America’s Transition from Scientific Brain Gain to Brain Drain: Part II, Brain Drain

July 7, 2025

IV. Trump policies undoing previous u.S. advantages

The second Trump administration has taken a chainsaw to American government-funded science and technology. There are several reasons behind the savage and chaotic cuts to science funding. The first is related to recommendations in Project 2025. That Heritage Foundation document called for removing references to climate change in all government documents. Bethany Kozma, deputy chief of staff at the U.S. Agency for International Development during the first Trump administration, said that “[Trump’s] administration will have to eradicate climate change references from absolutely everywhere.” A second focal point of the Trump administration is to remove and negate every program or executive order issued during the Biden administration. A third initiative involves deep cuts to health and human services (HHS) programs. Part of this stems from antipathy among many Trump voters towards the way that the COVID-19 pandemic was handled by government officials, with particular animosity directed towards Anthony Fauci and the COVID vaccine programs, despite their success in taming the pandemic.

One of the most pernicious aspects of science policy in the Trump 2.0 administration is the idea, stressed in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 report, that all science, in addition to all other agencies, should “implement the President’s agenda.” Figure IV.1 shows Russell Vought, a leader in the Project 2025 report and currently the head of Trump’s Office of Management and Budget. Katie Sullivan, a staffer from the Department of Justice, said that aligning an agency’s priorities with those of the President “should be the business of all federal employees.” When applied to scientific agencies, this means that political priorities will dictate what research will be followed. For example, in the President’s Budget Proposal for fiscal year 2026, Vought wrote that the proposed budget would put an end “to woke climate research and skewed, overly-precautionary modeling that influences regulations.” We suppose that everything looks woke to people who are asleep at the wheel. Moreover, scientific fields that are targeted for disapproval will not only have their funding terminated, but scientific information regarding these areas may be purged from government websites.

**Figure IV.1:** Russell Vought. Vought was one of the leading figures in producing the Heritage Foundation report Project 2025. The Trump administration has used that document in ravaging civil servants and government agencies. Vought is currently the head of the Office of Management and Budget during this administration.

Trump’s disastrous threats to research funding would be enough to endanger the attractiveness of the U.S. for both foreign and domestic scholars. But that is hardly all he is doing. He is also going out of his way to discourage immigration even from outstanding European scientists and trying to deport some scholars already in the U.S. And he is trying systematically to emasculate leading American universities. The man simply does not like having his obsessions and delusions contradicted by facts and knowledge. In this section we review some of the details of his attempts to undo all the earlier advantages that led to America’s century-long dominance in science and technology.

A: Detention and Deportation of Scholars and Students

Two scientists denied entry into the U.S. early in Trump’s second term served to deliver the message that foreign scientists are not welcome unless they bow down to the “Dear Leader.”

Kseniia Petrova is a Russian-born biomedical research scientist working at the Harvard Medical School. In February, 2025 she was returning from France carrying frog embryo samples requested by her collaborators at Harvard. She failed to declare the frog embryos on her customs form, apparently because she was concerned that a customs investigation of the embryos might destroy them. When a Customs officer asked to examine her suitcase, the samples were found. The normal fine for a first custom declaration error is $50. Instead, the Customs officers said they would revoke her visa and deport her to Russia. Because she was scared to return to Russia, where she had protested against the war in Ukraine, she requested asylum in the U.S. She was transferred to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center in Vermont, and later in Louisiana, awaiting an asylum hearing. On June 25, 2025 a Grand Jury in Boston indicted Ms. Petrova on three charges, the most serious of which is smuggling, which can lead to a prison sentence up to 20 years. It is extremely unlikely that a U.S. citizen (at least one who hadn’t run afoul of the Trump administration) would be treated so harshly for a minor customs declaration error.

The second incident occurred on March 9, 2025 when a French space scientist, whose name has not been released, attempted to enter the U.S. to participate in a conference near Houston. Immigration officers asked to examine the scientist’s phone and denied him entry based on what they found there. The French Minister of Higher Education and Research, Philippe Baptiste, said: “This measure was apparently taken by the American authorities because the researcher’s phone contained exchanges with colleagues and friends in which he expressed a personal opinion on the Trump administration’s research policy.” The French scientist was accused of writings “that reflect hatred toward Trump and can be described as terrorism.”

A spokesman for US Customs and Border Protection stated that: “If an individual has material discovered on their electronic media that raises flags during an inspection, it can result in further analysis. Claims that such decisions are politically motivated are completely unfounded.” In order to back up the latter statement, the Department of Homeland Security later claimed, in contradiction to the scientist himself and the French Minister, that entry was denied to the French scientist not because of anything in his personal messages concerning Trump, but rather because his phone contained “confidential information…from Los Alamos National Laboratory – in violation of a nondisclosure agreement.” This has the ring of an excuse made up after the fact. It seems highly unlikely that a Customs officer at the border would have known what nondisclosure agreements the scientist would have signed.

Even foreign scientists and students legally in the U.S. on visas are at risk. In March Trump’s State Department abruptly, and with minimal explanation, informed more than 1,400 international students at 200 U.S. colleges and universities that their student visas were being immediately terminated. About 40% of the affected students originated in India and China. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said visas were being revoked for visitors who “were acting counter to national interests.” Some of the affected students were accused of participating in pro-Palestinian protests, others thought they might have been targeted for such minor offenses as speeding tickets, and still others could think of no reasonable explanation. The real purpose seems to have been to inform foreign scholars that they are no longer welcome in the U.S. On April 25, after a wave of lawsuits had been filed against the government, the Trump administration reversed course and restored legal status for all the affected students. But the “go home” message had already been delivered.

That message has been reinforced by scenes visible around the world of multiple masked U.S. ICE agents, with no identification to depict them as police authorities, showing up suddenly in unmarked vehicles to grab foreign scholars off the street or campus into custody and send them to deportation detention centers. The example depicted in Fig. IV.2 is the detention of Turkish Fulbright scholar Even foreign scientists and students legally in the U.S. on visas are at risk. In March Trump’s State Department abruptly, and with minimal explanation, informed more than 1,400 international students at 200 U.S. colleges and universities that their student visas were being immediately terminated. About 40% of the affected students originated in India and China. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said visas were being revoked for visitors who “were acting counter to national interests.” Some of the affected students were accused of participating in pro-Palestinian protests, others thought they might have been targeted for such minor offenses as speeding tickets, and still others could think of no reasonable explanation. The real purpose seems to have been to inform foreign scholars that they are no longer welcome in the U.S. On April 25, after a wave of lawsuits had been filed against the government, the Trump administration reversed course and restored legal status for all the affected students. But the “go home” message had already been delivered.

That message has been reinforced by scenes visible around the world of multiple masked U.S. ICE agents, with no identification to depict them as police authorities, showing up suddenly in unmarked vehicles to grab foreign scholars off the street or campus into custody and send them to deportation detention centers. The example depicted in Fig. IV.2 is the detention of Turkish Fulbright scholar Rümeysa Öztürk, a Tufts University Ph.D. student being arrested on a street in Somerville, Massachusetts on March 25, 2025. Her “crime” was co-authoring an opinion piece in the Tufts Daily newspaper demanding that the University administration “acknowledge the Palestinian genocide” going on in Gaza and divest from supporting companies tied to Israel., a Tufts University Ph.D. student being arrested on a street in Somerville, Massachusetts on March 25, 2025. Her “crime” was co-authoring an opinion piece in the Tufts Daily newspaper demanding that the University administration “acknowledge the Palestinian genocide” going on in Gaza and divest from supporting companies tied to Israel.

