Galileo Galilei was a professor of mathematics at the University of Padua from 1592 to 1610. Among his many accomplishments, he invented the experimental method based on evidence and calculation, what we now call science. Using a telescope he invented, he was able to confirm the theory put forth by Copernicus that Earth and the other planets revolved around the sun, a theory that directly conflicted with parts of the Bible.
Bertrand Russell, in his book The Problems of Philosophy, wrote, “Almost everything that distinguishes the modern world from earlier centuries is attributable to science, which achieved the most spectacular triumphs in the seventeenth century. Together with Harvey, Newton and Keplero, Galileo was a protagonist of this scientific revolution in the late Renaissance.” For his trouble, Galileo was subjected to house arrest for most of his later years. The book he wrote to explain his scientific findings was banned by the Catholic Church for centuries.
The tension between science and religion has been ongoing for hundreds of years. Both sides feel they are speaking the truth. There are those who adhere to the Answers In Genesis thesis that the Earth is approximately 6225 years old, based on their reading of the Bible. According to Quora, that figure “derives from taking the ages of the patriarchs (Noah, Shem, etc.) and adding them up, adding the 400 year time in Egypt, the time of the conquest of Canaan, and the times of the judges and the first kings of Israel until you arrive at known (mostly Egyptian) dates and then working backwards.”
Quora goes on to say, “This means that reading Genesis as history is a genre mistake, a sort of category error like assuming that your state’s automobile regulations will tell you how to fix your car’s transmission.” And yet, there are those who are unpersuaded by the scientific explanation that the Earth, in fact, is about 4.5 billion years old. They tend to have bumper stickers on their cars that read, “God said it. It’s in the Bible. I believe it. And that settles it.”
Cutting Science At The EPA
Lee Zeldin, the failed head of the Environmental Protection Agency, may be one of them. He wants nothing to do with science when it comes to the agency making decisions. In fact, on July 18, 2025, the EPA announced it would eliminate its scientific research arm and begin firing hundreds of chemists, biologists, toxicologists, and other scientists. The parallel between the EPA and the Catholic Church in the time of Galileo could not be more clear.
The New York Times reports the EPA science office “provides the independent research that underpins nearly all of the agency’s policies and regulations. It has analyzed the risks of hazardous chemicals, the impact of wildfire smoke on public health and the contamination of drinking water by hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. Its research has often justified stricter environmental rules, prompting pushback from chemical manufacturers and other industries.”
Rolling Back Emissions Rules
In April, Zeldin gleefully announced the EPA would repeal dozens of the most significant environmental regulations in the US, including those that limit pollution from tailpipes and smokestacks, protections for wetlands, and the legal basis that allows it to regulate the greenhouse gases that are heating the planet, known generally as the “endangerment finding” that classifies carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas.
But beyond that, Zeldin reframed the purpose of the EPA. In a video on X, he boasted about the changes and said his agency’s mission is to “lower the cost of buying a car, heating a home, and running a business.” Well, any eight-year-old knows that is not the mission of the EPA, but in an autocracy, what the monarch says goes.
“From the campaign trail to Day 1 and beyond, President Trump has delivered on his promise to unleash energy dominance and lower the cost of living,” Zeldin said. “We at EPA will do our part to power the great American comeback.” Nowhere in the video did he refer to protecting the environment or public health, twin tenets that have guided the agency since its founding in 1970, the New York Times pointed out at the time.
Slashing science at the EPA could have devastating effects. “Our ability to respond to climate change, the biggest existential threat facing humanity, is totally adrift,” an Earth scientist who has spent the past two decades helping collect, store, and distribute data at NASA and NOAA told The Guardian this week.
“We won’t be able to afford to continue providing the free and quality tools and services to make our data stores searchable, viewable, usable, and accessible. We might not even be able to afford to keep all the data … this will mean worse forecasts and less effective search and rescue responses leading to unnecessary and avoidable loss of life,” the scientist said.
The Guardian claimed, “Donald Trump’s assault on science — but particularly climate science — has led to unprecedented funding cuts and staff layoffs across federally funded agencies and programs, threatening to derail research tackling the most pressing issues facing Americans and humanity more broadly. A generation of scientific talent is also on the brink of being lost, with unprecedented political interference at what were previously evidence-driven agencies jeopardizing the future of US industries and economic growth.”
