Unlock the White House Watch newsletter for free
Your guide to what the 2024 US election means for Washington and the world
Right-wing populism routinely contains a strong vein of scepticism towards science, or at least some fields. Yet nowhere has the populist backlash been as virulent as in Donald Trump’s second term. US science and health research are being hit by planned large-scale funding cuts and lay-offs at federal agencies, and a clampdown on what are regarded as permissible areas of scientific inquiry. The impact on US public health and the economy could be profound; America’s scientific verve has underpinned its entrepreneurial success. Countries elsewhere — notably in Europe — have a responsibility to ensure US researchers can continue vital work. They have opportunities, too, to turn America’s self-imposed loss into their own gain.
In the past week alone, thousands of employees across the US health and human services department began to be laid off in a sweeping downsizing by Robert F Kennedy Jr, the vaccine sceptic who is now in charge. (The top US vaccine regulator earlier quit over Kennedy’s “misinformation and lies”.) Leaders at the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes for Health have been put on administrative leave and offered reassignment. More than 1,900 leading US scientists have written to the Trump administration to decry its “wholesale assault on US science”. The slapdash calculation of “reciprocal” tariffs on trade partners last week only added to the White House’s perceived lack of respect for rational thought.
Cuts to grant funding from the NIH — by far the world’s largest funder of biomedical research — have thrown researchers into uncertainty. Cutbacks there and elsewhere are also being driven by the so-called Department of Government Efficiency of Elon Musk; some experts suspect Musk wants to push parts of publicly-funded science into the private sector, including his own companies.
White House directives attacking climate science and diversity and inclusion policies are meanwhile putting under threat research on global warming or even on different ethnic groups’ vulnerability to diseases. Global progress on dealing with climate change and preventing disease and epidemics could be at risk.
That creates a clear incentive for other countries to safeguard such work by providing havens to US-based academics. But there is a broader chance for Europe. By offering unimpeded academic freedoms, it could start to reverse a long transatlantic brain drain and invigorate its own research and start-up efforts.
The hurdles are strained public finances and sensitivities over immigration. Some institutions, though, are already taking initiatives. Aix-Marseille University in France has set up a “Safe Place For Science” scheme and Brussels’ two top universities are similarly offering grants to “scholars looking to relocate”.
France’s research minister Philippe Baptiste, himself a scientist, co-ordinated a letter signed by 11 other European ministers calling for an EU-wide effort to attract “foreign talents ”. One possibility could be to expand the EU’s seven-year, €95bn Horizon Europe initiative — the world’s largest multilateral research programme to which Canada, South Korea, Turkey and others have been granted associated membership — in its next phase from 2028 to woo displaced US-based scientists.
The UK, also a Horizon associate, could benefit. But while a shared language and its university strengths should give Britain a golden opportunity to attract “exiled” US academics, visa costs and restrictions put it at a competitive disadvantage that prime minister Sir Keir Starmer urgently needs to address.
Donald Trump’s second term may prove to be a temporary, if destructive, interlude after which US science can begin to be rebuilt — or it may not. The challenge is to be ready for both eventualities, by doing as much as possible to preserve all facets of American scientific endeavour, at home or abroad.
