I think science will survive the Trump administration.
There will always be room for what can be proven scientifically and mathematically. Gravity still works. Bridges still collapse if miscalculated. Markets still punish bad arithmetic. Even the most determined fundamentalism can only push back on reality so far. Governing becomes difficult when nine plus ten equals twenty-one.
(Though RFK Jr. may yet try.)
More interesting—and more dangerous—is the sustained attack on the social sciences: fields that deal not in equations, but in consequences.
Immigration crackdowns lead to labor shortages. Tariffs raise prices. Inflation follows. These relationships are well understood—but harder to prove in the moment, and easier to dispute rhetorically. So the response becomes: let’s “give it a chance.”
The same is true of psychology, sociology, and history. White nationalism, brutal enforcement tactics, and constant institutional stress plainly affect a society’s mental health and cohesion. But how do you prove that in a single chart? How do you quantify fear, distrust, or the normalization of cruelty?
And so these disciplines are dismissed as ideological, “soft,” or captured by academics who must be purged in the name of balance. With the right people installed, we’re told, even history can be made more neutral.
What’s most unsettling is how little internal resistance remains. Large parts of the media echo administration framing without interrogation. Repetition becomes its own proof. Meaning begins to bend. And when a claim can’t be easily falsified, power asks a simple question: who’s to say otherwise?
That is the real threat—not to science, which resists distortion, but to forms of knowledge that require judgment, memory, and moral clarity. Those are easier to undermine, and far harder to rebuild once dismissed as optional.