President Joe Biden is not on the November ballot but his administration is working overtime to “Trump-proof” science before he’s out, putting safeguards in place to protect government scientists from entering -get involved in politics if former President Donald Trump wins another term in the White House.
“The Trump administration has consistently suppressed, downplayed, or ignored scientific research that demonstrates the need for regulation to protect public health and the environment,” said Romany Webb, deputy director of the Sabin Law Center. of Climate Change at Columbia Law School, wrote.
He added that the Trump administration is “always putting economic interests first” over health and science and is encouraging public distrust of science.
Silencing science
The Trump administration’s efforts to “silence science” are documented in the Silence Science Tracker, an online database with more than 300 entries documenting actions against science by local, state and federal governments. It has been following complaints since November 2016. Trump was sworn into office on January 20, 2017.
Jennifer Jones, director of the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said Washington Examiner that although “there is always an urgent need to protect science” there was an uptick in dissatisfied scientists during the previous administration.
“I cannot emphasize enough how much our daily lives depend on good, independent, political science,” he said.
Scientists and advocates for evidence-based policymaking have several options. They include establishing a scientific integrity council, drafting laws to prevent political interference in scientific research and government data used to protect the public, and using collective bargaining agreements negotiated by labor unions. to protect scientists and their work.
Public Health Organizations
Lyric Jorgenson, associate director for science policy at the National Institutes of Health, said the plan to protect the agency’s independence is critical to its mission.
“Meddling and manipulating science to achieve an illusory agenda is wrong, and that’s what we’re working to combat,” he said. Politics.
The NIH is the nation’s primary medical research agency. The public needs to be able to believe in its legitimacy to “produce solid, reliable evidence to inform public life,” Jorgenson added.
The agency, made up of 27 different divisions called institutes and centers, spends more than $40 billion a year on research and has operated largely apolitically. Its roots date back to 1887, when a one-room laboratory was established in the Marine Hospital, the first facility of the US Public Health Service.
NIH has gained popularity and visibility during the global Covid-19 pandemic. While many turned to the NIH for guidance, others did not.
As president, Trump promoted hydroxychloroquine as a possible cure for Covid-19 and repeatedly threatened to fire Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert. Their relationship publicly soured after falling out over the White House’s response to the pandemic, which has killed more than 1.1 million Americans.
Fauci faced cross-party attacks as Trump embraced the idea of publicly impeaching him, something he was unable to do.
Schedule F
But now, there is concern among some in the scientific community that if Trump returns for a second term, he may try to reorganize government officials, neutral government scientists, and fire them with voluntary if he does not like. they have to say or feel that they are not loyal to him. One month before the 2020 presidential election, the Trump administration issued an executive order that would have done just that. That effort, called “Schedule F,” would have created a new task force.
“Because Trump did not take office, it is not known how many federal employees would have reached Schedule F, or how many would have been fired and replaced,” according to the organization. non-profit, Protect Democracy.org. “Experts have put the number in the tens or hundreds of thousands. Trump’s official touted the idea of creating List F and estimated that it could apply to about 50,000 government employees.”
Some Trump allies told Axios that it would not be necessary to fire more workers because firing fewer would produce the desired “behavioral change.”
National Weather Service
Trump was also scrutinized for “Sharpie-gate”.
In September 2019, he showed a National Weather Service map in the Oval Office showing the instability of Hurricane Dorian, indicating possible paths to the center of the storm. Trump had insisted on Twitter that Dorian would hit Alabama “harder than expected.” The problem was that it wasn’t and the map had been altered with a Sharpie to show that it was.
The Birmingham office of the National Weather Service had to issue a statement stressing that Alabama would not be affected. That statement, which directly contradicted the president, led to threats by the administration to fire key employees.
The threat of unemployment led to an unsigned statement from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration criticizing the National Weather Service’s position that Alabama is not in immediate danger. The move sparked outrage and accusations from the scientific community that NOAA was leaning toward political pressure from the president.
“We come to this job with the understanding that all of our lives depend on government agencies using the best available technologies, whether it’s tracking a dangerous storm, analyzing the effects of air pollution, or protecting us from infectious diseases. contagious like Covid-19,” Jones said. We want to make sure that policy, policy-making and legislation are guided by the best available science and that science is communicated to the public.”
Scientific strategies for loyalty
Another way Jones said it Washington Examiner It is for government agencies to adopt interim scientific integrity policies.
He said: “If you look across the government, you will see different government agencies are in different stages of adopting an interim policy of scientific integrity.” “Some of them have produced regulations that they have entered in the government register and sent them for comment. EPA [Environmental Protection Agency] it falls into that bucket. They posted their latest version in February. You will see many organizations release their final scientific integrity policies at the end of the year. ”
Associations
Another way scientists are getting ahead is through collective bargaining agreements negotiated by their unions.
Nicole Cantello, legal and policy coordinator for the union that represents more than half of the Environmental Protection Agency’s 15,000-plus workers, said. Nature that the Trump administration’s heavy-handed approach to science was surprising.
“We weren’t really prepared to defend the facility the first time,” he said, adding that the dismissal of scientists was unprecedented. People do not want to experience that again and are preparing for war.
Provisions protecting government employees who represent scientific integrity were also included in the United States Department of Agriculture’s employee agreements. Advocates for the union representing the 5,000 former scientists at NIH are also seeking protection.
Congress
In Congress, a group of bipartisan lawmakers has thrown their weight behind the Scientific Integrity Act.
Representative Paul Tonko (D-NY) has introduced legislation that would set “clear, enforceable standards for federal agencies and government-sponsored research to keep public science independent of political interference and vested interests.” special.”
“Social science must be about seeking the truth — not serving political agendas,” Tonko said in a statement. “As one of the few engineers in Congress, I have worked for years to ensure that scientific standards are maintained regardless of who sits in the White House.”
Trump is getting the lion’s share of the blame, Jones said Washington Examiner almost every administration – Republican and Democrat – has politicized science.
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“For years we’ve been pushing policies across the administration because the need to protect science and scientists is paramount,” Jones said. “We always watch all the elections carefully. We know that our candidates have a major role in shaping the use of technology and the culture of technology that any sector can embrace. ”
Emails to the Trump campaign seeking comment were not returned.
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