The National Academies have become one of the most powerful engines driving the left’s cultural and political agenda pushing DEI, transgender ideology, and a radical climate agenda on the taxpayer’s dime.
The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine operates under a congressional charter with a mission to advance America’s STEM capabilities. Today, that supposed mission has been hijacked. Instead of providing objective scientific guidance, the National Academies is pushing a woke political agenda. The organization funds leftist causes, and staffed by Democratic donors, and publishes research that reads more like activist manifestos than independent science.
Source: The National Academies
Pushing Transgender Ideology on Children:
The National Academies have used their scientific credibility to push transgender ideology, including onto kids.
Source: International Congress of Infant Studies
In 2023, the organization published a workshop brief titled “Supporting the Health and Well-Being of Transgender and Gender Diverse Youth” that echoed calls for so-called “gender-affirming care” for kids, citing endorsements from the American Academy of Pediatrics. A workshop that same year featured parents and transgender children as participants, with attendees arguing that classrooms should mandate “affirming pronouns.”
Source: National Academies
A 2021 webinar on “The Well-Being of Black and other Transgender People of Color” was moderated by a representative of the Human Rights Campaign, which is the same organization that openly advocates for transgender procedures on children. HRC has been called out repeatedly for its scoring system that is used to force companies to comply with its woke agenda.
Source: National Academies
Source: National Academies
The National Academies have also published full books on reducing “inequalities” facing LGBTQ+ youth, and hosted events framing gender diverse youth as victims of “racism, heterosexism, ableism, classism, and nativism.” — content that is better suited to an activist training session than a scientific institution.
Source: National Academies
Source: National Academies
Funding The Left’s Favorite Causes:
The National Academy of Sciences also provides grants to organizations, and the recipients tell you everything you need to know about where its loyalties lie.
Since 2018, the National Academy of Sciences has granted millions of dollars to woke groups, including:
It has also poured $4.4 million into the Urban Institute, a group dedicated to building what it calls a “more equitable and just society,” and nearly $3 million into Population Services International, an organization tied to abortion activism.
It also gave $1.25 million to Birmingham-Southern College to develop a curriculum “focused on environmental justice and climate change.”
Source: Birmingham-Southern College Facebook
The DEI Machine:
The National Academies have been among the most aggressive institutional promoters of DEI in the country. The organization has held events, published reports, and funded programs designed to embed radical equity ideology across American science and medicine.
Source: National Academies
In January 2024, the group hosted a workshop titled “Advancing Antiracism, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in STEMM Organizations: Current Context and Challenges.”
Source: The National Academies
In June 2022, the National Academies partnered with the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative on a grant program to promote DEI among biomedical researchers, handing out $1.15 million per recipient over five years.
Source: Chan Zuckerberg Initiative
In 2024, the National Academies held a workshop focused on the impact of anti-DEI laws following the Supreme Court’s ruling against affirmative action, discussing “potential solutions for mitigating adverse impacts” of those laws.
Source: National Academies
In May 2023, the National Academies hosted a separate workshop on “Protecting Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Higher Education and the Workforce,” with sessions focused on how to implement affirmative action without technically using race-based criteria after the Supreme Court struck it down.
Source: National Academies
Additionally, in 2023, the group hosted a workshop titled “Exploring Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Health Equity Commitments and Approaches by Health Organization C-Suites. This workshop featured presentations on how DEI and “equity commitments” should be used to achieve internal and external goals.
Source: The National Academies
Source: National Academies
Their 2023 report “Advancing Antiracism, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in STEMM Organizations” claimed that “racism is embedded in our society” and cited the “murder” of George Floyd as a reason to restructure American science institutions.
Source: National Academies
In 2024, the federal government finally told NAS to terminate a DEI-focused ocean studies committee, which the Academies had been running to “promote and increase diversity, equity, inclusion, and education” across federal agencies at taxpayer expense.
