“Maybe one way to say it from the administration's perspective,” Stassun says, “is that this group of presidential appointees was advising the Congress to not follow the president's wishes."
Federal research funding (NIH, NSF, etc) becomes economic power. I personally think the government should get a return on their research dollars but basically federally funded research has been given away to private companies since 1980 [1]. Interestingly, the Bayh-Dole Act was signed by president Jimmy Carter in a lame duck Congress after Ronald Reagan's election victory.
Federal research (via DARPA) is what gave the US so much control over the Internet. NIH funding into drugs gives US pharma companies a lot of power. mRNA technology was the product of decades of government-funded research. The US can (and does) wield that power to extract concessions from other countries.
In a little over a year American power on the world stage has been eroded, even destroyed, to a scale that I never would've predicted or thought could happen so quickly.
This is what I find so crazy: these moves are beyond performative politics. It's actually destructive to American power and corporate profits. Culture wars are meant to distract people while the government transfers money from government coffers to the wealthy. Culture wars aren't meant to be the goal. We're in a new era here.
And of course it's going to be China who fills the research void.
Well done, everybody, the system works.
The problem is what happens to the created vacuum. We know who is going to fill it, but we don't know exactly what it's going to look like. The devil we know is dying, the devil we don't know hasn't quite arrived just yet, and is likely going to take a decade or two to settle in.
The presumes that "Trump Administration" and "United States of America" are the same thing. The reality is that a Venn diagram of them would be two circles that barely touch. Is it really an "own goal" if you gravely injure your victim while you rob them?
Until the Trump Administration is replaced, the "Trump Administration" _is_ The United States of America.
It's certainly not what an increasing amount of the population want to be true, but facts can be sticky like that.
It's not just American right wingers turning off the world. The world sees how unexceptionally gen pop reacts in the US as our local politics destabilize everyone
America is a normal country now. All the WW2 heroes are dead and soldiers since were imperialist aggressors. We don't dare worship Vietnam vets or middle east vets as those conflicts were not so valorous. That we have to point back so far to feel good about our history says a lot about how long America has been falling apart.
For decades Academics been saying the decline of America started in the 1950s and has accelerated only as countries we bombed to hell to stay ahead normalized. I tend to agree.
America has really not been that great this whole time. But like every other nation, Americans been propagandized by each other to believe their American made bullshit don't stink.
In my career I have had endless obligations and expectations put on me by peers not out there protesting to cover my healthcare. IMO that's says it all about much Americans care about each other.
To billions of exploited sweatshop workers the average American is not much better than the billionaires.
Nor are the Europeans or East Asians.
> In my career I have had endless obligations and expectations put on me by peers not out there protesting to cover my healthcare. IMO that's says it all about much Americans care about each other.
What?
If the pathology was entirely within his own privately-owned company that'd be one thing, but Americans are going to continue to get hurt because of it.
If you have not read Project 2025 in a while, I encourage you to revisit it[2]. In summary it's a point-by-point plan to take over the entire federal government in order to enforce a single political ideology and suppress dissent. You can track[3] it as it gets implemented.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_2025 [2] https://static.heritage.org/project2025/2025_MandateForLeade... [3] https://www.project2025.observer/en
Xi, we shall see.
He gets blamed for being the cause because those who actually led us into the decline don’t want to own their role in the mess. The fact that he got reelected is proof the status quo had lost the plot.
Sure, he’s a scoundrel, but ultimately he’s a scapegoat.
Surely, he has made things uniquely worse, and in ways that would not have happened without him.
Put another way, in terms of the political status quo, what changed between his two term? Hint: not a damn thing. That ain’t his fault. Your bias has blinded you
The US has been on a downward spiral towards 'this' for a long time, but Trump literally self-selected to be the face of the intentional rapid acceleration of it.
Calling Trump a scapegoat is incredibly kind to his intentional destruction and, to still put it far too kindly, "vindictive nastiness in attempt to profit" (which, I think, also depressingly describes what has become of the US tech sector).
Will a future administration have an opportunity to build something new and better from scratch which would not have been possible due to institutional resistance before it was all burnt down?
Destroying institutions is one heck of a lot easier than building new ones.
By this you just mean your political enemies?
> With an annual budget of about $9.9 billion (fiscal year 2023), the NSF funds approximately 25% of all federally supported basic research conducted by the United States' colleges and universities. In some fields, such as mathematics, computer science, economics, and the social sciences, the NSF is the major source of federal backing [...] Since the technology boom of the 1980s, the U.S. Congress has generally embraced the premise that government-funded basic research is essential for the nation's economic health and global competitiveness, and for national defense.
Tom over at the Explosions&Fire channel (and Extractions&Ire channel) just published a video[1] about his academic career. In it he noted that in Australia where he's located, the defense companies were an exception to that general rule, and did indeed sponsor a fair bit of basic research, including his PhD. I assume in areas they figured had potential, but still.
