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Commentary: The right-wing attack on science reaches a nadir, but it could get worse
The tally from Trumpian attacks on science now includes billions of dollars in damage to farmers and ranchers and assaults on scientists’ freedom of speech
One of the rules I came to live by during my years of covering global trouble spots is: “Never assume that things can’t get worse.”
But it will be hard to find a worse display of shameful servility to the Trump administration by a scientific organization than the American Diabetes Association provided on Friday.
During the organization’s annual conference in New Orleans, five of its leading members — four former presidents and the current editor of Diabetes Care, its official journal — were distributing paper copies of an editorial from the journal decrying the administration’s aggressive attack on scientific research and funding.
The seeming endorsement by the ADA of the current administration’s approach to science and of its attacks on freedom of speech is unconscionable.
— Open letter to American Diabetes Association
Suddenly they were confronted by security guards and New Orleans police and manhandled out of the hall. (A video is here, courtesy of MedPageToday.)
Their papers were confiscated. They were ordered to surrender their passes and were informed that if they tried to reenter the hall they would be arrested for trespassing.
“We printed 1,000 copies of the editorial, at my personal expense, and we hoped that 200 people who hadn’t seen it would read it,” Steven Kahn, director of the Diabetes Research Center at the University of Washington, editor of the journal and the lead author of the editorial, told me.
Instead, the editorial has become a must-read, with tens of thousands of page views and widespread condemnation of the conference organizers’ actions.
An open letter to the ADA started by David Nathan of Massachusetts General Hospital, titled “Shame on You” and stating that “the seeming endorsement by the ADA of the current administration’s approach to science and of its attacks on freedom of speech is unconscionable” has more than 6,400 signatories on change.org as of this writing.
The Diabetes Association implied in an official statement that the scientists had breached IRS regulations that include “maintaining a strictly nonpartisan environment at all organizational events.” On Wednesday, the organization said it would commission “a thorough independent review of the events that occurred.”
The organization’s action underscores one reason why the Trump administration’s wholesale attack on scientific research has reached a level that, as I’ve written, will have generational ramifications: It’s because some of our most august scientific organizations have failed to stand up for principle.
“It’s part of a larger systems failure among the academic medical centers, research universities, scientific and professional societies and the National Academies,” says Peter Hotez of Baylor College of Medicine, a vaccine expert and veteran adversary of pseudoscience.
The attention given to individual incidents such as the ADA conflict obscure what Hotez calls “the greater reality … a much darker MAHA strategy to tear down American biomedicine.” The goal, he says, is to supplant independent academic research with “an entire system of pseudoscience and grift.” MAHA is the administration’s acronym for “Make America Healthy Again.”
The latest iteration of this effort came late last month with a rule proposal from the Office of Management and Budget, which is headed by the arch-conservative Russell Vought, that would in effect make all scientific grant applications subject to the oversight of politically-appointed commissars.
Among other provisions, grants would be rejected if they’re judged to “fund, promote, encourage, subsidize, or facilitate … diversity, equity, and inclusion” or “gender ideology” such as “theories or ideologies that deny the biological reality of sex or the sex binary in humans.”
The OMB proposal finally stirred major scientific bodies to speak up. “This latest move is a brazen power grab,” the American Association for the Advancement of Science said through its chief executive, Sudip Parikh. “If this rule becomes final, Americans’ hopes for future cures, national security and economic strength will rely on the scientific sensibilities of the nation’s chief bureaucrat.”
As it happens, the OMB proposal dropped just as the economic consequences of the extremist war on science were becoming clearer than ever.
Among the thousands of grants and programs that perished when the administration dismantled the U.S. Agency for International Development, for example, was a program monitoring the advance of the New World screwworm north from Central America.
