William R. Staplin is a former scientist specializing in utilizing molecular biology techniques to investigate RNA plant and animal viruses, research and development of vaccines to protect against infectious viruses; husband to Ruth A. Staplin; father to two independently minded young college students; cancer and spinal cord disability survivor; supporter of girls and women’s equal rights, reproductive rights, bodily autonomy and healthcare; supporter of reclaiming LGTBQIA+ civil rights and liberties; supporter of Black and Brown Lives Matter; full-time greyhound owner and walking companion to Tailgater. 

When you listen to Woody Guthrie’s song “This Land Is Your Land,” what do you think of?  

Does its message advocate for the private ownership of public land, private “walls,” or does it elicit thoughts of the grand picturesque publicly owned landscapes of the American Parks, National Forests and Mountains that make up the United States? 

I would imagine it would be the latter. Woody Guthrie wrote “This Land Is Your Land” in February 1940, reusing the melody roughly carved out from the folk standard “When The World’s on Fire” popularized by the infamous folk family musicians, The Carters, as a rebuke to Irving Berlin’s “God Bless America,” sung by Kate Smith.

Guthrie felt that “God Bless America” obfuscated the working class, which built this country, and the unequal distribution of valuable land and wealth between the upper and lower classes. Those with means owned their homes and used cars instead of public transit, while the lower class rented and worked a hand-to-mouth existence. Woody Guthrie wanted to shine light on the “everyman” and “everywoman” having the opportunity to experience the fantastic free and public lands of our natural parks and recreation sights.

But the song also highlighted the contrasting topography of our nation’s natural treasures. “This Land” was to be a song for the laborers, immigrants, naturalized citizens, and anyone who didn’t come by daily existence easily. Because regardless of his or her humble beginnings, one could truly be free from the oppressive tactics of the upper class. His message spoke like thunder across East Coast New England, Appalachia, the South, Mid-Atlantic, Midwest, North, and Southwest regions. 

This version was provided by Smithsonian Folkways Recording:

Guthrie was born July 14, 1912 in Okemah, Oklahoma, and died on October 3, 1967, living only until age 55, due to nefarious congenital autosomal dominant disease first eloquently characterized by Ohio physician, George Huntington, M.D. in a medical paper entitled “On Chorea, in 1872. Hence the vexing disease that plagued Guthrie’s genetics was given the name Huntington’s Chorea.

Guthrie was not always the model husband or father; he was married three times with a string of children, leaving some destitute while he rambled onto another gig in a different state. But the more than 1,000 songs he wrote amassed a following among the working class. His songs, now stored at the Library of Congress, certainly resonate in contemporary times.

Woody’s formative years were fraught with trauma. His mother, Nora Belle Guthrie, was institutionalized because of uncontrollable muscle contractions—the same congenital defect Woody would suffer from 40 years later.

He migrated south in 1929 to be with his freewheeling father, who ran a flop house in Pampa, Texas, and learned to play guitar through lessons with his half uncle, Jeff Guthrie. At age 20, Woody Guthrie married Mary Jennings; they would have three children together. This sublime family life did not last though because during the 1930s, this region suffered a multilayered man-made and environmental disaster. Texas, Arkansas, Missouri, and Oklahoma experienced a severe multi-state economic downturn due to drought, topsoil deterioration from over plowing, and the Great Depression.

During the seismic shift of the 1930s, Woody was forced to temporarily leave his family, as did an estimated 400,000 other “Okies.” Woody sought economic opportunity in California in 1936 as a “Dust Bowl Refugee”—a term considered derogatory term amongst established West Coast residents. He worked as a radio broadcaster in Los Angeles and was able to self-promote some of his band’s compositions during 1936 to 1939.

Yet even California felt a bit constraining to Woody with his pragmatic, populist message supporting the Communist Party of America. Woody would subsequently move to New York City and became known as the “Dust Bowl Troubadour.”

