Some measures could be a sign of a transition or just a general lack of knowledge of what these agencies actually do. We’re also seeing a leadership gap in critical agencies, like CDC, where an interim director was just announced yesterday, but still no Chief of Staff has been named.

But other moves could certainly be deliberate, signaling a value shift. It’s more than unsettling when scientists receive emails asking them to report colleagues or have their work micromanaged. And it’s easy to assume, especially given the first Trump administration, that these are signs of something bigger to come around control of information flow.

The truth is it’s likely a combination, but we don’t know yet.

Yes we do.

I get that the author is trying to responsible and scientific about it. But you know. Trump plans to kill science, to the best extent he’s able to get away with, which is likely to be pretty thorough. It’s deliberate and malicious. The only question is how far it will go. The answer to that, we don’t know yet, but it’s likely to be “considerably.”