Crap, did Trump just do something good?

No. As the article says, this requirement was implemented under the Biden administration. Trump is just pushing the deadline to comply forward by 6 months as a way to pressure Springer Nature into doing what he wants.

The greed of the publishing industry and the barriers they put up to access is well known. Trump here is trying to tarnish the integrity of federally funded science by going after a big dog publisher (just like his obsession with attacking Harvard) and threatening to cancel subscriptions the federal govt has. This would make access to information even harder. These subscriptions, as overpriced as they may be, are critical to the jobs of federal scientists.

Look at the totality of what Trump and the GOP is doing to gut science, outlined in project 2025 and in the latest budgets. Sure, I normally wouldn’t mind seeing publishers sweat a little, but the reason they’re losing a large chunk of their revenue stream is because federal funding for science has taken a huge hit.