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war on science
How to Defeat Trump's Unholy Alliance
Can the rest of us organize a powerful, humane alternative to Donald Trump's politics of hatred and division that could transform this country and the world?
May 28, 2026
Donald Trump’s America is a scary place in significant part thanks to an unholy alliance of MAGA devotees who don’t believe in science and see intellectuals as public enemy number one, and a gaggle of Silicon Valley militarists who think that they’re the smartest people in the room, if not the universe. Add in white Christian nationalists who abuse religious precepts to sow hatred and division and you have the foundations of the political base that elected Donald Trump (twice!). And worse yet, those groupings are likely to be with us long after our current president has gone off to that great cheeseburger stand in the sky.
Still, it’s worth reflecting on whether such an odd coalition of allies can survive without Donald Trump, or even with a president whose policies have become so harmful and irrational that they’re doing severe human and economic damage even to his most loyal supporters (not to mention the rest of us). And it’s also worth considering whether the pillars of the MAGA movement can manage to stick together in the ever-grimmer Trumpian years to come, not to speak of the post-Trumpian ones, or whether the rest of us can organize a powerful, humane alternative to his politics of hatred and division that could transform this country and the world.
The Know-Nothings Meet the Know-It-Alls
As a start, we have the latter-day “Know Nothings,” a term borrowed from a 19th century political movement. It’s not that members of that group literally know nothing. Some of them are quite skilled in their given professions and astute at assessing certain kinds of situations. Some are intelligent but woefully misguided. Trump supporter and former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson, for example, is a brain surgeon.
Members of the anti-science crowd are also often very good at communicating their messages, however wrongheaded or offensive they may be. The problem isn’t that they can’t take in information; it’s that they are distinctly anti-knowledge when it comes to, among other things, separating compelling conspiracy theories from well-documented facts.
Rather than DEI programs that stop at raising tough questions about America’s long history of systematic discrimination, what’s needed are programs that truly change people’s lives by creating better-paying jobs and affordable, quality healthcare for all.
The results of their ingrained antagonism toward basic knowledge are profound, making them a threat to public health and democratic practices. After all, we now live in a country where millions of people are against vaccinating their children to prevent potentially deadly diseases and don’t believe that perhaps the gravest threat to continuing life on this planet—climate change—is caused, or even influenced, by human activity or perhaps is even happening at all.
The dangerous delusions of Trump Secretary of Health Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., now have the stamp of government approval and the power of the US government behind them. There is no way to estimate how many people have already fallen sick or even died unnecessarily due to the implementation of his crackpot theories, but the numbers will undoubtedly be significant. The American Public Health Association captured the grim mood of our moment perfectly in an April 2025 press release entitled “Secretary Kennedy and His Policies Are a Danger to the Public Health.”
On a different spiritual plane, tens of millions of Americans believe in the rapture—the notion that they and their kind will be called up to heaven in the end days, while the rest of us will be left behind, presumably to burn in hell (but not a climate-change version of the same). A 2022 Pew poll found that 39% of Americans believe “we are in the end times.” Already! And such a belief, of course, has an impact on how or even whether one wants to devote time and energy to fixing problems here on Earth.
Such an amalgam of opponents of science and skeptics about basic reality bears a distinct resemblance to the “Know Nothing” movement of the 19th century that thrived on anti-immigrant sentiments and half-baked conspiracy theories.
The anti-intellectual faction on the right has been propagandized for decades to believe that the biggest obstacle to a better life for them and their families isn’t the predatory corporations hollowing out our economy and manipulating our democracy, but a group of liberal intellectuals clustered on both coasts who allegedly want to replace this country’s bedrock beliefs with a set of “politically correct” prescriptions about how they should live their lives, especially when it comes to DEI or diversity, equity, and inclusion. In such a rendering of reality, that “new class” is seen as sapping the country’s strength and undermining the basic values that would make America great (again!).
