WH proposes rules giving political appointees final approval on research grants

amanaplanacanal

A return of Lysenkoism. Nice!

pstuart

I'm curious to see how this is defended by the party members here. Science should be guided by science, not ideology.

ChrisArchitect

Related: What's Happening to Science in America https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48313687

globalnode

Its all the way down to the bottom now, enjoy.

quantum_state

It would spell the start of major corruption and the end of American sciences. God, please do something about it!

Georgelemental

> “We warned of this exact form of government overreach in science a year ago,” says Colette Delawalla, founder of the science advocacy group Stand Up for Science. “It replaces expertise with political appointees, globally decouples the U.S. and completely guts our scientific ecosystem.” If you want to be independent of the government, don't take money from the government. If you are mad because you don't agree with how the government is making decisions, say so. But don't pretend it has anything to do with "government overreach"

wrs

And a generation of young scientists starts packing their bags...

srean

Wait, wasn't that post revolution USSR / Mao's China ? Or in their words, only correct science is "Marxist" science

michaelhoney

and so continue the decline to a dumber, poorer, nastier nation

spacedoutman

Well, america had a good run i guess? Hope china can step up and fill the gap.

cookiengineer

But it's got electrolytes! My question is now: Which company is gonna buy the IRS now?

whatshisface

This may seem extreme, but it must be considered in the full context of the package of policy proposals that would also eliminate the grants themselves. This balances out any concerns of bias. See you in 50 years when we read about the consequences (on European electronics.) :')

idiotsecant

The natural state of all human political systems is autocracy. It takes constant vigilance to keep the train on the tracks and avoid that low energy state. The problem is that we only really see the consequences of these kinds of immensely stupid policies once every few generations. Nobody alive was around the last time we had this argument, so we get to do it all over again.

0xbadcafebee

> The OMB is headed by Russell Vought, lead architect of Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 plan for the Trump administration. This is far scarier than any single rule about research grants, and I'm not sure why nobody's talking about this. The OMB writes the budget to enact federal policy. And critically, no federal regulation can exist with the OMB approving it. By making this appointment explicitly political, they have carte blanche to completely rewrite all federal regulations to be exclusively conservative ones. This would have been crazy to attempt before, but with Trump 2.0, this is the new norm. One of the things they are doing right now (it's been approved and the rules are now active and legal, so it is now happening) is converting 50,000 civil servant jobs into political appointments. This means having a job in government no longer serves the whole nation, it's now an ideological function to serve a single political party. Literally weaponizes the federal government to punish opposing political views and enforce one view on everyone (there's no other point to political appointment). And if the party in charge ever changes, it now means everyone will be laid off and replaced. Every few years. So nothing will ever get done in government now, except for extreme short-term pushes for radical political agendas, because nobody will stay long enough to know how the government works to do anything else. Move fast and break things with the largest economy in the world, radical political agendas, and 380M people. The OMB also can review and block all proposed legislation going to Congress, vet all official congressional testimony, and block any agency from publicly disagreeing with the President. Military generals, health officials, science experts, ecologists, intelligence directors... they can block all of them from giving any testimony to Congress. That's an actual power the OMB has. They can also block money Congress has already allocated, meaning that your representatives in government are now completely useless, because whatever party is in the Executive can nerf anything your reps have passed. The Supreme Court could do something about it, but won't, because it's now a Conservative Supermajority. There is no reason for them to disagree because they already ideologically agree. Finally, the OMB can issue a rule that every agency that wasn't officially under the Executive before, has to submit all its rules for Executive approval. Meaning the Executive would control all government agencies. In any other context, in any other country, this would be called a single-party authoritarian coup. When they create rules that outlaw other political parties (that's what authoritarian governments do to retain single party control) - and assuming the democrats don't just give up - it will be the official start of civil war. Coming to you Fall 2028.

thisisit

It seems seeding chaos is the only thing these guys know how to do. What happens (or happened) when the shoe is on the other foot and the other guy wants to push climate science and vaccines? Run to Texas courts to stop the federal government? Thereby wasting lot of time doing nothing. I can only say Bravo to Americans who think this constant fighting is somehow going to help the country.

rullelito

Americans and Republicans seem so fine with this. Amazing to see this happen live.