The all-purpose adage offering optimism \u2014 and sometimes pessimism \u2014 to those confronting a crisis head-on is: \u201cThis too shall pass.\u201d<\/p>\n
One gets the impression that this is a crutch favored by some major institutions that have capitulated to Donald Trump\u2019s demands \u2014 such as universities that have committed to fines and payouts stretching out several years, beyond the end of Trump\u2019s current (and final) term and law firms that have made nebulous commitments to represent Trump\u2019s favored litigants in cases that may not even be brought until after the 2028 elections. <\/p>\n
Some institutions and services that have suffered major cuts in government funding may be tempted to hunker down, covering what they think may be a temporary shortfall in the expectation that a subsequent administration will restore the withheld funding and cover their interim losses. Recovery, however, may be tougher than they think.<\/p>\n
\nThe best-case scenario is that we limp along for the next three and a half years…But that\u2019s just a hope.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
\u2014 Jonathan Howard, New York University<\/p>\n
I reached out to some of my most trusted contacts in science, medicine, labor and other fields, hoping to hear encouragement that the current situation will be fleeting and it isn\u2019t too soon to look ahead; Trump\u2019s presidential term, after all, is finite. <\/p>\n
I ended up with a string of the gloomiest conversations in my long career \u2014 and I\u2019ve covered two foreign civil wars and more stock market crashes and economic slumps than I can count. (Well, let\u2019s say more than a dozen.)<\/p>\n
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\u201cWe\u2019re still in free fall and people are still in a \u2018shock and awe\u2019 phase,\u201d says vaccinologist Peter Hotez, who has written to defend sound science throughout Trump\u2019s terms. \u201cWhat\u2019s happening right now is continuing to evolve, and we don\u2019t really know where it\u2019s going. It\u2019s important not to take the attitude of \u2018this too will pass,\u2019 hunker down for a couple of years and then it will go back to the way it was.\u201d<\/p>\n
The administration\u2019s cuts in biomedical research funding, the \u201ccontinuing ascendance of the MAHA movement\u201d \u2014 Robert F. Kennedy Jr.\u2019s disdain for accepted science in favor of pseudoscience \u2014 betokens a dark period ahead, Hotez told me. \u201cEven if these things stop tomorrow, you\u2019ve got a pretty demoralized physician and scientific workforce. What this administration has done has given being a scientist an unsavory element \u2014 it\u2019s no longer a noble profession.\u201d<\/p>\n
Of particular concern is the administration\u2019s injection of partisan ideologies into the scientific grant-making process, shattering applicants\u2019 confidence that their submissions are considered fairly. The scoring of grant applications by professional panels used to be the key element in the process. <\/p>\n
\u201cNow, even if you get a fundable score,\u201d Hotez says, \u201cthere\u2019s still somebody behind the curtain who still could nix it for ideological reasons. And even if your first year is funded there\u2019s no guarantee for out years.\u201d <\/p>\n
The uncertainty that injects could hamstring scientific research for a generation, or longer. <\/p>\n
\u201cHow easy is it to rebuild a lab that\u2019s been hit by cuts?\u201d says John P. Moore, a professor of microbiology and immunology at Weill Cornell Medical College, where labs have been hobbled by the administration\u2019s toying with grants. \u201cThe answer is it\u2019s very difficult, once you lose key members of a research group, who are often the senior technicians who have institutional memory and keep a program going day to day. At a certain point, a freeze or a termination is not reversible.\u201d<\/p>\n
Moore also points to the consequences of a loss of foreign-born scientists. \u201cAmerica is now not a welcoming country for immigrants, period. Scientists who are here on short-term visas are realizing that their future is not in this country. Other countries are seeking to suck up talent that otherwise would have come here. That\u2019s going to have an impact over time, and it\u2019s not going to be easy to reverse.\u201d<\/p>\n
In my conversations with scientists, one name kept coming up: Trofim Lysenko, the charlatan whose reign over Soviet science during Stalin\u2019s regime from the 1930s to the 1960s and whose promotion of an anti-science ideology, especially a campaign against genetics research, encompassed repeated crop failures and famines costing some 7 million lives. I made the connection between Lysenkoism and Trump\u2019s appointment of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.<\/a> to head the Department of Health and Human Services in November. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe Soviet Union did everything they could to invest back in science and genetics and molecular biology, but it was still stagnant,\u201d says Angela Rasmussen, a leading American virologist now working in Canada. \u201cBut despite the attempts to rebuild what Lysenko had torn down, they were never able to compete with people everywhere else because they had lost so much by shutting down all genetics research during that time.\u201d<\/p>\n
