The News
An increasing number of scientists are voicing their concern over US President-elect Donald Trump’s second term agenda. During his first stint in office, Trump reversed, revoked, or rolled back a slew of environmental protection rules, a 2021 analysis by The New York Times showed, and repeatedly moved to slash the budgets of various federal research agencies.
Science wasn’t a priority on the 2024 campaign trail. But Trump’s imminent return to the White House has some scientists, particularly those involved in climate science, nervous: “We all feel like we have a target on our backs,” one told The Guardian. Meanwhile, Trump’s pick to lead the country’s health department, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has said he would tell National Institutes of Health medical researchers that the government is “going to give infectious disease a break for about eight years.”
Some disciplines, however, could see benefits from a second Trump term: The Republican’s first term saw a renewed push toward human space exploration, and Trump’s friendship with Elon Musk could translate into even more federal support for spaceflight, although the US space agency, NASA, may not be a benefactor.
SIGNALS
Not a death knell for the energy transition — but a slowdown is likely
In his second term, Donald Trump is widely expected to pull the US back out of the Paris climate agreement to limit global warming, and his choice for Energy Secretary is a fracking executive. Yet some analysts believe the US clean energy transition will remain on track, albeit slowed: Trump’s plan to repeal the Inflation Reduction Act, for example, is unlikely to pass even a Republican-controlled Congress, because most “state, local, and private sector leaders are committed to charging ahead,” the director of the World Resources Institute told Science. Any slowdown could be costly, however, both to the health of the planet and Washington’s push to gain a competitive advantage over China on future green technologies, Semafor’s Tim McDonnell argued.
Trump 2.0 could be ‘good for space but bad for NASA’
NASA’s funding priorities could shift under Trump: Any deprioritization of the agency’s Earth science capabilities would be a “major blow” to climate researchers, who are unsure of where Jared Isaacman, Trump’s pick to lead NASA, stands on the issue of climate change, E&E News reported. Isaacman is, however, both a SpaceX customer and a commercial astronaut, and his nomination, if confirmed, could be a boon for human space exploration, and private companies like SpaceX, Reuters noted. In that sense, the next four years could be “good for space but bad for NASA,” an expert at the Planetary Society said: The agency no longer enjoys a monopoly over space exploration, and the commercial sector will be given more opportunities to prove itself.
Academics may need to do more to prove their research is in the ‘national interest’
Many US academics have expressed their worry that Donald Trump’s second term will bring federal funding cuts, visa restrictions on foreign researchers, and more on-campus tensions, but “powerful US industry interests still support federally funded science and technology,” Science Business noted. Still, academics may need to work harder to convince the incoming administration that their research is critical to US interests, the senior vice president of the Association of American Universities said. Security will also factor in: Trump’s first term saw the launch of the now-disbanded China Initiative to boost research security, and given Trump’s threats toward China, that focus could take “center stage” this time around, Inside Higher Education wrote.