Science Advocates React to Democrats’ Historic Midterm Rout
Read full article in Scientific American
Tuesday’s midterm election marked a sea change in the country’s political landscape, with Democrats sweeping control of Congress and making historic gains in many state legislatures. Now science advocates say they want answers for what has happened during the first two years of the Trump administration.
“It’s a new day in Washington,” says Gretchen Goldman, president and CEO of the Union of Concerned Scientists. “There’s huge opportunities for science, for democracy, for getting accountability for these attacks on science that we’ve seen. We are keen to get to work pushing back.”
Since taking office in 2025, the Trump administration has turned science into a battleground, slashing or outright canceling federal grants and research that was deemed too “woke.” Thousands of federal workers, including researchers, lost their jobs or decided to leave government. And the White House has pushed the country’s science funding to favor artificial intelligence and other technologies over other scientific fields, including medical research. At the same time, federal agencies have rolled back numerous anti-climate change measures in moves that critics say leave the country more vulnerable to warming and emissions.
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The victories also mean Democrats will take over key congressional committees and subcommittees, empowering them to help set the country’s science and health agenda. Russ Paulsen, president and CEO of Research!America, observes that, even under Republican leadership, Congress had acted as a check on the executive branch, restoring some of the cut grants and preventing some of the most controversial efforts to politicize science funding.
“We think that this bipartisan support is going to continue,” he says. “We hope that it will stay the priority that has been for these members and that they’ll begin to roll back the damage that the Office of Management [and] Budget (OMB) has done.”
One proposal from the OMB in particular, a set of rule changes that would have granted political appointees—and not area experts—control over which grants were approved, was voted down by Congress in a stopgap funding bill that passed in September. That bill expires in December, before the new Congress is sworn in. Paulsen says he is optimistic that the proposed rule changes will not be included in any bills passed during the lame duck session.
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