The United States are a country of extreme. And nothing shows this better than the Trumpian reaction to the progressive policies of the previous government: diversity and inclusion are challenged by every aspect of the American federal apparatus, replaced by a new mantra, that of savings. A saving to be implemented with draconian cuts to the public administration and which becomes an opportunity for revenge on the enemy, political and cultural.
University and research institutes are among the prince targets of the iconoclast fury of Trump and Musk, material executor of the new Agenda of the far right of American government – the so -called Project 2025 – which leads the Departement of Govenment Efficiency (Doge) is dismantling the main federal agencies, such as the National Institute of Health (NiH) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa). And that in doing so, he is paralyzing the free scientific research ecosystem and, more or less, public that to them, and their funding, relied on.
The censorship: forbidden to bother Trump
A few days after his settlement, a series of executive and notes issued by the cabinet of the US president have started war on those that Trump, and his electorate, see how the cornerstones of the culture Woke: “gender” theory, policies of (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion), Fight against climate change. In a short time, the situation has degenerated to the point of transforming itself into a sort of witch hunt: the Internet agencies websites have started to be purged by any reference to the genre, the rights of the LGBT+community, global warming or climatic justice .
For scientific institutions, the situation proved to be even more complicated. Each research project that includes issues even remotely remotely descended to the new taboos must be deleted, each document or publicly accessible document removed from the web. At the National Science Foundation (agency that deals with financing basic research in the non -medical field) a long list of prohibited words has been drawn up, which includes terms such as LGBT, cultural, discriminatory, prejudice, but also words of common use Like women (but not men), or disabilities, who is used to screen all the documents contained in his databases, and report for manual control those that could having to be modified or removed.
The situation is also similar to the National Institute of Health (or NiH, which deals with biomedical research), on which various other agencies dedicated to health depend, such as the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), which operates Pubmed – the largest e Used databases of scientific articles in the world – Oi centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a control body dedicated to public health, which in these days has prohibited to its researchers to publish scientific articles containing the prohibited words not only on their pages and publications, but in any type of scientific journal.
The dangers of this witch hunt should be evident. The entire American public research system is being distorted, deprived of his freedom and folded to the agenda and ideology of the president. But not only that, because the new Trumpian Maccartism risks having much more pragmatic consequences: censorship is eliminating scientific studies, databases and online resources used to study the trend of climate change and their consequences, monitor the spread of dangerous pathogens and, Ultimately, to guarantee the health of the American population (and not only, since we live in a globalized world, and that the global scientific community has been for almost a century to US traction). Themes such as gender medicine, the fight against HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases, the inclusion of African American or Hispanic patients in clinical trials, are certainly not ideological distortions, but scientific conquests that contribute to saving the lives of thousands of people every year. And the Trumpian electorate risks discovering him in games made, on his own skin.
Cuts and purges: Instead of uncomfortable healthcare
With Musk at the helm of the doge, the government aims not only to gather the world of science, but also to hungry it. At the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration – probably the most important scientific institution in the world dedicated to the study of the climate and changes – for example a 50 percent of the expenses for the staff has been imposed, and we speak of suspending all the funding of Research programs dedicated to climate change, their prevention or adaptation policies.
It is at Inh, however, that in these the consequences of the crusade launched by Trump and Musk risk being catastrophic. One of the first initiatives taken to reduce the expenses of the health agency was in fact to impose a 15 percent roof to federal reimbursements of the “indirect costs” of research, a move that – according to American universities – could make it completely unsustainable The cost of clinical experiments and trials in the near future.
To understand why it is necessary to understand how public funding works for research in America. In summary, each institution (universities, centers and research hospitals) receives a sum that consists of two voices: the direct costs, which cover the salaries of the researchers and the material necessary to carry on the experiments; And the indirect ones, which are used to pay all the other voices of shopping of the workshops: the cleaning of the premises, the staff not directly involved in the research, the administration costs, waste disposal, and much more. In 2023, Nih paid 35 billion dollars in Grant (scholarships) for public research, of which nine billion in indirect costs. Up to now the indirect costs reimbursed to each institute were negotiated more or less every four years, and could go from a minimum of 15 percent to a maximum of 70 percent of the figure received for the direct ones, according to the different needs and the type of searches carried out.
The new rules instead include a 15 percent roof for everyone. And this means that many universities would not have the necessary funds to support their researchers (previously, even with reimbursements often greater than 50 percent, the American universities still supported a considerable part of the indirect expenses, for a total that that In 2023 it was 6.8 billion dollars). Currently, after a rain of appeals, the discussion moved to the federal courts, and at least temporarily the cuts were blocked.
In 2017 Trump had tried to do something similar, with a 10 percent roof to the indirect costs reimbursed by the Inh. At the time he had been stopped by a vote against the Committee for the appropriation of the American Senate. But given the climate that pulls in this second term, it is impossible to say how it will end this time. And fear, at least among researchers, is that it may be the tombstone for public research in the United States.