Guy Carden: Rally for Science – What are they protesting about?

Spokane Indivisible has announced a Rally for Science at 11 a.m. Saturday in Mission Park. What are they protesting about? “Science” is a very large subject; surely it can’t all be at risk.

The speakers at the rally will give us their specifics, but I can tell you now why I will be there and what I will be protesting about.

The Trump administration and the Department of Government Efficiency Service are cutting science staff and funding. They tell us they are doing this to reduce “waste, fraud and abuse” and to “terminate research funding that is not aligned with (Trump administration) priorities.” I believe this policy is a major mistake.

Science funding is a small part of the federal budget. Total federal spending on research and development is a little more than 3% of the available federal budget, $195 billion in fiscal year 2024. Even if DOGE deleted it all, it wouldn’t make a visible change in your tax bill.

But the cuts that are planned will do serious damage to one of America’s strongest economic sectors – science research and higher education – and put the country at risk in national defense and health care.

Where do these cuts fall? One part is staff reductions at the federal agencies that manage the research: 3,500 workers at FDA, 2,400 at CDC, 1,200 at NIH, and so on. The larger part is cancellation of research work in progress, “stop-work orders.” How is this distributed?

More than half of federally funded R&D is military: $92.8 billion for Department of Defense R&D, $10.5 billion for nuclear and weapons R&D in the Department of Energy. If we’re worried about Russia and China, cutting defense is a bad idea. Cornell reports that they received “more than 75 stop-work orders from the Defense Department” as part of their $1 billion in “frozen” funding.

The remainder ranges from high-priority medical research to literally far-out work from NASA.

Astronomers have just reported that spectroscopic evidence from NASA’s new Webb Space Telescope suggests that there is life on K2-18b, a planet 120 light years away. More work is needed, but unfortunately Trump’s current budget proposes to cut NASA’s science budget by almost 50%. If this goes through, a University of Washington astrobiologist says, “the search for life elsewhere would basically stop.” NASA’s total science budget is about $12 billion, about 0.2% of the federal budget.

Local universities face significant cuts: The University of Washington has 600 grants caught in the process, with 12 already canceled. WSU has stop-work orders on four grants, including a practical project from the Department of Energy. And the University of Idaho has just lost its largest grant, $59 million for crop marketing from the Department of Agriculture.

Why is Trump doing this? “Waste, fraud and abuse” looks like an excuse; no one is claiming that the canceled grants and contracts are fraudulent. President Trump and many conservatives believe that American universities are too “woke,” concerned too much about social justice and not enough about business. These funding cuts are their response.

The cuts extend even to the highest priority medical work. Shutting down USAID turned off tuberculosis programs across the developing world. Harvard just got a stop-work order for a $60 million multicenter NIH contract on TB. If you think stopping work on TB might be a good idea, listen to John Green: Even pausing the work will spread drug-resistant TB.

Now, I don’t believe that Trump really wants to promote drug-resistant TB, but his people haven’t been thinking about the work they are canceling.

The Rally for Science is scheduled for Saturday, Patriots’ Day, the anniversary of Concord and Lexington in 1775. I suggest that 21st century patriots should honor the day by going to the rally.

Guy Carden is a retired university teacher who lives on South Hill.