1. United States
2. Pa.
3. Letter

I am writing to express my profound concern regarding a recent, deeply alarming assault on academic freedom and scientific discourse. On June 5, several prominent diabetes researchers were forcibly escorted from the American Diabetes Association’s (ADA) annual conference by law enforcement. Their offense was simply distributing printed copies of a peer-reviewed editorial from the ADA’s own scientific journal that criticized the Trump administration’s budget cuts to biomedical research. Following their removal, the lead author—the editor-in-chief of that very journal—was barred from the remainder of the conference and stripped of his scheduled presentations. This heavy-handed retaliation has already triggered high-profile resignations from within the ADA’s leadership and sparked widespread condemnation across the global scientific community. The suppression of scientific dissent and the weaponization of security against medical experts are hallmarks of authoritarian censorship, not a free society. When scientific institutions silence their own experts to curry political favor or avoid administration backlash, the integrity of public health research is fundamentally compromised. As my representative, I urge you to publicly condemn this incident and to aggressively defend the independence of scientific speech. Federal research funding must remain tied to robust, open academic debate, entirely insulated from political intimidation or institutional self-censorship. Please look into this matter and ensure that the voices of our nation's medical researchers cannot be silenced by political pressure.