<
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/project-2025-plan-for-trump-presidency-has-far-reaching-threats-to-science/>
"Project 2025, the sweeping right-wing blueprint for a new kind of U.S.
presidency, would sabotage science-based policies that address climate change,
the environment, abortion, health care access, technology and education. It
would impose religious and conservative ideology on the federal civil service
to such an extent that Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has,
dubiously, tried to distance himself from the plan. But in 2022 Trump said the
Heritage Foundation—the think tank that authored Project 2025—would “lay the
groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do.” The
project’s main document, a lengthy policy agenda, was published the following
year.
Although Trump is not among its 34 authors, more than half are appointees and
staff from his time as president; the words “Trump” and “Trump Administration”
appear 300 times in its pages. At least 140 former Trump officials are involved
in Project 2025, according to a
CNN tally. It’s reasonable to expect that a
second Trump presidency would follow many of the project’s recommendations.
Project 2025 presents a long-standing conservative vision of a smaller
government and describes specific, detailed steps to achieve this goal. It
would shrink some federal departments and agencies while eliminating
others—dividing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention into two weaker
entities, for instance, and abolishing the Department of Education (ED)
entirely.
What is even more unusual, and also mapped out in detail, is a plan to exert
more presidential control over traditionally nonpartisan governmental
workers—those Trump might describe as members of the “deep state,” or
regulatory bureaucracy. For example, Project 2025 claims that the the National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and other scientific institutions are
“vulnerable to obstructionism” unless appointees at these agencies are “wholly
in sync” with presidential policy. To that end, it would reclassify tens of
thousands of civil service jobs as political positions that answer to the
president.
“The independence of science is being attacked across the board in this
document,” says Rachel Cleetus, policy director of the Climate and Energy
program at the nonpartisan Union of Concerned Scientists. “The importance of
this science is that’s how we can ensure people’s health and the environment
are being safeguarded.” (Cleetus notes that her comments address the policy
agenda’s contents, not the upcoming presidential election.)
Career scientists who are now employed by the federal government are “terrified
and polishing up their résumés,” says Jacqueline Simon, policy director of the
American Federation of Government Employees, or AFGE, a union that represents
workers at the National Institutes of Health, the Environmental Protection
Agency, the CDC and other agencies. If Project 2025 becomes reality, she says,
“the very idea of scientific integrity will be flushed down the toilet.” The
Heritage Foundation did not respond to
Scientific American’s request for
comment."
Via Susan ****
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
