Donald Trump’s second presidency has spelled upheaval or worse for multiple spheres of US government. But for science – long a key driver of the US’s global preeminence – it has heralded the perfect storm.
In public health, climate science, environmental protection and nuclear safety, seasoned career specialists have been left bewildered and often jobless under a ferocious onslaught from the president, apparently aimed at gaining control over a sector about which he has displayed strongly-held views, if frequently flawed understanding.
Now, experts warn, the US faces a loss of scientific expertise across multiple fronts that could takes decades to restore in a purge that has seen thousands of government scientists fired and billions of dollars slashed from research programs that were previously deemed vital.
Some observers compare Trump’s offensive to contemporary authoritarian regimes such as Hungary and Russia under Vladimir Putin. One even likens it to the ruthless efforts of Hitler and Stalin to bring scientists to heel in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.
“The Trump administration is trying to undermine the scientific method as a basis of making determinations, both in the scientific field and for application to improve public policy,” said Paul Josephson, emeritus professor at Colby College in Maine, and a specialist in the history of 20th century science and technology.
“It is designating which kinds of science are good and which are inappropriate. It’s come up with a list of terms that should not be mentioned in scientific articles, or end research that disproportionately [focuses on] women, trans people, black people or people of color.”
Josephson cited the phenomenon of “Lysenkoism” – named after the Soviet biologist, Trofim Lysenko, who rejected genetics and science-based agriculture – as an example of the long-term dangers of top-down dogmatic beliefs. Lysenko’s pseudo-scientific beliefs were backed by Stalin and led to the arrests, imprisonment and, in some cases, even executions of dissenting scientists.
The Trump administration’s approach captured headlines last month when the White House fired Susan Monarez, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) after she clashed with Robert F Kennedy Jr, the health secretary, over vaccine policy.
Monarez, an infectious diseases specialist who had been in her post for just a month, wrote that she was ordered to pre-approve the recommendations of a vaccine advisory panel due to meet this month that had been filled with people with anti-vaccine views.
Kennedy expounded on his own hardline anti-vaccine opinions in heated testimony before a Senate committee last week, where he faced Democrat calls to resign as he defended his purge of federal public health agencies, which have undergone mass staff cuts since he was confirmed in office.
Yet his actions have been part of a broader canvas in the war against science.
The Union of Concerned Scientists, a non-profit group, documented 402 incidents it defined as “attacks on science” between Trump’s 20 January inauguration and the end of June.
These included firing or demoting federal scientists, halting data collection in scientific studies by federal agencies, censoring scientists and rolling back regulations based on sound scientific evidence. There have also been moves to restrict access to data, reports and guidance.
Trump signaled his determination to bring science under his direct ambit in an executive order issued in May entitled “restoring gold standard science”.
It claimed that “confidence that scientists act in the best interests of the public has fallen significantly.” It blamed “the falsification of data by leading researchers” for his own administration’s termination of numerous federal research grants.
Another order issued last month vowed closer scrutiny of National Science Foundation grants, citing an unidentified “study” that claimed one-quarter of such awards in 2024 went to “diversity, equity, and inclusion and other far-left initiatives”.
Jennifer Jones, director of the center for science and democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists, US science was undergoing an “unprecedented…assault from all angles”.
“They’re sidelining science,” she said. “At the same time, they’re uplifting junk science and quackery that’s going to help and support their billionaire [supporters] and bottom lines.”
The effects, she warned, would endure. “There will be lasting damage, and it will likely take multiple political administrations to get over and to rebuild what has been lost.”
Among the most affected areas are:
Public health
According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, the Department of Health and Human Services shed nearly a quarter (24%) of its staff, around 20,000 workers, between Trump’s return to office and mid-May – the highest proportion of any federal science agency.
Before the row that triggered Monarez’s firing, Kennedy cancelled $500m in funding for the development of mRNA vaccines – which are currently used for Covid-19 but subject to research as a treatment for a host of other conditions, including certain cancers, HIV, rabies and Zika.
On 27 May, the administration cancelled a $590m contract with Moderna supporting the development of a bird flu vaccine.
Kennedy also announced that the CDC would no longer recommend Covid booster shots for healthy children and pregnant women. He falsely claimed that recommendations of repeat boosters for children were unsupported by clinical data.
Trump had previously issued an executive order prohibiting Covid mandates in schools.
Another order in May halted research into “dangerous gain-of-function (GOF) research” on viruses and pathogens – claiming that such research was being carried out without sufficient oversight and citing the unsubstantiated theory that the Covid-19 virus originated from a lab in China that used similar research methods.
