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Opinion | The Uncertain Fate of the Young American Scientist - The New York Times
America’s Brightest Minds Will Walk Away
By Neel V. Patel
Mr. Patel is a staff editor in Opinion who covers science.
"America is at risk of losing a generation of scientists. Amid sweeping cuts to federal research funding by the Trump administration, job opportunities for young scientists are being rescinded, postdoctoral positions eliminated and fellowships folded as labs struggle to afford new researchers. As countless scientific projects come to a halt, the researchers who will suffer the most are those just beginning their careers. Times Opinion has heard from more than 100 readers who have shared stories of how they’ve been affected.
Kristen Gram is a 22-year-old graduate student researching the type of materials and hardware that might one day help reduce the enormous amount of energy new computer processing technologies use to function. Her adviser recently warned her that federal funding cuts made it unlikely she’d secure a fellowship she needed to finish her degree.
Melanie Reuter is a 29-year-old graduate student whose work focuses on how the gut microbiome shapes human health and chronic diseases like Type 2 diabetes. She wants to find more effective ways to treat diseases, with fewer side effects. She hoped to secure federal funding to cover her education and provide a livable stipend so she could concentrate on her research. But her application for a National Institutes of Health grant meant to support diverse candidates was pulled, without explanation, in February, just days before it was scheduled for review.
Francesca Walsh, 28, is in the last six months of earning her Ph.D. in neuroscience and behavior. She wants to study how the brain functions when making economic decisions, in an effort to protect economic markets and consumers from financial harm. The postdoctoral jobs she planned to apply for have suddenly disappeared. “I felt the door of an entire sector of jobs, including federal research jobs, slam overnight,” she said. “It’s very disheartening, and sometimes I wish I just became an accountant.”
Most American scientists understood a second Trump term was unlikely to be friendly to their kind, but few anticipated such a rapid bulldozing. The N.I.H. — the largest public funder of biomedical and behavioral research in the world — announced it would slash funding to universities for overhead, or indirect, costs, which often covers laboratories’ operational needs. Though legal challenges have stalled enforcement, federal grant money remains withheld in many cases. Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency team has also turned its hatchet on the N.I.H. The agency has lost nearly one-fourth of its 18,000 employees because of job cuts, buyouts and some employees’ choosing early retirement, according to reporting by NPR.
Many research grants overseen by the N.I.H., the National Science Foundation, the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Energy, the Department of Veterans Affairs and other agencies are frozen or canceled. When federal money for scientific research disappears, so do the university labs that young scientists rely on as steppingstones of essential training and experience they can later apply toward projects of their own.
Those actions could mean America’s demise as the most powerful force for innovation in science, health and technology for the 21st century. Competitors like China will be able to usurp that position, and other countries are already making concerted efforts to recruit American scientists.
Many young researchers say they are having to choose between staying in the United States and staying in science. America shouldn’t take scientific progress in medicine, artificial intelligence, energy and more for granted. If the youngest, brightest minds aren’t soon reassured that the United States can support their work — and that scientific inquiry will be protected from political interference — they will walk away.
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American science has been a beacon for aspiring researchers since the end of World War II, when a rivalry with the Soviet Union spurred the United States to make huge investments in science and technology research and recruit the most brilliant thinkers from abroad. Scientists saw the United States as a kind of nationwide laboratory for pursuing work under the best conditions possible — a remarkable combination of positive pressure and competition that pushed them to their best work, paired with support that provided the time, space and resources needed to realize that work’s full potential.
This American brain trust has resulted in over 400 Nobel laureates, more than any other country in the world. As of 2023, an estimated 1.2 million people around the world held a Ph.D. in science, engineering or health earned at an American institution. The United States accounts for 27 percent of the world’s total research and development activity — the most of any nation — though China, at 22 percent, is closing in. This is still far ahead of the next largest players: Japan (7 percent), Germany (6 percent) and South Korea (4 percent).
This investment has been essential to our economy. More than 408,000 jobs are supported by N.I.H. grants. It’s estimated that every dollar of N.I.H. funding produces $2.56 in economic activity.
