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Rolling Stone: Brain Drain: Scientists Are Fleeing the U.S. as Trump Cuts Funding
Rolling Stone - (archived: https://archive.ph/L9OKw )
Brain Drain: Scientists Are Fleeing the U.S. as Trump Cuts Funding
Mass firings and cuts to research funding are causing American scientists to look for opportunities overseas
By Thor Benson
April 24, 2025
America has stood as a world superpower for the past century or so, and much of that power has been derived from the country’s scientific and technological prowess. From medicine to aerospace, some of the greatest thinkers in modern history have called the United States their home and pushed boundaries while residing within its borders.
That tradition is under threat in ways it has never been before as Donald Trump’s administration engages in the mass firing of scientists in the federal government, cuts funding to scientific research, and generally pushes an agenda that opposes scientific inquiry.
The Trump administration has thrown out hundreds of National Institutes of Health (NIH) research projects, fired thousands of the agency’s scientists, and looks intent on further dismantling the agency. Research funding for universities is also being stripped. So is climate science. Science is under attack in the United States basically everywhere you look.
Trump’s attacks on science are making American scientists anxious, and many are considering leaving the country indefinitely. Nearly 2,000 members of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine signed a letter in March warning of the administration’s threat to science. A poll from the international science journal Nature in late March found that 75 percent of American scientists are considering leaving the United States. European countries are planning on increasing their science funding, and countries like France, Belgium, and the Netherlands have launched programs to lure American scientists.
/snip
Brain Drain: Scientists Are Fleeing the U.S. as Trump Cuts Funding
Mass firings and cuts to research funding are causing American scientists to look for opportunities overseas
By Thor Benson
April 24, 2025
America has stood as a world superpower for the past century or so, and much of that power has been derived from the country’s scientific and technological prowess. From medicine to aerospace, some of the greatest thinkers in modern history have called the United States their home and pushed boundaries while residing within its borders.
That tradition is under threat in ways it has never been before as Donald Trump’s administration engages in the mass firing of scientists in the federal government, cuts funding to scientific research, and generally pushes an agenda that opposes scientific inquiry.
The Trump administration has thrown out hundreds of National Institutes of Health (NIH) research projects, fired thousands of the agency’s scientists, and looks intent on further dismantling the agency. Research funding for universities is also being stripped. So is climate science. Science is under attack in the United States basically everywhere you look.
Trump’s attacks on science are making American scientists anxious, and many are considering leaving the country indefinitely. Nearly 2,000 members of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine signed a letter in March warning of the administration’s threat to science. A poll from the international science journal Nature in late March found that 75 percent of American scientists are considering leaving the United States. European countries are planning on increasing their science funding, and countries like France, Belgium, and the Netherlands have launched programs to lure American scientists.
/snip