Good morning, America!
John Eagleton here, with the Truth Party.
And today, I want to talk about something that ought to scare the hell out of every American.
Not the Democrats.
Not the Republicans.
Not immigrants.
Not transgender athletes.
I’m talking about something far more important.
America is putting its scientific future at risk.
And here’s the crazy part.
We’re doing it to ourselves!
This morning, The New York Times published an extraordinary investigation into what’s happening to scientific research under the Trump administration.
And folks, the numbers are staggering.
The National Science Foundation has lost roughly a third of its workforce.
The National Institutes of Health has lost about 20 percent of its staff.
The Department of Energy has lost more than a thousand scientists and technical workers.
And more than 2,000 medical research grants have been delayed or canceled.
Research into cancer.
Alzheimer’s.
Heart disease.
Diseases that affect millions of American families.
Now, I want you to think about something.
What kind of country wants to lead the world in technology while making it harder for scientists to do their jobs?
That’s like firing the engineers at Boeing and announcing you’re going to build the world’s greatest airplane.
Good luck with that!
And I have a particularly personal interest in this subject.
I’ve had cancer three times.
Back in 2014, I was diagnosed with stage-four lung cancer.
And you know what helped save my life?
Science.
Medical research.
A clinical trial at Duke University involving immunotherapy.
Decades of research by scientists who were trying to understand how our immune systems could fight cancer.
Some of those researchers probably never imagined their work would help save the life of a guy from Greensboro, North Carolina.
But it did.
I’m standing here today because somebody, somewhere, funded scientific research without knowing exactly where it would lead.
And that’s the point!
Science doesn’t operate on an election cycle.
You don’t discover a cure for Alzheimer’s because somebody in Washington wants a good headline before November.
You don’t invent the internet because somebody needs better poll numbers.
Scientific breakthroughs take years.
Sometimes decades.
And sometimes the research that looks completely useless today becomes the foundation for something extraordinary tomorrow.
Let me take you back to 1969.
I was a young boy living in Nassau Bay, Texas.
My next-door neighbor was Gene Cernan.
An astronaut.
The last man to walk on the moon.
I grew up watching America do something that seemed absolutely impossible.
We sent human beings to another world!
Think about that.
We didn’t have smartphones.
We didn’t have Google.
Hell, we barely had decent television reception!
But we had something incredibly powerful.
We had a national commitment to science.
We had universities.
We had laboratories.
We had NASA.
And we had a government willing to invest in the future.
Republicans and Democrats both contributed to building that scientific infrastructure.
Because there was a time when scientific achievement was something Americans celebrated together.
We didn’t ask whether the scientist was a Republican or Democrat.
We asked whether the rocket worked!
And when Neil Armstrong stepped onto the moon, nobody said, “Well, that’s nice, but what’s the quarterly return on investment?”
We understood that we were doing something bigger than ourselves.
Now fast-forward to 2026.
According to this investigation, the Pentagon’s own research laboratories have lost approximately 14 percent of their workforce.
And a Defense Department report warned of potentially grave consequences for national security.
Let that sink in.
The Pentagon!
Not some liberal university professor.
Not a political activist.
The United States Department of Defense.
Warning that disruptions to scientific research could threaten our military’s technological capabilities.
Meanwhile, China is investing aggressively in scientific research.
Canada and Australia are actively recruiting international scientists.
They’re looking at what’s happening in America and seeing an opportunity.
Imagine that!
For decades, the brightest minds in the world wanted to come to America.
Now other countries are trying to recruit them away.
And here’s something else worth understanding.
The Trump administration says it’s trying to eliminate waste, remove ideological bias, and make American research more productive.
Those are goals worth examining.
Taxpayer money should be spent responsibly.
Research programs should be evaluated on their merits.
But here’s my question.
How do we distinguish eliminating waste from eliminating the people and institutions that produce scientific breakthroughs?
Because those are two very different things.
And there’s another issue.
The administration has proposed giving political appointees greater control over which research projects receive federal funding.
Now think about the implications.
Scientific research is supposed to be evaluated through evidence, expertise, and rigorous review.
What happens when political loyalty becomes part of that equation?
What happens when researchers become afraid to ask questions because the answers might be politically inconvenient?
Science doesn’t care who occupies the White House.
Cancer doesn’t vote Republican.
Alzheimer’s doesn’t vote Democrat.
And gravity doesn’t give a damn about your political affiliation!
You can pass all the executive orders you want.
Gravity is still going to win!
Now, let’s bring this home to Greensboro.
We’ve got North Carolina A&T.
We’ve got UNC Greensboro.
We’ve got talented students, professors, engineers, and researchers.
We’ve got young people preparing for careers in biotechnology, medicine, artificial intelligence, and advanced manufacturing.
Those young people are part of America’s future.
And federal research policy affects the opportunities available to them.
I’ve been spending my days talking to people throughout Greensboro.
I’m working toward interviewing a thousand residents.
And one thing I keep coming back to is this:
What kind of future are we building for the next generation?
Because that’s what this is really about.
It’s not just about scientists.
It’s about our children.
Our grandchildren.
The people who will inherit this country long after Donald Trump, the current Congress, and all of us are gone.
Are we going to leave them a country that leads the world in discovery?
Or one that spends its time arguing about which scientific questions are politically acceptable?
You know, when I was a little boy, I thought I could fly.
I really did!
And eventually I learned that if you want to fly, you need something called aerodynamics.
And engineering.
And mathematics.
And a hell of a lot of science!
That’s how humanity turns imagination into reality.
We ask questions.
We experiment.
We fail.
We learn.
And eventually, we accomplish things that previous generations thought were impossible.
That’s the America I grew up believing in.
And that’s the America I want future generations to inherit.
A country where curiosity is encouraged.
Where evidence matters.
Where scientific discoveries are celebrated.
And where the next child who dreams of walking on Mars has the opportunity to make it happen.
Because here’s the truth.
You cannot build tomorrow’s America by dismantling the institutions that made yesterday’s breakthroughs possible.
We should demand accountability for every federal dollar.
We should debate research priorities.
We should challenge inefficient institutions.
But we should also understand what we’re risking when we interrupt research that may take decades to bear fruit.
Somewhere in America today, there’s a young scientist working on something that could change the world.
Maybe it’s a cure for cancer.
Maybe it’s a breakthrough in clean energy.
Maybe it’s a technology none of us has even imagined.
And maybe, thirty years from now, somebody’s grandfather will still be alive because that scientist was given the opportunity to pursue an idea.
I know what that feels like.
I’m living proof.
This is John Eagleton with the Truth Party.
Keep asking questions.
Keep searching for the truth.
And remember:
The future doesn’t invent itself.
We do.
But first, we show up!
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