The Trump administration has slashed funding for universities and scientific research. Now, its lackeys appear to be escalating their tactics by menacing academic journals.

In a letter sent to the editor of CHEST Journal Peter Mazzone, US attorney for the District of Columbia Edward R. Martin, Jr. — a devout Trump appointee — insinuates that the publication is "partisan," presses it for an explanation on how it handles "misinformation," and asks whether it's accepting of "competing viewpoints."

In February, Martin sparked an outcry after he declared himself to be "Trump's lawyer," vowing "to fight to protect his leadership against entities "that refuse to put America first."

With anti-vax crackpots like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. chosen to run this country's public health institutions, and a tide of "anti-woke" sentiment targeting scientists for acknowledging that climate change is real and that trans people exist, it's impossible not to read Martin's letter as a thinly veiled threat: stop being "woke," or face government scrutiny.

"The public has certain expectations and you have certain responsibilities," Martin wrote. 

The letter was shared on social media this week by Eric Reinhart, a political anthropologist. MedPage Today reports that it's learned of at least two author journals receiving similar letters.

"A publication's editorial decisions are none of the government's business, whether it's a newspaper or a medical journal," JT Morris, a senior supervising attorney at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, told MedPage Today. "When a United States Attorney wields the power of his office to target medical journals because of their content and editorial processes, he isn't doing his job, let alone upholding his constitutional oath," Morris added. "He's abusing his authority to try to chill protected speech."

As part of its DOGE-effort to slash federal expenditures, the Trump administration has cut off billions of dollars in financial support for universities, terminated hundreds of research projects funded by the US National Institutes of Health, and cancelled nearly $3 billion in the agency's contracts. 

It has also frozen every single research grant at the US National Science Foundation, one of the largest funders of basic research in the world, in order to review the grants' language for terms related to DEI. Some of the "woke" or "partisan" stuff that's been kneecapped by the sweeping cuts include cancer and Alzheimer's research. If the draconian measures were intended to be an out-and-out assault on the scientific community, it's working: with the money drying up, some of the nation's top scientists are starting to consider leaving the country.

But many are fighting back. In February, publications including the American Journal of Public Health said they would heavily scrutinize papers submitted by government scientists, after the Trump administration carried out a blackout of health administration data and forced CDC scientists to withdraw their work to remove language related to gender.

In response to this latest escalation — siccing a US attorney on individual publications — some in the scientific community are calling for solidarity.

"It is yet another example of the Trump administration's effort to control academic inquiry and stifle scientific discourse — an administration, it warrants mentioning, that has embraced medical misinformation and pseudoscience to reckless effect," Adam Gaffney, a pulmonary and critical care physician at Cambridge Health Alliance in Massachusetts, told MedPage Today. "Journal editors should join together and publicly renounce this as yet more thinly guised anti-science political blackmail."

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