The Trump administration is taking a chain saw to America’s scientific
research. The proposed 2026 budget calls for a devastating
37 percent cut in funding for biomedical research through the National Institutes
of Health; a 56 percent cut in science research funding through the National
Science Foundation; and further, major cuts in science budgets at NASA, NOAA, the EPA, the CDC, the Agriculture Department, the Energy Department, the U.S. Geological Survey, the Forest Service, and other smaller agencies. Make
no mistake: This is a total war on science in America. If an enemy power wished
to demolish one of the pillars of American economic, military, and political
strength over the past century, this might be what they would do.
At first glance, these moves are so baffling that many
observers are tempted to deny that it is happening. Even the MAGA faithful
understand that science is part of what has made American great. So why has the
administration declared war on science?
To start, we should keep in mind that there is probably no
master plan. Multiple overlapping agendas and factors are driving the
destruction. But there is a deeper motivation at work too. The conservative
movement in America—the same movement that decades ago demanded science as the
answer to Sputnik—has turned its back on the very idea of science.
That’s because the conservative movement has become an
antidemocratic movement, and it understands at some level that the truth is
its enemy. Scientific research is in some respects collateral damage in a wider
war on democracy.
This anti-rationalist ideology comes in several flavors,
not all of them consistent. One wing comes out of the evangelical hard right,
which has long argued that science has been turned into a weapon against faith.
A large subset of the Christian nationalist movement, for instance, claims
climate science is not merely a hoax but a secular plot to undermine religion.
This
thinking is on vivid display at the little-known Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation. Cornwall, an
anti-environmental policy initiative, vilifies environmental science as a “Cult
of the Green Dragon.” In the alliance’s view,
environmentalism is an alternative—and false—theology.
The Cornwall Alliance is
led by E. Calvin Beisner. Before founding Cornwall, Beisner was a co-founder of the Coalition on Revival, a large network of
evangelical and right-wing Christian leaders and theologians that gathers every
few years in a different locale. COR members have adopted explicitly
dominionist and Reconstructionist ideological positions. They advocate theonomy, the idea that American laws should be based on a reactionary reading
of the Old and New Testaments. Think promoting “corporal discipline of
children as a means of teaching Godly behavior” and banning “deviant activities
as acceptable alternative lifestyles,” not Sermon on the Mount.
In spite of these
positions, many
religious right leaders insist that theirs is the scientific view. They
believe that what passes as science now is deeply infused with a value judgment—that scientific rhetoric is being deployed to advance the view that humans
should subordinate themselves to nature.
Then there is a
different approach emerging from people in the orbit of far-right think tanks
such as the Claremont Institute. They hold the view
that science has become part of a “woke bureaucracy”—Michael Anton, who
currently serves as Trump’s director of policy planning, has variously defined
it as the “university NGO international busybody complex” and the “globalist
borg” that is intent on pushing undesirable social views and cutting off
opportunities for a genuine—and dictatorial—leader of “the people.” Some New
Right representatives say we need a more monarchical form of government, a “Red Caesar” who can enact his will
without facts and reason getting in the way. They see in science an evil directorate,
and they simply want to destroy it.
A third, much smaller but highly influential group includes
the slice of tech bros who have allied with the authoritarian movement. Some
believe that AI and other allegedly private-sector forces will soon dominate
science; therefore, we don’t need the traditional government funding system.
They want us instead to put our blind faith behind them, the wizard-founders,
who they insist are the absolute best at everything they do and can be
therefore counted on to pursue science on behalf of all humanity—or at least
on behalf of their own ballooning fortunes.
It may seem surprising that the rise of technopolies
dovetails with anti-scientific attitudes. But some of these founders are
convinced they don’t need to do the science; they already know the answers because the answers are whichever technology turns out to be most profitable
for them under a misregulated market. If we needed further evidence that some
tech ideologues have embraced a profoundly antisocial misrepresentation of the
purposes of science, then we need look no further than the billboards that have recently
sprouted throughout the San Francisco Bay area: “Stop Hiring Humans.”
The various flavors of irrationalism in the current regime,
mixed with unprecedented levels of sheer incompetence, have given us the war on
science in its current form.
One of the major targets of the administration’s
aggression, for example, is the university system. Right-wing ideologues have
long griped that America’s universities are bastions of liberal power that willfully
discriminate against conservatives. The Republican base has largely bought into
this story. The administration now wants the power to exert control over
faculty and curricula, or at least undermine the independence of its academic
critics. But how can it do so? This is where the war on science comes in.
Over the past century, universities have emerged as key
nodes in the scientific establishment that converts public funds into research.
On the whole it has been a spectacularly successful system. But it has had the
unintended effect of rendering the universities hostage to federal funding. It
so happens that a good chunk of that funding goes into biomedical research. In
brief: This administration is willing to let people die of cancer if that’s
what it takes to win the war on supposedly “woke” universities.
Another target of the administration’s aggression is this
thing called the “administrative state.” It’s hard to say exactly what the
administrative state is, other than a catchall for everything that
conservative ideologues don’t like about government. The trouble is, of course,
that the administrative state is really the workings of a functioning democratic
government, and the biggest part of the government consists of administering
things that are very hard to cut: the Defense Department foremost, but also
things like air traffic management, nuclear safety, and so on. Much easier to
cut are contracts with outside suppliers, especially those whose benefits
accrue to future generations. In short: Science funding has fallen victim to
the conservatives’ need to perform violence against a demonized bureaucracy.
Right now, we are only seeing the short-term consequence of
the Republican war on science: Projects are canceled, and funding is denied,
individual careers are broken, research institutions are diminished, and
scientists drain out of the country for
safe havens around the world. The long-term consequences of Trump’s war on
science are likely to be far more serious.
What can we do about it now? Congress could stop this, but
of course it won’t as long as MAGA holds the Republican majority hostage. The courts
are slowing some of it, but they won’t change the overall direction alone.
Private actors and foundations can step in to cover some gaps, but their efforts are
likely to amount to Band-Aids.
The biggest problem is that there is a war going on and
very few people seem to have noticed. Scientists will need to step forward and help
the public understand the value of their work. Historians need to step forward
and explain the extraordinary achievements of the American research university
system. The rest of us need to get the message out. The true consequences of
this equation will show up 10 and 20 years from now, when our once-great
democracy faces health, climate, and other crises that might well have been
avoided.
The post The MAGA War on Science Is Deadly—and It’s Just Getting Started appeared first on New Republic.
