Reason #2 for the destruction of NSF (and other science agencies): hateful white christian nationalist troll Russ Vought

In the previous post, I listed three major reasons for the decimation of science in the US. The first bullet point introduced the billionaires on the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.

• The tech bros have decided that AI will do everything 
• A pathetic white christian nationalist wants to destroy “woke” science and “woke” universities
• Deranged MAHA conspiracy theorists run the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)

Today's post will discuss the second bullet point.

So much has happened since April 2!

“We have in Donald Trump a man who is so uniquely positioned to serve this role, a man whose own interests perfectly align with the interests of the country. He has seen what it has done to him, and he has seen what they are trying to do to the country. That is nothing more than a gift of God.”

– white christian nationalist Russell Vought, in a 2024 speech at his Center for Renewing America

Happy Easter, Mr. Vought. Revel in the words of your "gift" on the day that Jesus your Lord rose from the dead to save you from your sins.

This is potentially a war crime.

 Vought embraces the label of [white] christian nationalist:

“...the phrasing is too accurate to run away from the term. … I’m a Christian. I am a nationalist. We were meant to be a Christian nation.”

Vought doesn't have to say the "white" part out loud, because his disdain for diversity (DEI) is clear in everything he says and writes. He rejects the First Amendment — the part that guarantees freedom from religion. He despises people who are not like him. He and his ilk at the Heritage Foundation and the Center for Renewing America wrote Project 2025, a handbook for dismantling the US government and installing a theocratic dictatorship. 

As head of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), he has ignored the budget appropriations approved by Congress and has used an illegal process (impoundment) to hold back funding for agencies he dislikes. He is personally responsible for the NSF funding graph shown above (via Grant Witness).

And with the recommended increase in defense funding from $1 trillion to $1.5 trillion (PDF), “It’s not possible for us to take care of day care, Medicaid, Medicare, all these individual things,” Trump said.¹

Stunning, absolutely stunning. Except it’s not any more. 

Vought's intolerance, exclusion, and invective are written into the budget. The word “woke” occurs 34 times and “weaponized” appears seven times. It became his rallying cry: “We have to be able to defund agencies that cause the time we are in. And that is why these things have to be indelibly linked, and that is why we are focusing so much on 'woke' and 'weaponized',” he said.

From ProPublica, The Shadow President:

The centerpiece of Vought’s work during the Biden years was his campaign to popularize the concept of “woke and weaponized” government. The tagline brought together two of Vought’s rallying cries: “woke” policies, like diversity, equity and inclusion efforts and transgender rights, and a “weaponized” FBI and Justice Department that had allegedly been wielded against the Democrats’ political enemies, including, most notably, Trump. When the Center for Renewing America released a federal budget blueprint in late 2022, calling for nearly $9 trillion in cuts in the course of 10 years, the word “woke” appeared 77 times across 103 pages.

The 92-page 2027 budget never misses a chance to deny climate change and to denigrate immigrants, minorities, and LGBTQ people. Environmental justice is woke! Gardens are woke! Distributing food is woke! (p. 64).

By eliminating [EPA’s radical diversity, equity, and inclusion programs], the Budget finally puts an end to wasteful spending on grants including: 

• Environmental justice into vacant lot management;
• Latinx workshops on environmental justice;
• Tiny homes for immigrants;
• Educating refugee communities on fish consumption;
• Collecting, repackaging, and distributing reused food;
• Installing garden beds in parkways; and
• Developing school curriculum on woke topics like “climate change” and the alleged injustices it creates.

Vought refuses to believe that racial and ethnic health disparities are real, despite voluminous evidence to the contrary. Former OMB staff found it hard to reconcile his deeply held Christian faith with his zeal for cutting programs that support the vulnerable, such as Meals on Wheels. He's self-righteous about slashing $5 billion from the NIH budget, even when his family benefited directly from NIH-funded research. He and his ex-wife Mary have a child with cystic fibrosis (CF). In 2019, a triple combination therapy (Trikafta) was approved by the FDA to treat CF. In 2021, Mary Vought wrote, “We’re extremely grateful to live in a nation that leads the way on medical innovation.” Well we don't any more, thanks to your ex-husband...


Christian nationalists are a minority in the US: only 10% are Adherents, while 20% are Sympathizers. And yet they impose their beliefs and their chosen lifestyle on the rest of us.

• At the national level, Christian nationalism is strongly linked to Republican party affiliation and holding favorable views of Trump.  
• Christian nationalists are more likely than other Americans to see political struggles through the apocalyptic lens of revolution and to support political violence.

From A Reality Check on the Reach of White Christian Nationalism:

Christian nationalists tend to support opinions that are destructive to pluralistic democracy. This includes anti-Black attitudes and denial of the existence of systemic racism, harsh anti-immigrant attitudes, anti-Muslim attitudes, antisemitic attitudes, support for patriarchal gender roles, and anti-LGBTQ attitudes.

Vought has openly broadcast his religious intolerance, including the damnation of all Muslims. His evangelical alma mater, Wheaton College, fired its President when she dared to say that Christians and Muslims worship the same god. He wrote in support of the college's decision:

Christians believe that Jesus is the Son of God who is fully divine (and became fully human). This matters immensely for our salvation. If Christ is not God, he cannot be the necessary substitute on our behalf for the divine retribution that we deserve.