The screwworm, which has the capacity to devastate cattle and sheep herds, has now appeared in Texas, where its costs could be enormous. Just last year, the Dept. of Agriculture calculated that the eradication of the pest in the U.S. in the 1990s yielded annual economic benefits to producers of an inflation-adjusted $1.7 billion a year to the cattle industry and $6 billion a year to the broader economy. A new outbreak, the USDA estimated, could cost the Texas economy $1.8 billion.
Then there’s measles. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports 2,030 U.S. cases this year as of June 4, almost as many as were seen in all of 2025 (when there were 2,288, including three deaths), the worst outbreak since 1991. This is the harvest of the anti-vaccine ideology being spread by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
The outbreak’s consequences can be measured in dollars and cents: Responding to an outbreak of as few as 600 cases could cost local agencies $10 million, according to healthcare researchers at Johns Hopkins University.
The Trump administration has proposed slashing the budget of the grant making National Science Foundation by 61% and of the National Institutes of Health by 40%. The budget of the CDC, which once reigned as a global gold-standard for public health oversight but has suffered from the disdain of RFK Jr. and his minions, would be cut by 44%.
Taken together, these cuts “would shrink the economy by $1 trillion compared with maintaining the 2025 level of R&D,” reckons the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a science and tech think tank.
What frightens scientists more than the sheer numbers are that the cuts are arbitrary and manifestly pernicious. A study published last year in JAMA Internal Medicine identified 383 NIH-funded clinical trials that the administration terminated, leaving more than 74,000 participants high and dry.
“Scientific investment is not a cost to be minimized,” Henry Miller, a former biotech official at the Food and Drug Administration, observed recently; “it is an engine of national wealth. … The internet, mRNA vaccines, human gene therapy, GPS, the transistor — all emerged from the sustained public investment being dismantled today.”
The Diabetes Care editorial that Kahn and his colleagues attempted to distribute at the New Orleans conference is a cri de coeur targeted at the right-wing anti-science campaign. It’s titled, “Misguided Brushes of a Pen Continue to Dismantle and Destroy Biomedical Research in the United States.”
The result of the funding reductions, the authors wrote, will be “researchers being forced out of science and fewer people considering biomedical investigation as a career. Are we ready to watch the crippling of scientific advances in diabetes and all other diseases? It is no longer enough to stand idly by or work behind the scenes with lawmakers. Moreover, it is no longer appropriate to fret about political backlash.”
The scientists intended their distribution of the article implicitly as a counterweight to a keynote talk by NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya, who was going to speak without taking questions but who bailed out at the last minute. I sought a comment from Bhattacharya, who portrays himself as a champion of open scientific debate, about the eviction of the five scientists from the conference, but got no reply.
The uproar has roiled the ADA. Its president-elect, endocrinologist Jennifer Green of Duke University, and its scientific sessions planning committee chair, diabetes expert Mark Atkinson of the University of Florida, have both resigned their positions, though their role in the evictions, if any, is unknown.
The so-called New Orleans Five demanded an apology from the association, Kahn told me. They got one Wednesday from ADA Chief Executive Charles Henderson, via a video in which he extended his apology to “the broader diabetes community,” many members of which of whom he acknowledged were “disturbed, disappointed and concerned about what occurred.”
The truth is that the ADA’s action only validated the editorial’s exhortation to scientists to speak out forcefully: “We can no longer afford complacency and fear. We must all act now!” Will other scientific bodies draw a lesson from what happened in New Orleans? Let’s hope so.
Federal Bureau of Investigation officers served a search warrant Wednesday at the Garden Grove chemical plant, where a compromised tank containing toxic chemicals threatened to leak or explode, resulting in the evacuation of nearby residents in May.
“We are cooperating with authorities at our Garden Grove facility and will continue to do so,” a spokesperson of GKN Aerospace, which operates the facility, said in an email statement.
Laura Eimiller, an FBI spokesperson, said FBI agents are serving a search warrant as part of an ongoing investigation into the Garden Grove aerospace business.
GKN Aerospace is a division of Melrose Industries, a U.K.-based aerospace company that manufactures aircraft parts.
