Where do the NSF and NIH attacks hit hardest?

A quick post today, pointing to one aspect of the new Trump administration’s moves against higher education. New executive orders rained down and struck two major federal research funding, the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Institutes for Health (NIH), as I summarized two days ago. Spending was frozen, then maybe un-frozen, and now much is uncertain.

I was curious about where these NSF and NIH problems fell most heavily across the country, and Axios did a good job helping us visualize that question:

Notice the heavy NIH/NSF draw in Maryland and Massachusetts. There’s some recent and interesting research on uneven NIH spending.

Politically minded readers might see the strong federal research presence along the west coast, upper midwest, and northeast, then think of the 2024 election map (New York Times version):

It’s not a 1:1 correspondence — note North Carolina’s strong NIH/NSF presence, which Axios addressed in a separate note — but the general pattern does echo. We could think of this as a red state coalition punishing blue states, as they’ve done before, or as a sign of the growing role of education as a marker of party difference.

It seems reasonable to expect more of this over the next year.