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Trump 2.0 has blown up US scientific research in a way that will take decades to roll back. Labs that took years to build have closed, young people have left science. NYT Mag published a long report on Dismantling Cancer Research. Why does Ross Douthat lie like this?

“It will take decades to recover from this, if we ever do” is a quote in the actual publication for which Douthat has written over most of his career since he graduated from Harvard

I worry that reactionary ideologues like Douthat get locked into a bubble where they do not inform themselves about how the actual world works.

In this case, NYT Opinion also has published things saying the destruction of science might be good, actually. One was by the editor of New Atlantis, a project of the rightwing thinktank EPPC. EPPC has an anti-abortion agenda leading it to attack science generally, and was a key P2025 org.

Here’s that Sept 2025 piece from the EPPC person. The piece does the same thing Douthat does rhetorically…the prior establishment overreached, the bad things aren’t that bad, so why are we all so upset?? “Jay Bhattacharya wants to fix science [not true]. Is he in over his head?”

Here’s Ross Douthat giving the keynote for EPPC’s 50th anniversary. Yesterday there was lots of talk about the Powell memo—which advised the creation of rightwing thinktanks, with staffs of speakers and writers, to influence the media and public. We can see how these effects work.

For an update from the front lines of where we are, @nicolecrust.bsky.social posted this thread a few days ago (thank you Nicole!) which has all kinds of scientists telling stories about how bad things are for science now.