“They want to destroy the scientific system and replace it with something that reflects their ideology”: Science under Trump

Helmut Schwarz has been reading recently about what happened to science during the rise of Adolf Hitler, almost a century ago. For the German chemist, who just received the BBVA Foundation's Frontiers of Knowledge Award for his contributions to the field of catalysis , there are parallels between the situation in Trump's United States and Nazi Germany. "From 1900 to 1932, a third of all Nobel Prizes went to Germany, more than to the US and the UK combined," he recalls in an interview with two other scientists in Bilbao, where they received the awards presented annually by the foundation this week. "When Hitler came to power, German science, which was a world leader, completely disintegrated, but Hitler thought that wouldn't be a problem," he continues. Now, Donald Trump's administration considers universities, hotbeds of progressive ideology, to be the enemy and that they must be brought to heel. "In my opinion, the threat is not immediate, but it is very important in the long term," Schwarz adds.

When comparing the present with Nazi terror, the question arises as to whether the alarm is exaggerated. Schwarz points to another commonality. Hitler outlined his plan for seizing power and explained how he wanted to use it, but no one took him at face value. Camille Parmesan, a pioneering ecologist who demonstrated how climate change is forcing species to move with the help of a butterfly , recalls the same attitude toward Trump. “When I hear from acquaintances who vote Republican, many say [about the US president's more outlandish proposals] that it's bravado, that he doesn't mean it,” says Parmesan, a researcher at the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS). She arrived in France under the Make Our Planet Great Again program, created by President Emmanuel Macron to attract American scientists to his country whose research was likely to be hampered or even shut down by Donald Trump's rise to power.

The explanation for what motivates the president of the most powerful country in the world to attack science, which explains much of his immense power, seems unclear to the three academics. Narcissism, displays of power, and accumulation of wealth are some of the possibilities. Parmesan goes a little further: “They want to destroy the knowledge base in the US. They increase their power by keeping people ignorant. They're starting from age five onwards. They want to completely destroy the current education system and replace it with something that reflects their narrow ideology,” she adds. The researcher then emphasizes that everything happening now had been announced before: “JD Vance [the US vice president], five or six years ago, outlined what is happening now. He said, 'We must destroy all American institutions and rebuild them from the ground up in our image,' referring to his small circle.”

Since coming to power, the Trump administration has shaken the nation's science and healthcare system. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) , which oversees public health and develops strategies for disease prevention and control, has suffered thousands of job cuts, and the government has proposed reducing its budget by more than half, from $9.2 billion in 2024 to $4 billion. Trump has also proposed an $18 billion cut to the National Institutes of Health, which funds biomedical research, and has also proposed cutting a quarter of NASA's budget and laying off a third of its employees. According to a Nature survey conducted in March of this year, 75% of scientists were considering leaving the US in search of countries less hostile to science.

Richard Petty , a professor at Ohio State University, believes there's hope for Congress to rescue the science budget. "We'll soon see what Congress does with the budget. It's happened before; Congress could save science, history could repeat itself, and that would be great, but it could also be that Trump steps in and says, 'No, you have to vote this way.'" According to Petty, the president's popular support and his power to choose Republican candidates give him unprecedented power to do and undo without opposition within his party and extend his hegemony to Congress.

Petty, who has won an award for his studies on persuasion , believes the risks are high: “There’s a different danger: the president is especially powerful because it’s not clear what’s going to happen with checks and balances. The courts have said he can’t do some things, but the lawsuits continue.” In his opinion, the 50% cut would be devastating, but it could be larger in the next budget. “Or maybe the funds won’t go to real science, but to projects like the commission looking at links between vaccines and autism , or the one promoted by Robert F. Kennedy [Secretary of Health], and maybe that’s the kind of research that will be funded, and not peer-reviewed science or what scientists think should be done,” he says.

Along with the abundant funding in the budget of the richest country in the world, another pillar of American science is the brilliant students arriving from all over the world. Trump also threatens to obstruct this flow of talent. “More than two-thirds of the work in experimental science in America is done by foreign students, postdocs , and doctoral students,” Schwarz says. “In the last three or four months, the number of applications from China and India has more than doubled. And these are excellent students who would have previously applied to the United States and are now looking elsewhere,” he adds.

The lack of human capital would be another serious problem for that country's scientific system if students seek out nations less hostile to foreigners. Europe has already launched a €500 million initiative to attract foreign talent, especially from the United States, in an effort to turn the chaos in North American science into an opportunity to strengthen European science. Americans Parmesan and Petty believe there may be some scientists from their country who would consider it, but, at least for now, they don't see a mass exodus likely due to family or cultural reasons.

The ban on enrolling foreign students is one of the key elements of Donald Trump's war against Harvard University , the most prestigious academic institution on the planet, which has an endowment of some $50 billion, larger than, for example, that of the Generalitat of Catalonia. This confrontation, in which the government also froze nearly $2.7 billion in federal funds for the institution, is at the heart of Trump's plans to subdue the independence of the country's universities. Recently, a judge suspended the block on the enrollment of foreign students. Petty considers the judicial response one of the hopes against the Trumpist attack.

In this confrontation, "no one wants to be Harvard," but the future of American science may be at stake in its court battle against Trump. "If Harvard loses and loses international students because the courts decide this is within the president's powers, it will be the first domino to fall, and we would all be vulnerable," says Petty. If Harvard wins, there would be hope.