On Feb. 19, weeks after taking office, Mr. Trump signed an executive order that called for the downsizing and elimination of the advisory panels. The order affected panels that oversaw vaccines, astrophysics, fisheries, mathematics, space, the geosciences, the environment and artificial intelligence.
Next, in March, amid budget cuts and growing protests by scientists, Mr. Trump unveiled an overall science policy that echoed the autocrats in emphasizing technological spinoffs, such as artificial intelligence and quantum computing. In a public letter, the president called for securing the nation’s status “as the unrivaled world leader in critical and emerging technologies.”
Then in May, the administration made public its proposed cuts to next year’s federal science budget. Independent experts found that the category of basic research would fall to $30 billion from $45 billion, a drop of roughly 34 percent.
On the chopping block were studies focused on nursing, clean energy, climate change, air and water quality, chemical safety, minority health disparities, green aviation, the global carbon cycle, the atmosphere of Mars, the planet Jupiter, and the boundary in outer space where the solar system meets the cosmos, among other subjects.
“The cuts are justified,” said Terence Kealey, a scholar at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank. Decades of lavish funding have dulled America’s exploratory edge, he argued.