So much of that success is due to the U.S. government’s willingness to support the kind of basic science work that takes years, even generations, before resulting in monumental breakthroughs. Hundreds of millions of federal dollars established the groundwork for key breakthroughs in mRNA technology before the Covid-19 pandemic, which helped set up Operation Warp Speed for success. Ozempic and other GLP-1 drugs were inspired in part by N.I.H.-supported research into Gila monster venom in the 1980s; without that work, we might not have had the current weight-loss revolution. Fifty years ago, fewer than 60 percent of children diagnosed with pediatric cancer survived after five years. Now, thanks to treatments funded and spearheaded by the N.I.H., that survival rate is 85 percent.
America had also been an attractive destination for science because of its express support for free inquiry — the ability of researchers to study what mattered most to them, even if there wasn’t a straight path to success and profit. That commitment appears to be crumbling. “I mourn a world in which science must defend itself through its end products, rather than its underlying search for truth and beauty,” said Daniel Bauman, a 25-year-old Stanford University graduate student studying evolution. “When efficiency is mandated, current and future careers are lost or abandoned. If science funding is made contingent on immediately beneficial results, who will be left to tell the story of nature? Will anyone even be listening?”
Young scientists’ careers are inextricably tied to the grant application cycle. Carole LaBonne, a molecular biologist at Northwestern University, recently told the podcast “Odd Lots” to think of labs as small businesses that run on very tight operating margins. A grant that provides funding for, say, four years would need to be renewed in the third year. And if they can’t do that, people must be let go quickly — which almost always means junior members of the lab. Peter Jacobs, a senior scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, is unsure whether Department of Energy and National Science Foundation grants that help fund his program will be renewed; he’s not certain he can keep on his three postdocs, all of whom are already looking at other positions, including in Europe or Asia.
It’s already hard enough to establish oneself as a young scientist. The average age for researchers to receive a first N.I.H. grant has increased since 1995 and is now over 40 years. Those from disadvantaged backgrounds will find it especially challenging to make a career in science work, now that grants meant to help them are being dissolved.
At Fort Lewis College in Colorado, where nearly 40 percent of the student population identifies as Native American, one researcher said he and his colleagues were told not to bother submitting a renewal application for an N.I.H.-associated grant that funds increased representation in the biomedical sciences and that has helped at least a dozen Native Americans earn Ph.D.s in the past 15 years. The Frist Center for Autism and Innovation at Vanderbilt University was expecting $7 million in National Science Foundation funding meant to train scientists and engineers with autism, but those awards have been rejected or are in limbo. “It is heartbreaking having to tell these students — who have persisted through challenges throughout their lives for the opportunity to apply their talents for their own careers but also for their country — that they aren’t so valued after all,” said Keivan Stassun, an astrophysics professor and the center’s founding director.
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“I grow ever more skeptical of a bright future for young scientists,” said Patrick Payne, 28, a data scientist at the University of Vermont’s Larner College of Medicine. He recently decided to forgo pursuing an M.D. and a Ph.D. in favor of pursuing a medical degree exclusively. “This loss of a generation and of diversity makes me question research funding overall and has pushed me away from pursuing a permanent career in research.”
Of 1,200 U.S. scientists who responded to a poll conducted by the journal Nature, 75 percent said they were considering leaving the country. Countries like France, China and the Netherlands are courting them. Those who are already abroad are considering staying there, like Atticus Cummings, a 24-year-old graduate student in Barcelona who is exploring how to make buildings out of carbon-reducing materials. He’d prefer to return to the United States and build sustainable, affordable housing in his home state, Montana, but wonders if that will be feasible by the time he graduates. “My heart is in the mountains at home,” he said.
The Trump administration is squandering what was a real opportunity to improve the system around federally funded science. Critics have long suggested that some labs, particularly at very prestigious institutions, are awarded too much funding that could go elsewhere and that the process behind grant applications and approvals could use more streamlining and scrutiny. But the bulldozer approach of the past several weeks means people are hatching escape plans. Unfreezing the grant process and presenting a more thoughtful plan for improving federal funding for science may assuage young people’s fears that their lives are about to be upended permanently.
