Donald Trump’s second term as US president has already begun to attract accusations of damage to scientific research and efforts by any branch of the federal government to improve diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).
Despite having won his re-election on the basis of votes from poorly informed working-class and rural voters, these are likely to be the main victims of his administration’s initial restrictions and orders on public health.
Trump’s measures include ordering federal health agencies, including the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the National Institutes for Health (NIH) to pause all external communications, including health advisories and scientific reports.
NIH, in particular, appears to have been effectively put in lockdown, with even routine meetings cancelled and employees forbidden to travel. Job adverts have been withdrawn, job interviews cancelled, and scientists booked to speak at conferences have been instructed to cancel: some meetings were reportedly cancelled while they were happening.
Worse still, in a move reminiscent of totalitarian regimes, according to the New York Times, all federal employees have been ordered to become informers — threatened with “adverse consequences” if they fail to report on colleagues who surreptitiously engage in what the administration considers D.E.I.
Nature reports that the pause on advisory committee meetings means “the NIH cannot issue research grants, temporarily freezing 80% of the agency’s $47-billion budget that funds research across the country and beyond.”
In case anyone thinks this is purely an American phenomenon it’s worth noting that Trump’s onslaught has been welcomed by the right wing columnists of the Daily Telegraph, hailing “Trump is already smashing the Leftist deep state.” There are increasing numbers of authoritarian and anti-science voices on this side of the Atlantic.
Despite the limp silence of the ousted Democrats, there is also resistance in the US. Academics, led by the Harvard School of Public Health, have begun an urgent effort to collate and share precious data that is already beginning to disappear from US government agency websites.
A circular from Harvard Professor Nancy Krieger, calling for participation in a January 31 “Datathon” to rescue as much information as possible, notes that already NIH websites on “Ending Structural Racism” and on women’s health equity and inclusion could only be retrieved after deletion by using the “Wayback machine” that archives websites.
There is also resistance Yale University, where Sandy Chang, a professor of laboratory medicine, has warned that “I’m just worried that this trend continues, that we’ll lose a whole generation of scientists.” He added that “Without NIH grants, we’re dead.”
The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) are also on the case, with senior analyst Darya Minovi explaining “What’s at stake if the data at federal agencies disappears.” She argues that the first Trump term showed how the second term will go, rejecting and suppressing data and scientific information on health and many other issues:
“To put it plainly, the first Trump administration rejected and distorted scientific information to protect corporate profits, and rolled back critical science-based climate and environmental protections. This was seen not only in major regulatory and executive actions, but also in the language used on federal websites.”
The first Trump administration changed and/or removed information on federal websites related to issues like water pollution and climate change approximately 1,400 times.
Draya Minovi explains that when science-based information is removed or altered, it not only leaves people less informed, but it can also threaten public health and safety. She gives examples relating to the Covid pandemic:
“There were many politically-motivated efforts to hinder COVID-19 research and response efforts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), including concealing data that was once on the CDC website showing the number of people tested and number of deaths.…
“Political appointees in the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which oversees the CDC, also tampered with and downplayed language in CDC publications on COVID-19 and attempted to halt publication of numerous studies.
“This blatant interference with the work of federal scientists and efforts to downplay the severity of the virus, which killed more than one million Americans, can erode the public’s trust in science.”
Another Union of Concerned Scientists article notes that in June of 2020, in the midst of the pandemic, Trump told federal agencies to “slow the testing down, please,” because extensive testing was finding too many cases of COVID-19.
It goes on to warn that Trump 2.0 is likely to be even more destructive:
“The policy agenda outlined in Project 2025 for the second term and Trump’s early actions since the elections are already confirming his intent to charge ahead on all angles of that anti-science playbook. Just this time, the abuses and sidelining of science are sure to be more overt and wide-ranging. … Many of Trump’s nominees for federal science agencies have a history of disregarding science or come from industry regulated by those agencies.”
There is also a plan to bully and force out scientists who don’t toe the required government line, especially on the environment. Russell Vought, the nominee to head the Office of Management and Budget, has promised a “whole-of-government unwinding” of climate research – and an assault on nonpartisan government workers, including scientists, intended to “put them in trauma” and drive them from their jobs.
However another UCS article attempts to rally the maximum fightback, headlining “The Trump Administration’s Plans to Fire Federal Science Workers Is Not a Done Deal”, and pointing to “five reasons why federal science workers can watch and wait during these opening months of the Trump administration.” These are:
- Any plan to gut the system will take time to legally implement
- The federal government is not as simple as “The Apprentice.”
- Plans will get tied up in court (reminding readers that “President Trump lost most of his executive agency cases the first time around, or he backed down.”)
- The administration’s plan depends on workers’ fear and overreaction (warning that “the Trump Administration’s plan depends in large part on “traumatizing” public servants and using “shock and awe” to convince as many as possible to leave on their own as early as possible.”)
- Help for federal science workers is available (federal workers are backed by the public as well as the UCS: “According to a national poll published just days after the 2024 election, 76% of people in the US express confidence in scientists to act in the public’s best interests. That’s a higher level of trust than the public has for police officials or school principals.”)
Trump and his acolytes clearly have nothing but contempt for the other half of the American voters who did not support them in November: but the fact that there is an early willingness to fight back should give us all some hope that his attack on science and those who fight for greater equality may not prove as successful as he expects.
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