Science Under Attack, Global Leaders Fight Back With Binding Commitments

The Clinton Global Initiative's Sept. 23 plenary, titled "Powering Scientific Breakthroughs," assembled heads of state, Nobel-caliber scientists, tribal leaders and entrepreneurs around a single, urgent question: How do you keep science moving when political headwinds, funding cuts and declining public trust threaten to stall it? The answers came in the form of binding CGI commitments — concrete pledges spanning emergency maternal care in rural Ghana, diabetes prevention in underserved U.S. neighborhoods, gender-affirming healthcare on sovereign Indigenous land and climate entrepreneurship across the Caribbean.

• Cree Nation declares gender-affirming healthcare a treaty right, inviting global researchers to build sovereign health infrastructure outside the reach of anti-trans laws

• Bill Nye calls the upcoming midterm "the most important election in my lifetime" for science, cites the U.S. Constitution's mandate to promote scientific progress

• NIH funds only 8% of cancer research proposals, panelists warn, as Wellcome Trust pledges to steer 25%+ of its portfolio to researchers in Africa and Asia

• Guyana's president showcases a small-state partnership model — from the world's longest-distance robotic cardiac surgery to a 95% reduction in hinterland medevacs

• Moving Health commits to scale tricycle ambulance coverage in Ghana from 250,000 to 2.2 million people through a new digital dispatch center

• Willow Laboratories will fully subsidize a diabetes prevention app for 1,500 people in at least three underserved U.S. communities through 2028