Donald Trump and Elon Musk put science on the chopping block in 2025

One of the most memorable images of 2025 is that of billionaire Elon Musk, then a special adviser to US President Donald Trump, holding a shiny red chainsaw and shouting about cuts to the US federal government. It was a stark metaphor for the onslaught to come, and from the cancellation of space missions to the abandonment of vital climate change and public health programs, science felt the blow.

Trump's dismantling of nearly a century of U.S. leadership in science has been swift, and the consequences may last far longer than we can predict. It all started with madness – just a week after Trump's inauguration in January, he… signed an order to temporarily suspend grants and loans provided by US federal agencies.. This Thousands of grants overseen by the National Institutes of Health have been thwarted or terminated. (NIH), one of the largest funders of biomedical research in the world, and the National Science Foundation (NSF). According to Grant Witness, a website tracking changes in federal grant funding under Trump, cuts in grants from US National Institutes of Health And NFS in total will be about $3 billion.

In the following months, Musk led an independent task force called the Department of Government Effectiveness (DOGE), whose task was to reduce government spending. DOGE's goals did not affect the US government, but many of its decisions affected scientists. There have been job cuts in the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) NASA, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and many others. And the hits keep coming. Most recently, in October, the Trump administration announced it was planning deep cuts at U.S. science centers. US Geological Surveywhich monitors the health of U.S. agricultural and natural resources; and the National Park Service, which oversees protected federal lands that serve as a refuge for animals and a living laboratory for biologists and ecologists.

It all adds up to one of the most radical policy shifts of the Trump era. After World War II, the United States invested in scientific research as a path to progress and economic prosperity. This was an idea put forward by the head of the Office of Scientific Research and Development in the 1940s, the predecessor of the NSF. This concept, called the “infinite frontier”, represented an innovative approach to becoming a global leader in the research and development of key technologies that changed the world. Trump ended this collapse.

Not only did he dismantle much of the federal government's research apparatus, but his administration also put pressure on universities Align your teaching and research with U.S. government priorities. And he went even further in his denial of science. To no one’s surprise, Trump began the process of excluding the United States from the world’s main climate agreement. Paris Agreementas soon as he took office. Later that year speaking at the UNHe called climate change “the greatest fraud ever perpetrated on the world” and called renewable energy sources such as wind and solar a “fraud.”

Not satisfied with these statements, the Trump administration also reduced or undermined key climate databases and reports previously produced by the US Government. Due to fewer staff in many science-related agencies, monthly climate report calls to NOAA were canceled, for example, and key reports such as the US National Climate Assessment were discontinued. The remaining employees also follow Trump's line: e.g. NOAA scientists refuse to link warming to climate change earlier this year, to the shock of independent climate researchers.

Public health data in the US has also been discounted. Researchers conducting the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, a landmark tracking of drug use, addiction and mental health in the United States, were laid off in April. A few months later, the government fired staff at the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey and stopped producing reports that track food insecurity across the country and help allocate funds for food assistance. Most recently, the National Center for Health Statistics cut 100 positions, including most of the staff running the National Vital Statistics System, which tracks U.S. births and deaths and tracks causes of death and maternal mortality. The National Death Index was also cut, depriving it of a key source of information for public health researchers as well as those involved in long-term studies at various agencies such as the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Health care policy has become especially chaotic and evidence-free thanks to Robert Kennedy Jr., Trump's appointment to head the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Kennedy, a longtime vaccine skeptic, oversaw the layoffs of more than 10,000 people at the agency and frequently clashed with public health officials, prompting a wave of resignations. He is the driving force behind the dangerous – and completely debunked – claim that vaccines cause autism, and has even gone so far as to make the unsubstantiated claim that Tylenol (paracetamol) taken during pregnancy causes the condition. In June, Kennedy bypassed standard protocols and announced that the CDC would no longer recommend Covid-19 vaccines for children and pregnant women. His tenure as head of HHS made clear that the anti-vaccine movement is now firmly entrenched in the highest levels of government and has eroded what little trust Americans have had in the nation's public health agencies in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Under Trump, the US is also relinquishing its leadership in space. President's budget request delivered in May but has not yet signed the law, lays out a plan cut 47 percent of NASA's costs science budget and cancel dozens of missions, including some spacecraft and telescopes that have already been built or launched. Samples from Mars already collected by the Perseverance rover will never be returned to Earth. The DAVINCI probe, which was supposed to be the first to enter the clouds of Venus in half a century, was never able to get off the ground. The OSIRIS-APEX spacecraft, already on its way to the Apophis asteroid, will be left flying past it without learning what we can about asteroids on a potential collision course with Earth. NASA officials are also in turmoil, with the head of the US transportation agency serving as administrator while Trump nominated, withdrew and then re-nominated billionaire Jared Isaacman for the role. Leaked manifesto written by Isaacman suggests that if confirmed as head of NASA, he will oversee a massive outsourcing of NASA's science and space activities to the private sector.

This is not the only area where the private sector has gained power under the Trump administration. Big tech companies befriended the president, and a parade of billionaire executives attended his inauguration. bringing him generous personalized gifts and use their companies to finance the presidential an outlandish addition to the White House – a $300 million ballroom.. They may have ingratiated themselves with someone who could help them. maneuver through antitrust litigationthey may be hoping to avoid the worst of Trump's reckless tariffs, or simply enjoying the benefits of rolling back environmental regulations that would have allowed building huge data centers to support its artificial intelligence products..

Nearly a year into the second Trump administration, it is still impossible to say exactly how science will develop, not least because the 2026 federal budget has not yet been fully approved by Congress. But even if not all of Trump's proposed cuts are implemented, the haphazard and sometimes hostile manner in which the entire administration is approaching science and the people who do it will likely lead to more confusion, more scientists choosing to leave the United States, and less funding for work critical to the health and well-being of people and the planet. The end of the endless frontier has weakened the global position of the United States, and its consequences will reverberate for years or even decades.