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As a physical oceanographer, the destruction of these observing systems is horrific. It is hard to stress enough how intentionally OMB is trying to disassemble
by waterthrowaway 4mo ago
As 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-management-and-budget-tries-again-to-cripple-us-science/ 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 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-science-grants/ https://5calls.org/issue/federal-financial-assistance-scienc...
- sulam 4mo agoUnfortunately as a resident of the SF Bay Area, calling my elected representative is next to useless. :/
- onemoresoop 4mo agoDo it anyway!
- undersuit 4mo agoBlame 'The Reapportionment Act of 1929', the representatives capped their number and denied you adequate representation. If you did call you may get a response from one of your representative's staff, the number which are granted is based on the population of your state.
- triceratops 4mo agoThat's what they want you to think.
- WhitneyLand 4mo agoOMB = “Office of Management and Budget”. It’s a White House office run by Russell Vought, highly ideological maga institutionalist.
- ceejayoz 4mo ago(and one of the authors of Project 2025)
- tadfisher 4mo agoAlso famous for being a principal architect and author of Project 2025, which explicitly calls for impoundment as a mechanism for expanding presidential authority to control the Federal budget for political purposes.
- FrustratedMonky 4mo agoIn order to usher in their Theocratic Dictatorship, they need to have an un-educated population. This is the start. I hope it takes a few generations and the tide can be turned. But at this rate, the US might end within the next couple years, not decades. I don't think they are really even trying to hide it. Project 2025 was pretty obvious road map.
- gwerbin 4mo agoIt's not even about an uneducated population. It's about preventing research that might be inconvenient politically. Ocean sensors provide evidence of climate change and the current political agenda is to suppress evidence of climate change.
- jauntywundrkind 4mo agoanyone knowing anything is dangerous to fascists. unmoored radicalism does not appreciate competent people. destroying the professional class and reducing everyone to serfs has been an active ongoing never-closed plot against America that has never been snuffed out, and that is having it's day. the Business Plot people walk among us, and here, 93 years latter, they are getting the hollowing out of the state and any possible upstanding world anchored in anything good that they've worked for. these people, these people, these people.
- epistasis 4mo agoThe 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.
- toomuchtodo 4mo agohttps://www.project2025.observer/ https://www.project2025.observer/
- btown 4mo agoAnd the non-cancellable nature of grants is not just a nice-to-have, it's absolutely critical for research with upfront capital costs (buying equipment, building labs, etc.) The very _fact_ that this is a policy is disrupting research, even if specific grants haven't been cancelled. Some universities are stepping in to backstop, but it's a powerful chilling effect.
- epistasis 4mo agoSome of the specific grants that have been cancelled are shocking in the negative effect they will have on the ecosystem. Cutting off Sean Eddy, a giant in DNA analysis, just baffles the mind: https://www.npr.org/2026/05/11/nx-s1-5807995/some-researchers-say-restored-federal-funding-is-too-little-too-late https://www.npr.org/2026/05/11/nx-s1-5807995/some-researcher... There's not even any political angle to pursue here, it is just lighting knowledge on fire with no grander purpose.
- xg15 4mo agoCan anyone explain that "anti-science" crusade to me? This doesn't seem to have any effect than reduce America's standing in the world.
- fhdkweig 4mo agoStudying the ocean temperatures verifies that climate change is not a hoax. "He" is making money off fossil fuels. That is enough of a reason for being anti-science. This is the same guy that decided that the COVID numbers would go down if we just stopped measuring them. Burying his head in the sand is his go-to solution for all problems.
- justin66 4mo agoThey're isolationists. They do not care about America's standing in the world.
- kevin_thibedeau 4mo agoIt's all outlined in Gulliver's Travels.
- adithyareddy 4mo agoThey're ideological goals, not technical ones. If they don't make sense to you it's because you're not viewing it through their ideological lens.
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- Isamu 4mo agoI think this is part of an anti-climate change agenda, which is about protecting fossil fuel investments. Not sure that it is broadly anti-science, except maybe in the sense of being against public funding broadly.
- CamperBob2 4mo agoOnce you start asking what Trump would do differently if he actually were an agent or captive of hostile foreign interests, the rest will begin to make more sense.
- aaron695 4mo ago[dead]
- junofan 4mo ago[flagged]
- epistasis 4mo agoWhat COVID research shutdowns are you talking about? That's too vague to understand, it could mean anything of any sort of political motivation! But with COVID specifically, there's an entire industry devoted to feeding fake conspiracies, so you'll have to be very specific in order for anybody to agree with you.
- frogperson 4mo agoThe 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.
- phyzix5761 4mo agoWe haven't started the Democracy phase yet in the US. It's a constitutional republic and its working exactly as designed by the founding fathers. The wealthy elite stay in control of the Senate (equivalent to the House of Lords) and the citizens get to have their say in the House (equivalent to the House of Commons). In this system nothing becomes law unless approved by the Lords of the Senate. This started as an Aristocracy with well meaning participants but its evolved into an Oligarchy just as anacyclosis[1] predicts. The next stage is Democracy and then that, eventually, crumbles into mob rule (Ochlocracy). [1] https://anacyclosis.org/portfolio/what-is-anacyclosis/ https://anacyclosis.org/portfolio/what-is-anacyclosis/
- 20after4 4mo agoIt feels more like we've jumped straight to mob rule (with tinges of oligarchy, which are not new really)
- red-iron-pine 4mo agoUS business interests are fine with the US funding science they can use these are foreign interests, and it's 100% clear who is behind it.
- pstuart 4mo agoIt'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.
- 20after4 4mo agoI live in a red state. Our elected representatives are in on it.