Trump: more bombs, less science
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One of the important areas Trump wants to cut to fund his forever wars is, needless to say, scientific research:
For the second year in a row, US President Donald Trump has proposed significant cuts to the budgets of major US science agencies. Released Friday, the White House’s plan for federal spending next year also includes a ban on using federal funds for subscriptions and publishing fees for some academic journals.
The plan proposes cuts to federal agencies that fund or conduct research on health, space and the environment. Some of the steepest cuts would be made to the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA): the budgets of both would fall more than 50% in 2027 compared to their current levels (see ‘Budget crunch’). The budget for the US National Institutes of Health would drop 13%.
A budget document says that the proposal would maintain funding for research on quantum information and artificial intelligence “to ensure the United States remains on the cutting edge” in those arenas. The administration plans to increase applied research funding on those topics at the defence and energy departments, says Alessandra Zimmermann, who tracks science budgets and policy at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), a non-profit organization in Washington DC. But basic quantum and AI research funding at NSF, for example, would be cut by 37% and 32%, respectively.
“Why would you use money to save lives when it could be used to kill random people instead” is a central pillar of MAGA.
In related news, check out this latest sanewashing of RFK Jr. In addition to the “but apart from that, how was the trip to Dallas, Mrs. Kennedy?” approach to his anti-vaxx positions, the entire premise of the piece is that he is a popular Trump surrogate. The empirical basis for this…is unclear.