The use of that “new class” as a political epithet emerged from the neoconservative movement of the 1960s and 1970s, as Andrew Hartman has explained at his blog on American intellectual history:
Out of their political repositioning in the late 1960s and 1970s, neoconservatives developed a critical theory (co-opted from anti-Stalinist thinking) about a so-called "new class" of intellectuals, broadly defined to include all professionals tasked with manipulating language—although more narrowly applied to humanists and social scientists. Members of this "new class," so the theory went, had turned their backs on the society to which they owed their high-ranking status.
However, the current Trumpian war on DEI should be considered an extension of a longstanding conservative effort to distract Americans from the real sources of their problems by promoting a politics of division and hatred. Mainstream accounts of the drive to eradicate concerns about diversity, equity, and inclusion from public life rarely point out that fighting DEI can fairly be characterized as fighting to make racism, misogyny, and anti-gay and anti-trans discrimination ever more acceptable in the sort of open, unapologetic fashion that prevailed before the modern-day civil rights, women’s rights, and gay rights movements gained strength.
The crusade—and it’s nothing less than that—against DEI needs to be called out for what it is, not treated as some sort of skirmish over language. And rather than DEI programs that stop at raising tough questions about America’s long history of systematic discrimination, what’s needed are programs that truly change people’s lives by creating better-paying jobs and affordable, quality healthcare for all, regardless of race, gender, class status, or faith. Getting there will, however, require a flowering of faith of another kind—not religious faith, but faith that we can construct an accountable government that serves the public interest, rather than, as in the present age of Donald Trump, the interests of corporations and inhumane ideologues.
Silicon Valley Saviors
In contrast to the “know nothing” faction of the political right in America is the “know it all” faction—Silicon Valley billionaires like Peter Thiel, Alex Karp, Elon Musk, and Palmer Luckey. They view themselves not just as business executives cashing in on the latest trend, but as superior beings who should be running the planet. They promise better living through technology and, as new age militarists, see robotic weapons as the future of warfare. But the idea that such new technologies will inevitably change our lives for the better or protect us from the worst has, at best, a mixed record. It depends, of course, on just who is using such technologies and for what purpose.
In addition to owning companies that create new systems grounded in artificial intelligence and machine learning, the new age militarists are angling to shape our foreign policy, our federal budget, and the future of our democracy. They literally want to become masters of the universe by figuring out how to live forever and promote the colonization of space. They dream of video games in which, as Palmer Luckey put it, “If you die in the game, you die in real life.”
To say that Thiel, Musk, Palmer Luckey, Alex Karp, and their financiers like Marc Andreessen of the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz have a high opinion of themselves—and of the potential of the technology their companies produce—would distinctly be an understatement.
The political reach of the Silicon Valley crowd has grown dramatically in the age of Donald Trump. JD Vance, his vice president, was, of course, groomed and financed by Peter Thiel, the founder of the omnipresent firm Palantir, which provides technology to patrol the border, helps Immigration and Customs Enforcement identify suspects, and has provided software to Israel that its leaders have used to step up the pace of bombing in their genocidal war in Gaza. After a stint at one of Thiel’s venture capital firms, Vance won a Senate election in Ohio with major financial backing from him and his allies.
When Trump chose Vance as his running mate, champagne corks popped in Silicon Valley and the money started flowing to help Trump get elected, including up to a quarter of a billion dollars in dark money from Elon Musk. As a result, Silicon Valley now has its man in the executive branch.
Nor is Vance alone. Former employees of tech firms like SpaceX and Anduril are now embedded in key agencies of the federal government, and Secretary of—yes!—War Pete Hegseth has gone all in on integrating AI into US military planning and practice to the delight of the billionaire tech moguls and their hangers-on.
To say that Thiel, Musk, Palmer Luckey, Alex Karp, and their financiers like Marc Andreessen of the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz have a high opinion of themselves—and of the potential of the technology their companies produce—would distinctly be an understatement.