Early-career scientists cannot simply migrate to the private sector. Many scientists who work at private labs got their start in academic ones, often supported by federal grants. Private donors are highly unlikely to make up the funding shortfall caused by cuts to federal grants, and the private sector isn’t designed to completely support the kind of basic research that provides young scientists with essential education and training.
***
A lot of people perceive scientific research as prestigious — the smartest minds working under pristine conditions with seemingly limitless resources. In reality, it’s grueling work fueled almost entirely by devotion.
When I spent a semester working as an undergraduate researcher in an immunology lab at Virginia Tech, I watched the graduate students and postdocs I worked alongside spend up to 70 hours a week toiling on projects. They spent most of the day on their feet, paying meticulous attention to their experiments and trudging from one time-consuming task to another — calibrating delicate instruments to measure faint traces of chemicals, setting up and running bacteria culture experiments governed by rigid safety protocols, cleaning supplies and lugging heavy equipment from location to location, preparing reagents the entire lab needed, analyzing data and simply keeping the laboratory clean and organized.
Experiments run into obstacles and failure all the time, and researchers must devote weeks, months or even years trying to troubleshoot what went wrong so they can move to the next step. They build resilience not just against seemingly constant discouragements but also against the pressure testing of their ideas by mentors, peers and outside scientists. Success sometimes feels hardly more likely than winning the lottery.
That’s why Mike Gallagher, who has worked as a research scientist for 17 years, compares the work to a blue-collar job. “You roll up your sleeves, try to make or discover something useful and then let the scientific community try to punch holes in your work to make sure that it’s sound,” he said. Young scientists stick it out because they believe deep down that the work they’re doing could make a material difference in the real world if they’re allowed to see it all the way through. And that impulse can be nurtured when they have leadership and processes that provide encouragement in spite of setbacks.
“Being an early-career academic scientist does not pay very much, requires a very tough-minded attitude and generally is only worth it for people if they truly just love doing science to better understand the world and improve the quality of life for all people,” said Mr. Gallagher. In mid-February, he traveled to interview for a dream position as a tenure-tracked faculty member at a university where he’d get to lead a lab dedicated to understanding Alzheimer’s disease. When he returned home, however, he learned that amid the current funding turmoil, the hiring process had been put on hold.
I couldn’t cut it as a researcher. And that’s precisely what the system is meant to do — weed out the individuals who don’t have the motivation to meet the challenges and keep competing with others. Young scientists are driven by a passion to imagine what is possible, by dreams of turning very idiosyncratic obsessions into something that stands some glimmer of a chance to change the world or, at the very least, contributes to that goal.
Though that passion has been fractured, it still lives in America’s young scientists. They want to imagine a better world, and they want to pursue that dream here in the United States. If the country’s leadership continues with its plans, however, we will see the brightest minds of the next generation disappear with their dreams."
For Republicans, Tariffs Pose a Risk Like No Other - The New York Times
For Republicans, Tariffs Pose a Risk Like No Other
"Trump’s political strength is built on the economy. If it sinks, he could drag his party down with him.
The time after a presidential election can feel like a moment of clarity. The results, after all, are finally in.
But over the last two decades, the post-election period hasn’t offered any clarity at all about the future of American politics. The winning party repeatedly convinces itself it has won a mandate, or even a generational advantage. The shellshocked losers retreat into internal debate. And then just a few months later, it becomes clear that the next phase of American politics will not be what the winners imagined.
This week, the next two years of American politics began to come into focus, and it does not look like a MAGA or Republican “golden age.” The special House elections in Florida and the Supreme Court election in Wisconsin confirmed that Democratic voters were not, in fact, stunned into submission by last November’s election. More important, President Trump’s sweeping tariffs — and the economic downturn that may follow — have created enormous political risks for Republicans.
In one key respect, the elections on Tuesday were not significant: They do not suggest that Democrats solved any of the problems that cost them the last election. Instead, they mostly reflect the party’s advantage among the most highly informed, educated and civically engaged voters. This advantage has allowed Democrats to excel in low-turnout elections throughout the Trump era, even as he made enormous gains among the disaffected and disengaged young, working-class and nonwhite voters who show up only in presidential elections.
