The American Project Has Never Been Perfect. It’s Still Worth Fighting For.
The Equation Read More
Every Fourth of July my family goes on an adventure and this year we are going to Niagara Falls. The iconic falls in all their power and scale feel like an important destination for my kids’ formative years.
As I prepare for the trip to this famed American tourist destination and as we approach the 250th anniversary of American independence, I’ve been thinking about our country’s experiment with democracy and how to articulate it to my kids. The founders didn’t know how the bold new project they started would turn out. Democracy, separating church and state, insisting on the equality of all—these weren’t what most nations were based on in 1776. (Although, the Haudenosaunee Confederacy in what’s now called upstate New York is recognized as one of the earliest participatory democracies on Earth and its constitution is believed to have been the model for the American Constitution.) And the founders didn’t get it all right, of course: inequality of women, enslaved people, and subjugation of Indigenous Peoples, for starters.
While we’ve made significant progress since the days of our nation’s founders, many societal inequities persist, and indeed, we are now backsliding on democracy, science, civil rights, and more, as we stare down elevated threats to our long-celebrated system of government from a president with no interest in respecting it. The Trump administration has been making a mockery of our Constitution, disregarding the rule of law, and dismantling the critical checks and balances we all rely on.
The US science enterprise is a critical part of those checks and balances and a foundation of our democratic system. It is federal statistical agencies that collect and share reliable data and analysis on our economy, our health and our safety; it is federal scientists that help ensure science and research is conducted and used with integrity, and speak up when it is misused; and it is federal agencies that hold true to their missions to use science to advance public health, safety, security, and opportunity.
Unfortunately, science—and the critical role it plays in our democracy—has not been spared from the administration’s path of destruction. In a new tool released this week from the Union of Concerned Scientists, we find that between January 20, 2025, and May 30, 2026, the Trump administration carried out a staggering 574 attacks on science, including efforts to politicize research funding, fire or sideline federal scientific experts, censor scientific communications, weaken scientific integrity protections, and place political appointees and advisors with records of promoting misinformation or anti-science views into decision-making positions.
These attacks on science undermine the government’s ability to make evidence-based decisions that protect our health and safety. They reduce transparency and make it more difficult to hold the administration accountable for its actions. And they represent a dire threat to the future progress of our democracy.
So how should we mark the nation’s 250th in all its complexity? And what should I tell my kids about how they should feel about it? I think back to my scientific training. Scientists don’t start research projects with the outcomes in mind (at least, they shouldn’t), and when they make errors in their process, or end up with unexpected results, they don’t give up. Likewise, the US is a grand experiment well worth our blood, sweat, and tears to keep refining and keep improving.
Next month, I want my kids to stare in awe at Niagara Falls. I want them to understand our nation’s history in all its messiness. As they grow older, I want them to use their talents to help make our country and the world better.
The American project has never been perfect but we must all commit to keep it moving forward. To stand up for what’s right. To help those in need. To continue to strive for something more. This is the America all our kids deserve and I won’t stop fighting for it.