Here’s some good news: federal science budgets have stabilized, a result of bipartisan legislation in Congress, signed by President Trump. These include modest cuts, reasonable given the nation’s fiscal problems (though science is a tiny slice of the federal budget), but nothing like the draconian slashes proposed by the Trump administration in mid-2025. Moreover, the legislation’s wording is designed to reassert Congress’ spending authority, a staple of the Constitution, against executive-branch ploys to withhold or divert funds.
Under the new legislation, the National Science Foundation will receive $8.75 billion, compared to $9.06 billion last year, instead of the administration’s proposed $3.9 billion. This means, for one thing, that the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) will not face a prospect, previously noted, of a shutdown of one of its two detectors, which would’ve cripped the project as the detectors work in tandem. Similarly, NASA’s science programs, and the agency’s overall budget, will be only slightly below prior levels, avoiding cuts that would’ve cancelled dozens of science missions, some already in space.
There’s been a great deal of damage to American science over the past year, such as a brain drain of PhDs from science agencies, much of which can’t readily be undone. Still, the budget news reflects that public and political opposition to noxious policies can succeed, and that fatalism isn’t warranted, since you never know how things will unfold.
Here’s some more good news: Trump accounts are a pretty good policy initiative. While putting the president’s name on them is predictable cult-of-personality stuff, the idea of a financial account for children born in the US, seeded by the federal government and open to contributions by families and companies, has merit as a way of boosting economic security. It’s reminiscent of Cory Booker’s proposal for “baby bonds,” though Trump accounts lack Booker’s feature of higher benefits for low-income recipients. Still, Booker, recognizing a partial victory, has expressed a favorable view of Trump accounts.
On another positive note, Scientific American (for which I’m an editorial contractor) had an intriguing article about a job prospect now taking shape: “reality notary.” Such a position focuses on expert detection of deepfakes and other technological deceptions. As the article, by Deni Ellis Béchard, describes the role of such a specialist, “clients ask you to verify the authenticity of photos, videos, e-mails, contracts, screenshots, audio recordings, text message threads, social media posts and biometric records. People arrive desperate to protect their money, reputation and sanity—and also their freedom.” For instance, a reality notary could analyze a video purporting to show someone committing a crime, looking at the metadata and other technical aspects to determine authenticity.
The emergence of such a job type is one example of society reorienting itself to counter negative developments, such as technologically-enhanced ability by bad actors to generate and spread false information. One sees a similar reorientation in public discourse, where blatant lies by officials generate a public backlash, extending even to some putative supporters of official policies who don’t want to be associated with obvious lies. Others, however, seem to have no limits as to what they’ll accept and repeat.
Another Scientific American article sparked a twinge of optimism on my part, though it was on an esoteric topic with no obvious bearing on any social or political issue. It was about quantum frames of reference, a concept aimed at reconsidering some long-standing mysteries of quantum physics. Whereas Einstein’s theory of relativity showed that measurements of space and time depend on reference frames (where one is, how fast one’s moving, etc.), quantum reference frames add that any measuring device or observer is also composed of particles subject to the laws of quantum mechanics. Surprisingly, this seems to make some intractable physics problems more approachable, rather than less.