Science Is On The Ballot This November

Radically different visions for education, healthcare, and science

Dear Readers,

Unless you have been living under a rock, you probably know there is a major election coming up on November 5th in the US. Anxiety, disbelief, dread, and nausea are probably just a few of the unpleasant feelings many of us are experiencing in these final weeks. A glut of political content is clogging our social media feeds, email inboxes, texts, TV commercials, and podcasts. Trust me, I get it—politics is the last thing many of us want to hear about.

However, I have an optimistic (bordering on naive) belief in the power of democracy and civic engagement that would make Leslie Knope proud. My mission with All Science is to inform people about topical issues in veterinary medicine, science, and technology, and they are heavily impacted by who is running the government and how. While policy discussions can seem abstract and technical, they can have real world implications, and I will discuss a few that affect me personally.

I can’t—and won’t —tell you who to vote for. That said, I feel an obligation to use my platform to educate people about what is at stake. So in this newsletter, I want to go over the key differences between the policy positions of Donald Trump and Kamala Harris and to provide non-partisan information about voter registration deadlines and logistics. To keep the temperature as low as possible, I will be focusing on their proposals for education, healthcare, and science (where I have some expertise), not wading into the more controversial aspects of the campaign.

I hope you find this guide helpful. Please exercise your right to vote in a few weeks 🙏

—Eric

Project 2025

First, we need to talk about Project 2025. What is that? Essentially, it is the playbook for a second Trump administration created by the Heritage Foundation and allied conservative organizations. Due to a combination of disinterest and lack of expertise, the Trump campaign has essentially outsourced their platform to them. It consists of multiple pillars, including a personnel database of vetted political loyalists to be installed throughout the federal government, training programs for those people, and a set of policy proposals. This is all distilled into a 900+ page roadmap for the first 180-days of the administration called “Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise”.

Before we get into specific policies, the big picture view of Project 2025 is that it calls for a sweeping reorganization of the federal government, aiming to consolidate presidential power and reduce the independence of various agencies. This includes:

• Placing the entire federal bureaucracy under direct presidential control

• Eliminating civil service protections for thousands of government employees

• Replacing career officials with political appointees loyal to the executive

This is the link to the Project 2025 website so you can read their official documents and statements for yourself. However, I strongly dispute some of their spin distancing themselves from the Trump campaign. As Project 2025 started being covered in the news and becoming a political liability, Donald Trump has claimed he has no idea what’s in it and doesn’t support all of it.

This is, to put it mildly, hard to believe. Here are some of the key figures involved in Project 2025:

• Paul Dans: Former chief of staff at the Office of Personnel Management in the first Trump administration

• Ben Carson: Former Trump Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, who wrote Chapter 15 on HUD plans

• Peter Navarro: Former Trump advisor and first White House official ever convicted and jailed for contempt of Congress, who wrote Chapter 26 on trade

• Kevin Roberts: Former president of the Heritage Foundation who was a key architect of Project 2025, and whom Trump has praised and traveled with

  • He wrote a book aligned with the Project 2025 vision originally titled “Dawn's Early Light: Burning Down Washington to Save America,” which had its publication delayed and the subtitle changed to the less inflammatory “Taking Back Washington to Save America” because of the bad optics

  • He drew media backlash earlier this year for this quote:

• JD Vance: Trump’s current running mate wrote the foreward to Kevin Robert’s book above, in which he says it is “time to circle the wagons and load the muskets.”

Beyond those folks, a CNN review found that at least *140* different people who worked for Trump in one capacity or another were involved with Project 2025. Certainly seems like a pretty close linkage to me…

John Oliver went through some of the most disturbing aspects of Project 2025 in this must see video:

Specific Policy Differences

Lest we think that Project 2025 is just a bunch of talk that won’t go anywhere, you should know that the Heritage Foundation has been writing similar roadmaps for incoming Republican administrations for over 40 years, and much of their recommendations become law. President Reagan enacted 60% of their policy proposals and the first Trump administration implemented 64% of their plans.

The infographic and sections below are my distillation of key policy differences between Donald Trump and Project 2025 compared to those of Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. To review the Democratic equivalent, you can visit these links:

• Harris/Walz campaign Issues page

• “A New Way Forward" for the Middle Class,” an 82-page policy booklet

A TL;DR summary of the main policy differences in these areas

Education

President Donald Trump and Project 2025 advocate for reducing the federal role in education, with Trump promoting the elimination of the Department of Education and returning control to states, while Project 2025 adds a focus on expanding school choice through vouchers and Education Savings Accounts. In contrast, Democratic nominees Kamala Harris and Tim Walz emphasize federal investment in public education, with Harris focusing on increasing teacher pay, expanding access to early childhood education, and promoting equity, while Walz supports state innovation within a federally supported education system. Both Harris and Walz oppose reducing federal oversight.

One of the areas that is of greatest concern to me personally are the provisions related to student debt. Like physicians, dentists, and other health professionals, veterinarians go to school for 8 years and graduate with huge loans. According to the AVMA, 1 in 3 DVMs graduate with >$200,000 in debt, including me. In fact, my balance has increased since graduation due to the interest ballooning during my years of poorly-paid internship, residency, and PhD.