Still, Democrats won’t have to face many of those disaffected and disengaged voters until 2028. The results last Tuesday thus offer a plausible preview of the next few years of elections: major Democratic victories, including in next year’s midterm election.
There might not have been anyone marching in pink hats, and congressional Democrats might have been “playing dead,” but the Democratic special election strength looks just as large as it did in 2017 and 2018, before the so-called blue wave flipped control of the House.
Perhaps this shouldn’t necessarily be a surprise: It’s what happened the last time Mr. Trump won. But it’s not what triumphant Republicans or despondent Democrats had in mind in the wake of Mr. Trump’s victory, when there was seemingly no “resistance” to Mr. Trump and the “vibes” seemed to augur a broad rightward cultural shift.
The tariffs announced Wednesday, however, introduce a political problem of an entirely different magnitude for Mr. Trump and his party. No party or politician is recession proof. Historically, even truly dominant political parties have suffered enormous political defeats during major economic downturns.
In none of those cases — not even with the infamous Smoot-Hawley tariff — could the president be held responsible for the downturn as self-evidently as today. And whatever it may have felt like after the election, the Republican Party is not even close to politically dominant.
If anything, Mr. Trump and the Republicans today could be especially vulnerable, as so much of his political strength is built on the economy. Throughout his time as a politician, he usually earned his best ratings on his handling of economic issues. He’s benefited from his reputation as a successful businessman and from effective economic stewardship in his first term. He won the last election, despite enormous personal liabilities, in no small part because voters were frustrated by high prices and economic upheaval that followed the end of the pandemic.
In New York Times/Siena College national surveys last fall, more than 40 percent of voters who backed Mr. Trump in 2024 but not 2020 said that the economy or inflation was the most important issue to their vote.
Even before this week’s tariffs, Mr. Trump had squandered his post-election honeymoon. His approval rating had fallen back under 50 percent, back toward where it stood before the election. His early threats to raise tariffs, including on partners like Canada, Mexico and Europe, probably played an important role in diminishing his support. In a reversal of the usual pattern, the latest polls had found that Mr. Trump’s ratings on the economy were even worse than his overall approval rating. There were other indications that his actions had taken an early political toll: Consumer confidence was falling, inflation expectations were rising, and polls found that tariffs themselves were generally unpopular.
This all pales in comparison with the tariffs Mr. Trump enacted Wednesday. It is, of course, too early to judge the full economic effect and thus the political fallout. It may even be too soon to know the ultimate Trump tariff policy. For the same reason, many of Mr. Trump’s supporters will give the policy a chance. His approval rating might not plunge overnight.
But if the tariffs cause a recession and significant price increases, as many economic analysts expect, a plunging approval rating might be only the beginning of his problems. While Mr. Trump may not run for re-election (third-term dreams notwithstanding), many Republicans will be — and many of them were never entirely on board with tariffs in the first place. Already, a half-dozen Republican senators have supported legislation to rein in the president’s authority to impose tariffs. This is nowhere near enough to overcome a presidential veto, but it is an unusual level of Republican opposition to Mr. Trump, and the time for opposition to build is nowhere near over.
If the economic fallout is bad enough, the dissatisfaction with the Trump administration could combine with the longstanding Democratic turnout advantage to make seemingly safe Republican states in 2026 — think Kansas, Iowa and Texas — look plausibly competitive, perhaps even along with control of the Senate. Congressional Republicans’ continued support of (or acquiescence to) Mr. Trump — whether on tariffs or his other excesses — could be in jeopardy.
For now, all of these potentially extraordinary developments are in the distant future. They are not necessarily likely, either. But as Mr. Trump’s second term takes shape, it increasingly seems clear that the “golden age” augured by the post-election “vibes” are even less likely still.
Nate Cohn is The Times’s chief political analyst. He covers elections, public opinion, demographics and polling."
