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The other day I ran into an acquaintance who runs a government program that provides a valuable service and that Donald Trump and Elon Musk have tried to eliminate entirely. Through legal action and other means, this organization has fought back and so far staved off execution, even as much of its activity has been halted. The goal, I was told, is to preserve this program even as a shell that does a fraction of what it once did. That way, if the Trump crusade is eventually beaten back and Democrats regain power, it can be returned to its previous size and scope. “If it is destroyed,” this person said, “it will be nearly impossible to rebuild from scratch. We have to preserve it in some form, even if greatly diminished.”
I was heartened to see a public servant engaging in strategic resistance from the inside. Holding on for dear life for four years will be tough and not fun. Those people engaged in this insider opposition deserve our respect and appreciation.
But this encounter led me to an obvious realization. This hanging-on strategy cannot work across the board. Some government agencies that performed crucial work are being eradicated or broken beyond repair. Moreover, this obscene demolition derby is causing what will be a generational loss of brainpower and talent for the United States that will likely not be remedied.
Many of these people—midcareer or young scientists—will leave the field or look elsewhere. For some, the latter will mean seeking jobs in other countries. No doubt, many won’t return to the United States.
It’s easiest to spot this in scientific research. With the extensive cutbacks at the National Institutes of Health and other government agencies that support research, jobs are being lost throughout the scientific community. And Trump’s extortion-like withholding of federal funding from universities that draw his ire also threatens the research cosmos.
Research programs and centers at universities and institutions across the country have had to cut positions and rescind employment offers to newly graduated PhDs. They have had to turn away graduate students due to slashes in funding. Many of these people—midcareer or young scientists—will leave the field or look elsewhere. For some, the latter will mean seeking jobs in other countries. No doubt, many won’t return to the United States. They will establish themselves, fall in love, start families in other lands. All these brilliant minds, educated and trained here, will cook up ideas—advances that help cure diseases, create new energy systems, yield not-yet-imaginable technological breakthroughs—that benefit their adopted lands.
We are throwing away one of the great drivers of American society and the US economy. Two months ago, Lisa Jarvis, a columnist at Bloomberg Opinion who covers biotech, put it plainly:
The Trump administration’s attacks on science and funding at the National Institutes of Health will set research and training for future scientists back a generation.
This might sound melodramatic to anyone not intimately familiar with the world of academic training and research. But in just two months the administration has cut off opportunities at every phase in a scientist’s career. Unless funding and the freedom to pursue science without political bias are restored, biomedical research in the US will become less ambitious, less competitive and result in fewer breakthroughs.
After the Trump White House recently released its slash-and-burn budget blueprint that included huge cuts for the NIH, the National Science Foundation, and other government agencies that fund scientific research, Michael Lubell, a physicist who tracks science policy at the City University of New York, told Nature, “The message that this sends to young scientists is that this country is not a place for you. If I were starting my career, I would be out of here in a heartbeat.”
The man who irrationally obsesses about a trade deficit doesn’t care about creating a massive knowledge deficit. Who will benefit from this?
This is a serious self-inflicted wound. The man who irrationally obsesses about a trade deficit doesn’t care about creating a massive knowledge deficit. Who will benefit from this? European nations that are already luring away our scientists and China, as it surpasses the US in R&D investment. Meanwhile, Trump’s assault on elite universities could lead to a decline in the enrollment here of foreign students and a loss of talent from overseas. Trump is engineering a brain drain that won’t be easy to reverse.
And it’s not just within science. The administration decimated USAID, the agency that distributes foreign aid. Thousands of employees and contractors were pink-slipped, and humanitarian agencies funded by USAID had to lay off workers. A whole cadre of people who had developed expertise in delivering aid and overseeing humanitarian programs overseas—not an easy task—will now disappear. That human capital will dissipate, rendering it harder to revive these programs in the future. Job cuts at the State Department and the CIA will shrink the population of foreign policy experts knowledgeable about assorted parts of the globe.
Demoralized federal agencies will attract less fresh blood and become less attractive to the best and the brightest. Do we really want fewer young scientists, researchers, and policy experts looking for ways to prevent the next pandemic? Or searching for a cure for Alzheimer’s? Or preparing the government for the next international crisis?
I’m surprised there has not been more political outrage expressed over Trump’s maniacal effort to kill a generation of people with the expertise needed for a secure, prosperous, healthy, and competitive America. In his 1956 poem “Howl,” Allen Ginsberg wrote, “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness.” All these years later, we are not destroying our best minds. We’re just telling them to get lost. Many will find other homes. And we, not they, will suffer.
This post has been syndicated from Mother Jones, where it was published under this address.