Science won. At least, that’s one of the takeaways from last week’s midterm elections. If you were one of the 124 million Americans who voted, you probably already know that there was a Blue Wave, with resounding Democrat victories across the country, even in historically red areas.
Georgia not only reelected its Democrat Senator — no surprise — but also elected a Democrat Governor, who will be the first black woman governor in the country, no less. Iowa elected a Democrat Senator and Governor. South Carolina is sending a Democrat to the Senate, and Mississippi — Mississippi!!! — may as well. Even Kansas elected a Democrat Senator, the first such in almost 100 years. Ohio and Texas not only flipped their Senators and Governors but Democrats won all the statewide elections.
Truly strange times.
I’m allowing myself to hope that we’ll finally have a Congress that will fulfill its constitutional duties of acting as a counterbalance to the power of the Presidency, but one thing I’m particularly excited about is the prospect these results will be less about being a Blue wave than what The Washington Post called a “STEM wave.” Among the newcomers to Congress are a record number of physicians and scientists. They’re going to have their hands full.
Much has been written (including by me) about the Trump Administration’s attacks on science. Just last week The New York Times reported on How Trump Is Dismantling America’s Scientific Research Machine. Amid cuts in research grants, resignations and firings of top scientists, departures of leading scientists to other countries, and reductions in Ph.D. students, the Defense Department warned that its “innovation engine is at risk of stalling.” Even people who aren’t defense hawks should realize that spells big trouble for American science in general, and for all of us.
A year ago I wrote about how organizations like 314 Action and Stand Up for Science were leading the resistance to the attacks on science. 314 Action, for example, spent some $23 million on pro-science candidates, doubling its 2024 donations. Shaughnessy Naughton, president of 314 Action, told Alexander Nazaryan of The New York Times that the election results, especially the incoming scientist lawmakers, represent “a real repudiation of what has been two terrible years for science and public health.”
Deborah D. Stine, who served as the executive director of the President’s Council of Advisers on Science and Technology during the Obama administration, told Mr. Nazaryan: “The importance of having scientists, engineers and health professionals in national, state and local political positions cannot be overstated.” Mr. Nazaryan highlights a mathematician, a microbiologist, a chemical engineer, and engineer, and several physicians who are part of the wave. Kudos to the NYT headline writers: These Newly Elected Lawmakers Know Something Trump Doesn’t: Science.
“It’s a new day in Washington,” Gretchen Goldman, president and CEO of the Union of Concerned Scientists, told Adam Kovac of Scientific American. “There’s huge opportunities for science, for democracy, for getting accountability for these attacks on science that we’ve seen. We are keen to get to work pushing back.” Colette Delawalla, founder and CEO of Stand Up for Science, added: “Thinking through how all of this could pan out, this outcome is better than any eventuality that we worked through.”
In another NYT article on the topic, Rep. Zoe Lofgren, who is expected to lead the House Science committee in the new Congress, warned: “In some cases, the damage can’t be undone, But we can prevent it from continuing.” She told Jeffrey Mervis of Science: “My top priority is to help the U.S. science enterprise recover from the blows it’s received from the Trump administration and also get some wins for the American people when it comes to legislation that never was approved.”
Newly elected Representative Jasmine Clark, a microbiologist/scienced educator/political activist, added to Mr. Mervis: “People show what they care about by how they spend their money. And as Democrats we need to be able to show people, show the science community, and show the public health community that we prioritize health and research.”
The NYT article highlighted four ways the STEM wave could impact science policy:
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Reclaiming the Grant-Making Machine
“The power of the purse belongs to CONGRESS!” Senator Patty Murray of Washington, the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, wrote on X. “It’s NOT Trump’s money. Taxpayer dollars belong to the American PEOPLE.”
New Investigative Targets
“A lot of how the new majority will try to drive change is through investigations and hearings,” said Mitch Benzine, senior counsel in the congressional investigations practice at the law firm Eversheds Sutherland.
A.I. Guardrails
Restrictions on data centers, regulations for A.I. development, and new protections for copyright holders (against LLM data scraping) are all in play.
Safe Space
Already bipartisan for programs such as NASA and N.I.H, will get even stronger.
I’m excited to see what impact these newcomers can have on science and health policy, but we have to remember that they’re still in the minority among all the lawyers and millionaires in Congress, and that Congress has never shown itself to be very nimble — and certainly less nimble than the Trump Administration. Even more concerning, there are headwinds against science that are not solely attributable to President Trump.
In Nature, Miryam Naddaf illustrates how academic freedom has been declining in recent years in several countries — most notably, the United States. Citing the latest annual report from Scholars at Risk (SAR), there has been a steep decline in academic freedom in the United States, and not just since the start of the second Trump Administration. “The pressures on higher education are not limited to one election [or] one administration,” says Robert Quinn, founding executive director of SAR.
The report warns:
According to the Academic Freedom Index (AFI), since 2020, academic freedom has declined dramatically in the US. In 2019, the AFI rated the US as “fully free” with respect to academic freedom. By 2025, it was rated “moderately restricted.”…The US’s decline in university autonomy was particularly rapid, deteriorating by 50 percent over a 10-year period from 2015 to 2025.
Certainly the first Trump Administration started some of the attacks, and the second has dramatically broadened them, but state legislatures are complicit in many of the restrictions on academic freedom, and many of those legislatures weren’t swamped by the Blue wave.
So let’s be optimistic about the Blue wave. Let’s be hopeful in particular about it being a STEM wave. But let’s not forget that the war on science is not over, that our science infrastructure has taken terrible blows, and that there are many battles yet to come.