The Food and Drug Administration has limited access to Covid shots, saying only people over 65 and those at high risk of complications from the virus need them.
Amid this intense vaccine-hostility, groups such as the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Medical Association – as well as at least one Republican senator, Bill Cassidy – have accused the administration of denying vaccines to people who want it.
Concerns extend beyond vaccine policy. Last week, Kennedy was accused of burying a report – commissioned during Joe Biden’s presidency and submitted to the health department in March – that posited evidence of a link between alcohol and cancer. Critics say the stance contradicts Kennedy’s self-proclaimed make America health again (Maha) agenda.
Among numerous firings at the National Institute of Health were staff researching into Alzheimer’s disease at the institute’s center for Alzheimer’s and related dementias (Card), ABC News reported. They included Kendall Van Keuren-Jensen, who had been earmarked as the center’s next acting director.
The CDC is also eliminating its drowning prevention program, established in response to a spike of drowning incidents during the Covid pandemic. More than 4,000 people drown in the US each year, and it is the leading cause of death among children aged one to four.
Climate
About 800 researchers, meteorologists and engineers with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) were fired in February in a move specialists warned would impede vital hurricane forecasting and climate modeling work.
A further 10 fellows from a post-doctoral program on climate and global change run by the agency were put on unpaid leave in July. Meanwhile, the commerce department indefinitely suspended work on part of Noaa’s Atlas 15 program, which provides data on extreme rainfalls and how they are impacted by climate change.
The administration’s budget proposal for 2026 envisions a $1.52bn cut to Noaa’s allocation, with cuts specifically targeting climate programs.
The White House’s office of management and budget (OMB) also proposes a $20.29bn cut to the energy department, with its office of science budget targeted for a $1.15m reduction.
The administration has marginalized the national climate assessment, despite it being mandated by Congress to be conducted every four years. In April, it dismissed 400 volunteer experts who had prepared to work on the latest assessment.
As of the end of June, national climate assessment were no longer available on federal government websites, with no explanation or links to alternative sources provided, according to Columbia University’s Sabin center for climate change law.
Meanwhile, the Pentagon announced that it would stop providing atmospheric and oceanic data to scientists and weather forecasters, citing “cybersecurity concerns”.
Environmental Protection
Last month, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed rescinding the endangerment finding, a 2009 scientific determination that greenhouse gases endanger human health, and instead interpret its authority narrowly under the Clean Air Act. Experts say such a move threatens the legal basis for federal climate regulation.
The EPA also announced plans to eliminate its office of research and development – long seen as the linchpin of its mission to protect the environment and human health – and replace it with a new office of applied science and environmental solutions. In so doing, it is set to cut its workforce by 3,700 – down by nearly a quarter since Trump took office.
Last week, the EPA disclosed it was no longer prepared to uphold rules designed to protect people from unsafe levels of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (Pfas ) – also known as “forever chemicals – in drinking water. It asked a federal court to reverse legal protections against four such chemicals put in place by Congress just last year.
On Tuesday, the agency said it would end the Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program (GHGRP) – a move that it said would end the obligations of around 8,000 large business concerns in the US to report their carbon emissions and save businesses $2.4bn over the next decade. Lee Zeldin, the EPA’s Trump-appointed administrator, dismissed the program as “bureaucratic red tape that does nothing to improve air quality”.
Trump has issued a series of orders undercutting clean energy initiatives, fueled by his frequently-expressed antipathy towards wind turbines.
“We have a president who rejects wind power because he says it makes whales go nuts,” said Josephson, the Colby College historian. “He claims that wind power is unsafe and that it’s not good otherwise for the nation, but [the real reason] is to support the fossil fuel industry. By doing that, he will give the leadership to European countries, and especially to China, in the areas of wind power.”
Nuclear Safety
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the US’s nuclear safety watchdog, has lost nearly 200 staff since Trump’s inauguration – amounting to a “brain drain” of expertise that former officials say raises the risk of future accidents.
Nearly half of the agency’s 28-strong senior leadership team have been installed in an “acting” capacity, while only three of its five commissioners’ positions are filled.
The Financial Times quoted a Scott Morris, a recently-retired former deputy executive director of operations, as calling the staffing situation, in which some senior leaders have been pushed out, “unprecedented”.
Two dozen nuclear reactors are currently under development in the US, prompting Morris to warn that replacing qualified professionals with politically motivated appointees at the agency would be “a dangerous game” that could lead to serious problems going undetected until years in the future.
