On Sunday, the National Science Foundation announced that his payment system was online again To comply with the order of a judge, five days after the Agency had freezing the financing for researchers.
Although postdoctoral guys were relieved that they could now ask the checks that they trust to pay for rent, food and credit card accounts, some concern subsidies and resources of existence can still be at risk.
The NSF did not immediately respond to questions from Stat on Sunday.
Many researchers funded by NSF are paid through universities or other institutions, but others get their money directly from the agency itself, report to a portal and ask for payments. Although some of those who are immediately financed, have to adhere to certain wage schemes, others can technically assign all the money they are allocated in one go, although it is common for them to withdraw it little by little, the way in which Many workplaces regularly become salary.
That portal was frozen after the order of Trump on January 27 and put many payments in the government, which was later changed and then withdrawn.
According to the NSF webpage on the executive orders, which was updated on Sunday, “NSF cannot take action to postpone or stop for active prices that are exclusively based on actual or potential non-compliance with the executive orders are based. “
But last week, when researchers tried to log in to request their salary, the website said that “the Award Cash Management Service (ACM $) is temporarily unavailable from Tuesday 28 January 2025 at 5 pm EST, while NSF is an extensive overview of the Award portfolio to ensure that recent executive orders … ”
And even as soon as the payment system came back online, the website of the agency said that it would continue to revise its allocation portfolio “in the context of recent executive orders.”
In the court, the attorney general argued that the payment break was a violation of the American constitution, since the financing mandatory by the congress could not be withheld by the executive power.
When researchers had heard of the approaching freezing of the financing, many had tried to ask large amounts to be able to pay for their bills and to continue to work, regardless of whether the Trump administration tried to pause payments that the federal government had already promised to give out. But payment requests on Tuesday were canceled.
The NSF website said that it is the right to “take action for reasons that are not related to compliance with the executive orders, such as violations of the law, regulations or current NSF subsidy conditions.”
In the meantime, the NSF said that there may be delays in payment processing in the coming two days, given the expected high volume of requests.