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Trump’s War on Science [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2025-06-11

The Trump White House released an Executive Order misnamed Restoring Gold Standard Science. Trump’s Executive Order 14,303 destroys, not restores science. Science is committed to decentralization, constant testing, replicability by others, and self-scrutiny. Trump wants to replace real science with a politically controlled system serving the interests of the President and his supporters, including corporations that want to prevent scientists from examining the consequences of their actions on the environment and the health of the American people. Executive Order 14,303 is “fool’s gold.”

A major weapon in Trump’s war on science is the anti-vaxxer Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert Kennedy who recently ousted every member of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practice that makes recommendations to the Centers for Disease Control on vaccinations. Kennedy claimed, “A clean sweep is needed to re-establish public confidence in vaccine science.” The move was denounced by major medical and public health organizations for promoting vaccine skepticism and threatening the health of the country. Kennedy, who is not a doctor and has no medical training, already changed COVID-19 vaccination recommendations without consulting the advisory panel.

Senator Bernie Sanders (IND-VT) issued a report documenting the Trump war on science. Trump officials have already cut $2.7 billion in National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding. At least 175 public health datasets from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s website were deleted. Over 100 scientific meetings have been cancelled or delayed. Trump officials have undermined the important role that vaccines play in preventing disease. According to Sanders, “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. That is beyond unacceptable. This is a war we cannot allow Trump to win. Far too many lives are at stake.”

Thousands of scientists and academics signed an open letter to the President, Congress, and the American people describing the Executive Order as an escalation of an “ongoing assault on science.” The proposed “gold standard” for science would “introduce stifling limits on intellectual freedom in our Nation’s laboratories and federal funding agencies.” The letter charges that the Trump administration “has already defunded areas of research they do not agree with, pushed vaccine misinformation despite widespread evidence, lied about the impacts of climate change, and incorrectly defined sex determination as binary, when biology proves it is not.”

You can add your name to the letter.

According to Section 7 of the Executive Order, a “senior appointee designated” will be selected by the head of every federal agency to “evaluate alleged violations” of the supposed “Gold Standard Science.” This political appointee would be the “sole and exclusive means of evaluating and . . . addressing alleged violations” overseeing the “use, interpretation and communication of scientific information.” Given Trump’s record for Cabinet and regulatory appointees, we can expect these scientific overseers to lack any qualifications, to be beholding to special interests, and probably to be promoters of conspiracy theories. They will have the authority to decalre “common and important scientific activities as scientific misconduct, and to penalize those involved.”

The Open Letter warns of the “danger of state-dictated 'scientific truths'.” In the 1930s, the Soviet Union declared a discredited theory of evaluation to be scientific truth, contributing to policies that resulted in famine in Ukraine and the death of millions of people. Nazi Germany justified the extermination of millions of Jews, people with disabilities, and people identified as LGBTQ+ who were based on a fabricated and official “science” of eugenics. Eugenics was also used to justify racism, immigration quotas, and forced sterilization in the United States.

Standing up for science, signers of the Open Letter affirmed their support for “rigorous science, as defined by our field, not the White House;” called for “swift social and legal actions against this illegal Executive Order;: and demanded “freedom of inquiry without governmental influence or interference.”

Prominent signatories include Victor Ambros, PhD, 2024 Nobel Laureate of Physiology or Medicine, University of Massachusetts, Chan Medical School; Jeremy M Berg, PhD Director, National Institute of General Medical Sciences, NIH 2003-2011; Joachim Frank, PhD 2017 Nobel Laureate of Chemistry, Columbia University Irving Medical Center; and Carol Greider, PhD. 2009 Nobel Laureate of Medicine, Distinguished Professor, University of California Santa Cruz. As an alumni of the Bronx High School of Science, Class of 1967, I was pleased to see that the letter was signed by biology teachers Tracy Lagrassa and Marisa Wagner from Bronx Science. It was also signed by my Hofstra colleague Peter Daniel, Professor of Biology.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/6/11/2327416/-Trump-s-War-on-Science?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=latest_community&pm_medium=web

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