Alain
We are in dire straits indeed if scientists are relying on journalists as expert arbiters of fact.
Of course it is a banal fact that funding is being cut. That's not what is in dispute here. What is in dispute is how much funding for politically biased research has been flowing from politically captured state entities under false banners.
How do I know this? From following left-wing commentators for decades. This is how the dominant political hegemony has been maintained. It's got nothing to do with the highly misguided constructs of right wing or left wing stances on some arbitrary issue of the day. It doesn't matter which team's flag is currently flying on the dungeon parapet.
Maybe I'm an idealist, but as far as I am concerned, the problem isn't that the U.S. is cutting the branch that many researchers are sitting on, but rather that researchers were sitting on a branch cultivated by and for U.S. interests in the first place while (hopefully) being fully aware that they were part of a massive exploitative racket that ultimately only furthered those interests and not that of science or scientists as a whole.
Doug