Natalie B Aviles

Thanks to legislation passed by the US Congress on 3 February, government spending on research and development unrelated to national defence is expected to decrease by 3–7% in the current fiscal year. This is much less than the 33% cut sought by President Donald Trump last year. Trump one year on: How six US researchers plan to protect science amid chaos and cuts The news has brought relief to many US scientists. We welcome this development. But US science is a long way from being in good shape.

An ideological current gained traction in the last quarter of the twentieth century in the United States, a growing claim that true innovation is a property of the private sector. Associated with the slow beginnings of a war on government spending, this perspective ignored the mid-century achievements of the Manhattan Project, Project Apollo, or the Cancer Moonshot and drove home a different message. Government agencies are slow, wasteful, and unnecessarily bureaucratic.

Every new administration brings with it a churn of new priorities and new personnel throughout the executive branch. This generally happens above the steady work of federal employees keeping government agencies and services running. But a recent US Supreme Court decision may prefigure deeper changes in how agencies operate. The court’s ruling in Loper Bright Enterprises v.