**Figure IV.2.** Turkish Fulbright scholar Rümeysa Öztürk (in white coat) being taken into custody by masked ICE agents on March 25, 2025, for the crime of penning an opinion piece in a student newspaper that the U.S. government didn’t like.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said: “We do it every day. Every time I find one of these lunatics, I take away their visa.” Indeed, many other “lunatics” concerned about the unnecessary killing of Gaza residents have been similarly detained. Judges have now ordered several of these detainees, including Öztürk, released until courts can adjudicate whether their civil rights have been violated by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). But, again, the clear message that the Trump administration considers them devoid of protection for freedom of speech and unwelcome in this country has been delivered. In addition, numerous U.S.-born American citizens who deal with immigrants, such as Massachusetts immigration lawyer Nicole Micheroni, have been sent official DHS letters telling each recipient “It is now time for you to leave the United States.”

In response to all of these detentions and to many other unreasonable immigration investigations for visitors arriving at U.S. airports, a number of countries nominally allied with the U.S. have issued recent travel advisories warning their own citizens to be wary of travel to America. For example, the U.K. Foreign Office has warned British citizens “that minor entry mistakes could lead to detention or deportation.” Australia and New Zealand have issued similar warnings. Germany, France, Denmark, and Finland have added a warning that U.S. entry may be denied if citizen’s travel documents do not match the sex they were assigned at birth. Many foreign scientists and science students will stop coming to the U.S. to work, study, or even to attend conferences.

B: Attacks on Research Universities and Academic Freedom

Vannevar Bush considered federal funding of research a wise investment in the country’s future. Donald Trump considers such funding to be merely leverage he can use to impose his will on American universities.

Columbia University: In April 2024, Columbia President Minouche Shafik, shown in Fig. IV.3, testified before Congress. She was grilled about Gaza protests at Columbia, and over accusations that Columbia had fostered an atmosphere of antisemitism. Republican Congresswoman Elise Stefanik of New York found great political advantage in railing about antisemitism, even if it was done somewhat cynically. On March 7, 2025,the Trump administration informed Columbia University that it was withholding $400 million in federal funds from the university. The rationale was a claim from the Federal Task Force to Combat Antisemitism that Columbia had fostered a climate of antisemitism on its campus. On March 14, the U.S. Department of Education, Department of Health and Human Services, and the General Services Administration had sent Columbia a list of nine “next steps” that Columbia had to assent to in order to enter “formal negotiations regarding Columbia University’s continued financial relationship with the United States government.” Furthermore, the message demanded that Columbia respond to these proposed actions within one week.

**Figure IV.3:** Columbia University president Minouche Shafik testified before Congress in April 2024, where she was grilled over allegations of antisemitism at Columbia, based on student protests at the University against the Israeli killings of citizens in Gaza.

On March 21, interim University President Katrina Armstrong announced that Columbia University had sent a document outlining steps that they were taking to comply with the Trump Administration demands. The demands, and the response from Columbia, are listed here.

Demand #1: “Enforce Existing Disciplinary Policies.” One day earlier, the Columbia Judicial Board had issued suspensions, expulsions and temporary degree revocations for students who had occupied Hamilton Hall during 2024 Gaza protests. Hearings related to other encampments on campus were ongoing.
Demand #2: “Establish ‘primacy of the President’ in disciplinary issues.” The Trump Administration wanted Columbia to abolish their University Judicial Board and move all disciplinary matters to the Office of the President. In response, Columbia said that the UJB “will be situated within and overseen by the Provost, who reports to the President.”
Demand #3: “Establish Time, Place and Manner Rules.” The Trump Administration demanded that Columbia establish rules that would prevent disruption of teaching, research and campus life. Columbia responded that “protests in academic buildings, and other places necessary for the conduct of University activities are generally not acceptable under the Rules of University Conduct.”
Demand #4: “Implement a Mask Ban.” The Trump Administration demanded that Columbia ban masks that might conceal a person’s identity or intimidate others. (The administration has no issue with ICE agents wearing masks during arrests for precisely those purposes.) Columbia responded that they were “addressing the risk of masked individuals creating disruption.” Columbia had an earlier policy that allowed protesters to wear masks but might have to remove them if a University official asked them to identify themselves.
Demand #5: “Hold all student groups accountable.” Columbia responded that they had a policy and processes for discipline of all student groups that engage in discriminatory conduct, and that these processes could involve sanctions, defunding, suspending or de-recognizing such groups.
Demand #6: “’Formalize, adopt, and promulgate’ a definition of antisemitism.” President Armstrong stated that the university’s “approach and relevant policies will incorporate the definition of antisemitism recommended by Columbia’s Antisemitism Taskforce in August 2024.” That report can be found here. However, co-chair of the task force Ester Fuchs stated that the definition of antisemitism was intended “for use in training and education, not for discipline or as a means for limiting free speech or academic freedom.”
Demand #7: “Give Public Safety Law Enforcement Authority.” The Trump Administration demanded that the university’s internal law enforcement staff have the power to arrest and/or remove agitators who “interfere with the functioning of the university.” Columbia responded that the university had hired 36 special officers who would have the power to arrest and/or remove individuals. The officers were completing their training; however, they would not carry arms.
Demand #8: “Place the Middle Eastern Studies Department under academic receivership.” The Trump Administration demanded that this department be placed under academic receivership (where the administration appoints an outside chair to run the department). Columbia announced that a new senior vice provost “would conduct a thorough review of programs in regional areas across the University.” Interim President Armstrong announced a number of steps that Columbia would take to ensure “comprehensive and balanced” programs, and was committed to “expansion of intellectual diversity among faculty.” These announcements were news to Columbia faculty, as they had not been announced prior to the university’s response to the Trump administration.
Demand #9: “Reform Admissions Practices.” The Trump administration demanded that Columbia change its admissions and international recruiting practices “to conform with federal law and policy.” Columbia responded that it had formed an advisory group to analyze enrollment trends. The university also responded that admissions staff had been trained to work “in compliance with the law and in accordance with the schools’ admissions priorities.”

Both the scope of the penalties ($400 million in government funding) and the extraordinary detail of the nine demands made it clear that the Trump administration was in essence attempting to take over the functioning of an elite private university. The various demands – in particular, the demands to place a department in receivership and to reform admissions practices — appeared to cross red lines between criticism of a university and a hostile takeover by the federal government, in direct violation of the 1957 Supreme Court ruling in Sweezy v. New Hampshire. Acting President Armstrong soon stepped down after it was revealed that at a private faculty meeting, she had minimized Columbia’s promises to the Trump administration.

However, the Columbia administration now claims that their apparent capitulation to Trump et al. was misleading, and that they are “maintaining Columbia’s core ideals” through their negotiations with the federal government. Indeed, the Trump administration has now soft-pedaled their criticisms of Columbia; however, note that the government has not yet returned the $400 million in research funding which they are withholding from the university. It appears that the Trump administration may be trying to force Columbia to sign a consent decree before the funds are released.

