What's Behind Trump's War on Science?

I have a new article in UnHerd about the Trump administration’s efforts to cut science funding.

Last month, The New York Times reported that the National Science Foundation, the government agency that funds non-medical research, was distributing money at the slowest pace in at least 35 years. Compared to the year-to-date average over the previous decade, funding for math, physics, and chemistry was down 67%; 52% for biology; and 57% for engineering. The crisis at the NSF isn’t accidental. It reflects the Trump administration’s hostility toward basic research, part of a wider assault on science.

It is also a case study in the weaknesses of the Trump movement’s simplistic approach to punishing enemies, and how instincts that can be healthy in one situation can be disastrous in another.

Partly, the delay in disbursing funds has been caused by a combination of incompetence and the time it’s taken to scrutinize research projects for “DEI” and other politically disfavored themes. Nonetheless, as if to leave no doubt of its ultimate intentions, the White House is proposing a budget that would cut funding for the NSF by 57%, and for the National Institutes of Health by 40%. Cancelling grants to Harvard while making impossible demands is another sign that the administration doesn’t think that support for science is worthwhile, as is its crusade against foreign students.

Read the whole thing here.

I’ll be publishing more on this topic in the coming days.

Building 10 of the NIH in Bethesda, MD

As I explain, the war on science is a microcosm of problems with populism more generally. It’s full of anger that arbitrarily fires off at different targets, sometimes hitting the mark but just as often making a mess of things. I also talk about the role of the Tech Right, good things Trump has done, and the way Carl Schmitt seems to have given young MAGAs an excuse to behave as resentful nihilists.