President-elect Donald Trump has a vast array of options to tackle in the traditional first hundred days of his administration. Chris Bray says that one of the very first of these should be the depoliticization of the federal science agencies:
Donald Trump has spoken very clearly about his day-one determination to end the mutilation of children in the service of gender ideology, but let’s look for the roots of that poison tree. Via Billboard Chris, here’s a sample descriptive section from a National Institutes of Health grant given to a pediatric gender physician in Los Angeles, and read this carefully to find the most important sentence:
Dr. Johanna Olson-Kennedy has worked to push gender hormone treatment down to eight year-olds, with research funding from the federal government. Now, big finish: the dates on the NIH grant that Billboard Chris highlighted:
This is a project — gender hormones for eight year-olds — that operated with federal funding during the first Trump administration. Policy expressed in words meets policy expressed in cash. This is what matters, year after year, through Republican and Democratic administrations alike (click to enlarge):
The money, the money, and the money. What you fund is what you’re doing. It may not seem like a big target, but the politicization of federal science funding is a root cause of institutional decay and pathological narrative-making, and cutting the money pipeline to politicized science is the policy action that will matter for decades. Remaking the funding pipeline for federal science grants is a day one priority, because the money will shape policy far more than any declaration of intent.
The problem is everywhere: the NIH, the NSF, NASA, NOAA, and so on. SpaceX is catching rockets; NASA is funding this: “21-EEJ21-0020 ASSESSMENT OF THE GULF COAST ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE LANDSCAPE FOR EQUITY.”
And this: “EXPLORING SYNERGISTIC OPPORTUNITIES BETWEEN CHARLOTTE-AREA ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE INITIATIVES AND NASA EARTH SCIENCE INFORMATION.”
Pick a federal science grant website and spend some time exploring it. Here’s the National Science Foundation’s funding opportunities page. Sample grant program: “Growing Research Compliance Support and Service Infrastructure for Nationally Transformative Equity and Diversity”.
Today’s funded program for transformative science equity and environmental justice is tomorrow’s new policy measures. This is the pipeline to programs. What you fund today is what you’re going to do in five years.
