Re: Science News

On 2/26/2025 12:36 PM, Kestrel Clayton wrote:

On 26-Feb-25 12:58, RonO wrote:

On 2/26/2025 11:19 AM, Kestrel Clayton wrote:

On 26-Feb-25 10:52, RonO wrote:

https://www.science.org/news
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The News site for the journal Science has a lot about Trump's influence on science.
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https://www.science.org/content/article/u-s-gene-banks-key-new- crops- hobbled-trump-job-cuts
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https://www.science.org/content/article/more-nih-job-cuts-coming- agency- scientists-already-reeling-after-week-firings
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https://www.science.org/content/article/u-s-early-career- researchers- struggling-amid-chaos
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https://www.science.org/content/article/nasa-cuts-international- climate- science-support
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https://www.science.org/content/article/science-trump-latest-news
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These are just articles on the first page.
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What Trump is doing could disrupt science in the US for decades.

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To the authoritarians, that's a feature, not a bug.
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It is what Putin wants Trump to do to the US.

 Yup. It's also what our domestic oligarchs want: When we get poorer, they get richer. And, of course, there are millions of anti-intellectual clodhoppers who think science is a globalist conspiracy to funnel tax dollars to queer and brown people. They will gladly vote against their own interests as long as it hurts the people they hate.
 An example: During his campaign, Trump promised cheap eggs. He bragged he won the election with that promise. Now eggs are more expensive than ever, and Trump has admitted he can't do a damn thing about it. But most of his supporters AREN'T outraged, because it was never REALLY about the price of eggs.
 "The salient fact of American politics is that there are fifty to seventy million voters each of whom will volunteer to live, with his family, in a cardboard box under an overpass, and cook sparrows on an old curtain rod, if someone would only guarantee that the black, gay, Hispanic, liberal, whatever, in the next box over doesn't even have a curtain rod, or a sparrow to put on it." — Davis X. Machina
 

https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2025-02-26/federal-job-cuts-hit-trump-supporters
https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2025-02-24/russia-ukraine-trump-looks-like-vladimir-putins-wingman
It may be true that Trump supporters were not the type of federal workers we would want to be carrying out US policy, but Trump never seemed to care about them, and he didn't need them to do what he has wanted to do to federal programs.  Putin never wanted a more efficient US federal program, he wanted what Trump is providing, more dysfunctional federal efforts.
Ron Okimoto