{"id":16624,"date":"2026-11-10T06:35:00","date_gmt":"2026-11-10T06:35:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/?p=16624"},"modified":"2026-11-10T06:35:00","modified_gmt":"2026-11-10T06:35:00","slug":"science-ftw","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/?p=16624","title":{"rendered":"Science FTW"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n<\/div>\n

By KIM BELLARD<\/p>\n

Science won. At least, that\u2019s one of the takeaways from last week\u2019s midterm elections. If you were one of the 124 million Americans who voted, you probably already know that there was a Blue Wave, with resounding Democrat victories across the country, even in historically red areas.<\/p>\n

Georgia not only reelected its Democrat Senator \u2013 no surprise \u2014 but also elected a Democrat Governor, who will be the first black woman governor in the country, no less. Iowa elected a Democrat Senator and Governor. South Carolina is sending a Democrat to the Senate, and Mississippi \u2013 Mississippi!!! \u2013 may as well. Even Kansas elected a Democrat Senator, the first such in almost 100 years. Ohio and Texas not only flipped their Senators and Governors but Democrats won all<\/em> the statewide elections.<\/p>\n

Truly strange times.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m allowing myself to hope that we\u2019ll finally have a Congress that will fulfill its constitutional duties of acting as a counterbalance to the power of the Presidency, but one thing I\u2019m particularly excited about is the prospect these results will be less about being a Blue wave than what The Washington Post<\/em> called<\/a> a \u201cSTEM wave.\u201d Among the newcomers to Congress are a record number of physicians and scientists. They\u2019re going to have their hands full.<\/p>\n

Much has been written (including by me<\/a>) about the Trump Administration\u2019s attacks on science. Just last week The New York Times<\/em> reported on How Trump Is Dismantling America\u2019s Scientific Research Machine<\/a>. Amid cuts in research grants, resignations and firings of top scientists, departures of leading scientists to other countries, and reductions in Ph.D. students, the Defense Department warned<\/a> that its \u201cinnovation engine is at risk of stalling.\u201d Even people who aren\u2019t defense hawks should realize that spells big trouble for American science in general, and for all of us.<\/p>\n

A year ago I wrote<\/a> about how organizations like 314 Action<\/a> and Stand Up for Science<\/a> were leading the resistance to the attacks on science. 314 Action, for example, spent some $23 million on pro-science candidates, doubling its 2024 donations. Shaughnessy Naughton, president of 314 Action, told<\/a> Alexander Nazaryan of The New York Times <\/em>that the election results, especially the incoming scientist lawmakers, represent \u201ca real repudiation of what has been two terrible years for science and public health.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

Deborah D. Stine, who served as the executive director of the President\u2019s Council of Advisers on Science and Technology during the Obama administration, told Mr. Nazaryan: \u201cThe importance of having scientists, engineers and health professionals in national, state and local political positions cannot be overstated.\u201d Mr. Nazaryan highlights a mathematician, a microbiologist, a chemical engineer, and engineer, and several physicians who are part of the wave. Kudos to the NYT<\/em> headline writers: These Newly Elected Lawmakers Know Something Trump Doesn\u2019t: Science. <\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a new day in Washington,\u201d Gretchen Goldman, president and CEO of the Union of Concerned Scientists, told<\/a> Adam Kovac of Scientific American<\/em>. \u201cThere\u2019s huge opportunities for science, for democracy, for getting accountability for these attacks on science that we\u2019ve seen. We are keen to get to work pushing back.\u201d Colette Delawalla, founder and CEO of Stand Up for Science, added: \u201cThinking through how all of this could pan out, this outcome is better than any eventuality that we worked through.\u201d<\/p>\n

In another NYT article<\/a> on the topic, Rep. Zoe Lofgren, who is expected to lead the House Science committee in the new Congress, warned: \u201cIn some cases, the damage can\u2019t be undone, But we can prevent it from continuing.\u201d She told<\/a> Jeffrey Mervis of Science<\/em>: \u201cMy top priority is to help the U.S. science enterprise recover from the blows it\u2019s received from the Trump administration and also get some wins for the American people when it comes to legislation that never was approved.\u201d<\/p>\n

Newly elected Representative Jasmine Clark, a microbiologist\/scienced educator\/political activist, added to Mr. Mervis: \u201cPeople show what they care about by how they spend their money. And as Democrats we need to be able to show people, show the science community, and show the public health community that we prioritize health and research.\u201d<\/p>\n

The NYT article<\/a> highlighted four ways the STEM wave could impact science policy:<\/p>\n

Reclaiming the Grant-Making Machine<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cThe power of the purse belongs to CONGRESS!\u201d Senator Patty Murray of Washington, the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, wrote on X. \u201cIt\u2019s NOT Trump\u2019s money. Taxpayer dollars belong to the American PEOPLE.\u201d<\/p>\n

New Investigative Targets<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of how the new majority will try to drive change is through investigations and hearings,\u201d said Mitch Benzine, senior counsel in the congressional investigations practice at the law firm Eversheds Sutherland.<\/p>\n

A.I. Guardrails<\/strong><\/p>\n

Restrictions on data centers, regulations for A.I. development, and new protections for copyright holders (against LLM data scraping) are all in play.<\/p>\n

Safe Space<\/strong><\/p>\n

Already bipartisan support for programs such as NASA and N.I.H, will get even stronger.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m excited to see what impact these newcomers can have on science and health policy, but we have to remember that they\u2019re still in the minority among all the lawyers and millionaires in Congress, and that Congress has never shown itself to be very nimble \u2013 and certainly less nimble than the Trump Administration. Even more concerning, there are headwinds against science that are not solely attributable to President Trump.<\/p>\n

In Nature<\/em>, Miryam Naddaf illustrates<\/a> how academic freedom has been declining in recent years in several countries \u2013 most notably, the United States. Citing the latest annual report<\/a> from Scholars at Risk (SAR), there has been a steep decline in academic freedom in the United States, and not just since the start of the second Trump Administration. \u201cThe pressures on higher education are not limited to one election [or] one administration,\u201d says Robert Quinn, founding executive director of SAR.<\/p>\n

The report warns:<\/p>\n

According to the Academic Freedom Index (AFI), since 2020, academic freedom has declined dramatically in the US. In 2019, the AFI rated the US as \u201cfully free\u201d with respect to academic freedom. By 2025, it was rated \u201cmoderately restricted.\u201d\u2026The US\u2019s decline in university autonomy was particularly rapid, deteriorating by 50 percent over a 10-year period from 2015 to 2025.<\/p>\n

Certainly the first Trump Administration started some of the attacks, and the second has dramatically broadened them, but state legislatures are complicit in many of the restrictions on academic freedom, and many of those legislatures weren\u2019t swamped by the Blue wave.<\/p>\n

So let\u2019s be optimistic about the Blue wave. Let\u2019s be hopeful in particular about it being a STEM wave. But let\u2019s not forget that the war on science is not over, that our science infrastructure has taken terrible blows, and that there are many battles yet to come.<\/p>\n

Kim is a former emarketing exec at a major Blues plan, editor of the late & lamented <\/em>Tincture.io<\/em><\/a>, and now regular THCB contributor<\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By KIM BELLARD Science won. At least, that\u2019s one of the takeaways from last week\u2019s midterm elections. If you were one of the 124 million Americans who voted, you probably already know that there was a Blue Wave, with resounding Democrat victories across the country, even in historically red areas. Georgia not only reelected its…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":16622,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16624","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16624"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16624"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16624\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/16622"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}