Source: National Academies
Platforming “Defund the Police”:
While the National Academies haven’t officially called to “defund the police,” it has funded, published, and hosted research that makes the case for them.
Source: The National Academies X Account
The workshop’s co-chair closed by declaring that “police have caused a great deal of harm in low-income communities and communities of color.”In 2021, their Committee on Reducing Racial Inequalities in the Criminal Justice System held a workshop where presenters reviewed Austin, TX’s effort to redirect $50 million from its police budget, and a speaker from the Anti Police-Terror Project argued that much of Oakland California’s police incidents “do not require the response of a police officer.”
Source: National Academies
Source: National Academies
The workshop’s co-chair closed by declaring that “police have caused a great deal of harm in low-income communities and communities of color.”
Source: National Academies
Their journal has published studies calling police “a leading cause of death for young men in the United States,” argued that BLM protests were effective in shifting public discourse, and advocated for “curtailing militarized policing.”
Source: PNAS.org
Source: NAS X Account
In the wake of George Floyd’s death, the National Academy of Sciences rushed to offer “evidence-based science” to communities “reevaluating policing goals, methods, and procedures.”
Source: NAS Facebook
As far back as 2015, members of the National Academies’ Board on Behavioral, Cognitive, and Sensory Sciences sought to undertake research examining “police split-second choices to shoot unarmed black men.”
Source: National Academies
Radical Climate Agenda and Attacking the Trump Administration:
National Academy of Sciences President Marcia McNutt has boasted that the National Academies have written more reports on climate change “than just about any other single topic.” Their website hosts an entire climate change collection of dozens of reports dating back to 2008.
Source: National Academies
In 2022, McNutt claimed that humans were “entering what is perhaps the final decade” where they could address climate change.
Source: The National Academies X Account
In August 2025, the National Academies pushed forward a climate review that critics say was a backdoor effort to undermine the Trump administration’s rollback of the Obama-era greenhouse gas endangerment finding. The report concluded that linking greenhouse gas emissions to harm to human health is “beyond scientific dispute.”
Source: FOX News
Source: National Academies
In 2026, a study published in NAS’s own journal examined behavioral interventions designed to mobilize public advocacy for climate action — testing 17 techniques on more than 31,000 U.S. participants to find the most effective ways to push Americans toward climate activism.
Source: PNAS Nexus
Leaders Who Donate Exclusively to Democrats:
None of these woke priorities should be surprising given who runs these institutions. The National Academy of Sciences President Marcia McNutt donates exclusively to Democrats, including then-President Biden, Sen. Tim Kaine, and Sen. Mark Kelly. She publicly expressed outrage at “Trump budget slashes” and called his withdrawal from the Paris Agreement a sign of a “lack of science advice in White House.”
Source: Marcia McNutt X Account
Source: Marcia McNutt X Account
National Academy of Medicine President Victor Dzau has donated to Hillary Clinton, the DNC, and President Obama. He also posted a selfie with transgender Assistant Secretary of Health Richard “Rachel” Levine at a Biden White House event.
Source: Victor Dzau X Account
National Academy of Sciences Executive Officer Monica Feit has also donated exclusively to Democrats, including Senators Fetterman and Alsobrooks.
In 2024 alone, NAS employees gave over $57,000 to Democrats, continuing a 20-year trend of one-sided political giving.
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The National Academies were created to be America’s trusted, nonpartisan scientific voice. Instead, the group has become a taxpayer-subsidized lobbying arm for the woke left: pushing DEI mandates, transgender ideology, anti-police research, and a radical climate agenda that advances the Woke Agenda. Taxpayer dollars should not be used to push politics, and consumers deserve more from institutions that were established to be nonpartisan.
Contact the National Academies today and demand it stops pushing woke policies and return to objective, nonpartisan science.
Call them at: 1 (202) 334-2000
Email them at: news@nas.edu
Reach them on X: @theNASciences
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