Project 2025 and Science and Technology Policy
You may have heard of the Project 2025 Presidential Transition Project, developed by the Heritage Foundation, which is the most prominent of the conservative think tanks and has, in the past, proposed science and technology (S&T) policies that most in the S&T community do not support. Although former President Trump denies affiliation with the project, many who have served or are likely to serve under a potential second Trump Administration are affiliated, so this may be a forewarning of our future in 2025. The New York Times provided an excellent overview if you’d like to know more.
I was curious to see if S&T policy was mentioned. The answer is that it is. In my quick review of the 900-page document, I found a few action items.
1. Enhance Role of White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) on Science Manipulation for Public Policy: “If science is being manipulated at the agencies to support separate political and institutional agendas, the President should increase the prominence of the OSTP’s Director either formally or informally. This would elevate the role of science in policy discussions and subsequent outcomes and theoretically help to balance out agencies like the Departments of Energy, State, and Commerce and the Environmental Protection Agency and Council on Environmental Quality. The OSTP can also help to bring technical expertise to regulatory matters in support of OMB.”
Enhance OSTP Activities on R&D Coordination: “The OSTP should continue to play a lead role in coordinating federal R&D programs. Recent legislation, especially the CHIPS and Science Act, has expanded federal policy and funding across the enterprise, and there is a need for more significant leadership in this area both to ensure effectiveness and to avoid duplication of effort. As befitting its location in the White House, the OSTP must be concerned with advancing national interests and not merely the parochial concerns of departments, agencies, or parts of the scientific community.”
Reduce OSTP List of Industries of the Future. “During the Trump and Biden Administrations, there has been a bipartisan focus on prioritizing R&D funding around the so-called Industries of the Future (IOTF). Under President Trump, IOTF priorities were artificial intelligence (AI), quantum information science (QIS), advanced communications/5G, advanced manufacturing, and biotechnology. Under President Biden, this list has been expanded to include advanced materials, robotics, battery technology, cybersecurity, green products and clean technology, plant genetics and agricultural technologies, nanotechnology, and semiconductor and microelectronics technologies. These priorities should be evaluated and narrowed to ensure consistency with the next Administration’s priorities.”
2. Reshape the USGCRP: “The President should also issue an executive order to reshape the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) and related climate change research programs. The USGCRP produces strategic plans and research (for example, the National Climate Assessment) that reduce the scope of legally proper options in presidential decision-making and in agency rulemakings and adjudications. Also, since much environmental policymaking must run the gauntlet of judicial review, USGCRP actions can frustrate successful litigation defense in ways that the career bureaucracy should not be permitted to control. The process for producing assessments should include diverse viewpoints. The OSTP and OMB should jointly assess the independence of the contractors used to conduct much of this outsourced government research that serves as the basis for policymaking. The next President should critically analyze and, if required, refuse to accept any USGCRP assessment prepared under the Biden Administration.”
Limit USGCRP Activities: “The President should also restore related EOP research components to their purely informational and advisory roles. Consistent with the Global Change Research Act of 1990, USGCRP-related EOP components should be confined to a more limited advisory role. These components should include but not necessarily be limited to the OSTP; the NSTC’s Committee on Environment; the USGCRP’s Interagency Groups (for example, the Carbon Cycle Interagency Working Group); and the Federal Coordinating Council for Science, Engineering, and Technology. As a general matter, the new Administration should separate the scientific risk assessment function from the risk management function, which is the exclusive domain of elected policymakers and the public.”
3. Reverse Science Equity Initiatives: “[T]he next Administration will face a significant challenge in unwinding policies and procedures that are used to advance radical gender, racial, and equity initiatives under the banner of science. Similarly, the Biden Administration’s climate fanaticism will need a whole-of-government unwinding. As with other federal departments and agencies, the Biden Administration’s leveraging of the federal government’s resources to further the woke agenda should be reversed and scrubbed from all policy manuals, guidance documents, and agendas, and scientific excellence and innovation should be restored as the OSTP’s top priority.”
4. “Conduct a whole-of-government assessment and consolidation of science. Before the start of a new Administration, there should be a review of all the federal science agencies. This should include a review of the ill-advised attempt to expand the National Science Foundation’s mission from supporting university research to supporting an all-encompassing technology transition. Specific to DOE, there should be a review to measure, prioritize, and consolidate DOE programs based on a range of beneficial factors, including degree of relationship to national security; furtherance of energy security (cyber but also international aspects); and importance to scientific discovery/advancement.”
5. Stop Conflict of Interest at NIH/CDC: “The incestuous relationship between the NIH, CDC, and vaccine makers — with all of the conflict of interest it entails — cannot be allowed to continue, and the revolving door between them must be locked. As Severino writes, “Funding for scientific research should not be controlled by a small group of highly paid and unaccountable insiders at the NIH, many of whom stay in power for decades. The NIH monopoly on directing research should be broken.” What’s more, NIH has long “been at the forefront in pushing junk gender science.” The next HHS secretary should immediately put an end to the department’s foray into woke transgender activism.”
6. Eliminate Perspective of Abortion as Healthcare: “HHS also pushes abortion as a form of “health care,” skirting and sometimes blatantly defying the Hyde Amendment in the process. [Roger] Severino writes that the “FDA should…reverse its approval of chemical abortion drugs because the politicized approval process was illegal from the start.” In addition, HHS programs often violate the spirit, and sometimes the letter, of conscience-protection laws. Severino writes that the HHS “Secretary should pursue a robust agenda to protect the fundamental right to life, protect conscience rights, and uphold bodily integrity rooted in biological realities, not ideology.” The next secretary should also reverse the Biden Administration’s focus on “‘LGBTQ+ equity,’ subsidizing single-motherhood, disincentivizing work, and penalizing marriage,” replacing such policies with those encouraging marriage, work, motherhood, fatherhood, and nuclear families.”
7. Restart the China Initiative: “The DOJ’s China Initiative under President Trump reflected the department’s priority of combating Chinese threats to our national security. . . key goals for the China Initiative . . .included development of an enforcement strategy concerning researchers in labs and universities who were being coopted into stealing critical U.S. technologies, identification of opportunities to address supply-chain threats more effectively, and education of colleges and universities about potential threats from Chinese influence efforts on campus. In February 2022, the Biden Administration terminated the department’s China Initiative largely out of a concern for poor “optics.”
As you can imagine, there is a great deal more in the document, so if you’re interested in a specific government organization, then it is best to go to the whole document and search for it. Just be prepared to be depressed as you read it. On the other hand, opposition research is a good thing. If you don’t know what the other side is saying, you can’t fight it.
This article is from my LinkedIn Inform and Influence S&T Policy Newsletter, which serves as a practical guide to the victories and struggles in Science and Technology Policy and how to make a difference. You can subscribe to it on LinkedIn.