Three factors could be lasting obstacles: Trump\u2019s undermining of federal employment, of the law and of the economy.<\/p>\n
Trump has systematically demoralized the workforce responsible for enforcing the regulations that remain. That\u2019s the observation of David Weil, a labor expert at Brandeis University whose nomination by President Biden for a top-level post at the Department of Labor was sidelined by conservative opposition<\/a> in 2022.<\/p>\n
The law has been a thin reed to lean on, Weil observes. A key example is the attack by Elon Musk\u2019s SpaceX on the National Labor Relations Board, which garnered an opinion from the notoriously right-wing 5th Circuit Court of Appeals<\/a> last month finding that the NLRB\u2019s structure \u201cviolates the separation of powers\u201d<\/a> established by the Constitution. That\u2019s a remarkable finding, given that the NLRB was established 90 years ago, in 1935.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf the Supreme Court upholds the 5th Circuit, \u201c Weil told me, \u201cthat\u2019s the end of the NLRA,\u201d the act that established the board, \u201cand we go back to a system where there\u2019s no federal statutory method for protecting private sector workers.\u201d<\/p>\n
What Weil finds especially disquieting is the Supreme Court\u2019s practice of allowing Trump to continue challenged policies while the underlying issues are litigated. \u201cInstead of letting the status quo to prevail until we adjudicate the issues, they\u2019re letting Trump prevail until they adjudicate. That, to me, is a formula for destruction. How do you rebuild then?\u201d<\/p>\n
The court has done this by lifting the stays on Trump policies imposed by lower courts, pending further rulings. That\u2019s what happened as recently as Monday, when the court overturned a Los Angeles federal judge\u2019s order<\/a> that had barred \u201croving patrols\u201d of immigration officers from snatching people off Southern California streets based on how they look, what language they speak, what work they do or where they happen to be.<\/p>\n
One issue casting a shadow over all others is the future course of Trump\u2019s economy. At this moment, the warning signs are all flashing red. Inflation is on the rise \u2014 core inflation as measured by the personal consumption index, the Federal Reserve\u2019s preferred metric, rose in July to an annualized rate of 2.9%<\/a>, the highest rate since February; economists expect the rate to keep rising as businesses pass through more of their tariff-related costs to consumers. <\/p>\n
Meanwhile, new hiring has ground to a screeching halt, according to the latest government statistics<\/a>. The unemployment rate notched up to 4.3% in July, not the direction Trump would like to see. The rate hasn\u2019t been this high since the pandemic year of 2021.<\/p>\n
Trump also has remade the government\u2019s relationship with industry, extracting a fee from the AI chipmaker Nvidia of 15% of its revenue from selling chips to China and taking a 9.9% equity stake in the faltering chipmaker Intel. That\u2019s not the first time the government has owned a piece of a public company \u2014 it owned most of GM during the Great Recession, but later sold its stake; Trump is talking about making a habit of these buy-ins through a sovereign wealth fund, an idea that\u2019s far from universally favored<\/a> by political leaders and economists.<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s rampage through government agencies, especially those devoted to science, health and the economy, has left some so severely damaged that fixing what\u2019s broken might require the establishment of a Cabinet-level post to oversee the repair job. <\/p>\n
Consider the state of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, where five top officials resigned or were forced out<\/a> late last month \u2014 including CDC Director Susan Monarez, who was fired after less than a month on the job after tangling with Health and Human Affairs Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Anyone tasked by a future administration with rebuilding the CDC, which once set the global gold standard for public health, will have to be told: \u201cYou know you\u2019ll be starting from scratch, right?\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s only fair to say that the GOP hasn\u2019t had a monopoly on philistine attacks on scientific research. The pioneer of such cocksure philistinism was Sen. William Proxmire (D-Wis.), who started issuing his \u201cGolden Fleece\u201d awards in 1975. Proxmire became addicted to the fawning press attention he got from caricaturing serious scientific research as ludicrous<\/a>. His know-nothing rabble-rousing appalled progressives who otherwise admired him for his principled stands against the Vietnam War and in favor of campaign finance reform. <\/p>\n
But its more lasting and destructive effect was to render political attacks on scientific research acceptable. Proxmire\u2019s goal was personal aggrandizement. The goal of the current attackers is more sinister \u2014 they\u2019re engaged in an anti-science campaign for strictly ideological purposes.<\/p>\n