Trump's War on Science

One area in which the administration of cult leader, convicted felon, and failed President Donald Trump has been particularly destructive has been science. Cuts and disruptions at the Department of Health and Human Services and its associated agencies such as the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have severely harmed the ability of the U.S. government to conduct medical research. Last month, the minority staff of the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) issued a report documenting the impact of Trump's actions on public health. Senator Bernie Sanders, the ranking member of the Committee, said upon releasing the report that, "Since January, Trump has launched an unprecedented, illegal, and outrageous attack on science and scientists. Trump is not only denying scientific truth but actively seeking to undermine it". Sanders went on to say, "Let’s be clear. Trump’s war on science is not making America healthy again. It is making Americans and people throughout the world sicker".

Frankly, the HELP Committee report is a little dry, consisting mostly of lists of cuts to various programs. Since I am relying almost exclusively on that report, this is probably not going to be a very interesting post either. But, boring reading or not, the impact of the Trump administration's attempt to defund science is severe and will undoubtedly have a very negative impact on public health. Moreover, the impact goes further than science. As the report notes, "This is part of the aggressive movement toward authoritarianism that the Trump administration is pursuing."

The report concentrates on cuts at the National Institutes of Health, finding that Trump officials have cut "$2.7 billion in National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding in the first three months of 2025 – including a 31 percent cut to cancer research through March." The bulk of the reduced spending is a result of cancelling grants for research projects. The report provides the following examples of grants that have been eliminated:

• $5.3 million Cancer Center Support Grant for the Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center at Columbia University, which funds cancer prevention, treatment, and clinical trial infrastructure for thousands of patients annually.

• Approximately $100,000 for two Alzheimer’s disease research grants, one studying how pathways impacting immune proteins in the body could help clear brain plaques, and another examining how to identify genetic pathways to preserve memory.

• $900,800 postdoctoral training grant in cardiovascular disease – the leading cause of death in the United States – supporting clinical research on heart failure, stroke, and high blood pressure.

• $260,000 pediatric endocrinology and diabetes research training grant, which prepared new investigators to address rising rates of childhood obesity.

• $4.2 million for the Infectious Diseases Clinical Research Consortium Leadership Group, which led national clinical trials on vaccines, therapeutics, and diagnostics for emerging infectious diseases including influenza, malaria, and tuberculosis.

Research on infectious diseases was particularly hard hit, with $533.8 million being cut through the elimination of 272 grants. The report also noted that "the number of new research grants fell to its lowest level in more than a decade." This will be particularly devastating for the future because it will stymie research into new areas and force early-career scientists who do not have established projects to leave the field.

The administration is also defunding science by cutting support for research performed by universities and independent research centers. The administration has proposed a 15% cap on indirect reimbursements. These are expenditures that support the infrastructure behind the research being funded by grants. For instance, utilities, information technology systems, and other administrative costs. Historically, these fees have averaged 27 to 28 percent. Cutting this support nearly in half will mean that many institutions may no longer be able to afford to conduct the research or will have to reduce staff and close facilities. The report notes that the cost cap will make "certain types of scientific research – especially long-term studies in Alzheimer’s disease and other degenerative diseases – impossible to sustain."

Another aspect of the Trump administration's war on science highlighted by the HELP report is the administration's efforts to silence scientists. The report finds that the "Trump administration has moved to suppress scientific communication, impose political control over the work of federal scientists, and erase scientific data." The Trump administration does not allow scientific staff in HHS or its agencies to engage in public-facing communications unless the communications has been cleared by a political appointee. This includes "media inquiries, scientific presentations, journal submissions, and conference attendance." HELP Committee staff learned that topics such as materials referencing “vaccines,” “peanut allergies,” “obesity,” and even “Cancer Moonshot” require "heightened scrutiny or political review before publication". This has severely hampered the exchange of ideas and public awareness.

The report further finds that the "Trump administration has also revoked public access to important public health information." According to the report, "at least 175 public health datasets from the CDC’s website and 135 datasets from a central HHS data portal have been deleted." In addition, websites have been taken offline and important data has been removed from public websites. The report says that "Former HHS officials characterized taking down the datasets as an ‘erasure of science,’ noting that the datasets were the products of years of work to study the health of Americans."

My impression from reading the report is that the Trump administration has turned the idea of scientific endeavor on its head. Instead of science being a search for knowledge, Trump officials view science as simply another tool to support the MAGA political agenda. As such, conclusions are not something that are derived from study, but rather provided beforehand. Research likely to support those conclusions is funded while any other research is prevented. Like any other autocratic system, control of the narrative is of utmost importance and, hence, the restrictions on communications. The Trump administration only wants the public to hear what the administration believes to be true and only wants to fund research that will prove what the administration believes is true. This is the nature of science within an autocratic government. By destroying important datasets, the administration has engaged in a digital version of the burning of the Library of Alexandria.