The stench of burning data sets and broken pipettes hangs heavy over Washington tonight, as the United States Congress—now little more than a rubber-stamp cult for the Trump-Vance kleptocracy—delivered a brutal middle finger to 56 scientific societies and 107,000 researchers begging them to stop the corporate bloodletting of American science.
This was no ordinary legislative snub. This was a calculated execution, carried out with the cold precision of a lobotomized butcher.
In March 2025, a coalition spanning from the American Society of Mammalogists to the Society of Wetland Scientists—signed in the blood of peer-reviewed desperation—sent Congress a howling plea: Stop gutting federal science, stop firing researchers, stop strangling diversity programs, stop letting Trump’s DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) turn the NIH into a Musk-owned junkyard 13.
Congress’s response? A deafening silence, punctuated by the sound of budget axes swinging.
The Carnage in Plain Sight
Let’s be clear: This wasn’t negligence. This was arson.
While scientists warned that every NIH dollar generates $2.46 in economic output and every NSF dollar spins off $2, Congress greenlit Trump’s proposal to slash NSF funding by 57%—reducing it to 2001 levels, butchering climate research, and vaporizing programs that train underrepresented scientists.
They let DOE’s renewable energy office bleed out by 74%, let NASA’s Earth Science budget get halved, and watched as the EPA’s research arm was reduced to a withered stump.
And for what? To fund what, exactly? Defense spending hikes? Tax breaks for uranium miners? A $100 billion TSMC chip factory deal brokered by Trump and Elon Musk while grad students scraped mold off petri dishes in shuttered labs?
The proof is in the smoldering rubble:
- NIH terminated hundreds of grants targeting LGBTQ+ health and racial equity, spitting on federal court orders 6.
- NSF Director Sethuraman Panchanathan resigned in disgust as 700 grants were canceled, many labeled “extremist” by Ted Cruz for daring to study diversity.
- NOAA fired 1,300 staff because who needs hurricane forecasts when you’ve got Musk’s Mars fantasies?
- Universities rescinded grad admissions, trapping the next Einstein in a Taco Bell drive-thru 1.
The Silence of the Labs
Meanwhile, Congress yawned. While scientists at the AAAS meeting whispered in fear—“uncertain, anxious, fearful”—lawmakers fast-tracked a budget deal hacking $13 billion from nondefense spending, ensuring Trump’s “streamlining” could continue unchallenged 67. The House GOP’s Dear Colleague Letter begging for NSF funding? Dead on arrival, drowned out by the clatter of SpaceX rockets and oil drills 13.
And let’s not forget the human toll: Early-career researchers purged, DEI programs torched, Navajo uranium miners thrown back into radioactive pits, and epidemiologists forced to dodge bird flu outbreaks with one hand tied by CDC layoffs 47. When Lee Zeldin—a man who thinks “clean air” is a communist plot—got tapped to run the EPA, Congress barely blinked 4.
The Real Agenda: A Dark Age by Design
This isn’t about “fiscal responsibility.” This is about erasing inconvenient truths.
Climate data? Gone. Health disparities? Buried. Nuclear safety? Pfft—just restart Three Mile Island!
Trump’s DOGE, led by Musk’s henchmen, isn’t streamlining—it’s dismantling, brick by brick, every institution that dares to prioritize facts over fossil fuel profits.
As 50,000 scientists warned in a desperate petition: “Science stands in the way of polluters… no matter the cost to future generations.” But Congress, high on lobbyist cash and MAGA delusions, chose to betray the social contract of science—the pact that built everything from the internet to mRNA vaccines.
The Aftermath: A Nation Left to Rot
The fallout? Chaos. Universities crumbling, drug discoveries stalled, ecosystems collapsing, and a brain drain as researchers flee to Europe or Canada 7. Meanwhile, Trump’s “energy dominance” cronies drill, frack, and melt polar ice caps with glee.
But hey—at least TSMC’s factories will churn out AI chips to automate our dystopia.
Welcome to the United States of Amnesia, where Congress traded the future for a handful of Silicon Valley scraps and a cabinet full of oil barons. The labs are dark, the data is dead, and the only thing left to study is our own extinction.
Coda: For those still fighting, the Union of Concerned Scientists recommends 14: Don’t amplify the lies. Shout louder. March harder. And when they come for your microscopes, hit back with the truth.