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In a stunning repudiation of American scientific ambition, the Trump administration’s draft FY 2026 budget seeks to slash NOAA’s climate research arm by more than 70%, effectively eliminating it. It also aims to slash NASA’s Science Mission Directorate by nearly 50%. These deep and shortsighted cuts will cripple astrophysics, planetary science, Earth observation, and missions like the Mars Sample Return and the Roman Space Telescope.
In the bigger picture, these cuts are part of a deliberate and sustained strategy to dismantle the very engine that has powered U.S. innovation, prosperity, and security since World War II. Vannevar Bush’s visionary 1945 report Science, the Endless Frontier argued that “without scientific progress no amount of achievement in other directions can insure our health, prosperity, and security.”
The decades that followed proved him right. Basic research, particularly when government-supported, laid the groundwork for everything from GPS and MRI machines to weather forecasts and the Internet.
Imagine a farmer in Kansas, no longer able to access localized climate projections from NOAA to decide when to plant or harvest. Or a parent in Florida, blindsided by an intensifying hurricane, because funding for advanced storm modeling was withdrawn. Imagine a retired admiral testifying to Congress that “We didn’t lose our edge in combat; we lost it in the lab” following a decisive defeat of American Pacific forces.These are the realities now being birthed by the Trump Administration.
Once these devastating cuts are imposed, U.S. science will not rebound quickly. When research labs are shuttered and STEM scholarships disappear, talented students choose alternative career paths. Perhaps, the tariff-smitten Trump Administration believes that such talent would be better deployed in low-skill, low-wage primary manufacturing. Once expertise is lost, it can’t be restored in an instant.
Science isn’t the wasteful cost that the Trump Administration imagines it to be. It’s an investment that yields unmatched future value. It’s the only societal inheritance that guarantees a better future. Once that future is sold off, there is no buyback option.
The Trump Administration, as part of its authoritarian project, has embraced ignorance to save pennies and expand its control. Its power, not the nation’s capacity to wonder, reach, and dream, is all that matters. Authoritarianism requires the conquest of truth to sustain itself. Thus, any activity that leads to truth becomes its target. That makes science expendable. That explains its FY 2026 budget proposal.
Note: Illustration was generated by AI.
