alt Hacker NewsAs a physical oceanographer, the destruction of these observing systems is horrific.
It is hard to stress enough how intentionally OMB is trying to disassemble American science. The new (proposed) OMB guidelines prohibit international collaboration without pre approval for example. They also codify a political grant approval process. https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/05/the-office-of-manage...
Additionally, OMB is not releasing the congressional appropriated funds that they are required to. This is currently tanking the post-doctoral researcher market and eventually will wipe out a generation of researchers if it isn’t stopped. https://grant-witness.us/funding_curves_nsf.html
Please call your elected representatives! It is so so important! https://5calls.org/issue/federal-financial-assistance-scienc...
Replies
OMB = “Office of Management and Budget”.
It’s a White House office run by Russell Vought, highly ideological maga institutionalist.
I live in a red state. Our elected representatives are in on it.
The elected reps are captured by business interests. Citizens united means the best marketing team wins every election. The reps do not work for citizens, why would they? Voting has been nullified, democracy is dead.
Unfortunately as a resident of the SF Bay Area, calling my elected representative is next to useless. :/
It's borderline evil. The only reason they are doing this is to silence the science that contradicts their agenda.
I get the part about old school corruption where your cronies get to steal from the government (hello Big Coal/Big Oil), but to figuratively shit on the people of the world out of spite takes it to a whole new level...of evil.
Can anyone explain that "anti-science" crusade to me? This doesn't seem to have any effect than reduce America's standing in the world.
[dead]
> wipe out a generation of researchers
It’s really hard to take this seriously after the COVID research shutdowns. You reap what you sow.
The other thing they've done is make it possible to cancel any grant at any time if it goes against the politics of the current executive administration.
Science has flourished in the US precisely because it could proceed without whimsical political picking and choosing, entire areas of science have flourished that would never have happened otherwise.
That's not to say that politics is completely out of science, Congress has done things like ban any research money for gun safety, for example. But that had to make it through Congress, a vote across party lines, instead of just being the political whim of some bureaucrat that can cancel whatever they want whenever they want.
For every issue you read about here on HN, there are about 10 other policy changes designed to destroy the US's scientific infrastructure. It doesn't get much attention because of all the other chaos going on, and scientists tend to be pretty quiet and try to stay apolitical, but it is truly a full-on crisis in the scientific research community right now. You won't see immediate effects, but in 10-20 years when China zooms ahead of the US on all research fronts and the US is left out of key technology and science directions, we will feel it then.