The most anti-science administration in American history — edging out the first Trump term through sheer audacity — continues apace. Two reports on Friday regarding Trump’s budgeting plans indicate what amounts to an outright attempt to murder the scientific enterprise at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA. These agencies have offered conclusions the people in charge don’t like — the climate is changing, it is dangerous, and we should stop burning fossil fuels, primarily — and as such they want them to stop asking the questions entirely.
Meanwhile, Ars Technica reported that the administration sent a budget document to NASA outlining an across-the-board cut to the agency of $5 billion, or around 20 percent of its total budget. Again, the primary target is the Science Mission Directorate, which would see its budget cut from $7.5 billion to $3.9. billion. Per their reporting, some details:
A two-thirds cut to astrophysics, down to $487 million; a greater than two-thirds cut to heliophysics, down to $455 million; a greater than 50 percent cut to Earth science, down to $1.033 billion; and a 30 percent cut to Planetary science, down to $1.929 billion.
There are some mind-boggling wastes involved. Though the budget would continue to fund the Hubble and James Webb space telescopes, it would cut all funding for the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, a new instrument that is slated to study “dark energy, expolanets, and astrophysics.” It is scheduled for launch in 2027. It is already built.
As with all presidential budget requests, it is important to note that it is just that — a request. It may still change before the final draft emerges, and Congress then gets to actually set the budget, though obviously the early days of the Trump administration should make that sound more like a threat than a promise. The Republican majority has shown little interest in doing anything but rubber-stamping the president’s desires, and essentially zero spine in fighting back against Trump’s actions to more or less remove Congress’s budgeting power.
And meanwhile, the moves to kneecap government science outside the bounds of normal budgeting processes have already wreaked havoc. NOAA has undergone a “hostile takeover” by DOGE and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, NASA’s Office of the Chief Scientist is already gone, and the reductions in force which have decimated HHS and elsewhere are still on the horizon.
“We don’t know what’s going to happen in June,” said a source inside NOAA Research, but they also don’t know what their office “will look like at that point after the RIFs.”
This all amounts to just a remarkable self-inflicted wound. It isn’t just sticking our collective head in the sand, it’s sticking our collective head in the sand and then sawing it off at the neck and leaving it down there.
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