The Trump Administration Tries to Destroy Science, with Predictable Results

There's a good article by Dan Diamond in today's Politico: 

How Trump warped HHS long before Covid-19: Political interference and tensions with scientists preceded — and set the stage for — the disaster of 2020.

Here are a couple excerpts:

“Two-and-a-half years before Covid-19 would bring the issue of political interference with the Health and Human Services Department to a head, the flap surrounding the disbanding of the Science and Medicine team showed the extent to which tensions within the department were undermining its mission and sowing distrust between longtime staff members and Trump appointees. The result was that when America’s health agencies confronted the ultimate challenge — the worst global pandemic in a century — they had already been battered by internal divisions, feuds and suspicions.

“POLITICO spoke to 29 current and former career civil servants about their time serving in the health department, as well as political appointees, outside advisers and others with knowledge of Trump administration operations. They painted a picture of a national health bureaucracy riven with tension even before the advent of Covid-19. Many officials said the seeds of the disasters of 2020 were planted in 2017 — from ‘the End of Science’ episode to a dozen other incidents — as Trump appointees sidelined, ignored or pushed out career health officials in favor of policies demanded by the White House, a dynamic that would repeat itself throughout the pandemic.”