Not every ghost town is found in the high deserts of the West. As CBS reports, you can find a few without leaving Washington, D.C.
In its 41-year-old history as the White House hub of innovation, the Office of Science and Technology Policy has never gone this long without a leader or official mandate. The science office, which takes up half of the fourth floor of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, has a fleet of empty desks.
Of course, it’s easy to think of many reasons why Trump might be leaving those desks open. He’s been slow to nominate people in many areas and he’s often convinced his giant brain needs no assistance. Trump knows how to tweet. What else is technology good for anyway?
And of course, there’s another factor.
The Environmental Protection Agency has dismissed at least five members of a major scientific review board, the latest signal of what critics call a campaign by the Trump administration to shrink the agency’s regulatory reach by reducing the role of academic research.
Trump has been on a purge of actual scientists throughout the government. In addition to purging the EPA science boards of anyone who can describe the atomic theory of matter, science offices from the FDA to the DOE have been staffed with non scientists. Trump didn’t even invite America’s Nobel prize winners to the White House.
It’s probably better that Trump doesn’t have a fully staffed-up OSTP. Considering the reports coming out from other departments, it would likely be talking about coal is an important part of a balanced diet.
So the corridors of the OSTP are pretty much as empty as the halls at the Department of State.
… Nine months into his administration, there's no clear indication that the president is close to naming a science adviser who will inform his policymaking, though that's the mission that the OSTP has played since its founding in 1976 by President Gerald Ford. From climate change to space to education, the office has served as an in-house incubator for research, data, and crisis management that drove policy under seven presidents.
Well, from climate change, to space, to education, Trump already has an answer: Chinese hoax, appoint a science-denier, and … hey isn’t it time for the new, improved Trump University?