Trump Ends American Science Century and American Power

One of the primary drivers of American success in the late 20th and early 21st century was science. America had the best universities, bar none, in the world. They were well supported by the government and produced advances in technology that American firms used to made products that people wanted to buy. As a result, people came from all over the world to study at American universities, enriching and improving the United States.

Trump has destroyed all of that.

Trump has frozen essentially all federal payments to, well, everything, but hitting science especially hard. The NSF has halted payments and the NIH halted payments and grants, even payments that had been approved and budgeted by Congress. Now, you will have heard that a judge ordered these payments turned back on and that the OPM rescinded the stop payment orders. Unfortunately, the money is still not being paid. The link talks primarily about foreign aid, but it appears that the Trump/Musk administration is not paying out other obligated funds. They wrote so many orders that the OPM memo may not

This is all illegal and unconstitutional, of course, but no one is stopping them. No one is even trying to make them pay a political price. And it is about to get worse. Musk has, illegally again, been granted access to the federal government’s payment system. That means that your social security number is now in his hands, and the hands of the incompetents he brought with him. These payments will largely be used to attempt to shut down resistance. Get ready for funds and social security money to stop flowing to, say, Chicago, which has organized an effective campaign meant to keep ICE within the law.

But it will also mean that Musk can shut off the flow of money to any science organization he does not like. Studying history? No money for you! Studying climate science? Sorry, the check’s bounced. Studying self-driving traffic fatalities? Please, who needs that? Musk can devastate science with a simple instruction, as illegal as it may be, to one of his flunkies.

Trump and Musk are on the verge of shattering American power for the foreseeable future. Things are running fast right now, so other countries are not prepared for this. but I suspect that the smarter among them are about to throw open the doors to scholars of all kinds, devastating perhaps the single most important component of the American Century in less than a month.

Call your congressperson. Because if they don’t start making the case now, then the next internet, the next miracle medicine will come from Canada or the EU or Australia or China. But it most certainly will not come from the United States, thanks to Musk and Trump.