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This is Science Friday. I'm Flora Lichten.

It was President Trump's first week back in office, and along with a number of executive orders,

the new administration has imposed a range

of restrictions on the Department of Health and Human Services, including the National Institutes of

Health. Here to get us up to speed is Casey Crownheart, senior climate reporter at the MIT

Technology Review. Welcome back to Science Friday, Casey. Thanks so much. Always great to be here.

Casey, what is happening? All kinds of things are happening. Mass confusion is happening.

So like you said, the Trump administration imposed new restrictions on the NIH. That includes a suspension of all

travel, a pause on all external communications out of the agency,

and it's also being affected by a government-wide hiring freeze. And researchers are saying

that this sort of disruption can have ripple effects that slow down the pace of research.

You know, the NIH is responsible for all public health and biomed research for the government.

So this could have long-ranging effects,

depending on how long this all lasts. I'm reading that it's also some grant-making operations.

Have you heard anything about that? Absolutely. So, I mean, it really ranges from, you know,

researchers aren't able to travel to conferences, groups that would meet to

approve grants aren't meeting. There's really like a range of things that this is affecting at the

agency. One thing that really surprised me was, you know, we were expecting reports on the H5N1

bird flu outbreaks this week. And now it's not clear when those reports are going to be published.

Do you have a sense of how unusual this is? I mean, does this typically happen when a new

administration takes over? Some section of this is pretty common. So like a short pause on

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