Harvard University:

The Republican Party and the Trump administration have been sparring with Harvard University since spring 2024, when Republicans in Congress claimed that Harvard had fostered an atmosphere (see Fig. IV.4) where antisemitism was affecting the lives of Jewish students. However, this escalated dramatically when on April 11 the Administration’s Joint Task Force to Combat Antisemitism sent Harvard a list of demands. This list went far beyond concerns about potential antisemitism. They included the following demands:

A ban on Harvard admitting students “hostile to the American values” enumerated in the Constitution.
An audit of the political leanings of faculty and students to determine “viewpoint diversity.”
Quarterly status updates from Harvard to the administration for the remainder of Trump’s term.

**Figure IV.4:** *A protest at Harvard University over Israel’s actions in the Gaza war and allegations that Harvard was aiding Israel.*

The Trump administration subsequently said that the letter had been sent “by mistake.” However, they have continued to press allegations and punishments that were totally out of line with the initial allegations of antisemitism. In response, on April 14 Harvard sued the federal government; their President Alan Garber stated that “No government – regardless of which party is in power – should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue.” Indeed, President Garber has listed the principles of academic freedom that were guaranteed during the Warren Supreme Court.

It is clear that the demands in the April 11 letter to Harvard constituted a direct attack on all of those academic freedoms. In response to Harvard’s lawsuits, the Trump administration has carried out the following punitive actions towards the university.

Termination of $2.2 billion in multi-year research grants and $60 million in contracts. These grants are mainly from the NIH.
Paused $1 billion in NIH grants for Harvard’s research partners.
Disqualified Harvard from all future federal grants. This came in a letter from Education Secretary Linda McMahon.
Terminated $450 million in multiagency grants. The task force on combating antisemitism took this action, accusing Harvard of being “a breeding ground for virtue signaling and discrimination.”
Terminated $60 million in grants from the CDC. The HHS Department claimed that this was in response to the college’s “continued failure to address antisemitic harassment and race discrimination.”
Proposed terminating $100 million in “remaining federal contracts.” Federal agencies were tasked with cancelling all remaining federal contracts for Harvard.

These actions involved absurdly large penalties for Harvard for its claimed antisemitism and alleged efforts to evade the Supreme Court’s decision that race could not be included in determinations of which students were admitted. It appears obvious that the Trump administration is using these penalties as a cudgel to attack academic freedom at Harvard and to require that the university allow the Trump administration to dictate the university’s policies on the composition of the faculty, courses taught at Harvard, students admitted, and Harvard policies with respect to students. We remind the reader that the Supreme Court in Sweezy v. New Hampshire found that the U.S. Constitution guaranteed “‘four essential freedoms’ of a university – to determine for itself on academic grounds who may teach, what may be taught, how it shall be taught, and who may be admitted to study.”

At present, there are at least eight investigations of Harvard being carried out by at least six federal agencies. These include an investigation by Health and Human Services into a Harvard Medical School graduation ceremony (some students apparently wore buttons or scarves that indicated their support for Palestinians in Gaza). Kristi Noem, Secretary for Homeland Security, threatened to disqualify Harvard from participating in the Student and Exchange Visitor Program. This would have stopped Harvard from enrolling foreign students, and would have required all current foreign students and postdocs to withdraw from Harvard and leave the U.S. This action has been temporarily blocked by a federal judge.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission opened an inquiry into potential discrimination by Harvard against white, Asian, male and heterosexual students. The inquiry was spearheaded by EEOC acting chair Andrea Lucas. The EEOC could presumably subpoena Harvard in an attempt to force the university into a settlement decree. And the Justice Department opened an investigation into Harvard’s admission policies using the False Claims Act law designed to punish entities that defraud the government. In addition, on May 2 Donald Trump suggested that his administration might revoke Harvard’s tax-exempt status.

It should be obvious that the Trump administration is willing to go to extraordinary lengths to punish Harvard. Antisemitism was simply the original pretext for these attacks; the real reason is that the administration wants more academic and intellectual support for its policies than current Harvard and other university faculty are inclined to offer. Academics like us are cheering Harvard on, since capitulation to Trump would likely mean that the federal government can essentially abolish academic freedom of universities and force universities to comply with a series of demands designed to crush the independence of our elite universities. At present Harvard has proceeded to sue the administration over its actions. However, up to now the Trump administration has pursued a strategy of increasing pressure. In some areas Harvard has been negotiating with the Trump administration; it will be interesting to see to what degree the university can maintain its independence. The outcome here will be of crucial importance to determine whether academic freedom of universities will prevail, or whether Trump’s attempts at dominance will succeed. We note that just recently Trump’s Justice Department has succeeded in forcing the University of Virginia President James E. Ryan to resign because they were displeased with the university’s response to the administration’s outlawing of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) policies.

Indiana University and other State Universities:

Republican-controlled state legislatures are extending Trump-inspired attacks on faculty governance and academic freedom to their state universities. The Texas state legislature began its 2025 session by threatening “to withhold hundreds of millions in funding unless universities aligned more closely with their conservative vision of higher education.” The threat was not realized but may have served to temper university objections to Senate Bill 37. This bill, signed into law by Governor Greg Abbott on June 20, takes power away from faculty senates and even from university Presidents and gives power to Governor-appointed Boards of Regents. These Boards can now approve or deny the hiring of university administrators, create (or disband) faculty senates and choose their officers, recommend the courses that should be required for graduation, and reject courses that don’t meet the state’s politicized standards, thereby assuming effective power over curricula. The bill creates a new office within the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board that has the authority to recommend funding cuts for universities that do not sufficiently address the state’s DEI ban.

At our own institution, Indiana University, the state legislature has recently removed the last three alumni-elected members of the Board of Trustees and the state Governor (currently Republican Mike Braun) immediately appointed three new members of the Board. Removing alumni-elected board members was a targeted act that affected Indiana University but no other state institution of higher education. In a 2024 bill that Board was given the authority to review, and if necessary reject, the continuing appointment of any faculty, including those with tenure, who are accused of and judged to be not teaching with whatever the state government decides is an appropriate level of “intellectual diversity.” In addition, the state legislature now requires mandatory five-year reviews of all tenured faculty. This spells the end of lifetime tenure at Indiana’s public universities. These state legislature moves constitute a direct attack on academic freedom and further politicization of university curricula.

C: Draconian Cuts For Research

In this section we will document cuts by the Trump administration in various areas. We will also discuss the political rationale behind the brutal attacks by Donald Trump, Elon Musk and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. on both the funding for scientific research and the personnel at federal science agencies. We should emphasize that our report here merely lists a few of the many areas of science under attack by the Trump administration.

Climate Change and Environmental Issues:

As of April 2025, the Trump administration has cancelled 400 previously approved environmental grants totaling $1.7 billion. These grants were aimed at improving air and water quality, and at making communities more resilient towards coming extreme weather events. Trump was focused on canceling funding related to the Biden Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), despite the fact that this legislation created jobs, saved costs and provided public health benefits, largely in Republican-led states. The IRA investments were scheduled to provide $500 billion in economic investment; cutting IRA support is estimated to lose nearly 800,000 jobs and $160 billion in GDP by 2030.

