The best and brightest simply aren't going to want to come to the U.S. for an uncertain future where they'll be harassed at the airport every trip and then defunded or deported at any time for "political" reasons (a.k.a. racism, bigotry, religion, ignorance and anti-intellectualism).
Amazingly, we're only 200 days into this administration.
We have 3 years, 5 months and 12 days left, assuming we still have free and fair elections in 2028.
For the next several years, the administration is going to continue to dismantle our country's foundations brick by brick, enabled by Congress and SCOTUS. The attack on immigrants is in full swing, but the total takeover of science, public education, universities and mass media is actually just beginning.
The midterms are in 2026. A swapped House (and/or Senate, but less likely) would drastically shift power.
What exactly do you think will change? The administration is already ignoring the law with impunity. Unless there's a big enough swing so that impeachment and conviction is a reality, Congress will have essentially zero impact.
Around 40% of the country still supports the president unconditionally. They are truly ecstatic with what's happened so far. The other 60% are being gerrymandered so their majority status is inconsequential. If Republicans do lose the House, it'll most likely be by a small margin, and the current Congress will rush through a bunch of laws to be signed that will make the next one as useless as possible.
And even if there was in fact a huge swing allowing Congress to try and stop the White House's wrecking ball, the amount of damage between now and January 2027 will be monumental and irreversible.
> The administration is already ignoring the law with impunity
Can you provide an example where they've ignored a Supreme Court ruling?
And the histrionics around this are uniquely relative to modern norms. Look up the shenanigans around Marbury v Madison https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marbury_v._Madison#Backgroun...
Joisting for power between federal branches (and with states, historically) has been a constant in American democracy more often (most of its history) than not (1970s+).
> Around 40% of the country still supports the president unconditionally
Yes, such is the danger of personality cults in democracies.
> The other 60% are being gerrymandered so their majority status is inconsequential.
Gerrymandering has always been a finger on the scales of elections, and will continue to be, until such time as Congress puts a stop to it (though debatable they have the power). https://gerrymander.princeton.edu/
> the amount of damage between now and January 2027 will be monumental and irreversible.
I imagine FDR's ghost is spinning in his grave, with things to say about Hoover.
How about the case where the Supreme Court told the administration to obey a lower court's order and facilitate Kilmar Abrego Garcia's return to the US [1]? The Trump administration openly defied the Supreme Court's order for nearly 2 months (April 11 to June 6) [2][3]. Setting aside whether the "temporary" violation of a Supreme Court order has been legally resolved, the administration brought Garcia back to press (hypocritical and doubtful) human smuggling charges to justify deporting Garcia again, and a judge let Garcia stay in jail for longer otherwise necessary because the judge thought the administration would deport Garcia before he could have his trial [4].
[1] https://www.techdirt.com/2025/04/11/even-the-supreme-court-s...
[2] https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mdd.578...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deportation_of_Kilmar_Abrego_G...
[4] https://apnews.com/article/abrego-garcia-deportation-immigra...
If the Supreme Court had wanted to order him back immediately, it would have done so.
The facts are that this administration has skated on and just over the line with regards to lower courts, especially in matters of immigration, but has yet to ignore a directive from the Supreme Court.
If you're aware of an actual example, feel free to provide it.
The word "histrionic" is what really got me though. We're well past the stage where anyone deeply cynical about the state of things and the foreseeable future can be accused of histrionics. And we're way beyond any previous historical analogies.
My whole point is that the damage to the country is permanent. Whether it'll eventually destroy the Union has yet to be determined.
I.e. anyone who believes that adjectives suffice where facts fail
There are things that are not happening and things that are happening. Trying to phrase the former into the latter doesn't do anything but hasten a post-truth era.
What is it they say in America? "Oh sweet, summer child?"
Honestly and seriously: look at the abuse of power and its escalation. Consider the consequences to Trump if he lets the House flip. Impeachment again and this time removal really would seem likely.