Kathryn Boyle of Andreessen Horowitz, a self-appointed chief ideologist and cheerleader for the Silicon Valley tech takeover of America, gave a speech to the conservative American Enterprise Institute in February 2025 that analyst Gil Duran described as an effort to “equate most government actions with communist dictatorships… while positioning tech bros as the ordained saviors of the traditional family.” Boyle’s bread and butter argument—call it a potentially fatal kind of narcissism—was that only the “founders” (yes, they call themselves that!) are serious enough, skilled enough, and endowed by their creator with enough persistence to solve and reverse America’s imperial decline. The rest of us should just get out of the way and let the new techno-gods do their work.
Will Trump’s Patchwork Quilt Come Apart at the Seams?
The Trump coalition is a strange kaleidoscope of confusing views and contradictory cover stories: the know-nothings; the know-it-alls; the false prophets of white Christian nationalism, the billionaires and millionaires, the people who (once upon a time) watched too many episodes of "The Apprentice" and think Trump is a good businessman; those who want yet another tax break; those men among us who want to control what women do with their bodies, and the (mostly) men who feel liberated because Trump openly and repeatedly makes racist, sexist, anti-gay, and anti-trans statements, legitimizing vocal expressions of prejudice in a way not seen in decades.
Yes, his is a motley crew, but so far they have rallied around the president, no matter the promises he breaks or the harmful policies he jams down all of our throats (policies that could ultimately hit many die-hard Trump supporters who aren’t billionaires as hard or harder than they will hit his opponents). Fortunately, there are at least signs that his ability to thrive politically (even as his policies drive America into a ditch) may be fading. His brutal, illogical, illegal, ill-defined war on Iran—complete with genocidal rhetoric about ending an entire civilization—may be the beginning of the end of his grasp of our politics and our psyche.
Unfortunately, he may be as much a symptom of what’s wrong with America as he is a producer of deep damage to the future prospects of democratic governance and human cooperation in this country and on this planet.
Which Way Out?
Any resistance to such know-nothingism and incipient technofascism must start on a human scale. If we are ever going to build a tolerant, welcoming nation that meets the basic needs of its residents, while leaving ample room for scientific inquiry and creative endeavors of all sorts, we need to get off our machines and start talking to—and crucially, listening to—each other.
This is already happening more widely than you might imagine if you’re a prisoner of your news feed. And it’s happening not just in large gatherings like the No Kings rallies, but in local organizing around schools and housing, voter registration and education efforts, and attempts to help communities survive the double-injury of runaway capitalism and the shredding of the social safety net thanks, at least in part, to Donald Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” (which is the ugliest, most inhumane piece of legislation in living memory).
There are no guarantees in life, but in this disastrous Trumpian universe of ours, fighting the power should feel far more fulfilling than bending the knee.
We need to fight on at least three fronts—economically, politically, and culturally. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has shown just how a truly populist economic program could draw support even among diehard MAGA backers, and such a program is a necessity if we are ever to dig our way out of our current predicament.
But economics is hardly the only problem we have. There’s also the reality of racism to contend with, not to speak of a thriving anti-immigrant sensibility, and misogyny, as well as anti-gay and anti-trans discrimination—all deeply embedded in a nation that was founded as a colonial enterprise fueled by slavery and genocide. Such a history has to be transcended by embracing the values and elevating the leadership of the people most impacted by the legacy of America’s repressive past, while building a new culture based on tolerance, respect, and (yes!) love for our fellow human beings.
To be clear (as President Barack Obama would often say), by “transcend” I don’t mean ignore. We must fully acknowledge and seriously commit our society to repairing the crimes embedded in our development as a nation, not to speak of those being committed right now in Donald Trump’s America against so many of us and our planet as well.
And sadly, it’s all too obvious that coming together to save this planet and retain our basic humanity will not be easy. People are messy and, frankly, can be a pain to deal with (yours truly included). We are, however, all we have, and making the effort will matter.
I believe in the saying, attributed to leaders of the Wobblies (the radical union founded in 1905 and known formally as the Industrial Workers of the World), that we must sow the seeds of any new society in the shell of the old one. The way we treat each other in our homes, workplaces, schools, sites of worship, and other public and private spaces will determine whether we can build a better world or are fated to live in a never-endingly Trumpian one. In that context, it’s important not just to speak truth to power, but to begin trying to create alternative sources of power and good ideas aren’t enough for that. (If they were, we would already be living in a far better world.)