National Science Foundation (NSF) Funding:

The Trump Administration has proposed severe cuts to many divisions of the NSF. The overall budget has been reduced by 51%. Figure IV.5 shows the 2025 NSF budget through May 21, compared with the average of the same time period for the preceding five years. The shaded regions show the size of the current budget in that field, while the light regions show the average of the previous five years. Some of the areas receiving the largest cuts are:

An 80% reduction for STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) education. The division of equity for excellence in STEM was eliminated. The division of graduate education has not approved any grants so far this year (on average it would have approved $21 million by now). It has announced it will issue 1,000 graduate education grants this year, as opposed to 2,000 in previous years.
Physics, Math and Chemistry support has decreased by 67%. Funding for physics grants has fallen by 83% and by 63% for materials research grants.
NSF funding in biology has decreased by 52%. There were steep cuts in funds for environmental biology, but also cuts to facilities and staff support for biological research.
Support in Geosciences has decreased by 33%. This is smaller than cuts in other divisions; however, the cuts were highly targeted. For example, the Office of Polar Programs, which supports research in the Arctic and Antarctic regions (and whose research provides crucial input for measuring global climate change) fired many of its staff and decreased its budget by 88%. On the other hand, the ocean sciences division of NSF received a $39 million grant to establish an office that will manage a program in deep-sea drilling.

**Figure IV.5:** Shaded areas: spending in various areas for the NSF up to May 21, 2025. The white areas denote the average over the past five years for spending in those areas up to the same date. Education, math physics and chemistry, and biology show the largest cuts, while social science spending has remained roughly constant.

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration:

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) was one of the agencies targeted by the Trump Administration because of the relevance of its work to monitoring and projecting global climate change. The proposed Fiscal Year 2026 budget for NOAA included a reduction of 27%, more than $1.5 billion. This would be the largest single-year reduction in the history of NOAA. The proposed cuts to the NOAA budget are shown in Fig. IV.6. The cuts are relative to average NOAA funding from 2018 through 2021. Cuts include 15.4% cuts to the National Environmental Satellite, Data and Information Service, 5.6% cut to the National Weather Service, 35.7% cut to the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research, 15.9% cut to the National Marine Fisheries department, and 36.7% cut to the National Ocean Service. The two departments that are primarily responsible for oceanic and atmospheric research have been singled out for the largest cuts. These areas were singled out for savage cuts because they provide essential data regarding the effects of climate change.

**Figure IV.6:** Trump proposed cuts to the NOAA budget. The cuts are relative to average NOAA funding from 2018 through 2021. Cuts include 15.4% cuts to National Environmental Satellite, Data and Information Service, 5.6% cut to National Weather Service, 35.7% cut to Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research, 15.9% cut to National Marine Fisheries department, and 36.7% cut to National Ocean Service.

The proposed budget was defended on the grounds that it would “eliminate functions of the Department that are misaligned with the President’s agenda and the expressed will of the American people.” We know of no surveys showing that Americans are demanding de-funding of many NOAA programs. The administration’s proposed budget would specifically aim to “terminate a variety of climate-dominated research, data and grant programs.” This is a typical response of the Trump Administration – scientific research that leads to “inconvenient truths,” answers that don’t conform to the political prejudices of the administration, will be terminated, and existing data could be purged from government records. Thus, the proposed budget would eliminate investments in climate research, and terminate investments in educational programs, conservation partnerships, and climate monitoring.

NOAA is housed within the Department of Commerce (DoC); hence, this agency will be overseen by DoC head Howard Lutnick. Lutnick’s comments on the effect of Trump tariffs on the U.S. economy suggest that he is strong on loyalty but weak on understanding facts. Many of the NOAA cuts reflect Trump administration searching for keywords such as “climate change,” “pollution,” natural resources,” “diversity, equity and inclusion,” in order to determine where to apply budget cuts. Scientists familiar with the operations of NOAA are extremely concerned with the Trump Administration’s recommendations for that agency. “In a world where catastrophic climate change impacts and extreme weather events are becoming more frequent and intense, I can think of nothing worse than turning this scientific powerhouse into a skeletal operation,” declared Juan Declet-Barreto, senior social scientist for climate vulnerability at the Union of Concerned Scientists. “If President Trump moves forward with demolishing NOAA, he will jeopardize most people’s access to life-saving information, while only the rich might be able to afford private data sources.”

NOAA was specifically mentioned in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 report. This called NOAA “one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry.” That report recommended breaking NOAA up and privatizing much of its weather forecasting work. The Trump administration installed a number of Project 2025 authors into NOAA positions, and actions by the administration closely mirror the Project 2025 recommendations. NOAA may also be targeted because of animosity between Donald Trump and NOAA staff. In 2019, Trump announced that Alabama was threatened by Hurricane Dorian. However, NOAA staff predicted that Alabama was not in the direct path of Dorian. However, at a briefing Trump unveiled a NOAA forecast where the prediction of the storm’s probable path had been modified with a Sharpie to include the state of Alabama. A Trump administration investigation of the incident ended up by rebuking NOAA leaders for doing their jobs.

The cuts in climate monitoring are particularly tricky since the objective is to avoid research that indicates the effects of global climate change. At the same time, these funds are also essential to forecasting weather and in particular to the ability to predict damaging storms, hurricanes, tornados and other weather disasters. Sure enough, the cuts to the NOAA budget and the chaotic staff reductions carried out by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) under Elon Musk and his associates suggest that staffing may be insufficient to prepare the country for extreme weather events. A number of Republicans have called for information regarding weather patterns and severe weather to be carried out by private weather services. They do not seem to realize that these private companies currently just use the research generated by NOAA to make their “own, independent” forecasts.

The following are some of the cuts at NOAA that have been carried out or are proposed for the 2026 budget.

Hundreds of NOAA employees have been terminated or have taken buyouts to retire. In addition, dozens of federal grants and NOAA leases of research centers have been terminated. The closed facilities include many centers charged with maintaining large databases.
Weather balloon launches have been terminated.
A proposed 73.86% budget reduction for the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research, together with complete de-funding of the National Severe Storm Laboratory and the Cooperative Institute for Severe and High-Impact Weather Research and Operations.

National Institutes of Health (NIH):

At present, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) are in a state of relative chaos. Since the Trump 2.0 administration began, the NIH has been viciously attacked by three different forces. The first was the DOGE group, under the leadership of Elon Musk. Thousands of NIH staffers took buyout offers from Musk or were fired. The process was extremely chaotic – however, this was not an error but a central feature of the smashing of the civil service state. Russell Vought, a Christian Nationalist and leader of the Heritage Foundation group that produced Project 2025 (shown in Fig. IV.1), said in an event hosted by his think tank Center for Renewing America (motto: “For God. For Country. For Community”), “We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected. When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work, because they are increasingly viewed as the villains. We want their funding to be shut down … We want to put them in trauma.”

At the moment, the NIH budget and its staffing are in a highly uncertain state. Some of the chaotic DOGE cuts to personnel and facilities have been walked back. In addition, there are many lawsuits against Health and Human Services and the NIH. Before we describe the current situation, we will step back and discuss the motives of those people who have been the most active in upending the status of the NIH.

Donald Trump’s actions can best be understood as the product of a clinical narcissist pursuing a mission of vengeance. As a narcissist, he views issues only to the extent that they involve him personally. He desires to dominate the media, while he works out his priorities. In the case of health care, Trump acts through a number of motivating factors. One of these is punishing the research areas pursued by the NIH, because of his view towards health care leaders, particularly Anthony Fauci, the 40-year director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). Trump believes that Fauci was instrumental in undermining Trump’s own erratic handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. Furthermore, Trump’s base was instrumental in forming “medical freedom” groups that opposed mask mandates, restrictions on large group gatherings, and pressure for Americans to be vaccinated against COVID. As a result, Trump eagerly supports slashing the NIH budget.

