Over the years, Donald Trump hasn’t exactly been a champion of science. As president and on the campaign trail, he called climate change a “hoax.” Oversaw the rollback of more than 100 environmental policies. It directed agencies to reduce expert guidance. They promoted unproven treatments for COVID. It withdrew from the Paris Climate Agreement (and promised to do so again). And they claimed, without evidence, that noise from wind turbines causes cancer. Ahead of his next term, he nominated a vaccine denier to oversee the Department of Health and Human Services, promised to potentially eliminate tens of thousands of career employees from federal agencies, and said he would close the Department of Education. .
“Trump basically said he was at war with science and scientists.”
“Trump has basically said he is waging war on science and scientists,” said Jennifer Jones, director of the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), a nonprofit science advocacy group.
And the “war” won’t be limited to researchers within the federal government. To better understand what scientists think about their work under Trump 2.0, I spoke to researchers, PhD students, postdocs, and startup founders at public and private universities. Many described concerns about losing funding, being banned from using terms like “climate change” in federal grant applications and other paperwork, and losing access to federal data sets. Some even feared for their own safety. Others were confident that their field would insulate their work from a future Trump administration. Most spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid putting their research at greater risk.
Their testimony is by no means a comprehensive picture of the scientific community’s position on Trump, but it sheds some light on what some researchers think the next four years will bring and what exactly is keeping them up at night. “There are many days when I feel like quitting the whole thing,” said one PhD student in California candidly.
Here are some ways another Trump administration could complicate things:
Funding and federal research priorities may change.
In academia, it may be difficult to find funding whether Trump is in office or not. To cover their salaries, researchers often require multiple grants, which are competitive and may only cover a few years at a time. “As you go down the railway, you’re essentially building a railway,” explained Oliver Bear Don’t Walk IV, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Washington who studies indigenous health. With Trump promising to shake up federal agencies like the NIH, they could “add even more uncertainty to an already quite uncertain process,” he said.
Although none of the researchers I spoke with expressed concern about losing their present Under Trump, the future was a different story if funded. “I already have an existing grant, so I’m already funded for the next few years,” said the California doctoral student, a NASA-funded ecologist who studies tree health and drought. But “what happens next is a big question mark for me.”
Funding in areas related to climate science, equity, and diversity initiatives may be particularly vulnerable. like Inside higher education Trump allies, including Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz and tech billionaire Elon Musk, have criticized the National Science Foundation, which provides billions of dollars in federal funding to researchers each year for grants related to gender, race, society and the environment, according to the report. I did it. righteousness. Cruz argued in an October report that these “questionable projects” are essentially “left-wing ideological campaigns” that have led, in Musk’s words, to “the corruption of science.”
Now researchers aren’t sure what funding they can rely on. Eldrick Millares, co-founder and CEO of Illuminant Surgical, a Los Angeles-based medical device startup aimed at helping doctors make fewer mistakes in spine surgery, said the company’s current Federal grants provide additional funding to hire employees from underrepresented groups. Millares said before Trump won that Illuminant had plans to use the funds to hire people from low-income or rural backgrounds in West Virginia. It is located. “We were really excited about it,” Millares said. “It may disappear next year.”
In Jones’ view, cutting funding for certain areas of research would be part of Trump’s larger campaign of attacks on scientists. (By UCS’s count, the Trump administration has led more than 200 attacks on science.) “By threatening to cut those subsidies, you’re scaring people into silence.”
Researchers are worried They will have to avoid controversial buzzwords like “diversity” or “climate change.”
For their own protection, many of the researchers I interviewed said they might have to reorganize their research to attract the attention of the new government.
“I will be completing my PhD early in the Trump administration.” A student from California said: “There is a NASA postdoctoral program I can apply to, and I’m starting to think about ways to continue my research in a non-climate-related way.” Hypothetically, he said, the project could be shifted towards what he describes as addressing ‘wildfire risk’ rather than ‘climate change’. It’s not ideal, but “there are parts of me that want to protect myself in the event of funding changes.” (I will) still do good research, but I will also protect myself.”
Other researchers may have more difficulty changing directions. “If talking about health equity is taboo, it’s hard to imagine how we will talk about the injustices that have happened to Indigenous people,” said Bear Don’t Walk, a citizen of the Apsáalooke Nation. When he first applied for the postdoctoral fellowship grant, he noted how U.S. government actions, including colonization, residential schools, and land dispossession, continue to impact Native health today. In other words, equity is at the heart of Bear Don’t Walk’s research. “It was important to me not to mince words. Should I mince words now?”
“Should I start mincing my words now?”
Some sources pointed out that scientists are always modifying their research proposals to suit the needs of their institutions. That’s just good grant writing. But what happens when the words researchers use affect the research that is ultimately conducted? “If we can no longer study specific things about health equity or talk about systemic racism in medical practice and education, we can’t essentially move the needle and try to solve some of the problems,” argued one medical researcher. I did it. .”
Scientists aren’t sure if they will have access to federal data or tools.
Above all, the scientists I spoke with worry that access to information will be further reduced under the new Trump administration. “I rely a lot on federal data,” said one postdoctoral fellow who studies energy policy. “I think there are a lot of open questions about the quality, reliability and ongoing delivery of federal data.” This includes data collected by agencies such as the U.S. Census (which the Trump administration first attempted to intervene in, as my colleague Ari Berman reports in detail) and the Energy Information Agency. Class” Data on energy consumption and production in the United States since the 70s, including data on energy companies. “If this were to be broken, researchers would generally be much more reliant on the companies themselves to provide the data, and there is no real reason to think that the companies would be completely honest or transparent in doing so,” says the postdoc. .”
“In general, we expect there to be much less transparency and disclosure from the federal government, which will make it much more difficult to assess the impact of federal actions,” he said.
Millares’ Illuminant co-founder James Hu noted that his company is in the process of receiving medical device approval from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). If the FDA becomes more “efficient” under HHS, led by Robert Kennedy Jr., wait times for approval could be shorter. But if FDA scientists resign en masse in response to Kennedy’s appointment (something current and former government officials reportedly fear will happen), that could slow things down at the FDA. “We’ve spent a lot of time trying to build good relationships with the FDA reviewers. If they leave, it’s going to be really difficult, because we’ll have to start over,” Millares said.
Good scientists may leave the field, be driven out, or not join at all.
Some researchers said they were worried about their own safety or the safety of their colleagues, especially in red states. A transgender California student said she had no intention of moving to a “top half” state after completing her doctorate because of hostility toward transgender people. “I was thinking about quitting science before I moved to Florida. I was going to move into the private sector and get a job in industry or something long before I moved to Missouri or Tennessee.”
“I was thinking of quitting science before I moved to Florida.”
UCS’ Jones served as a professor of environmental studies at Florida Gulf Coast University until he was tapped to head the university’s Center for Environment and Society, leaving in 2023 because of Gov. Ron DeSantis’ anti-science policies, he said. “It became increasingly clear that at best I should just shut up and crawl under the table and not do what I thought I should do.”
Now she worries that her experience in Florida could soon become a symbol of what will happen in the rest of the country. “With Trump waging a war of intimidation and fear against scientists, there will be far fewer people in the future who will stand up for the public good through science,” Jones said.