Lately it looks like the focus has changed, example grants "Disrupting Racialized Privilege in the STEM Classroom", "Creating affinity groups in ornithology" and "Gendered impact of COVID-19 in the Arctic" Seems oddly specific and agenda driven. How would you "use the results of that science to build a great deal of useful commercial things"?
What kind of an agenda does studying Gendered impact of COVID-19 in the Arctic carry?
I had a job paid by the National Science Foundation, doing genomics research on children with extremely rare (sometimes unique) genetic diseases. We did publish papers, and Big Pharma can glean a little bit about how we handled the biomedical informatics of managing data across different highly specialized labs, maybe a researcher will incrementally improve GWAS across the field. But that research was important because actual human children were suffering and needed help.
I'm not even American and I've heard of it. The NSF's mission is to promote science and engineering in all 50 states.
Personal: Always saw them as contributing to PBS kids shows I watch growing up.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Science_Foundation
EDIT: other folks beat me to it
But if I have a specific question regarding what some entity does, I can always look into it on my own time, rather than have a default stance on what they might do/not do.
We are each responsible for learning ourselves, and we live in a time where that is easier than ever. I find it odd your default position is to assume it is not important.
It's wild how efficient they are, sometimes.
> why not just let him do it and stop complaining?
Because I have to live on this planet for a few more decades. I feel like I'm being trolled?
Basic science also increases our understanding of the world and universe, an admirable goal in its own right.
We are all failing morally for not revolting at this level of corruption.
He raped kids and the entire GOP is helping to cover that up.
He raped kids and the entire GOP is helping to cover that up.
You're correct, the NSF isn't a "beneficial org" to your country.
On the off chance that you're legit, posts in the form of a question like yours are a 98%-specificity tell for influence ops from a certain country that likes to drink its potatoes.
You know how the US had people from all over the world trying to get into our schools, and how they regularly figured things out important economic healthcare and other discoveries by being ahead of the curve? This group is a huge reason why.
Here's a good link for just 9 things that came from nsf funded studies. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/16/science/federally-funded-... there's way more and the obvious ripple down effect of having trained people who went into industry and innovated in the private sector.
The NSF is an independent federal agency that funds roughly a quarter of all basic academic research in the US, laying the groundwork for technologies like the Internet backbone and MRIs. The NSB is its governing body, composed of top scientists who serve staggered six-year terms specifically so no single administration can wipe out the entire board at once. That continuity is designed to insulate scientific priority-setting from political pressure, ensuring American research funding is directed by objective merit rather than political patronage. Dismissing all members simultaneously removes the exact oversight mechanism built to prevent political offices from dictating scientific agendas.
From a political science perspective, this is an institutional move Robert Paxton described in his stages of fascist development. His framework identifies patterns where political actors weaken or bypass independent bodies designed to constrain executive power. In Paxton's fourth stage, the exercising of power, an executive consolidates control by actively dismantling these checks. Centralizing control over scientific governance by firing the board for opposing a budget cut is hollowing out an independent institution; it's a pathway Paxton documented whereby institutional checks are weakened in ways that accumulate over time.
https://election.princeton.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Pa...
Just another day of America getting exactly what they twice voted for.
Mocking regional accents doesn't really help the conversation.
Looking forward to whoever replaces the US as the leaders of the free world. Iran? Cuba? China? Greenland?
If the US president has always been able to fire them, then they were never truly independent.
JumpCrisscross•1h ago
joe_mamba•1h ago
throwaway27448•38m ago
joe_mamba•20m ago
You missed my point on purpose to argue in bad faith. I never said they have to be CCP members.
I said how many people get to work for Chinese institutions who vocally disagree with the CCP?
Go call Xi Winnie the Poo and the CCP an oppressive regime, and see how your job prospects look like in Chinese academia. The country has a social credit score for a reason, and you don't need to be CCP for it to affect you.
>And yes, they clearly are more competent.
Compared to you, definitely.
gverrilla•6m ago
Fake news.
Spooky23•31m ago
This is the American version of the cultural revolution. We’re pushing people to be plumbers instead of scientists.
Aurornis•1h ago
The article says 8 members are replaced every 2 years and the terms are 6 years long. Between 1/4 or 1/2 of them would have been replaced during this presidency, and whoever gets placed now will start to be replaced by the next administration.
As for China: They’re not known for having independent advisory committees overseeing government decisions. They’re definitely not known for inviting foreigners to come join their government to oversee their spending. So if you’re implying these people are at risk of going to China to serve the same role, that’s way off the mark.
joe_mamba•1h ago
So it's similar to working for the UN or IAEA where most jobs are fixed term.
jazzyjackson•1h ago
citizenkeen•52m ago
huxley•45m ago
lacy_tinpot•10m ago
It's like totally obvious that our team is the only correct answer.
tensor•49m ago
smegma2•48m ago
bdangubic•45m ago