Aside from Donald Trump, a man named Russel Vought is probably the most powerful politician in America that few people have heard of.
Vought works as Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director where he exerts broad control of federal spending in all programs in the federal government. As an evangelical hard-right Christian, Vought believes that science goes against his Christian beliefs which he feels the government should promote. His crusade against science across the federal government is doing incalculable damage to the United States and will set us back decades in medical and other areas of research that benefit all Americans.
Like Trump, Vought is a culture warrior. He sees scientists as anti-Christian people out to thwart the agenda of Donald Trump. He has labeled broad areas of science as “woke,” a catch phrase of the far right that dismisses complex issues as simple constructs of leftist extremists that can be dismissed. Anything related to public lands and wildlife fits as woke.
For example, Donald Trump has long believed that climate change is a “hoax” and that those who research or address climate change are his political enemies. Vought agrees and has used the OMB to block climate research across the entire federal government, blocking grants to researchers, and banning agencies from discussing climate science with the public. Vought has ended funding for renewable energy and shut down wind and solar projects in the private sector, laying off thousands of workers and causing private industry and rate payers to lose millions of dollars in high value energy investments.
Recently, Vought has gone farther. He is dismantling large internationally critical research facilities used to collect nonpolitical information on how the ocean is changing as the world warms up. The ocean regulates weather worldwide, and it is a critical source of food for billions of people. Over decades, the US has installed a big system of sensors in the ocean called the OOI that monitor ocean currents and temperatures, allowing weather forecasters to predict major storms, weather trends, and help us see ongoing changes in ocean currents that will have huge implications for food supplies, flooding, and fires.
Nine hundred OOI sensors placed on the bottom of the ocean years ago and monitored by teams of scientists worldwide are being torn up and sent to the landfill because climate science offends Vought and Donald Trump. Scientists will be fired and this ideologically driven vandalism will spawn ignorance and cause incalculable damage to research for decades, wasting hundreds of millions of dollars spent installing the sensors. Like Vought’s attack on cancer research in the US, suffering and death will result. Covering our eyes doesn’t make problems disappear.
America funds tens of thousands of scientists and their research on thousands of subjects through the National Science Foundation. This research has put the United States in the forefront and allowed us to be a world leader in most scientific fields. But Vought and Trump’s culture war with scientists has laid waste to research in America. Vought has terminated 7,800 research grants and has fired 25,000 scientists from federal agencies. Recently, Trump has ordered that all research grants go through the office of Russel Vought for approval. Anything like conservation, pollution control, infectious disease research, education, or programs for tribes and farmers likely will be culled and research stopped.
Not only is this crusade damaging life for Americans, but political interference in science is allowing China to move into the lead in many areas of research and technology. The US is fast becoming a theocracy ruled by Christian nationalists.
Tom Ribe
