Trump's Plan to Corrupt American Science by Robert Kuttner

[justaprogressive]

Ever since World War II, the American system of peer-reviewed grants to support science has made our great research universities the envy of the world, and has been a key source of commercial innovation as well. President Trump has already substantially weakened that system with a series of cuts and delays in federal research funding, as a way of punishing universities. Now, Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought, the architect of Project 2025, proposes to finish the job.

Under OMB’s proposed rule, all federal research awards, hundreds of billions of dollars every year, would be reviewed by Trump political appointees, who could veto them if they didn’t fit the president’s agenda. Even existing grants could be terminated on the same grounds.

The rule was put out for comment on May 29. The deadline for comments was July 13. As of the weekend, a record 93,000 comments had been received, the vast majority of them negative. The relatively few positive ones were mostly variations on the same form letter.

The proposal has created wall-to-wall solidarity in the scientific community. “This latest move is a brazen power grab by the Director of the Office of Management and Budget to buck the will of Congress and the American people and will make future discoveries less likely,” Sudip Parikh, the head of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, warned in a statement.

https://prospect.org/2026/07/14/trumps-plan-corrupt-american-science-vought-omb/]

[The Madcap]

1. I'm sure other countries would welcome scientists with open arms.

It's really short-sighted of this administration to alienate the very people who are essential for progress. By the time they are done, we'll be a country full of imbeciles. We seem to be halfway there already.