My aunt recently passed away from cancer. I loved her so much.
We shared a love of books, reality TV, and fighting for what’s right. And we shared a deep, unfiltered hatred of Donald Trump.
And so today, when I saw the headline in WIRED: How Trump Killed Cancer Research, it hit me like a punch to the chest.
Over 240 cancer research grants—canceled.
Clinical trials—stopped mid-treatment.
Researchers—laid off.
Patients—left with nothing.
When you’re watching someone you love suffer, you cling to hope. Hope for a breakthrough. Hope for a clinical trial. Hope in science.
But under Donald Trump’s leadership, that hope was defunded.
After returning to office, Trump froze $1.5 billion in NIH research funding. That decision immediately disrupted the work of cancer researchers across the country—halting trials that were already underway, cutting off funding mid-project, and in some cases forcing entire labs to shut down.
This wasn’t some bureaucratic delay. This was deliberate.
Grants were flagged and canceled because they included keywords like “diversity,” “LGBTQ+,” and “equity.” Entire research projects were erased—not because they lacked merit, but because they offended a far-right ideological agenda.
In the middle of it all, nearly 300 scientists at the NIH—many of them longtime career researchers—sounded the alarm. They signed what’s now known as the Bethesda Declaration, warning of a “culture of fear and suppression” that threatens the very foundation of public health research in this country.
This isn’t just about scientists losing funding.
It’s about patients losing time.
Losing treatment.
Losing their lives.
Cancer doesn’t care about politics. But apparently, Trump does.
He promised to “cure cancer.”
What he did was kill the research that might have.
I’m angry. I’m grieving. And I’m not staying silent.
Because I know I’m not the only one who’s lost someone.
And I know I’m not the only one who’s furious that those in power would rather cancel lifesaving research than let it exist in a world that values equity and inclusion.
If you’ve lost someone to cancer—if you’ve ever hoped for a miracle that might come from a clinical trial—you deserve to know the truth about what’s happening.
Read the WIRED article. Here’s the link.
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Because the truth matters—even when they try to bury it.
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