When University of Virginia professor Chris Mooney wrote “The Republican War on Science” 20 years ago, he had plenty of evidence to work with. The bestselling book, written partway through the Bush/Cheney era, documented a GOP that manipulated research findings, ignored scientific facts and evidence, and even embraced pseudoscience as part of a culture war crusade.
It was difficult to imagine, in 2005, how the party’s hostility toward science could get much worse.
Two decades later, the Bush/Cheney era is starting to look like the halcyon days compared with the Trump/Vance era. NBC News reported:
The National Institutes of Health announced Friday that the agency is making cuts to grants that support research institutions by limiting the amount of indirect funding for research projects to just 15%. In the agency’s announcement, the NIH’s Office of Policy for Extramural Research Administration, or OPERA, wrote that $9 billion of the $35 billion total spent on research grants in fiscal year 2023 was allocated from the agency for indirect costs, which cover things like equipment, operations, maintenance, accounting and personnel.
A casual reader might see this and think that shifting overhead costs is inconsequential, but the details matter: This move will force research institutions to redirect funds away from medical research.
A Politico report explained: “[U]niversities and research organizations that stand to lose a lot of money sounded the alarm that the cuts will jeopardize advances in health research and slow progress toward curing diseases, since funding administrative costs is crucial to keeping the lights on and buildings staffed.”
The New York Times added that the new policy, which takes effect immediately, left much of the scientific community “reeling,” as doctors and scientists warned that the Trump administration’s decision “would have a devastating effect on studies aimed at finding treatments for diseases such as cancer, diabetes and heart disease.”
Matt Owens, president of the Council on Government Relations, an association of academic medical centers and research institutes, told The Washington Post, “This is a surefire way to cripple lifesaving research and innovation.” Jeffrey Flier, the former dean of Harvard Medical School, added via social media, “A sane government would never do this.”
If you’re wondering how such an idea even reached the Trump administration in the first place, it’s worth emphasizing for context that it originated with — you guessed it — the Project 2025 blueprint.
Making matters far worse is the degree to which this is a battle in a larger war on science. Consider the related developments that have unfolded as Donald Trump’s second term as president has gotten underway:
- Online information critical to scientists and physicians has been taken down.
- Scientific research funding is being restricted through keywords that Republicans find objectionable.
- Taxpayer-subsidized scientific information was withheld from the scientific and medical communities for the first time in generations.
- Prominent proponents of discredited scientific ideas, including Robert F. Kennedy Jr., have been chosen for powerful leadership positions in the administration.
- Team Trump has reportedly “unleashed chaos” at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the scientific agency commonly known as NOAA that provides weather forecasts through its National Weather Service.
- Political appointees at the Environmental Protection Agency fired all of the members of the EPA’s most influential science advisory panels.
Did I mention that we’re not yet one month in Trump’s second term in the White House?
Democratic Rep. Zoe Lofgren of California recently said, “My fear is that the chaos the new administration is sowing will be enough to leave our science and technology enterprise in ruins, with Chinese Communist leaders in Beijing popping champagne corks.”
It seems inevitable that these anxieties will spread and intensify in the coming hours, days, weeks, months and years.
