His started off strong with an attack on DEI, but he’s now pursuing misguided priorities of his own.
Critics accuse President Trump of politicizing the National Science Foundation, warning that the administration poses a lethal threat to what one called “American science expertise as we know it.” At first, these assertions were overwrought and misleading: The administration was cleansing the NSF of left-wing politics. The administration’s latest proposals, however, don’t go far enough in some areas while jeopardizing progress in others.
From February through May, the NSF, which supports academic science, terminated more than 1,700 grants, totaling $1.4 billion. “The American people deserve a scientific enterprise free from political interference,” California Rep. Zoe Lofgren, the House Science Committee’s ranking Democrat, said in an April press release. Jon Freeman, Columbia psychologist and NSF grant recipient, told the New York Times that the cuts will cede “American leadership in science and technology to China and to other countries.” Science magazine reported that “NSF watchers” feared a proposed restructuring would leave the foundation “more vulnerable to pressure from the White House to fund research that suits its ideological bent.”
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Heather Mac Donald is the Thomas W. Smith fellow at the Manhattan Institute, contributing editor at City Journal. Her latest book is When Race Trumps Merit. This piece is adapted from a forthcoming City Journal piece.
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