AUGUST 29, 2026
Trump administration's termination of over 150 science advisory committees draws concern from researchers about long-term policy gaps
More than 150 science-focused federal advisory committees were terminated in 2025 under the second Trump administration, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists, with over a quarter of healthcare-related committees shut down as of March of this year, per advocacy group Public Citizen. The White House said dissolved committees "were found to be redundant, unnecessary, or ineffective." These committees, formalized under the Federal Advisory Committee Act passed by Congress in 1972, are composed primarily of volunteers drawn from across relevant fields of study and practice.
The terminations have affected committees covering a wide range of topics, from managing fisheries and sustaining U.S. seafood resources, to planning future NASA space science and astrophysics missions, to reducing preventable infections in hospitals. The long COVID advisory committee — which included doctors, researchers, patients, and public health experts — was among those dissolved, and it was terminated before it held a single meeting, according to NPR.
Netia McCray, a long-COVID patient and nonprofit director who runs a STEM program for teens in Boston, had joined that committee in 2025 and received an email notice that the group was terminated "effective immediately" after only a few months. Dr. Alexandra Yonts, a pediatrician at Children's National Hospital in Washington, D.C., and one of few specialists in the country focusing on long COVID in children, was also on the committee and said new therapeutics remain urgently needed.
Participants from other terminated committees described the loss of independent expertise as a structural gap in federal policymaking. Hilary Babcock, an infectious disease researcher who served on the Healthcare Infection Control Practices Advisory Committee before it was dissolved, said committee members provided agencies like the CDC with practical, real-world knowledge about operationalizing scientific findings — knowledge that agency staff, who do not work in hospitals, may not have. Babcock specifically noted Candida auris, a drug-resistant fungus with rising case counts, as an issue that she said is not receiving updated federal guidance.