Elon Musk is a sociopathic, self-dealing billionaire. He is a bitter opponent of any efforts to raise taxes on the rich or to regulate industries, especially his own. Musk and his associates at DOGE (particularly those between 19 and 25 years of age, who had no prior experience in government and who are described as “worker bees” for Musk) utilized “slash and burn” techniques in firing staffers at NIH and other agencies, carried out wholesale cancellation of government contracts and terminated leases for a number of government offices. At the same time, Musk and his associates gained access to classified government databases and accessed information that could be of great value to his own companies. In an article titled “Corruption in Plain Sight,” the Economic Policy Institute detailed how Musk was personally benefiting from the Trump administration halting investigations into Musk’s companies such as Tesla, Neuralink and SpaceX.

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is currently the Secretary for Health and Human Services. As such, he oversees the NIH. Kennedy was initially an environmental lawyer; however, in the early 2000s he became a leading figure in anti-vaccination circles. He was chairman of Children’s Health Defense (initially called World Mercury Project) from 2015 to 2023. Several of our blog posts deal with Kennedy and his anti-science positions (see here, here, here and here). During Kennedy’s confirmation hearings for the HHS Secretary position, medical groups representing tens of thousands of physicians and science researchers testified that, if appointed, RFK Jr would use his position to discourage vaccinations, make it more difficult to conduct research on new vaccines, and take steps to shut down research on HIV/AIDS and new medical cocktails for those with HIV, and make it more difficult for people with HIV to obtain treatment and medical support.

Kennedy pledged that if he was named HHS Secretary, he would not interfere with vaccine development or vaccine schedules. This was a lie. Since being confirmed as HHS Secretary, RFK Jr. has cancelled or postponed meetings to determine vaccine schedules. Recently he fired all 17 members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, claiming falsely that all of them had serious conflicts of interest due to their ties to the pharmaceutical industry. He replaced them with eight members, of which four were associated with anti-vaccination efforts (one of the new appointees rapidly resigned). Kennedy does not understand science, nor does he understand statistics. He does not understand that minute quantities of substances can be helpful, even if those substances are toxic in large doses. This partly helps to explain his false claims that the ethylmercury compound thimerosal has caused great harm to vaccinated children, or that traces of aluminum that act as an adjuvant (a substance that enhances the body’s immune response) in hepatitis B vaccines produce great harm to children. Kennedy also claims that minute quantities of fluoride in drinking water cause serious medical issues to the population.

At the most recent meeting of the new ACIP committee, instead of being addressed by a top researcher from the Centers for Disease Control, the group was addressed by Lyn Redwood, the former CEO of Children’s Health Defense. Redwood falsely suggested that thimerosal in vaccines caused harm to those vaccinated with vaccines that included that chemical. The ‘study’ that she cited to bolster her argument does not exist. In addition, Kennedy has appointed David Geier, an infamous anti-vaxxer, to head a group to study correlations between vaccines and autism. Numerous rigorous clinical studies with very large samples have shown that there is no correlation between vaccines and autism. At the moment, Geier is reviewing some of these clinical studies. One can expect that Geier will announce correlations between vaccines and autism, by manipulating data from studies that show exactly the opposite.

Figure IV.7 shows the NIH Institutes that will lose the largest amounts of funding under cuts proposed by the Trump administration. The figure plots the “termination impact index” for the most affected institutes; this index is calculated by comparing the size of the proposed Trump cuts with the average funding for that center over the period 2020 – 2024. Using this index, the most affected center is the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities. Second is NIAID, which is the division responsible for preparing for future infectious disease outbreaks and pandemics.

**Figure IV.7:** The NIH agencies that will be most negatively affected by Trump administration proposed cuts. The “termination impact index” is calculated by comparing funding rescinded by the administration with the average amount of grant money allocated during the period 2020 – 2024.

At the moment, the status of budgets and staffing for Health and Human Services, and the National Institutes of Health, are highly uncertain. There are a number of lawsuits over the firing of NIH staffers, gigantic cuts in the NIH budget, and other aspects of HHS. A group of 19 states plus the District of Columbia have sued the Trump Administration over the mass layoffs at HHS. But here are a few of the many dramatic cuts proposed to HHS and NIH.

The proposed HHS discretionary budget would be $95 billion; this would represent a 25% cut in HHS funding.
The NIH budget would be $27.5 billion; this represents a 40% cut in NIH funding.
HHS would terminate 5,000 contracts and its staffing would revert to pre-COVID levels.
A new office, the Administration for a Healthy America, would receive a budget of $14 billion. It would combine the Health Resources and Services Administration, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration and programs that were previously housed in the CDC. Thus, budgets for a number of very effective public-health programs will be robbed to fund RFK Jr’s obsessions with the dangers of ultra-processed foods and his animus against pharmaceutical firms.
More than $1.5 billion is proposed in cuts to programs designed to slow or stop the spread of HIV.
It is proposed to cut $2.7 billion, a 37% decrease in funding, from the National Cancer Institute.
The new budget would eliminate the Affordable Care Act Prevention and Public Health fund. This fund invested in “evidence-based activities” relating to prevention of tobacco use, public health workforce training, surveillance, immunizations and screenings.

Although Kennedy claims that he is focused on the causes of chronic disease and that he will “Make America Healthy Again,” this is not reflected in the planned cuts to research on the leading causes of death in the U.S. For example,

The National Institute on Body Systems, which studies heart disease that kills 681,000 Americans a year, is scheduled to have its funding cut by 40%.
The National Cancer Institute, which carries out research on cancers that kill 613,000 per year in the U.S., is scheduled for a 37% cut in research funding.
The National Institute of Neuroscience and Brain Research, which studies stroke that causes 163,000 deaths per year, is slated for a 40% cut in research funding.
The National Institute on Aging, that deals with Alzheimer’s disease that kills 114,000 people per year, is scheduled for a 40% cut in research funding.
The National Institute of Behavioral Health, that carries out research on drug overdoses that kill 97,000 per year, is slated for a 38% cut in funding.

Some conservatives claim that private companies will take on the research that will be cut at the NIH. This seems quite unlikely. Figure IV. 8 shows the source of research funding for the 356 drugs that received Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval from 2010 – 2019. Of those drugs, 354 received NIH funding, while 2 received only private funding.

**Figure IV.8:** *Source of funding for the 356 drugs that received FDA approval in the period 2010 – 2019. 354 were developed in research supported by NIH funding, while 2 were supported solely by private funding.*

Among the targets of the most concerning cuts to public health funding are efforts that help the LGBTQ community. Here the attacks come from both the Trump administration and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. The Trump administration claims that public-health efforts aimed specifically at LGBTQ members are products of “radical gender ideology,” and cuts in these services are designed to resonate with the strongly homophobic Christian Nationalist elements of the MAGA base. In recent years antiretroviral cocktails have been designed that are now providing long and relatively healthy lives to the 1.4 million Americans and 40 million people worldwide who are living with HIV. On these regimens, people with HIV can lower their infection to undetectable levels. They never develop AIDS, they can’t transmit the disease to others, and mothers don’t pass HIV onto their children. Unfortunately, RFK Jr. falsely claims that various chemicals in the antiretroviral drug therapies are killing untold numbers of people with HIV.