A Big Beautiful Mess
Legislation approved by the House and Senate recently and signed with enthusiasm by the failed president calls for a 56 percent cut to the $9 billion National Science Foundation (NSF) budget, as well as a 73 percent reduction in staff and fellowships. Graduate students who do much of the basic science will be among those hit hardest by the cuts.
The NSF is the premier federal investor in basic science and engineering, The Guardian reports. The areas hardest hit are studies aimed at addressing the unequal impact of the climate crisis and other environmental hazards, as well as any projects perceived to have a connection to diversity, equity, or inclusion.
As of this moment, 42 percent of Americans tell pollsters they are happy with the job the so-called president is doing, happy that science is being severely downgraded, happy that research grants at colleges and universities are being terminated because of a failure of political purity, happy that people who have lived in America for decades — working, paying taxes, and raising their families — are being scooped off the streets, locked up, and deported.
Justin Chen, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, Council 238, which represents more than 8,000 workers, told the New York Times the EPA science office that is being hollowed out by the funding and staffing cuts “is the heart and brain of the EPA. Without it, we don’t have the means to assess impacts upon human health and the environment. Its destruction will devastate public health in our country.”
Project 2025
The Heritage Foundation, an ultra-right-wing organization created years ago by the Koch brothers and the architects of Project 2025, has accused the EPA science office of being “bloated, unaccountable, closed, outcome-driven, hostile to public and legislative input, and inclined to pursue political rather than purely scientific goals.” In other words, it wouldn’t do what the Heritage Society wanted it to do.
The Competitive Enterprise Institute, another conservative research organization, has called for eliminating or overhauling the office’s program for evaluating toxic chemicals, known as the Integrated Risk Information System, or IRIS. “IRIS evaluations often rely on worst-case hazard assumptions that fail to consider real-world exposure scenarios,” James Broughel, a former senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, wrote in a recent blog post. He is now associated with the America First Policy Institute, a conservative think tank closely aligned with the current failed administration.
The conservatives are always thumping their chests and roaring about government waste. Elon Musk bought that line completely when he signed up to lead the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). But basic research is not something that happens on a strict timeline. The Nuclear Physics Laboratory at the University of Illinois has been at the forefront of cutting-edge science in drug discovery, cancer treatments, PET scans, and semiconductor testing. Its researchers have played a key role in research institutions like CERN and Los Alamos.
Actions Have Consequences
In 1945, Rosalind Yalow got her PhD in nuclear physics at NPL, then went on to invent radioimmunoassay — a technique to detect minute amounts of hormones, viruses, and drugs in the blood which revolutionized medical testing for conditions such as diabetes. Yalow was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1977, only the second woman ever to win it. NPL was recently informed that the NSF will slash funding for graduate students from $15 million over four years to $1 million for one year.
“Our group in nuclear physics at Illinois actually predates the founding of the NSF in 1950, and we have a long history of both producing scientists and accelerator technologies that have had an impact on huge numbers of people,” said Anne M Sickles, professor of nuclear physics at NPL. “If you cut the funding to the people who are doing the work right now, you don’t know what they would have innovated in 10 years or 15 years or 32 years like Rosalind Yalow. We don’t know what we’re losing.”
No, we don’t know what we are losing, but we do know we are losing something that is immensely valuable. It is absurd to say that eviscerating science programs will make America great again. Doing so will make America a follower instead of a leader, as researchers who once flocked to the US are taking their talents to other countries, which will profit from their efforts at America’s expense.
And still 42 percent of Americans are cheering, even as the cost of groceries, clothing, cars, and other manufactured goods climb thanks to the flawed economic policies being promoted today. The ramifications and repercussions will reverberate through history for years, possibly decades. We know that all of this war on science is driven by money from the fossil fuel industry, which has ignored the findings of its own scientists for the past 70 years and fought to keep their research from becoming public.
The Heritage Foundation has nothing to do with heritage and everything to do with preserving the profits of fossil fuel companies. DOGE has nothing to do with cutting government waste; it is a way to redirect money away from things that undermine fossil fuel profits to things that will boost those profits.
The American people have been sold a bill of goods, yet many of them say they approve of being hoodwinked by crooks, phonies, and frauds. PT Barnum was right — there’s a sucker born every minute. Based on the most recent available scientific research, there are at least 79 million suckers in America today.
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