Science and Public Health in the Trump Era: The Dismantling of Evidence and Institutions and Proposals for Reconstruction

Abstract

This contribution to the special issue addresses the unprecedented politicization of science and health institutions, which threatens the functional integrity of democratic governance itself. Regulatory measures have weakened the infrastructure for evidence generation, constrained the autonomy of scientific actors, and subordinated public health priorities to cultural grievance and political loyalty. False and misleading information about core scientific knowledge is amplified not only in social media but by government itself. NIH disinvestment, advisory body sidelining, and public rhetoric casting science as elite overreach have together eroded the credibility of United States health leadership both domestically and abroad. The targeting of DEI policies in research portfolios, moreover, jeopardizes not only representational justice but the innovation capacity of American science at large. In this contribution, we trace the historical and political structure of science-politics confrontations and detail the damage to the public health and research ecosystem. We offer proposals to reconstruct the scientific enterprise in the next presidential administration.