Now consider, in all detached seriousness: why would a man who tried a coup and thinks he can disappear people to El Salvador let that happen?
Now consider that he's trying to force the creation of a new census that doesn't count illegal immigrants, which is obviously about denying the democrats seats, and he's fired someone for producing numbers he doesn't like and replaced them with "all new numbers".
It's not going to be the end of his interference, right?
The midterms, if they happen, will not flip the House. If they do, he will try to delay, confuse, challenge, set them aside, produce alternative results, claim massive fraud, or interfere with their certification. If he can't stop them, he will threaten them individually until they quit. (Don't say "he can't stop the election, under the constitution"; it's a meaningless phrase now)
You're not having a normal election in 2026.
Even if I turn out to be wrong, I really wish people would start acting as if predictions like these are entirely plausible. Because they are. He's moving much faster than critics expected, and yet he's doing all the things they expected.
Because he has an ego the size of a planet and cares about his legacy.
Being remembered as the president that broke democracy is not his mental narrative.
Those doing and supporting what's happening a) care only about power, b) honestly think they and America is superior, c) both and d) think this time is different assuming they are educated and know history.
Hopefully people remember this for next time.
Nah, there was nothing "poor communication" about it. It was very well done bad faith communication from bad actors. It was intentional lies. This was not a fault of communication of these institutions. They can not match the lies machine from well founded and motivated political groups. And that is about it.
Trust of our institutions, scientific and other, had been deliberately destroyed by anti-intellectual political hacks over the past few decades. Some from appealing to regressive religious fundamentalism, but much just shameless ignorant grandstanding of painting the complex world as unfair. And it's mostly those same hacks who are now supporting the wanton burning of our societal institutions while continuing to whitewash it as "conservatism".
Sorry, the fault here lays entirely with the fascists - most especially with the people supporting them who should have known better.
Hopefully people who have voted for this and defending this remember this as the beginning of the end of American exceptionalism. It's certainly not happening any time soon. Maybe decades later but these things will be remembered in the same way as Mccarthyism.
American exceptionalism has always been a weird delusion, I don't see that ending. USA not being a market leader in <whatever>, now that can end and it's starting to happen for sure.
But that happens in unprecedented amounts in a developed and organised country, maybe soon developing...
If everyone tomorrow just stopped working around the world, that would paint a pretty picture.
That is the only only way to stop dictatorship while it is still possible.
- science funding is controlled by the state (and thus politics) in many leading countries, especially China. Doesn't seem to hold them back
- the US pays people vastly more than other countries, and will continue to have the ability to fund expensive research more than others. Maybe it will regain the political will to do so in coming years
You're right that uncertainty is deadly to investment, and signing up for 5 years of a PhD is certainly an investment. But it's hard to see this turn into an actual brain drain, if only for lack of a better place to go.
After all, why bother doing research when the guy ultimately responsible for choosing your funding will take a sharpie to any data you collect if it looks bad?
Probably not. Grants were always under political control, right? This is just shifting political control from one part of a government agency to another part of the government agency.
> The order also instructs agencies to formalize the ability to cancel previously awarded grants at any time if they're considered to "no longer advance agency priorities."
Now? One of your grad students says something a little too on the nose on Bsky, and your lab gets shut down.
Sure. In the same vein, you have always been at war with Eurasia.
My understanding is the grants you're talking about are generally for small student salaries as they work on a given project simultaneously with their continued education. Is there not another way to fund these projects? Is there not a better way to engage students into these projects? I don't recall most students having a wide array of choices when it comes to taking on these opportunities.
Is this not a chance to improve a rather ancient and clumsy system?
I seriously doubt that there is any will to improve the system.
> My understanding is the grants you're talking about are generally for small student salaries as they work on a given project simultaneously with their continued education.
Grants cover a much larger part of the work at labs. Basically, a grant could be paying anything except tenured salaries and administrative costs.
You can't really enroll graduate students for a 5 year PHD project if their funding can be pulled at a moment's notice like this.