One of the key lifelines for vets and other people with heavy student debt has been Income-Driven Repayment (IDR) and Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF). I know multiple friends who forewent (much) higher salaries in the private sector to work in universities teaching the next generation of veterinarians and were able to get their loans forgiven with PSLF.

Unfortunately, that will all change if Project 2025 comes to pass. Their plans include phasing out IDR (Chapter 11, Pages 337-338) and rescinding PSLF (Chapter 11, Page 332). Simply put, if IDR and PSLF go away, I and millions of other borrowers like me will be unable to pay back our loans without extreme financial hardship.

Healthcare

President Donald Trump and Project 2025 both emphasize reducing federal intervention in healthcare, with Trump advocating for the repeal of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and promoting market-based reforms, while Project 2025 extends this by proposing Medicaid lifetime coverage caps and adding work requirements, and decentralizing healthcare regulation to states. In contrast, Democratic nominees Kamala Harris and Tim Walz support expanding access to healthcare, strengthening the ACA, and reducing costs through federal programs. Harris focuses on lowering prescription drug prices and supporting universal coverage, while Walz promotes state-driven healthcare innovation within federal frameworks.

There is perhaps no greater policy contrast between the two parties than on bodily autonomy and reproductive care. Donald Trump famously bragged about appointing three staunchly conservative and pro-life justices to the Supreme Court that led to the repeal of Roe v Wade in the case Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization. If any additional justices die or retire between now and 2029, that hard right supermajority could be cemented for DECADES. Here are just some of the Project 2025 agenda items for reproductive healthcare:

• Implement surveillance of women who receive abortions in states where it is legal (Chapter 14, Pages 455-456) and to create criminal penalties for physicians who provide them (Chapter 14, Page 474)

• Revoke FDA approval of the drug mifepristone used for medication abortion and managing miscarriages (Chapter 14, Pages 457-458)

• Remove contraceptive coverage for condoms and the morning after pill (Chapter 14, Page 485)

In addition to endangering abortion access in many states, the Dobbs ruling opened the door to restrictions on In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) in Alabama and elsewhere. This is personal for me, as I was born through IVF and would not be here without it. Despite their claims to support IVF, Republicans in Congress have voted against bills that protected it multiple times, and Trump has been evasive about whether he thinks they are making the right decision.

Science

President Donald Trump and Project 2025 emphasize deregulation in science, technology, and innovation, favoring free-market-driven advancements with minimal federal oversight. Project 2025 specifically advocates for reducing the role of federal agencies in research and innovation, particularly reducing the funding and freedom of the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which fund the vast majority of biomedical research in the US. In contrast, Democratic nominees Kamala Harris and Tim Walz support substantial federal investments in science and technology, aiming to foster innovation through public funding, expand STEM education, and address issues like climate change. Harris and Walz prioritize government collaboration in driving forward research and technological advancements. President Biden and Vice President Harris already began some of this work by passing the Inflation Reduction Act that provided incentives for clean energy and the CHIPs and Science Act to onshore semiconductor manufacturing.

Some of the biggest Project 2025 goals for science concern agencies that deal with climate change. Some of this would be indirect, by converting most non-partisan civil servants in relevant departments to political appointees who could be censored or fired by the President. For a more direct threat, Project 2025 calls for elimination of the division that forecasts weather, including hurricanes:

“The National Oceanographic [sic] and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) should be dismantled and many of its functions eliminated, sent to other agencies, privatized, or placed under the control of states and territories.” (Chapter 21, page 664)

As someone who just lived through Hurricanes Helene and Milton, I cannot fathom how anyone could think this is a good idea. The National Hurricane Center (NHC) data is the main source of storm path and strength predictions and enables warnings that save lives. This is too important to politicize or privatize.

It should go without saying that the items above are just scratching the surface of policy proposals between the candidates. Particularly with regards to Project 2025, there is only so much I can do to summarize and discuss a mammoth 900-page document, and this post is already >2,000 words. There are huge changes planned for immigration, civil rights and protections for LGBT people, environmental regulations, and beyond. But don’t take my word for it; I would encourage you to continue researching it on your own to learn more.

Take Action

Whatever your beliefs and political affiliation, it is clear that the two parties present extremely different visions for America. So, after hearing what is at stake in November, what can you do?

The single most important thing is to VOTE !!!

Your voice matters! Don’t let anyone tell you it doesn’t; people you don’t agree with plan on apathy and cynicism letting them coast to victory.

There is still time to register in many states! Below is a table of several of the most competitive swing states where the deadlines haven’t passed yet. Unfortunately, time is up to register in Arizona, Florida, and Georgia 😕 You can find a complete list of state-by-state information at the non-partisan site Ballotpedia.

More tips:

• Make a plan to vote on Election Day (or earlier)

• You can check your voter status, register to vote, request a mail-in ballot, find polling locations, and more at the non-partisan website Vote.Org

• You can research candidates and issues at Ballotpedia.org

• Talk to friends and family about the election so they’re informed

• Donate to candidates that align with your values

  • Pro-tip: Down-ballot candidates in swing districts may benefit more from each dollar than presidential campaigns, which have already raised $$$

• Volunteer for phone banking and/or to drive people to the polls

  • I worked the phones in 2020 and it was a rewarding experience

• Share this post with science-minded people who may be undecided 👇

Finally, if you have a moment, I would appreciate it if you answered this poll question on what impact, if any, this newsletter had on your plans for 11/5.