In the United States, we often put more focus on building new things than maintaining what we’ve already built. It’s just as true in the way we run our government, where politicians claim glory for the new laws they pass, while workaday bureaucrats go largely unnoticed as they run the government agencies built to carry out those laws.
Ironically, the boringness we ascribe to bureaucracy is currently allowing Trump-appointed bureaucrats — like Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought — to operate with impunity as they try to dismantle the engines of progress. Just look at the federal government’s new 412-page proposal to change the rules governing federally funded research.
[Trump] has given Vought free rein to destroy key engines of progress — including universities, research institutes and scientific and professional associations.
Much of the progress this country has made over the past 75 years was achieved with the help of government money for research. As the federally funded National Science Foundation touts on its website, “Next time you talk on a cell phone, hear a weather report, search the web, or get an MRI, remember the U.S. National Science Foundation helped make that all possible, and more.” To name just a few examples of what the “more” includes: the development of artificial intelligence, along with the semiconductors and supercomputers that run AI technologies, research into AI’s effect on the U.S. workforce and research on the social and ethical guardrails needed to rein in AI.
Historically, federal agencies have supported research not in the spirit of an investor looking to make a quick profit, but rather in the spirit of a benefactor looking to do real good in the world. That beneficence, in turn, is necessary for progress because good science is slow and deliberate, and its payoff is never guaranteed. Getting to headline-worthy developments takes far more time than private investors are typically willing to wait for a return on their capital, and far more money than private investors are typically willing to risk. And if the outcome was certain, there would be no need to do the research at all.
Trump, however, seems far more interested in padding his own and his cronies’ pockets than in boosting the economy or the fate of humanity long term. And so, he has given Vought free rein to destroy key engines of progress — including universities, research institutes and scientific and professional associations.
Under the proposed OMB rules, for example, every research grant awarded by the federal government would be vetted by political appointees, who could overrule decisions made by scientific experts during the peer review process and deny the award if it doesn’t advance the president’s priorities.
This new political vetting process could reshape the trajectory of research for decades. It discourages researchers from doing the kind of basic science that isn’t tied to any specific agenda — but is essential in laying the groundwork for future developments. And it discourages universities and research institutes from prioritizing investments in the kinds of research (and related infrastructure, equipment and personnel) that are politically out of favor under the current administration, but that have the most potential to support big innovations long term.
For example, any organization facilitating diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility — or adopting what Trump has called “gender ideology,” but which is actually just recognition of the biological and social complexity of sex, gender and sexuality — would be ineligible for future federal research funding and could have their current grants canceled as well.
This new political vetting process could reshape the trajectory of research for decades.
These rules would leave universities in an impossible position, forced to choose between losing the funds that currently make up more than half their research budgets and losing the trust of marginalized communities that have relied on universities for recognition, protection and support.
The proposed OMB rules also stand to decimate professional and scientific associations, along with the collaborations and spirited debates on which scientific progress is based.
Under the new rules, grant applicants could be denied based on their affiliation with any organization or individual the administration disfavors, and researchers would need authorization from political appointees to use their grant funding to pay for association memberships, attend their conferences or subscribe to their journals. There’s reason to suspect, in turn, that agency officials will deny such requests, not only in an inefficient effort to save money but also because of the role that scientific and professional associations have played in challenging the administration’s previous attacks on scientific research.
The proposal is open for public comment until July 13, but Vought and his OMB aren’t required to respond to any pushback they receive. And so, the future of scientific progress — and the future of the universities and the research institutes and the scientific and professional associations that support such progress — will likely hinge on the willingness of Congress and the courts to intervene.
If those efforts fail, and if Trump and Vought are able to enact their new rules for research, we might keep building things in this country, but the evidence at the foundation of those developments will be thin and flimsy at best.
Dr. Jessica Calarco is a sociologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a fellow at the Roosevelt Institute and the author of "Holding it Together: How Women Became America’s Safety Net."