Donald Trump’s budget proposes a “major reorganization” of the National Institutes of Health budget. What that means is that he wants to reorganize 20 percent of the NIH’s funding into military spending, which is seriously bad news for medical research:

The shock waves of this blueprint will be felt far beyond the walls of government bureaucracies. The scientific endeavor across America depends to a large degree on competitive grants distributed by federal agencies that face dramatic budget cuts. NIH uses only about 10 percent of its $30 billion budget for in-house studies; more than 80 percent goes to some 300,000 outside researchers.

We don’t yet know what’s going to be cut. Cancer research? Diabetes prevention? Preventing alcohol use in American Indian and rural youth? Vaccines for mosquito-borne diseases? The effects will be felt across the country, by researchers and by the vendors that serve them. A study of nine Midwestern universities found that:

In 2012, these nine institutions received about $7 billion for research, more than half of which came from the NIH, the National Science Foundation and other funding agencies. Of that, the universities spent almost $1 billion on goods and services from U.S. vendors and subcontractors, the study found. Of that, 16 percent went to vendors in the university's home county, over 16 percent was spent elsewhere in the state, and the balance was spread to companies across the United States. University researchers buy chemicals and other ingredients needed for experiments and purchase laboratory equipment. There are entire industries devoted to supporting biomedical research.

Every STEM student doesn’t become a medical researcher, but medical research helps create industries that employ STEM students. And, of course, we don’t know how many people will feel the effects of these cuts when they get what could have been a preventable or curable illness … but isn’t, because Donald Trump cut research funding.