MAGA Is Making America Stupid . The Effects Will Be Felt For Generations

cleantechnica.com · Feb 27, 2026 · Collected from GDELT

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Support CleanTechnica's work through a Substack subscription or on Stripe. On October 4, 1957, Americans (and the world) awoke to hear the “beep….beep….beep” of Sputnik in orbit around the Earth. Americans were shocked. How could the communist stooges in the USSR pull this off before the US did? Suddenly, Americans were clamoring for more science education to close the “brain gap.” Ever since, the US has been a leader in mathematics, physics, chemistry, and economics. Patents for new technologies have exploded. But under the fascist regime now in power on the banks of the Potomac, all of that is being ripped apart. Budgets have been slashed and entire research departments closed. Americans are now far more interested in cage fighting and Super Bowl shows than they are in science. Young people who could be future scientists are devoting their days to playing violent war games and bulking up at the gym instead. Immigrants & Science Writing in The Guardian, Ed Pilkington reports that in 2025, half of all US Nobel prize winners in science were immigrants — people who no longer feel welcome in the US. The Tramp administration last year imposed a $100,000 fee on new applications for H-1B visas for foreign skilled workers — which includes many scientists and researchers. That move makes coming to the US prohibitively expensive for many of them. Then in January the administration suspended immigrant visa processing for people from 75 countries. Then there are the nightly TV images beamed around the world of ICE raids on US city streets, sending a clear message to the world that America does not welcome newcomers. Jennifer Jones, director for the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists, told Pilkington the international reputation of US science had been damaged in ways that could take years to repair. “We are no longer attracting top talent from around the world. Why would you want to come to a place where you know you could be threatened with deportation at any moment?” Why, indeed. A Brain Drain Becomes A Flood Emma Bay Dickinson, a 27 year old post-grad researcher in infectious diseases, is a specialist in zika, the mosquito-born virus that can cause birth defects. Her ambition is to help find a way to protect the world against viruses that have the potential to evolve into the next pandemic, such as avian flu. But she is leaving the US because funding for such research has been largely eliminated. Those who apply for the dwindling number of grants must filter their proposals to remove a banned list of key words across DEI — words like climate, vaccines, and other study areas deemed undesirable by Tramp and his coterie of anti-science true believers like Robert F. Kennedy, Jr and Mehmet Oz. She is not alone. A growing number of young American scientists are quitting the country for positions in Europe, Australia, or Asia, Pilkington writes. Universities across Europe have been quick to exploit the opportunity, openly enticing young Americans to join the exodus and seek “scientific asylum” with them. The response has been overwhelming. Aix-Marseille University, which launched one of the first European programs to lure people from the US, was inundated by hundreds of applications from early-career researchers hoping to flee the US. Deep Cuts To Science The outflow of young scientists has been exacerbated by deep cuts to NIH training programs, which acts as a breeding ground of the US’s future top scientists. At least 50 training programs, targeted at undergraduates through early-career lab researchers, have been shut down under this administration, which keeps shoveling tax breaks to the wealthy while slamming ordinary Americans with huge increases in medical insurance costs. The latest scam is withholding more than $120 million in Medicaid funds from Minnesota to punish the state for not welcoming the invasion of ICE earlier this year. An NIH program officer spoke to The Guardian about the impact of the training cuts, but asked not to be named for fear of reprisal. “Trainees are the most vulnerable people in science,” the officer said. “They are the ones with new ideas, where a lot of our hope resides. Now they are losing their minds with worry about what comes next. They are desperate for advice on how to stay in science when there are no grants available. If you delay and terminate training grants, it’s like a snowball effect. Eventually you start wiping out our next generation of scientists.” Mortgaging Our Future For Ideology In the long run, Pikington says, the damage done to the next generation of researchers threatens to harm not just scientific knowledge itself, but also the US economy. NIH funding supports basic biomedical research that leads to the discovery of new drugs and other commercial opportunities. It provides the foundation for the nearly trillion-dollar US pharmaceutical industry. A 2018 study of the 210 new drugs approved by the Food and Drug Administration in the six years to 2016 found that all of them had been developed from early basic research funded by NIH. “We are leaving discoveries on the table,” warned Donna Ginther, an economics professor at the University of Kansas who is an authority on the science labor market. “Those discoveries are the ones that in 10, 20 years will contribute to economic growth, improved health, human longevity. That’s what we are choking off.” MAGA = MASSA The immediate result of the MAGA virus is an explosion of authoritarian inspired government overreach. The long term consequences will be a new phenomenon known as MASSA — Making America Super Stupid Again. Many people may welcome making America into a giant ongoing reprise of The Dukes Of Hazzard, but the truth is, immigrants are what make America great, and without them, the United States will become a stagnant backwater of mediocrity, irrelevant to the world around it. What a sorry epitaph for a once great nation, which squandered its every advantage to kowtow to the twisted thinking of people like Russell Vought, Stephen Miller, Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and so many other extraordinarily wealthy people who believe that they alone rose to their exalted positions by dint of their own wonderfulness and who feel no obligation to give ten cents back to the nation that nurtured them but are always clamoring for more for themselves. RIP, America. You had it all, but then you decided to give it away to assuage the demented rantings of the Grifter In Chief and his henchmen. What a sad end to a once glorious nation. Had those who stepped off the LSTs in Normandy and advanced into the withering fire of the defenders known their sacrifice would be squandered so thoroughly on the altar of greed, they would have refused to go. We owe them so much and have rewarded their heroism with so little. What a waste of a perfectly good country. Sign up for CleanTechnica's Weekly Substack for Zach and Scott's in-depth analyses and high level summaries, sign up for our daily newsletter, and follow us on Google News! Advertisement Have a tip for CleanTechnica? Want to advertise? Want to suggest a guest for our CleanTech Talk podcast? Contact us here. Sign up for our daily newsletter for 15 new cleantech stories a day. Or sign up for our weekly one on top stories of the week if daily is too frequent. CleanTechnica uses affiliate links. See our policy here.CleanTechnica's Comment Policy