Silencing science: How Trump’s policies are driving scientists out of America

According to The Guardian, Sally Johnson, an earth scientist at NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), has warned that if Trump’s policies of slashing budgets for scientific institutions continue, the world will face an environmental disaster.

“Our ability to combat climate change — the greatest existential threat to humanity — has been completely derailed,” Johnson said.

Trump’s drastic reductions in funding, particularly in fields related to the environment and climate change, along with the dismissal of numerous staff from government science agencies, have jeopardized many ongoing research projects.

According to Johnson, her team has already faced a 60% reduction in staff, putting at risk 30 years of climate data. This comes as natural disasters have claimed countless lives across the U.S. in recent months.

She warns that the continuation of these policies will disrupt free and high-quality access to data, and even the preservation of existing information cannot be guaranteed — a reality that would undermine forecasting systems and emergency response efforts.

Under what’s been dubbed Trump’s “Big Beautiful Science Act”, the National Science Foundation (NSF) faces a 56% budget cut and a 73% reduction in staff. The NSF is the most significant public funder of basic science and engineering research in the United States.

According to data from the nonprofit Grant Watch, over 1,650 scientific projects have been canceled so far.

One anthropologist at Johns Hopkins University, who was researching the impact of floods and storms on public health and food security in Madagascar, migrated to Oxford University after threats of funding cuts. “After Trump’s election, it was clear I couldn’t continue any climate-related projects in America,” she said.

In the health sector, a researcher in infectious diseases at Ohio State University was forced to halt a clinical trial of a new treatment for respiratory failure caused by COVID-19 after funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) was abruptly cut.

“We’re living in a state of anxiety and hopelessness,” the researcher said. “All of this was meant to improve public health, but now we feel like the government sees us as the enemy. If another flu pandemic or livestock disease outbreak spreads, we’ll be left with nothing but hope and oxygen.”

Trump’s policies have driven many U.S. scientists to leave federal institutions for opportunities abroad. The Australian Academy of Science, for example, launched a talent recruitment program offering special funding and immigration incentives to American researchers. Within the first three months, at least 75 U.S. scientists applied to migrate to Australia.

The ripple effects have reached the industry sector as well. Wessel van den Berg, a materials scientist working on battery storage technology for a renewable energy company in Massachusetts, lost his job after Trump’s trade war with China and cuts to green energy budgets.

“America used to lead the world in battery and clean energy technology,” he said, “but now that position has been handed over to countries like South Korea, Japan, and China.”