The Science and Politics of the Trump Era: What do we have to learn about the United States and what do we need to do about it?

From repealing climate policies to overturning guidance on the safe development of artificial intelligence (AI), Republican Donald Trump made plenty of promises during his presidential campaign that could affect scientists and science policy. It will be difficult to fulfill all of his pledges.

The senior official with the EPA said they were going to need people who would push back, protect the vulnerable and do what’s right for the environment. We have to remember what is right. Protection of public health and the environment is what is right.

The majority of readers who responded to a survey conducted by Nature expressed concerns about the current situation. Sixty-eight per cent of the people who answered a poll said they preferred Harris because of their concerns about climate change, public health and the state of US democracy. Some said they would change their homes or studies if Trump were to win.

Climate change, terrorism and the rise of society: scientists globally respond to Trump’s election win in South Africa via tweet (CERN-ESA-Newton)

Responses geared towards that sentiment have come swiftly. Tulio de Oliveira, a prominent virologist at the Centre for Epidemic Response and Innovation at Stellenbosch University in South Africa, posted on X (the social-media platform formerly known as Twitter): “With the changes around the world, you may want to relocate to one of the best Universities in [South Africa] in one of the world’s most beautiful region!”, he said and linked to job ads for postgraduate and postdoctoral fellowships.

Not all researchers are against a Trump presidency, however. Of those who responded to Nature’s reader survey, 6% expressed a preference for Trump — usually citing concerns about security issues and the economy. César Monroy-Fonseca, chief scientific officer at Seele Neuroscience, a behavioural neuroscience laboratory in Mexico City, favoured Trump, telling Nature that he is “the lesser of the evils”. Monroy-Fonseca says the Mexican economy is dependent on US decisions.

The reader who agreed to be contacted but did not want their name used was concerned about Trump’s anti-science stance. The nurse from North Carolina who responded said she would vote for Trump because she wanted to be safe and take care of her family.

“In my long life of 82 years … there has hardly been a day when I felt more sad,” says Fraser Stoddart, a Nobel laureate who left the United States last year and is now chair of chemistry at the University of Hong Kong. “I’ve witnessed something that I feel is extremely bad, not just for the United States, but for all of us in the world.”

Source: ‘We need to be ready for a new world’: scientists globally react to Trump election win

The Greatest Political Movement of All Time: Donald Trump’s Plan to Reenter the White House During his Second Presidency in Washington DC

Votes are still being counted in many places, but Trump has already won enough US states to sail to a resounding victory over his opponent, vice-president and Democrat Kamala Harris. Trump addressed his supporters as the victor early today, declaring his coalition “the greatest political movement of all time”.

The Republicans appear to have a good chance at getting the upper chamber of the Congress, the Senate, flipping at least three Democratic seats. It could be days or weeks before the final results are in for the lower chamber, the US House of Representatives, but it seems likely that Republicans will retain control. This would give Trump and his party full control of government in Washington DC.

“We need to be ready for a new world,” says Grazyna Jasienska, a longevity researcher at Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland. If Republicans take over, it is hard to find any positive aspects for global science and public health.

Donald Trump has said in the past he would give Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a political figure who has denied the effectiveness of vaccines, a “big role” in his administration.

Trump, now the US president-elect for a second time, will have some advantages as he re-enters the White House in January. He won in his first year in office and many people said that he didn’t have a solid plan. By contrast, the Trump administration that enters office next year will be better prepared, and Trump himself is likely to face fewer checks on his power now that he has consolidated control over the Republican establishment, says Matt Dallek, a political historian at George Washington University in Washington DC who studies the modern conservative movement.

But that still does not mean he will be able to do as he pleases, Dallek adds. “There’s a kind of revolutionary sweep to a lot of Trump’s promises that may collide with the messy reality of implementation.”

Biden’s executive order focused on making sure that the models don’t output discrimination. That is likely to be a low priority for the new administration, according to Venkatasubramanian. The Republican platform supports free speech and human flourishing.

Given that executive orders can be revoked at any time, it will be possible for Trump to implement his plan as soon as he arrives in the White House. Will Trump put it in its place?

What Trump’s election victory could mean for AI, climate and more: Why AI should be banned in the United States and how Congress will look after it

According to Roman Yampolskiy, a computer scientist and AI safety researcher at the University of Louisville in Kentucky, “it is a great idea to remove censorship and support free speech” in general. But, he says, “removing regulations around training of advanced AI systems is the worst possible thing we can do for the safety of the American people and the world”. Given the risks associated with developing superintelligent AI systems, which could potentially operate in unpredictable ways and cause harm to humans, Yampolskiy and other AI researchers have been arguing for a pause in AI development, which could only be achieved with stronger regulations.

Many federal climate efforts are likely to stall or move in reverse under Trump, who has long denied the dangers of climate change while prioritizing the economic benefits of boosting domestic fossil-fuel production. Policy specialists think that Trump is not likely to stop the United States from its gradual shift towards clean energy.

It will be hard to undermine Biden’s signature climate achievement: theIRA, which has created a raft of federal investments now estimated at more than US $1 trillion in climate and clean energy that are scheduled to run until around 2032. Legislation in the US Congress is needed to repeal it. Even if Republicans gain control of the congressional chambers, businesses and leaders in conservative US states that are already benefiting from IRA investments will probably not want to stop the flow of federal money.

The president-elect promised to pull the United States out of the 2015 Paris Agreement, which commits member countries to limiting global warming to 1.5–2 C above preindustrial levels. Trump’s administration had to wait until 2020 before formally leaving the agreement last time, and Biden moved to rejoin the agreement quickly after taking office several months later. The leaving process would take one year, under the rules of the agreement.

Source: What Trump’s election victory could mean for AI, climate and more

The Future of the US Biomedical Collaboration Landscape: Benjamin, Emanuel, Cohen, and Responsible Statecraft in the Light of Trump’s New Term

Georges Benjamin, the executive director of the American Public Health Association in Washington DC, worries about Kennedy’s role in the new administration because he has long cast doubt on the vaccine-approval process, threatening to undermine confidence in jabs and cause a resurgence in illnesses such as measles. “People will get sick and die because of the confusion around vaccines, if [Kennedy and Trump] implement some of the things they verbalize,” he says.

It remains to be seen whether Trump will appoint Kennedy to a position such as director of US Health and Human Services (HHS) — or whether the US Senate would approve it — but it’s clear that Kennedy will have Trump’s ear on health issues.

With Trump’s isolationalist approach and past comments he has made criticizing the World Health Organization, support for global health will also likely be “greatly scaled back” during Trump’s second term, says Ezekiel Emanuel, a bioethicist and long-time observer of the US biomedical funding landscape at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. Emanuel said that the US was the key player in funding global-health initiatives. This includes, for instance, a programme that aims to end the global AIDS epidemic. So it’s “hard to be optimistic” about the future, he adds.

Specialists says it’s unclear whether the second Trump administration will revive the China Initiative, although the Republican-led US House of Representatives advanced legislation in September that would do so. Adam Cohen is a lawyer at Siskind Susser, which focuses on academic immigration, and he says that the president may be able to institute policies like the travel ban.

But there might be one bright spot on the collaboration front, at least for US-China partnerships. The Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, a foreign policy think tank in Washington DC, believes a crucial pact governing US- China scientific cooperation is likely to be signed by the Biden administration before Trump’s second. Simon says that a renewal of the agreement will show that both governments gave their blessing to collaborations.