Earlier tonight, Elle Celeste, an assistant director at the White House’s Office Of Science And Technology Policy, which helps advise the president on scientific matters, posted the following tweet/mic drop, revealing that the science branch of the office—which, overall, employed more than 100 people during the Obama administration—is now empty:
CBS News confirmed the message, stating that the few Obama-era holdovers in the department (and their expertise) have now taken their leave of the Executive Branch. And while the White House assured reporters that the office itself—presumably the technology side of things—still employs 35 people, and that, “All of the work that we have been doing is still being done,” it’s still a little alarming to hear that Donald Trump is no longer being advised by dedicated science personnel, especially given his fanciful relationship with facts.
Indeed, Trump’s science interests run largely to the “fun” stuff—i.e., space travel—and not so much to the more boring issues, like the entire planet gently roasting under the effects of climate change. (Hence his recent departure from the Paris climate accords, which we can only imagine his science advisers just loved.)
But hey: At least he’s still holding the annual White House science fair. Fingers crossed that our legally elected president can find a sufficiently eloquent fourth-grader there to follow him around and explain what all the experiments and research data he’s regularly presented with actually mean, or we might be well and truly fucked.