In May, at the manufacturing facility, which stores thousands of gallons of toxic chemicals in pressurized tanks used to produce materials such as plexiglass for fighter jet and commercial aircraft windows, one tank threatened to leak or explode.
Over 50,000 residents were temporarily evacuated as officials investigated the potential for an explosion for days. They found that a crack in the compromised tank released the pressure buildup inside the storage unit, which ruled out the possibility of an explosion, and allowed residents to return to their homes.
The compromised tank threatened to blow up, affecting adjacent tanks also containing the toxic chemical methyl methacrylate which could have caused a large-scale public safety emergency. Still, plans to remove the remaining MMA chemical tanks from the facility have been postponed, and no new date has been announced yet.
Residents who were impacted by the evacuation have already filed multiple class action lawsuits against the company, alleging negligence at the manufacturing facility and seeking compensation for loss of use of homes and diminished property value. Now, federal officials will investigate possible violations and factors that could have contributed to the incident.
According to the FBI warrant, the officers will seize items in violation of measures to prevent the accidental release of hazardous substances into the air.
The warrant allows FBI officers the discretion to search digital devices or seize and transport them as part of the investigation.
Electric-vehicle maker Rivian began delivery of a cheaper SUV on Tuesday as it aims to take customers from Tesla and others.
The long-anticipated R2, which will eventually be available for less than $45,000, could help boost the market share of the Irvine company better known for vehicles priced around $77,000.
The first R2s to roll off the company’s production line in Normal, Ill., are the performance version, starting at $57,990. Rivian said the R2 Premium will arrive in late 2026 for around $54,000, followed by an R2 Standard version in 2027 priced at $44,990.
“Rivian is really trying to prove its worth,” said Ivan Drury, director of insights at Edmunds. “They’ve gone past that initial stage and are hoping to move on to mass market products.”
The R2 Performance is still an expensive vehicle for many Americans, but it’s a step down from Rivian’s nearly $77,000 R1S. It’s typical for an automaker to launch the most expensive version of a new vehicle first, experts said.
Whether the R2 will be the success Rivian is hoping for won’t become clear until late 2027, once the standard versions are widely available. Chief Executive RJ Scaringe said the company is aiming to compete with not just other EV makers, but also traditional auto companies such as Jeep and Subaru.
“More mainstream people are going to be in on the R2, especially for the lower-priced models,” auto analyst Brian Moody said. “You’re always going to have early adopters, but there’s a lot more customers to go around in the $45,000 to $55,000 range.”
According to Cox Automotive, the average transaction price for a new EV in the U.S. is $55,000, compared with $49,000 for a gas-powered vehicle. Used EV sales have been surging lately because of their value, with an average transaction price of around $36,000.
Though there’s significant hype surrounding the launch of R2, investors have been unimpressed. Rivian shares fell 7% on Tuesday.
There has been a broad cooling of the EV market. Major automakers including Honda and Ford have cut back their EV options as excitement for the vehicles has fallen under the Trump administration. A $7,500 EV tax credit for new vehicles expired in September.
Drury added that an announcement of a new product would generally generate more buzz than the first deliveries of a vehicle that’s already been in the public eye.
“This is simply them delivering on a promise, and the market itself is not what it was when they had first conjured up the vehicle,” Drury said.
Rivian lost $3.6 billion last year and hasn’t been profitable since its founding in 2009. Scaringe said the company will reach profitability on a per-unit production basis with the R2 this year, but estimated that the company won’t turn an overall profit until closer to 2030.
Karl Brauer, an auto industry expert at ISeeCars.com, said the premium and standard versions of the R2 probably will sell in much higher volumes than the performance version.
“It’s in theory an exciting moment, because they’re launching this new version, but it’s the expensive one,” Brauer said. “There’s no indication in my mind that there will be huge, high-volume sales.”
A month away from its closure, onetime gambling oasis Primm, Nev., located along the state border with Southern California, has a new lease on life.