Building alternative power and charting a path to such a world will be a distinctly collective undertaking. A handful of charismatic leaders or courageous organizers can’t do it for us. We all need to be leaders since we are all experts (in the sense of knowing our communities and our bits of the world).
There are no guarantees in life, but in this disastrous Trumpian universe of ours, fighting the power should feel far more fulfilling than bending the knee, and if enough of us join that fight, we at least have a shot at building a society and a world worth sustaining for generations to come.
What are we waiting for?
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'More Destruction of Science': Trump Fires Every Member of US National Science Board
"This is the latest stupid move made by a president who continues to harm science and American innovation."
Apr 26, 2026
US President Donald Trump on Friday quietly fired every member of the independent board that governs the National Science Foundation, a move seen as an escalation of the administration's destructive war on science.
Members of the National Science Board (NSB) were notified in a brief email "on behalf of President Donald J. Trump" that their "position as a member of the National Science Board is terminated, effective immediately." One fired board member, chemist Willie May, told The New York Times that he was "disappointed" but not "entirely surprised," adding, "I have watched the systematic dismantling of the scientific advisory infrastructure of this government with growing alarm, and the National Science Board is simply the latest casualty."
The NSB sets the policies of the US National Science Foundation (NSF), approves major funding decisions for NSF, and advises Congress and the president on "policy matters related to science and engineering."
Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), the ranking member of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, said in a statement Saturday that "this is the latest stupid move made by a president who continues to harm science and American innovation."
“The NSB is apolitical," said Lofgren. "It advises the president on the future of NSF. It unfortunately is no surprise a president who has attacked NSF from day one would seek to destroy the board that helps guide the foundation. Will the president fill the NSB with MAGA loyalists who won't stand up to him as he hands over our leadership in science to our adversaries? A real bozo the clown move."
Alondra Nelson, an academic who resigned from the NSB last May over concerns of political interference, wrote on social media that "history will not look kindly on this administration for many reasons, but the systematic silencing of independent expertise is particularly troubling."
Since the start of his second term, Trump and his deputies have assailed science across the federal government, including by eliminating the Environmental Protection Agency's scientific research arm and firing experts en masse.
In the coming fiscal year, Trump has proposed cutting NSF's budget by nearly 55%. Additionally, the president's budget would "eliminate funding for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research," Scientific American reported. The White House plan, if approved by Congress, would also slash NASA's budget by nearly 25%.
"This is how the US loses its scientific leadership—with a reckless budget line," Leigh Stearns, a glaciologist at the University of Pennsylvania, told Scientific American.
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Trump Is Telling All The Wrong People, 'You're Fired' and Devastating America
Entire careers and livelihoods have been destroyed by this dictator using the White House to vastly enrich himself and his cronies.
Apr 26, 2026
On my radio show-podcast—the Ralph Nader Radio Hour—interviews of knowledgeable people have detailed the ravages by the cruel, serial law violator, Tyrant Trump, inflicted on millions of Americans. Still, the report from the V-Dem Institute at Sweden’s University of Gothenburg produced a jolting Common Dreams headline: 'Trump is Dismantling US Democracy at a Speed ‘Unprecedented in Modern History.’"
The report described the first year of President Donald Trump’s second term as achieving in one year what budding autocracies take a decade to accomplish, adding that “the speed of decline is comparable to some coups d’état.”
To wreck, weaken, and endanger our country, Trump disrupts the lives of millions of civil servants, contractors, small businesses, and their families. He fired or forced out hundreds of thousands of federal civil servants staffing programs that protect the health, safety, and economic well-being of tens of millions of Americans, relying on food supplements, Medicaid, government-backed loans, and innumerable other social safety nets.
Trump has especially targeted law enforcement programs directed at enforcing worker and consumer safety, financial protections, and environmental health against toxic corporations. He is taking federal cops off the corporate crime beat.
