"Science . . . is not the object of antagonism; the people are." Nima Bassiri, the author of MADNESS AND ENTERPRISE, discusses the Trump administration's cuts to science funding in @thebaffler.com:

Nina Bassiri’s Madness and Reason: Psychiatry, Economic Reason, and the Emergence of Pathological Value is great, and here he takes his arguments about pathological value to understand Trump’s cuts to basic science
press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/bo...

When the Trump administration proposed cuts to the National Weather Service, it wasn’t acting in ignorance—it was acting out of economic interest. After all, why fund climate research when the wealthy can afford the next catastrophe?

The right may very well be at war with science. But science is not its intended target. As @nimabassiri.bsky.social argues, what we are seeing is the latest salvo in a long campaign against the poor and disenfranchised.

President Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” aims to cut spending across the board, including at major scientific agencies. Liberal commentators say it’s part of a MAGA war on science. But the battle lines are less clear than you might think.

I wrote a new piece for @thebaffler.com where I try to reconsider what might really be at stake in the current attacks on science funding…

"If what was good and what was healthy were increasingly conflated with what was remunerative (and vice versa), then a conceptual space opened through which madness itself could be converted into an economic form and subsequently redeemed—and even revered."

interview w/ @nimabassiri.bsky.social

newbooksnetwork.com/madness-and-...

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been confirmed as secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. He’s been accused of politicizing science. But as Nima Bassiri writes, it’s inherently political.

I wrote this piece for @thebaffler.com on RFK Jr and the politicization of science (drawing on some ideas I’m developing for my new book…)