The result of these two attacks on health measures for people with HIV led to a $1.5 billion proposed decrease in funding. Carl Schmid, Executive Director of the HIV+ Hepatitis Policy Institute, warns that “The obliteration of CDC HIV prevention and surveillance programs is an absurd proposal that will just increase HIV infections and health costs down the road.” For example, the budget for the CDC’s Ending the HIV Epidemic in the U.S. is scheduled to be cut by 50%.

Dr. Steven Wolff, professor of family medicine and population health at Virginia Commonwealth University, stated that “Too many Americans, including our leaders, take their health for granted, assuming that the infrastructure to prevent disease and save their lives will always be there, that America will always lead the world in science and that systems to keep their children safe will always exist. None of this can be counted on, especially now.”

Ceding leadership to China:

The overall cuts to science funding agencies in Trump’s proposed 2026 budget are summarized in the upper frame of Fig. IV.9. The lower frame shows the trend in federal research funding for the U.S. compared to China, corrected for differences in purchasing power in the two countries. China’s R&D investment has been catching up to America’s and is projected to far exceed it by 2030, taking into account only Trump’s proposed 55% cut to NSF funding and termination of the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act, which authorized federal investments to boost U.S. research and manufacturing of semiconductors and silicon chips, to improve competition with China. China is investing in its own future through research and development, while Trump is drastically cutting funding to undercut research that might contradict his own and his Cabinet members’ delusions.

**Figure IV.9.** (Upper frame) The proposed Trump cuts to science funding agencies in his fiscal year 2026 budget. The red bars represented the funding levels approved for 2025 by the preceding Congress and President, while the blue bars represent the levels proposed by Trump and Russell Vought. (lower frame) Federal investments in R&D in the U.S. (blue curve) and China (red curve), adjusted for differences in purchasing power between the two countries, from 2010 to the present and *projected* *out to 2030. Trump’s proposed cut to NSF funding and termination of the CHIPS act would cede R&D leadership to China.*

D: Specific Policies and Appointments Damaging Climate and Health Outlooks

Over and above the draconian funding cuts described above, the Trump administration has undertaken many actions that systematically jeopardize the nation’s ability to address climate change and public health by ignoring science. Here, we summarize a sampling of these actions.

Trump’s climate policies disregard science and favor his largest donors, the fossil fuel and cyber-tech industries. On his first day in office in January 2025, he withdrew the U.S. from the Paris Climate Accord and declared a national “Energy Emergency.” The energy emergency was claimed to be driven by the needs of artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency mining. Indeed, as shown in Fig. IV.10, the computing (strictly, Information and Communications Technology) sector of the worldwide economy is projected from current trends to demand well over 20% of total worldwide electrical energy usage by the end of this decade, driven largely by AI and crypto. But this designated “emergency” has allowed Trump to favor fossil fuel industries, including even a proposed expansion of coal plants, to disfavor renewable energy industries, and to eliminate federal support for climate change research. As we noted earlier, Russell Vought claimed that one of the primary objectives of the President’s FY2026 budget proposal was to put an end to “woke climate research and skewed, overly-precautionary modeling that influences regulations.”

**Figure IV.10.** *Trends and projections* out 2030 of worldwide electrical energy demand for the Information and Communications Technology sectors of the global economy. The sharp projected increase during this decade is driven by data centers and network infrastructure needed for artificial intelligence and Bitcoin mining.

Here are some of the specific Trump administration actions to undermine preparations for climate change:

Trump nominated climate change deniers to head relevant federal agencies.
He has called for cutting all funding for NASA climate research and NOAA climate monitoring.
He’s called for cancelling next-generation Earth-observing satellites and removing climate-measuring instruments from future weather satellites.
His Environmental Protection Agency, under the leadership of Lee Zeldin, is working to rescind the 2009 “endangerment finding” that enabled regulation of greenhouse gas emissions.
He has clawed back Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund grants that had been approved under the 2023 Inflation Reduction Act.
He has dismissed the scientists and experts who draft the National Climate Assessment.
He has rescinded and proposed cutting all NSF and DOE funding for climate-related research projects.
He claims, in violation of common sense, that all these moves will reduce “climate anxiety.” Essentially: “what you don’t know can’t hurt you.”

Donald Trump believes that he can always bend reality to his will, but he cannot change nature. His actions make any future adaptations to a changing climate all the more challenging and costly, besides setting back American science.

Trump has also systematically undermined Americans’ health. Also on his first day in office he withdrew the U.S. from the World Health Organization. Early on, he muzzled public communications from the CDC, the FDA, and other health agencies. His greatest sin in this regard was nominating a conspiracy theorist and anti-vaxxer like Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. to head the Department of Health and Human Services. Here are some of the specific actions and inactions of RFK that jeopardize Americans’ health:

He has mismanaged the West Texas measles outbreak by spreading decidely mixed messaging about the measles vaccine and inadvertently encouraging Vitamin A toxicity through over-consumption of cod liver oil. The outbreak continues, with well over 1,000 cases across multiple states. If the outbreaks persist throughout 2025, the U.S. will no longer be able to claim that it is “measles free,” as was first declared in 2000.
He restricted National Cancer Institute communications on a wide range of topics, including “Vaccines, Fluoride, Measles, Obesity, and Bird Flu” and other RFK obsessions.
He authorized an NIH study of the long-debunked link between vaccines and autism, to be led by a known conspiracy theorist.
He has called for restricted public access to COVID vaccines.
He has terminated a government grant to Moderna to develop an mRNA vaccine to prevent bird flu in humans, which threatens to fuel the next pandemic.
He has advised allowing all chickens in U.S. poultry farms to be exposed to bird flu, so that only the immune ones survive.
He has imposed huge staffing cuts at NIH, CDC, and FDA.
As noted above, he has completely replaced the membership of CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. Half of the new members have expressed significant anti-vaccine views.
He published a “Make American Healthy Again” report filled with made-up references and Kennedy’s own obsessions. In the report he attributes, without evidence, one of the primary causes of childhood chronic disease as over-vaccination. We have pointed out in a previous post that chronic disease is most prevalent in rural areas of the U.S. and not very prevalent in large urban centers. Does RFK, Jr. think that urban children receive fewer vaccines than rural children?

Kennedy has claimed that HHS policies will henceforth be based on rigorous “gold standard” science, with himself as the arbiter of which science is reliable. Unfortunately for all American citizens, he seems to have no idea how rigorous science is actually done or to understand the differences between anecdotal stories about a few subjects and robust, large-sample clinical trials and epidemiological studies. Republican policies have already contributed to significantly lower life expectancy among Republican voters, in comparison with Democratic voters. With Trump, RFK, Jr., and the deep Medicaid cuts in the recently passed budget reconciliation bill, the discrepancy is likely to continue growing.

E: Comments From Foreign Scientists

Trump’s attacks on scientific research and universities are basically burning the country’s “seed corn” that otherwise ensures a prosperous future. It is not only American scientists who are aghast at the damage Trump is doing to American research and Americans’ health and well-being.

On the same day that the French scientist described earlier was denied entry at the U.S. border, Philippe Baptiste, the French minister of higher education and research, wrote in a letter that “Many well-known researchers are already questioning their future in the United States. We would naturally wish to welcome a certain number of them.” Baptiste also said: “Freedom of opinion, free research, and academic freedom are values that we will continue to proudly uphold. I will defend the right of all French researchers to be faithful to them, while respecting the law.”In fact, we will see in the next section that France, the European Union, and many countries are now aggressively working to attract concerned American scientists.