Multiply this story of undeserved misery and fragility hundreds of thousands of times.
Here are some specifics. Qualified foreign doctors have had their visas rejected. The US has a doctor shortage, especially in rural areas. These physicians were blocked by Trump from extending care in areas with no doctors.
Huge, arbitrary cuts for scientific research have closed or curtailed labs, left individual scientists pursuing crucial discoveries to save lives without the government grants funding vital promising projects. He has also accelerated a brain drain from the US to Europe and China, and reduced the number of scientists, engineers, and nurses coming to the US to work, where they are seriously needed.
Entire careers and livelihoods have been destroyed by this dictator using the White House to vastly enrich himself and his cronies.
Let’s be more specific. The New York Times published a front-page story about what is happening to employees of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), illegally closed down in the first week of Trump’s regime. This reckless action jeopardizes millions of impoverished lives abroad. The article opened with: “She was fired by email while on maternity leave, given 24 hours to clear out her desk, and left with three days of health insurance and no severance.” Her husband, also working with funding from USAID, lost his job. They are now relying on food stamps, Medicaid, and a supplemental nutrition program—long-standing programs being cravenly slashed by the Trumpsters, while giving huge tax escapes to the super rich and large corporations like Apple.
Multiply this story of undeserved misery and fragility hundreds of thousands of times. Through Elon Musk’s criminal enterprise, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), whole agencies were being illegally shattered, and virtually shut down, e.g., the Department of Education, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and the US Institute of Peace. Others were being strip-mined like the Department of Health and Human Services, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Department of Agriculture.
Trump tore up civil service union contracts. The unions are suing Trump for this breach of contract. Such lawsuits drag on interminably and are hardly covered by the media. What the union leaders and members should be doing is peaceably encircling the White House for round-the-clock vigils and featuring large signs calling Trump out in vivid language. After all, the headquarters of the AFL-CIO is less than a block from the White House for easy logistics.
What are the pretexts coming out of Trump’s snarling mouth to justify such devastation of America? One is that he accuses these agencies of being “woke,” an ill-defined word for “leftists” that he has turned into another of his four-letter epithets for his ever-true believers.
A more frequent declaration issued without substantiation is that his decisions are based on “a grave threat to national security.” His lies don’t pass the laugh test.
This pretext is always applied to Trump’s blockage of offshore wind turbines, which he strangely has long called “ugly.” Trump recently exempted oil and gas drilling in the Gulf of Mexico from measures to protect endangered species. Self-described warrior of God and Jesus Christ, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, stated that such exemptions would bolster national security by increasing domestic oil production.
Trumpian effrontery gets worse. He issued an executive order removing collective bargaining rights from hundreds of thousands of federal employees employed by a dozen agencies on national security grounds. The 1978 law he falsely invoked applied to “intelligence officers,” not to cleaners, guards, clerks, etc., in federal buildings. Again, the expected lawsuits were filed. Amid judicial delays, Trump gets his way.
When pressed by reporters to explain these pretexts, Trump’s flaks come up with ridiculous assertions promptly rebutted by specialists in each area. (See The New York Times, April 19, 2026—“Trump Has a Go-To Justification for His Contentious Decisions: National Security.”)
Who elected Trump? The Democratic Party’s feeble, cowardly, and uninspiring performance in 2024—repressing through its corporate-conflicted consultants’ decisive input from its progressive wing and civic and labor leaders—was a big factor. (See the August 27, 2024, letter to Liz Shuler).
Who unleashed this runaway felonious politician violating daily innumerable federal laws, regulations, international treaties, and constitutional provisions, constituting serious impeachable offenses? (See H.Res.1155).
First, the congressional Republicans have abjectly surrendered their oath of office to constitutionally lead the congressional branch of government. In addition, the cowardly Democrats, who could have conducted scores of “shadow hearings” to inform the media and citizenry are largely MIA.
It is time for citizens to press their Senators and Representatives to stop this Trump rampage—before it is too late. The Congressional Switchboard number is 202-224-3121.
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