Trump Family’s Cash Registers Ring as Financial Meltdown Plays Out - The New York Times
Trump Family’s Cash Registers Ring as Financial Meltdown Plays Out
"The party was on at a Saudi-backed LIV Golf tournament at the president’s Doral resort in Florida and a fund-raiser at Mar-a-Lago, even as markets tumbled.
The financial market meltdown was underway when President Trump boarded Air Force One on his way to Florida on Thursday for a doubleheader of sorts: a Saudi-backed golf tournament at his family’s Miami resort and a weekend of fund-raisers attracting hundreds of donors to his Palm Beach club.
It was a fresh reminder that in his second term, Mr. Trump has continued to find ways to drive business to his family-owned real-estate ventures, a practice he has sustained even when his work in Washington has caused worldwide financial turmoil.
The Trump family monetization weekend started Thursday night, as crowds began to form at both the Trump National Doral resort near Miami International Airport, and separately at his Mar-a-Lago resort 70 miles up the coast.
Mr. Trump landed on the edge of one of the golf courses in a military helicopter — just in time for a dinner at Doral. The next day, LIV Golf, the breakaway professional league backed by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, was scheduled to hold a tournament at the course for the fourth time.
On Thursday at Mar-a-Lago, hundreds of guests gathered for the American Patriots Gala, a conservative fund-raiser that featured Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and President Javier Milei of Argentina, who told his supporters back home that he was hoping to catch up with Mr. Trump while there, seemingly unaware that Mr. Trump was double-booked at two of his family properties that night.
And that was just the weekend’s lead-up.
Mr. Trump ordered a new set of global tariffs on Wednesday from the White House using his trademark Sharpie pen, a version of which is on sale at Mar-a-Lago for $3.
The announcement set off one of the largest market crashes in American history, erasing $5 trillion in market value from companies in the S&P 500 in just two days. Mr. Trump has said his policy would reverse what he calls unfair trade practices, and that eventually the “markets are going to boom.”
On Friday, as markets continued to tumble, thousands of golf fans visited Doral, as did Eric Trump, Mr. Trump’s son, and Yasir Al-Rumayyan, the governor of Saudi Arabia’s $925 billion sovereign wealth fund. Mr. Al-Rumayyan is also the chairman of LIV Golf, and was there to see its stars compete.
“It is a nice club,” Mr. Al-Rumayyan said as he walked around the golf course watching the players tee off.
LIV Golf — a venture intended to lift the Saudi profile worldwide even as it has burned through hundreds of millions of dollars of state funds — is styled as a daylong party, with club music pumping out of speakers lining tournament courses and machines dispensing wine and large beers. On Friday, fans watched a bit of golf and danced on the edges of the course. Others in MAGA hats walked around smoking cigars.
In short, the economic turbulence seemed far away.
“You are all looking a little too stiff!” said Matt Rogers, a LIV Golf announcer, as he yelled into a microphone, blasting his message across the greens as the first group of golfers on Friday prepared to play with dance music blaring in the background. “You need to turn this up! This is LIV Golf.”
Every room at the 643-room Trump Doral, including the $13,000-a-night presidential suite, was sold out through the weekend. Not a seat could be found at the BLT Prime steakhouse bar, where a porterhouse steak cost $130.
“This is the perfect venue,” Eric Trump said as he strolled the golf course Friday.
He had driven his father in a golf cart from the military helicopter to the resort dinner the day before, as the festivities over the big moneymaking weekend were getting underway.
The president spent much of Friday at yet another Trump family venue, Trump International Golf Club, not far from Mar-a-Lago, sending out social media messagesduring the day, including, “THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO GET RICH, RICHER THAN EVER BEFORE.”
By Friday night, the center of attention had shifted back to Mar-a-Lago, as Mr. Trump held another in a series of $1 million-a-head dinners at his private club in Palm Beach.
Since he was elected in November, Mr. Trump has hosted at least four of the fund-raisers, including one in December, two in March and the one Friday night, with a fifth planned for April 24.
The fund-raisers unfold in similar ways, according to people who have attended them.
