Soon-to-be US president Donald Trump (left) and his vice-president, J.D. Vance, at an election night watch party.Credit: Evan Vucci/AP Photo/Alamy
Scientists around the world expressed disappointment and alarm as Republican Donald Trump won the final votes needed to secure the US presidency in the early hours of 6 November. Owing to Trump’s anti-science rhetoric and actions during his last term in office, many are now bracing for four years of attacks on scientists inside and outside the government.
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“In my long life of 82 years … there has hardly been a day when I felt more sad,” says Fraser Stoddart, a Nobel laureate who left the United States last year and is now chair of chemistry at the University of Hong Kong. “I’ve witnessed something that I feel is extremely bad, not just for the United States, but for all of us in the world.”
“I am shocked, but not surprised”, given how polarized US politics are right now, says Michael Lubell, a physicist at the City College of New York in New York City, who tracks federal science-policy issues. The implications of the win for both government policy and science are profound, especially because of Trump’s deep scepticism of scientists and other specialists who manage public health and environmental policy within the federal government, Lubell says.
Votes are still being counted in many places, but Trump has already won enough US states to sail to a resounding victory over his opponent, vice-president and Democrat Kamala Harris. Trump addressed his supporters as the victor early today, declaring his coalition “the greatest political movement of all time”.
Republicans also look primed to win the upper chamber of the US Congress — the Senate — flipping at least three Democratic seats, although there are four more competitive races that have yet to be called for either party. It could be days or weeks before the final results are in for the lower chamber, the US House of Representatives, but it seems likely that Republicans will retain control. This would give Trump and his party full control of government in Washington DC.
“We need to be ready for a new world,” says Grazyna Jasienska, a longevity researcher at Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland. “I am trying to be optimistic, but it is hard to find any positive aspects for global science and public health if Republicans take over.”
Worries pour in
Trump has in the past called climate change a hoax and pulled the country out of the Paris climate agreement; he has said he would give Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a political figure who has denied the effectiveness of vaccines, a “big role” in his administration, and he has promised to make it easier to fire specialists such as scientists from the US government who oppose his political agenda.
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Worries pouring in this morning align with those expressed by the majority of readers who responded last month to a survey conducted by Nature. Eighty-six per-cent of the more than 2,000 people who answered the poll said that they favoured Harris, owing to concerns including climate change, public health and the state of US democracy. Some even said they would consider changing where they live or study if Trump won.
Responses geared towards that sentiment have come swiftly. Tulio de Oliveira, a prominent virologist at the Centre for Epidemic Response and Innovation at Stellenbosch University in South Africa, posted on X (the social-media platform formerly known as Twitter): “With the changes around the world, you may want to relocate to one of the best Universities in [South Africa] in one of the world’s most beautiful region!”, he said and linked to job ads for postgraduate and postdoctoral fellowships.
Not all researchers are against a Trump presidency, however. Of those who responded to Nature’s reader survey, 6% expressed a preference for Trump — usually citing concerns about security issues and the economy. One reader who agreed to be contacted but did not want their name to be used, worried about Trump’s hostility towards science and evidence. Nonetheless, the respondent, a longtime nurse from Wilmington, North Carolina, said they would vote for Trump because, “at the end of the day, I want to be safe, and I want to be able to take care of my family.”
Lessons learnt
Others, though, are focused on what a second Trump presidency will mean for science. “Perhaps one of my biggest worries … is that Trump will be another nail in the coffin for trust in science”, given his anti-science rhetoric, says Lisa Schipper, a geographer specializing in climate change vulnerability at the University of Bonn in Germany. According to a survey of thousands of US adults by the Pew Research Center in Washington DC, the percentage of people who say that science has had a positive effect on society has been declining steadily since 2019.
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“I’m speechless, but I think it’s a learning moment,” says Sheila Jasanoff, a social scientist at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Trump’s victory illustrates a fundamental disconnect between academic researchers and many Republican voters. Finding common ground will require social engagement and likely humility on the part of scientists, who have yet to fully grapple with this social and political divide. For many Republicans, “the problem is us” — the academic ‘elites’, Jasanoff says.
Some have already begun to think about January 2025, when Trump is slated to take office. “I hope we can convince the Trump administration to adopt a bold evidence-based science agenda and to hire people who are skilled and competent to implement it,” says Georges Benjamin, the executive director of the American Public Health Association in Washington DC. But the last time he was in office, Benjamin adds, “he had some absolutely amazing scientists who worked for him, and then he undermined them — he didn’t follow their advice” — in particular by publicly rebuking them and not pushing a strong response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Starting now, we are going to need brave people, people willing to push back, protect the vulnerable, and do what’s right over what’s easy,” says one senior official with the US Environmental Protection Agency, who declined to be named because they were afraid of retribution under a new Trump administration. “We do have to remember what’s right. And what’s right is protecting public health and the environment.”
This is a breaking news story and will be updated throughout the day.
With additional reporting from Davide Castelvecchi, Elizabeth Gibney and Max Kozlov.