The treatment of visitors at the U.S. border has dissuaded other foreign scientists from even visiting the country. Dirk Brockmann, a biology and physics professor studying complex systems at the Dresden University of Technology in Germany had been planning to deliver a keynote talk at Northwestern University in June 2025. But when the German Foreign Ministry issued a travel advisory about the treatment of foreign scholars at the U.S. border, Brockmann said the warning “was kind of a signal to me: I don’t feel safe.” So, he cancelled the talk. Brockmann, who previously taught at Northwestern, mourned the distressing signals from the Trump administration because he understood the world leadership in science that the U.S. was on the verge of giving up: “There is something very deep in the culture that makes it very special. It’s almost like a magical ingredient.”

International scientists are now wary even of attending science conferences in the U.S. The impact is especially strong even on our nearest neighbors to the north. After Trump threatened to make Canada the 51^st U.S. state, Marco Prado, the Canada Research Chair in Neurochemistry and Professor at the University of Western Ontario, said “I cannot [bring] myself morally to spend Canadian taxpayers’ money in attending U.S. conferences.” He has thus cancelled his lab’s plans to attend the next International Society for Neurochemistry conference to be held in August in New York City, even though he has personally attended nearly every conference in this series for the past 30 years. And many foreign scientists are concerned about U.S. immigration policies at American borders. One Chinese professor who did attend the most recent American Physical Society meeting in the U.S. said that “I think that not many students would like to come to U.S. nowadays,” after a Chinese Ph.D. student was recently “questioned by U.S. customs for more than 1 hour about his work and ties to the Chinese government before being let through.”

Foreign graduate students who once thought migrating to the U.S. would be the best boost for their science are now seeking employment in other countries. They no longer believe that American labs and universities are likely to hire international scientists in the present climate. One biology graduate student from Bangalore, India, whose thesis research is on cell signaling and cancer, put it succinctly: “It is sad to see that the hero is coming down from the pedestal.”

International collaborations have become essential for cutting-edge research in many fields of science. But scientists now fear that such collaborations between American and foreign scientists may no longer be encouraged. David W. Hogg, a physicist at New York University who works closely with such large international collaborations in astronomy, says: “If things continue as they are, American science is ruined. If it becomes impossible to work with non-U.S. scientists, it would basically render the kinds of research that I do impossible.”

Even as other countries launch programs to attract the best American scientists, they also mourn the loss of the American example. Patrick Schultz, the President of France’s Institute of Genetics, Molecular and Cellular Biology, said that “The U.S. was always an example, in both science and education.” He considers Trump’s anti-science policies “very frightening also for us because it was an example for the whole world.”

V. recruitment efforts for american scientists in other countries

The Trump administration’s attacks on science, science funding, foreign visiting scholars, academia, and even reality detailed in the preceding section are causing many scientists, both domestic and foreign, to re-evaluate their futures. There will undoubtedly be a dramatic dropoff in the influx of foreign scientists under the present climate. For American scientists, both their own careers and scientific progress may be better served by their emigrating to more welcoming countries. We are seeing the beginnings of a brain drain from the U.S., reversing the many-decade trend of foreign scientists doing their best work here.

Many countries sensing this American assault on science have recently launched programs intended to recruit the best American scientists. The European Commission has devoted half a billion euros to their Choose Europe for Science program (see Fig. V.1), to aid the transition for foreign scientists. In announcing the initiative European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen also indicated that the European Research Council would create new seven-year “super-grants” to attract the very best scientists. Start-up funds up to 2 million euros would be available to researchers moving to Europe. Scientists attracted to the EU would have access to funding from the 93.5 billion euro Horizon Europe funding program for research and innovation.

**Figure V.1.** *European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen* *announcing* *the new Choose Europe for Science initiative in May 2025.*

In her speech, von der Leyen drew sharp contrasts with Donald Trump’s attitudes toward science and scientists, in a way that will certainly appeal to American scientists, all without ever mentioning Trump’s name. In effect, she channeled Vannevar Bush in her comments. Here are some excerpts, with our own emphasis in boldface:

“I believe that science holds the key to our future here in Europe. Without it, we simply cannot address today’s global challenges – from health to new tech, from climate to oceans…We can all agree that science has no passport, no gender, no ethnicity or political party…Europe runs the world’s largest international research programme, Horizon Europe. It has a firepower of over EUR 93 billion…the return on investment in science is unparalleled…Europe has everything that is needed for science to thrive: we have the stable and sustained investment; we have the infrastructure; we have the commitment to open and collaborative science, we have a social market economy that delivers access to good schools, education and healthcare for all…The first priority is to ensure that science in Europe remains open and free…We want to strengthen the free movement of knowledge and data across Europe – just as we do for goods, talents and capital across our Single Market. And we want to enshrine freedom of scientific research into law in a new European Research Area Act. Because as threats rise across the world, Europe will not compromise on its principles. Europe must remain the home of academic and scientific freedom…We have to make it easier and more attractive to come to Europe for research. We will better link up researchers with research institutions. We will speed up the process around entering and staying in Europe…We are choosing to be the continent where universities are pillars of our societies and our way of life. We are choosing to be the continent where innovation serves humanity, where global talent is welcomed.”

Individual European countries are adding their own incentives to attract foreign, and especially American, scientists:

The French National Research Agency has tailored the European Commission effort as Choose France for Science.
Germany’s Max Planck Society, which includes a number of highly regarded German research institutions, has started a Transatlantic Program, supported for now by 12 million euros, to start collaborative research centers with U.S. institutions.
The Spanish State Research Agency is “offering an additional funding of €200,000 ($226,000) for researchers who have been selected and are coming from the US.”
The Dutch Research Council has launched a new research fund to attract international scientists to work in the Netherlands.
The Research Council of Norway has launched a US$9.5M fund to attract international researchers.
The Danish Chamber of Commerce is starting a fast-track program to attract up to 200 U.S. researchers in fields including quantum technology, robotics, and climate research to Denmark.
Austria proposes to amend its University Organization Act to become a “safe haven” for students and researchers from the U.S.
Several French universities and institutions are introducing initiatives to welcome and support U.S. scientists.
The Free University of Brussels is “freeing up funds and establishing a dedicated contact point for American researchers who want to continue their work in Brussels.”
The Joint European Disruptive Initiative (JEDI), focusing on ‘moonshot’ research programs, has launched a Transatlantic Science Fellows Program to attract the best scientists from the Americas to manage some of their JEDI Moonshot Science and Technology Programs in the fields of Energy, Life Sciences, and Computing.

Clearly, Europe sees an opportunity and hopes to benefit from an American brain drain as much as the U.S. benefited from the European brain drain before and after World War II. Europe is not alone. In Canada the Toronto University Hospital Network (UHN) has launched Canada Leads 100 Challenge (see Fig. V.2), hoping to recruit “100 world-leading early-career scientists to Canada’s No. 1 hospital” in fields of virology, regenerative medicine, and areas “at risk due to shifting research funding landscapes globally.” The UHN Foundation has already secured $15 million to recruit the first 50 scientists and hopes to attract matching funds. The program will offer two-year funding commitments and will install a Global Mobility Expert “to help support the seamless transition of the new scientists to Canada.” UHN hopes to see this program replicated across Canada “to ultimately recruit 1,000 early-career scientists.”