Roughly 20 people gather around a candlelit table with big white flowers in the club’s “White and Gold Room” after a photo session. Mr. Trump speaks, then listens to the guests discuss their businesses, one by one. In just an hour or two, he can raise as much as $20 million — a great return on his time investment, associates say.
Attendees at some of the post-election dinners at Mar-a-Lago hosted by MAGA Inc., one of Mr. Trump’s fund-raising political action committees, have included the casino owner Miriam Adelson, the sugar magnate Pepe Fanjul and James Taiclet, the chief executive of Lockheed Martin, the world’s largest military contractor, along with representatives from the cryptocurrency and energy industries.
On Friday, Ronald S. Lauder, the cosmetics heir, and Steve Wynn, the former casino executive, both billionaires, were among the guests at the Mar-a-Lago fund-raiser, according to two people briefed on the matter. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the event.
The dinners have been just the start. Mar-a-Lago remains a popular site for Republicancandidates to host their own fund-raisers, Federal Election Commission records show.It is not clear to some Republicans why Mr. Trump has been raising money so aggressively, according to eight people involved in conservative fund-raising who have kept track of his Mr. Trump’s efforts. Never before has a president ineligible for re-election vacuumed up so much money for a super PAC.
Some of Mr. Trump’s associates believe it is prudent to fund-raise when the money is available, as corporate interests and others seek to get access to the president or make amends for perceived slights, people close to him acknowledge.
The packed agendas at the two Trump venues recalled the constant buzz and spending by lobbyists, members of Congress and foreign leaders at Trump International Hotel in Washington before the Trump family sold its lease after Mr. Trump’s first term.
In addition to the Saudi sovereign wealth fund, top sponsors of the Doral golf tournament included Aramco, the Saudi oil company; Riyadh Air, the airline owned by the sovereign wealth fund; and TikTok, the Chinese-owned social media company whose fate Mr. Trump is helping to decide, according to a large billboard outside one of the event’s party tents.
Mr. Trump’s merchandise shops — there are at least three of them at Doral — were also doing swift business, selling everything from a $550 Trump-branded crystal-studded purse to $18 Doral-branded paperweights made in China. The store clerk said that he did not know if new tariffs on imported products would mean price increases.
Fans in the crowd said that they had traveled from as far as South Africa to attend the event. Some purchased special tickets that cost as much as $1,400 to enter exclusive party areas with free drinks and food — tickets that were sold out as of Saturday.
In interviews, tournament attendees and others said that they did not mind the disconnect between the Wall Street meltdown and the events at the Trump properties.
“The sky is falling every day,” said Mike Atwell, a Key Largo, Fla., restaurant owner who was attending the LIV event with his wife enjoying lunch and drinks. “When you are happy, you drink. When you are sad, you drink. It all works out.”
Tyrell Davis, a 39-year-old entrepreneur spending Saturday afternoon in Palm Beach, said that he admired Mr. Trump for focusing on his own businesses while also implementing tariffs that he believed would benefit Americans.
Mr. Davis said that the United States had given away money to other countries for years while not investing in American cities, and that it only made sense Mr. Trump would continue to bolster his own businesses while in office.
“It’s all about business and money,” Mr. Davis said. “That’s what it’s all about. America is a business. It’s a corporation.”
On Saturday, as the tournament continued at Doral, Mr. Trump showed up at yet another family golf course, in Jupiter, Fla., which is holding its own, more modest tournament.
Good news was announced by the White House staff: “The president won his second round matchup of the senior club championship today in Jupiter, Fla., and advances to the championship round on Sunday.” Reporters and photographers were prohibited from watching him play, and were held down the street at a coffee shop.
As Mr. Trump returned to Mar-a-Lago, one of his political committees sent out an offer to his followers: They could buy a signed replica of his executive order changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. The minimum contribution was $50. “I want you to have a PIECE OF HISTORY in your home,” Mr. Trump said in the solicitation.
The White House then announced that there would be no more public events on Saturday.
Maggie Haberman contributed reporting from New York.
Eric Lipton is a Times investigative reporter, who digs into a broad range of topics from Pentagon spending to toxic chemicals."