Political elections always affect the prospects of science, particularly those from such an influential government as the United States. Change in leadership often results in variation within scientific funding, whether it is a shift in focus or a decrease in resources altogether, but the re-election of Donald Trump will credibly have much more substantial consequences than most ballot-box appointments.
The National Scientific Foundation (NSF) reports that in 2019, the USA made up 27% of global monetary spending on research and development, making them the world’s biggest contributor. Many fear that Trump’s election could mark a shift in the United States’ policies in science, resulting in drastic cuts of funding for institutions like the NSF or NASA—especially considering the Republicans now also control the Senate and the House of Representatives, giving the Trump administration a trifecta. The most drastic effect of this could be the application of severe brakes on the growth of global collective scientific knowledge as the US and its specialists collapse out of the game. It is unlikely that scientists would continue to work at the same levels, as many have gone on record saying the election of Trump makes them strongly consider migrating elsewhere. However, this doesn’t mean there would be no effect, as although migration of academics is an option, the tap that ensures the flow of funding and institutional equipment will not be easy to replace.
Optimists amongst us may want to brush this off as an exaggeration and argue that these four years will be, in the grand forward march of science, an aberration in US political and scientific history and largely irrelevant past this presidential term. Project 2025 makes this hard to believe. Project 2025, to which many of Trump’s former and current closest staff and cronies contributed, advocates for highly conservative views, including regarding education. Within it are calls for substantial restraints on scientific education, with everything from evolution to climate science restricted. This institutional restructuring would have longlasting effects which would plunge America into an academic ice age, where little development of scientific theories could occur, setting the USA adrift from the global scientific stage for, perhaps, a scientific generation or longer.
Climate change and climate science will also feel the impact. The US is already the world’s second-largest emitter of carbon dioxide and is undoubtedly in a position to push the world over the climate crisis cliff. With the Trump administration’s plans to strip back on R&D for green science and ramp up fossil fuel usage, it is blindingly obvious that the US will certainly not retain its leading position on climate technology developments, and may instead become the nation that runs the planet’s ticking clock down—with China and India also conceivably reneging on climate commitments if they no longer have any obligation to strip back when America does not.
Space, the final frontier, will also likely remain unconquered—at least by NASA, with cuts to their funding likely, and difficulty ensuring public support and interest due to the changes in the mindsets of Americans that Trump seems capable of inspiring. As the pendulum of political power swings ever more rightwards, its shadow leaves chasms in many paths and the corridors of science are likely to be especially damaged—certainly in the US, but perhaps globally—for an unknowable length of time.