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

This article 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 also by government itself. Disinvestment from the National Institutes of Health, 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. Moreover, targeting policies in research portfolios designed to enhance diversity, equity, and inclusion jeopardizes both representational justice and the innovation capacity of American science at large. This article traces the historical and political structure of science-politics confrontations and details the damage to the public health and research ecosystem. It offers proposals to reconstruct the scientific enterprise in the next presidential administration.