TARGETING SCIENCEA Siege on Science: How Trump Is Undoing an American Legacy
In its first 100 days, the Trump administration has slashed federal agencies, canceled national reports, and yanked funding from universities. The shockwaves will be felt worldwide.
Across seven decades and a dozen presidencies, America’s scientific prowess was arguably unmatched. At universities and federal agencies alike, researchers in the United States revolutionized weather forecasting, cured deadly diseases, and began monitoring greenhouse gas emissions. As far back as 1990, Congress directed this scientific might toward understanding climate change, after finding that human-induced global warming posed a threat to “human health, and global economic and social well-being.”
Donald Trump and his new administration evidently disagree. In the first 100 days of his second stint in the White House, the president has released a slew of orders that destabilize this apparatus. Earlier this month, the administration effectively scrapped the government’s comprehensive National Climate Assessment — a quadrennial report that provides scientifically-backed guidance for how towns, cities, and regions can prepare for a hotter climate — when it canceled a contract for the firm that facilitates the research. Recently leaked memos, reviewed by Grist, show the White House hopes to slash scientific research at NASA and eliminate all research at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, which is responsible for a host of climate, weather, and conservation science. And two weeks ago, the administration froze over $2 billion of research funding to Harvard — the latest in a series of punishments targeting the nation’s top schools that the president claims have become overrun by “woke” ideology.
Experts fear this siege against science could jeopardize the United States’ status as a global leader in climate research. Since Trump took office in January, the federal government has frozen billions of dollars in climate funding and grants for universities. At the same time, Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency has decimated the federal workforce, firing thousands of scientists, in a purported attempt to cut a trillion dollars in “waste and fraud” from the federal budget. This month, Musk’s team began canceling hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of scientific grants distributed by the National Science Foundation. And last week, Secretary of State Marco Rubio shuttered the Office of Global Change, which oversees international climate negotiations.