**Figure V.2.** *Members of the Toronto University Health Network team surrounding Ontario Premier Doug Ford (front row, center) while announcing the Canada Leads 100 Challenge program.*

The University of Montreal aims to create a $25 million fund (with half the money already raised) “to recruit top researchers and promising young talents to its campuses,” promising “a vibrant space for free thought, scientific rigour, innovation and creativity.” The focus is on reinforcing Montreal’s strengths in healthcare, public policy, biodiversity, artificial intelligence, and new materials. The effort is part of a $1 billion Brave the Way campaign.

The Australian Academy of Science has announced a Global Talent Attraction Program aimed specifically at pursuing “an urgent and unparalleled opportunity to attract the smartest minds leaving the United States to seed capability here and nurture the next generation of scientists and innovators.” The program is intended to be “institution- and discipline-agnostic.” The Australian Academy President Chennupati Jagadish says that already “there has been strong interest from US-based researchers and Australians wanting to return home.”

Already in February 2025, just one month after Trump took office, China began circulating a recruitment offer on the social-media platform X: “Especially for talents who have been dismissed by the U.S. NIH or other universities/institutes. ‘Welcome global talents to pursue career development and entrepreneurship in #Shenzhen, #China.’” The ad identified Shenzhen (which neighbors Hong Kong) as “one of China’s most concentrated hubs for technological innovation.” The Chinese pitch coincided with massive layoffs of scientists ordered by the Elon Musk-led DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) from the Centers for Disease Control, the National Institutes of Health, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

All of these countries understand clearly what the Trump administration does not, that America’s economic and geopolitical dominance since World War II has been driven in large part by innovations introduced by its preeminent scientific researchers, a sizable fraction of whom were immigrants. The drastic funding cuts Trump has proposed to American science funding agencies would transfer the global lead in research support from the U.S. to China without so much as a fight. The question is whether they will also transfer significant numbers of scientists.

Although Trump’s war on research funding and the research climate in the U.S. has been swift, it is still too early to have meaningful statistics about the number of American scientists who will depart for other countries. The evidence to date is anecdotal. Among young scientists, the journal Nature reports that both the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne and the University of Sydney in Australia have received increasing numbers of unsolicited applications from U.S. scientists. U.S.-based applications have doubled over last year for France’s Institute of Genetics, Molecular and Cellular Biology, and they have tripled for the Max Planck Society’s Lise Meitner Excellence Program aimed at young female researchers. 139 of the first 300 applications for France’s Aix-Marseille University’s newly launched Safe Place for Science program have come from U.S.-based scientists, some working in AI and astrophysics. It is unlikely that these institutions are the only ones seeing a rapid rise in American applications. More than 1600 readers responded to a Nature poll and more than 1200 of these said they were actively considering leaving the U.S. for Canada or Europe. In addition, a substantial fraction of scientists summarily fired from U.S. government agencies at the start of the Trump administration are being heavily recruited by other countries and many will emigrate.

Promising young researchers who have attracted grant funding in the past are seeing their grants not being renewed because they address subjects the Trump administration considers “woke.” For example, Danielle Beckman, researching long COVID at the University of California at Davis, was told her $2.5 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) would not be renewed because it contained the word “COVID;” she was further warned that any NIH grant proposals containing the words “mRNA,” “virus,” or “vaccine” were being pulled without explanation, apparently because HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. believes he can “make Americans healthy again” without the benefit of science. Beckman has now accepted an offer for a new research position in Germany. Scientists bearing the brunt of such arbitrary, capricious, and science-denying funding “rules” will seek and accept positions in other countries in large numbers. Biomedical research and climate science are likely to be decimated in the U.S.

Even well-established senior scientists are losing funding to support graduate students and post-doctoral assistants. Nobel Prize-winning biochemist David Baker, who directs the cutting-edge Institute for Protein Design at the University of Washington says “that more than 15 of his graduate students and postdoctoral researchers were aiming for new roles overseas.” Peter Jacobs, a senior nuclear physicist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and a highly valued former collaborator of one of us (SV) in researching the properties of nuclear matter under early-universe conditions, is encouraging his three post-doctoral workers to seek positions in Europe and Asia for fear that his substantial funding from the Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation will not be renewed. European universities in particular may benefit from the loss of graduate student and post-doctoral support in the U.S.

With any luck, the Trump administration will last for only three more years. But the damage they are doing to America’s research enterprise and innovation workforce is generational. The global center of gravity of scientific innovation, which shifted to the U.S. in the mid-20^th century, will now shift overseas. And it will be difficult to attract the best researchers who leave back to the U.S. even after Trump, now that they have seen that the country’s political polarization can lead to such self-absorbed, backward-looking, and delusional leadership.

VI. conclusions

Donald Trump is hardly the first would-be dictator to undermine his own country’s science because it seemed to contradict the leader’s own obsessions. Hitler’s purge of Jewish scientists not only set back German science for more than a generation, but probably also made a German equivalent of the Manhattan Project unrealistic. As Laura Fermi put it: “[Europe’s] best brains had emigrated.” Joseph Stalin rejected genetics because the idea of species survival based on natural selection of random genetic mutations seemed a “bourgeois pseudoscience” opposed to the Marxist doctrine of class struggle. “More than 3,000 mainstream biologists were dismissed or imprisoned, and numerous scientists were executed in the Soviet campaign to suppress scientific opponents.” Stalin instead appointed Trofim Lysenko, who was confident his own (debunked) ideas, such as inheritance of acquired characteristics, would make Soviet agriculture far more productive in the wake of disastrous Russian famines. Stalin and Lysenko were wrong; In fact, Soviet agriculture remained quite unproductive through to Stalin’s death in 1953.

Trump’s attacks on scientists, science funding, academia, and immigrants are already leading to a brain drain. His militantly uninformed opposition to the science of climate change, virology and vaccines, and sex and gender are putting the health and well-being of American citizens at unnecessary risk. Many young and some established first-rate scientists are entertaining relocation to other countries. Numerous other countries, particularly within the European Union, hope to profit from an American brain drain as much as the U.S. did from the pre-war brain drain from Nazi Europe. Meanwhile, China’s government investment in research and development is overtaking that of the U.S. in terms of purchasing power. The global center of gravity of scientific innovation is likely to shift considerably eastward for a generation or more.

It is not only Americans’ health and well-being at risk. The welcoming post-war policy signaled by Vannevar Bush’s Science: The Endless Frontier report attracted a steady flow of the best foreign scientists, who helped to maintain U.S. world leadership in scientific and technical innovation for three-quarters of a century. As seen in Fig. VI.1 that innovation in turn fueled a sharp post-war acceleration in the rate of U.S. economic growth. As the net flow of scientists now shifts from inward to outward, economic growth, and with it geopolitical stature, are likely to be stunted in America’s near-term future. Donald Trump is the worst thing that has ever happened to American greatness.

**Figure VI.1.** *U.S. Gross Domestic Product* (GDP, open black circles) and GDP per capita (red circles, to remove effects of population increase) from 1790 through 2020. With the logarithmic vertical scale, straight-line behavior represents exponential growth. Note, however, that the slope of GDP/capita growth after World War II exceeded that before by a factor of two or more, fueled in large part by scientific and technical innovation in the U.S.

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IV. Trump policies undoing previous u.S. advantages

V. recruitment efforts for american scientists in other countries

VI. conclusions

references:

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