Thursday February 13, 2025
Las Vegas Sun —
UNR says it received an order to stop work on three projects meant for developing global partnerships and scientific research because around $30 million in federal funding used in those initiatives could dry up in President Donald Trump’s gutting of the U.S. Agency for International Development.
Trump wants to scrap the bulk of initiatives performed by USAID, the agency tasked with assisting countries in need of support for disasters, poverty or democratic reforms, and move any remaining ones into Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s purview. Trump and billionaire Elon Musk, who runs what is billed as a cost-cutting Department of Government Efficiency, asserts the agency is rife with fraudulent spending of taxpayer dollars with “next-to-no oversight.”
That’s not sitting well at UNR.
Take Sudeep Chandra, a biology professor and director of the school’s Global Water Center, who says a highlight of co-leading the USAID-funded “Wonders of the Mekong” project is its diplomacy.