Trump poised to blow up America's 'superpower' — and 'engine of our wealth': analysis

One of the biggest casualties of the Trump administration's sledgehammer to federal funding is scientific research grants — and the result could be a nation that is "stupid" and unable to innovate compared to its peers, wrote Frank Bruni for The New York Times.

These cuts have become a hot-button issue, with scientists at major institutions warning the shutdown of research will even imperil public safety. Under Trump, the National Science Foundation is reportedly even flagging studies for review based on whether they contain words like "woman," "female," "bias," "systemic," "trauma," and a number of other words associated with liberal activist speak, even though many have entirely different and necessary meanings in scientific research.

"The Trump administration is currently trying to stanch the flow of such money to organizations, including universities, that will nurture tomorrow’s most consequential discoveries," wrote Bruni. "That makes zero sense in the context of Trump’s past experience in the presidency. It’s even less logical in the context of his promise to lift the United States to new peaks of glory and make us the envy of the world. Among our most significant competitive advantages are our scientists, our laboratories, our system of higher education. They’re a kind of superpower, their output an engine of our wealth — of frontier-expanding technology, medical breakthroughs and production innovations that enrich companies as they improve lives."

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One of the more recent prominent examples is Operation Warp Speed, which expedited the development of COVID-19 vaccines to contain the pandemic in 2020 under the Trump administration — a major bragging point for him at the time — and which would not have been possible without scientific research grants.

But that's just the start of Trump's war on knowledge, wrote Bruni.

"On Tuesday his administration announced that it was firing more than 1,300 workers in the federal Department of Education, which had already been reduced by more than 600 workers since Trump took office. That will leave it with roughly half the number of employees it had just two months ago ... how would its erasure improve the shameful reading and math scores of America’s schoolchildren? Administration officials don’t really say," he wrote.

They similarly are taking a hatchet to the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control, and funding for private universities he doesn't like.

"Intellectualism, science, education — and respect and funding for all three — are what positioned Operation Warp Speed to operate at warp speed," Bruni wrote. "They gave Trump something big to brag about. How can he of all egomaniacs sacrifice the boasts of the future?"