The Primm family, owners of the land that includes three casino resorts and other businesses along the 15 Freeway, announced Tuesday a partnership intended to save the struggling state-line strip and hundreds of jobs.
The deal allows Las Vegas-based Terrible’s, owned by the Herbst family and perhaps most famous for a string of gas stations and convenience stores, to operate the properties.
“What we saw with them is the same energy that we had in rebuilding Primm,” said Cory Clemetson, describing the new deal with Terrible’s in an interview with The Times. Clemetson is president of Primm South Real Estate Co. and a grandson of Primm founder Ernie Primm, who made a name for himself in Southern California in the 1930s and ’40s with his Gardena card rooms.
In the summer of 2025, signage blocks an entrance at Primm Mall, a once-popular site along with the trio of casinos at the California-Nevada state line.
(Bridget Bennett / For The Times)
“Primm has long been one of Nevada’s most recognizable destinations,” said Tim Herbst, president of Terrible’s, in a statement. “This partnership reflects our commitment to preserving that legacy while creating new opportunities for growth, investment, and tourism for decades to come.”
Terrible’s takes over for Affinity Gaming, owned by private equity company Z Capital Partners, in the full-circle world of southern Nevada gaming. In 2010, Herbst Gaming declared bankruptcy and saw Primm taken over by Z Capital Partners.
An email to representatives for Affinity Gaming was not immediately returned.
The process for the return of Terrible’s to Primm kick-started May 5, when Affinity confirmed the closure of Primm Valley Casino Resorts.
Affinity’s subsidiary, Primadonna Co. LLC, sent termination notices to more than 300 employees effective July 4.
The closure was devastating, Clemetson said.
“It felt like a gut punch,” he said. “I mean, you’ve got to be kidding me that they would announce something like that for the Fourth of July. Laying off in excess of 300 Nevadans who are mostly paycheck to paycheck with nowhere to go didn’t sit well with my family.”
Primm Valley was the last of three resorts built between 1977 and 1994 at the site that remained in full operation.
Buffalo Bill’s, the largest of the three resorts, closed 24-7 operations in July 2025, after Whiskey Pete’s, the original casino, shuttered in December 2024.
Affinity Gaming declined multiple requests from The Times to speak about Primm’s struggles.
In a letter presented at a Clark County Board of Commissioners meeting, Erin Barnett, Affinity’s vice president and general counsel, wrote in October 2024 that “traffic at the state line has proved to be heavily weighted towards weekend activity and is insufficient to support three full-time casino properties.”
Scott Butera, Affinity’s chief executive and president, offered a few comments about the closure at the May 21 Nevada Gaming Commission meeting.
“As a tenant with a difficult lease and an expensive property and increased competition every day in California … it just became a very difficult thing,” he said, “and we’ve been losing money for years there.”
Clemetson said that Affinity asked for help over the years, such as potential rent reductions, but that the Primm family was unaware of Affinity’s finances.
As for the future, Clemetson said Terrible’s was in the process of reacquiring a gaming license for Primm, which he hoped would happen in the next three weeks.
He also said it was the goal of the Herbst and Primm families to try to keep all workers who received a termination notice employed.
Clemetson said he was excited about Primm’s future under Terrible’s and chalked up its bankruptcy in 2010 to the Great Recession.
“They suffered a similar fate of many big brands like MGM and Caesar’s,” Clemetson said.
“They’re very well thought of in Nevada and they’re a very successful family who’s done well,” he added.
Speaking of Primm’s chances of regaining its former glory, Clemetson reached back into his own past as a young sports agent for players on the L.A. Galaxy soccer team.
“I can’t tell you how many people told me I was dumb to get involved representing soccer players because soccer would never make it here,” he said. “Now, Major League Soccer has a few franchises over a billion dollars.”
As for Tim Herbst and his family, “we believe Primm’s best days are still ahead.”
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