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Comment by bboygravity | Hacker News Reader

I'm not American and I find it hard to believe that there is actually no strategy behind this whatsoever?

I get that it's what media are screaming at the top of their lungs (orange man bad etc), but there must be more behind this, no?

Then again, they did put JFK jr. in charge of making infectious disease research impossible. I couldnt think of a worse person for that or politics in general.

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No, there is no more to this. They fucking eliminated grants for studies on transgenic mice because they thought that was the same thing as transgender. That’s the level of thought and care put into this.

If there were a plan, one would hope they would have shared it?

This is my frustration - there is clearly no plan, but smart people will assume that there must be one, because they bring their own biases of how they approach problems and project that onto trump.

Trump has always been a terrible executor even when getting the initial idea correct. See all his failed businesses. In this case, along with the tariffs, his frame of reference is 40+ years out of date. He thinks that people will do whatever they have to in order to work with US. That the best and brightest won’t leave. That other countries will bow down to his will. That’s not the world today, even if a lot of Teslers are made in the US.

> The guidance said that in the event of a request that “violates or doesn’t follow proper procedures”, employees were to contact Dorothy Aronson, the NSF’s chief information officer. “Do not give any indication that the request will be denied,” the guidance statement noted. Two members of DOGE, Luke Farritor and Zachary Terrell, were quickly given complete access to NSF grant-management systems despite statements in the guidance to staffers that they should initially receive read-only access.

I feel like “don’t make them follow policy” and “we’re going to lie about the access they have” is pretty telling as to whether there’s more behind this

To answer your question -- they say "to save money".

The question is still open whether it actually saves the announced sums, or whether it saves anything at all.

The benefits of education on a country are decades long to fully see the positive outcomes. How do you expect differently by destroying said institutions? Your kids or likely kids kids will be feeling the decision of today as the beginning of the dark ages (at least in the US). Without innovative people able to achieve great progress, where does society, , hell humanity go? At the very least from a here and now position, it's a strong signal to continue pulling money out of the US and into countries that have better long term outlook.

“orange man bad” is a pretty good example of a thought-terminating cliche (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought-terminating_clich%C3...).

Talk to employees working at Federal agencies.

There no strategy. They put rfk Jr in charge of public health. Orange man is bad. Or more specifically he's a selfish corrupt liar who doesn't really care that much if he destroys the country. To the extent that he'd prefer to be a king or dictator he'd prefer economy and military to be strong while he's in control but even that falls to his whims and instincts which are authoritarian, racist and conspiratorial. He's too intellectually lazy to learn how things work. Of course some of his subordinates are far right true believers but even then flattering Trump corruption and incompetence rule the day more then ideology.

There hasn't been time for any kind of coherent review of the programs. A few programs receive enough outrage, and they're restored almost immediately.

So no, I don't think there is any kind of strategy beyond "cut any budget item that my constituents don't care about, especially if it makes liberals angry".

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