"The rest of the world is going to forge new relationships, attract the best and the brightest away from the US. Major research and scientific advances will more frequently happen elsewhere. The US will become a backwater dominated by racists and religious bigots with an increasingly resentful population, dominated by an oligarchy that steals more and more of the citizens’ future from them and their children. A bleak future awaits this country.
The erosion of trust in the US won’t be restored by a Democrat in the
White House because the rest of the world knows that they are only ever 4 years
away from another belligerent, ignorant demagogue, elected by an increasingly
dumbed down population." - NY Times comment
Looking Back On Last Week's Solar Dynamics Workshop - One Of The Best Meetings I've Ever Attended
We learned from organizer Dean Presnell that "up to ten percent of those giving presentations could be joining breadlines by September". This was thanks to the deranged DOGE- inspired cuts at NOAA.
Breadlines? It is just as likely they will be off to more hospitable countries, namely those that will welcome foreign physicists, space physicists, astronomers and engineers. But don't take my word for it. WSJ columnist Chris Mims makes pretty well the same prediction in his recent column 'America's Brain Drain Could Become The World's Brain Gain' (Business Exchange, p.B2, July 11). As Mims puts it in his opening paragraph:
"The U.S.'s dramatic research and funding cuts and changes to skilled worker immigration policies, threaten one of its greatest economic advantages: people -powered innovation. But the rest of the world stands to benefit."
Indeed! I still recall talking with my Chinese office mate Cao Fei before leaving the Geophysical Institute at the University of Alaska- Fairbanks, in May, 1986. This was after completing my own research assistantship in space physics. It turned out Cao Fei, (see top photo) would be staying another two years after developing a first of its kind numerical simulation program for auroral plasma. A sketch he left with me is instructive, showing how he began by computing the drift velocity in a typical magnetospheric 'bounce period', e.g.
He explained this work, if successful, could ultimately lead to showing how the existence of strong currents along magnetic field lines - which close through the ionosphere - lead to magnetic perturbations during times of strong magnetospheric activity.
I don't know how it turned out as I left to continue my own solar flare research in Barbados, leading to publication of a paper in Solar Physics Letters within a year, e.g.
Whether Cao completed his own numerical simulations to do with the aurora I can't say, but I am fairly confident he did and remained in his research assistantship at the Institute. In today's chaotic era of Trumpian ignorance and short sightedness, it's likely he'd have been forced to return to Beijing University.
Mims' further observations on our current state of affairs is as troubling as his opening paragraph:
"A March 2025 survey by the journal Nature of more than 1,600 scientists in the U.S. found that three quarters have considered leaving the country. Respondents specifically cited the Trump administration's hostility to scientific research and those who practice it."
Especially foreign students I might add. As Mims goes on:
"Historically, three quarters of international students who earn a Ph.D. in the U.S. have stayed long term. America's ability to retain these workers - who are not just highly trained but expensive to educate - has been one key to the country's pre-eminence in innovation."
So why toss that into the dustbin leaving the Chinese, EU and others to pick up the talent and leave us in the proverbial dust? Well, because the country has allowed itself to have its scientific talent and resources destroyed by the deranged DEI mind virus, used as an excuse to destroy and pillage since Trump arrived back in power.
The insanity of it all becomes apparent when, as Mr. Mims points out, the impact will be on our economy as well - which for too long the 6-time bankruptcy claiming orange fruitcake has been given credit for. As per a finding by economists at American University, a 25% cut in public research and development spending would eventually reduce the nation's gross domestic product by 3.8 percent a year.
"This is on a par with what we experienced during the Great Recession of 2007-09."
To make matters worse, Mims notes the god-awful Trump-GOP "Megabill" saw :
"America's leaders double down on slashing budgets for the country's key research bodies."
As one economist put it on Chris Hayes' ALL In last week, this constitutes an "own goal" in soccer parlance. In our case, a Mega unforced error to impact our country for decades. What was Trump and Co. thinking? Well, they weren't. They simply went on a blind rage anti DEI rampage - and let the bodies (and money) fall where they may.
In the words of Nobel laureate Frances Arnold, quoted in the WSJ piece:
"At stake today is our position as a worldwide beacon for brilliant minds, which now will be going elsewhere - given the lights have been dimmed in the U.S."
Trump and his rabid anti-DEI minions have effectively ensured the U.S. will race to second class nation status as the Chinese leapfrog us on every front. It needn't have been so, but too many ignorant voters in the 2024 general election preferred a bombastic felon over an intelligent woman of "DEI" background.
See Also:
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by Thom Hartmann | July 19, 2025 - 5:05am | permalink
Every day, it seems, we see or hear about another way in which Trump and his lickspittles in Congress and the various federal agencies are tearing down our country, weakening our defenses, pitting Americans against each other, looting our government, and making life harder for everybody except the morbidly rich.
The question nobody seems to have an answer to is, “Why?”
— Is it that, as Craig Unger seems to suggest, that he’s been a Russian agent for decades and is setting us up to lose to the newly-forming Axis of Russia and China?
— Is it that he spent so many years burning with rage and embarrassment at not being accepted by New York high society that he’s just come to hate America?
— Could it be that America-fearing foreign powers that have poured literally billions of dollars into the Trump family are paying him to tear us apart so they’ll never again have to endure the humiliation of having their human, civil, and women’s rights records called out by a future administration?
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