We Need to Prepare for the Mammoth Task of De-Trumpification |
Forgot Your Password?
New to The Nation? Subscribe
Print subscriber? Activate your online access
.nation-small__b{fill:#fff;}
We Need to Prepare for the Mammoth Task of De-Trumpification
The damage he and his cronies have wrought could take decades to repair, particularly when it comes to science and public health.
Donald Trump attends a UFC fight in Miami on April 11, 2026.
Back in December, after Donald Trump renamed the Kennedy Center in his own honor, Kerry Kennedy, the daughter of the late Robert F. Kennedy (that’s Kennedy Sr., not the misbegotten son), posted on X: “Three years and one month from today, I’m going to grab a pickax and pull those letters off that building, but I’m going to need help holding the ladder. Are you in? Applying for my carpenter’s card today, so it’ll be a union job!!!”
The De-Trumpification of buildings and other edifices of our narcissist in chief, and the melting down of his commemorative gold coins, will fill many of us with joy, but the effects of this monster’s reign will be long-lasting. There will be a long road to recovery, in many cases, with damage that will take decades to repair.
In public health, biomedicine, and other sciences alone, we have a generational task ahead of us. Just to rebuild what we’ve lost will take a “Marshall Plan” for these fields. Whole agencies have been decimated; divisions dissolved, thousands of civil servants who made these places run fired, data erased, key bodies like the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices populated by cranks and quacks, others like the US Preventive Services Task Force put in limbo, and study sections and advisory councils at NIH thrown into disarray. Procedural rat-fucking has slashed the number of grants funded, while capable leaders are replaced by cronies and ideologues, often with little professional expertise or experience.
You don’t just switch the lights back on for these things after Trump is gone and expect to find everything just as it was. From NIH, FDA, SAMHSA, CMS, and CDC, to NSF, NOAA, EPA, and NASA, the harm is so significant that massive amounts of resources will be needed just to bring us back to baseline, let alone prepare ourselves for the challenges of the 21st century and beyond.
If the Democrats win back the White House, Senate, and House, they are........