MAGA Death Wish

Since Donald Trump's return to the White House, the federal government has slashed approximately $2.7 billion in funding for the National Institutes of Health

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Clinical trials have stopped accepting new patients. Families whose children were weeks away from experimental treatments are scrambling for alternatives.

But much more than cancer research is on Trump’s chopping block, including the architecture of international peace. Trump has announced plans to halt security assistance programs for Europe’s eastern flank, even as Russian drones violate NATO airspace. His defense secretary, former Fox News host Pete Hegseth, has called European NATO allies “pathetic” and dismissed them as “freeloaders.” Josep Borrell, the European Union’s former foreign policy chief, recently declared that the United States “can no longer be considered an ally of Europe.” After 80 years of leadership in the transatlantic alliance, America is walking away.

Trump has also accelerated fossil fuel production while canceling $7.6 billion in clean-energy projects. On day one of his second term, he declared a “national energy emergency” - even though the United States is the world’s largest oil and gas producer. And although 2024 was almost certainly the hottest year on record, with global temperatures on track to exceed 1.5° Celsius (the threshold scientists say will trigger catastrophic climate effects), Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency has moved to repeal all emissions limits on power plants.

Nor has Trump spared American farmers, who gave him more than 75 per cent of their votes in 2024. His tariffs have been devastating: soybean farmers are under extreme financial stress, and farm bankruptcies have reached a five-year high. As one Kansas rancher said when Trump floated the idea of buying Argentinian beef for US markets: “an absolute betrayal.”