...Muslims do not simply have a deficient theology. They do not know God because they have rejected Jesus Christ his Son, and they stand condemned.

 

Basically, this man believes that if you're not one of the 10% of Americans who adhere to white christian nationalism, you are damned to hell and god will smite you and he — Russell Vought — deserves to see you punished.

Perhaps this explains his penchant for traumatizing federal employees.

“We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected. When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work because they are increasingly viewed as the villains. We want their funding to be shut down so that the EPA can’t do all of the rules against our energy industry because they have no bandwidth financially to do so.

We want to put them in trauma.”

 

And federal employees (plus many others) want to impeach him.

Civil Servants Demand Impeachment of Russell Vought

 

 

In his role as Director of the Office of Management and Budget, Russell Vought is the central architect driving the destruction of your government.

Russell Vought created lawlessness in every part of the Trump administration.

 

You can read and sign the letter. Our future as a functioning democracy demands change.

 

Footnote

¹ from @HQNewsNow:

Trump is seeking to pay for his new $1.5 trillion military budget by cutting the following:

$510 million - Grants for farmers and agricultural research
$82 million - Loans for rural small businesses (Fully eliminated)
$61 million - Support for farmers and food markets (Fully eliminated)
$240 million - School meals and food education for children abroad (Fully eliminated)
$659 million - Community building grants
$47 million - Support for minority-owned businesses (Fully eliminated)
$449 million - Economic development grants for communities
$1.6 billion - Weather forecasting, fisheries, and coastal protection (NOAA)
$993 million - Scientific research and technology standards
$150 million - Support for American exports and trade
$2.2 billion - Broadband and internet access programs
$8.5 billion - Funding for public schools
$1.5 billion - Vocational training and adult education (Fully eliminated)
$2.7 billion - College access and higher education support
$15.2 billion - Roads, bridges, and infrastructure projects
$1.1 billion - Home energy efficiency and clean energy programs (Fully eliminated)
$1.1 billion - Scientific research funding
$386 million - Environmental cleanup programs
$150 million - Cutting-edge clean energy research
$4 billion - Help paying home heating and cooling bills for low-income families (Fully eliminated)
$768 million - Refugee resettlement assistance
$819 million - Care and shelter for migrant children
$775 million - Local anti-poverty programs (Fully eliminated)
$5 billion - Public health programs, mental health services, and disease prevention
$5 billion - Medical research (NIH)
$129 million - Healthcare quality and safety research
$356 million - Emergency preparedness and disaster response
$1.3 billion - FEMA community disaster preparedness grants
$707 million - Cybersecurity protection for critical infrastructure
$52 million - Airport and transportation security
$40 million - Protection against chemical and biological weapons threats
$53 million - Funding for homeland security operations
$3.3 billion - Community development block grants for local neighborhoods (Fully eliminated)
$1.3 billion - Affordable housing construction grants (Fully eliminated)
$393 million - Programs to reduce homelessness
$529 million - Housing assistance for people living with HIV/AIDS (Fully eliminated)
$489 million - Housing and services for Native American communities
$50 million - Grants to help communities build more housing (Fully eliminated)
$60 million - Enforcement of fair housing and anti-discrimination laws
$58 million - Homebuyer and renter counseling services (Fully eliminated)
$45 million - Renewable energy development programs (Fully eliminated)
$1.7 billion - Grants for local law enforcement and public safety
$20 million - Civil rights mediation and legal access programs (Fully eliminated)
$1.6 billion - Job training for at-risk youth (Fully eliminated)
$395 million - Jobs program for low-income seniors (Fully eliminated)
$234 million - Worker safety and labor protection programs
$101 million - Enforcement of equal pay and workplace anti-discrimination laws
$46 million - Programs to combat child labor and forced labor abroad
$2 billion - International humanitarian aid
$1.2 billion - Food aid for hungry families abroad (Fully eliminated)
$4.3 billion - Global health and disease prevention programs
$2.7 billion - Funding for the United Nations and international partnerships
$642 million - International economic and treasury programs
$315 million - Democracy and anti-corruption programs abroad
$486 million - Grants for public transit projects
$4.2 billion - Electric vehicle charging infrastructure
$372 million - Airline service for rural and small communities
$145 million - Grants for sustainable and equitable infrastructure
$204 million - Loans and investment for underserved communities
$1.4 billion - IRS taxpayer services and enforcement
$100 million - Air pollution monitoring and reduction programs (Fully eliminated)
$1 billion - EPA grants to states for environmental protection
$2.5 billion - Clean drinking water and wastewater infrastructure funds
$90 million - Grants to reduce diesel pollution (Fully eliminated)
$3.4 billion - NASA space and earth science research
$297 million - NASA technology innovation programs
$1.1 billion - International Space Station operations
$143 million - STEM education programs
$309 million - Small business development and entrepreneurship programs
$170 million - Small Business Administration operations
$158 million - Loans for small businesses