The Dust Bowl was the most devastating ecological disaster in U.S. history. Heat waves, drought, crop failure, dust storms, land mismanagement, and mass migration are estimated to have claimed some 7,000 lives in Texas, Arkansas, Missouri, and Oklahoma. Having experienced personal economic hardship during the Dust Bowl, disappointment while seeking opportunities in California, Woody realized some had it better than others. The system was stacked against the poor and working classes. Woody put his personal journey to song, and this “Okie” folk singer found a following with New York City audiences. Many laborers found solace and connection to Guthrie’s compositions, including “This Land.”

In 1940, Guthrie recorded the album “Dust Bowl Ballads.”  It was a rebuke of the idea of privatized land that excluded the masses for the select gilded class’s privileges. The public lands were everyone’s to share with good stewardship.

Guthrie later joined the World War II effort as a Merchant Marine. He wrote songs about fighting fascism and had a guitar labeled with a notable slogan “This Machine Fights Fascists.”

After World War II, Guthrie found himself doing recording gigs back in California, up to the Pacific Northwest, then back to New York City. But Woody’s continual ramblings stretched the patience of Mary and the monogamy of his marriage. He ultimately divorced Mary while he was romantically involved with a dancer in New York named Marjorie. They would have four children together, with one of their children tragically dying from an apartment fire.

Guthrie’s alcoholism, behavioral outbursts and moments of paranoia added stress upon another untenable relationship. Ultimately Woody needed to be institutionalized in 1952. He would be in and out of hospitals until his untimely death in 1967 at Creedmoor State Hospital in Queens.

Woody’s doctors encouraged Marjorie to divorce him in 1953 and take custody of the children as his erratic behavior only seemed to worsen. Woody would remarry a third time after becoming romantically involved with Anneke van Kirk. They would have one child between them but the marriage only lasted three years.

Despite Woody’s many personal shortcomings, Marjorie remained by his side and supervised his care, even after their marriage dissolved. By 1965, he was unable to talk and flailed his arms to answer “Yes” or “No” questions. Marjorie would use “Yes” or “No” cards to communicate with him. She also came up with a system of eye blinks and showed Woody how to use these eye movements to communicate with her when he was unable to use his voice.

She organized regularly scheduled visits to see him with their children at the hospital and arranged for musicians to visit with and sing to him. Woody was aware of the neurological medical challenges that faced him, recalling his own mother’s institutionalization and premature death. Even worse, Woody would lose both of his daughters from his first marriage to the wretched hereditary Huntington’s Disease.

Even after Woody’s death, Marjorie successfully advocated for research funding to address Huntington’s Disease. She was a trailblazer and lobbied state legislators and members of Congress for basic biomedical research into this congenital neurological disorder. Marjorie formed the Committee to Combat Huntington’s Disease and traveled worldwide to spread awareness. In 1977, she convinced President Jimmy Carter to form the Presidential Commission to Study Neurodegenerative Diseases.

Thanks to Marjorie’s persistent advocacy, a biomedical breakthrough occurred in 1983. Researchers found a genetic linkage between Huntington’s and an unknown gene somewhere on the human genome of chromosome 4. This genetic correlation between Woody’s genome and Huntington’s occurred two months after Marjorie’s passing and 16 years after Woody’s premature death.

The Committee to Combat Huntington’s Disease was renamed the Huntington Disease Society of America on Nov. 4, 1983. Ten years later, the autosomal dominant congenital defect that Woody suffered from was linked to the short arm of autosomal chromosome 4 (i.e. 4p16.3).  By1999, the organization had committed more than $20 million in funding for basic research on Huntington’s Disease.

With just one defective gene, the toxic gain of function protein within the brain was responsible for causing a shortened life. In 2008, researchers correlated the number of CAG repeats within the HTT gene with the severity of the disease. Within the HTT Gene was a protein called “Huntington protein”, involved in cell signaling, cellular transport, transcriptional regulation of neurons and synaptic function (i.e. neuronal communication). Research indicated that the HD mutant form of this protein (mHTT) had an abnormally expanded polyglutamine stretch with >40 CAG nucleotide repeats within the actual gene that encoded a poly-glutamine protein that disrupted the form and function of neurons and slowly degraded the neuron with a highly toxic gain of function protein causing advanced neurodegeneration. 

Marjorie’s legacy in advocating for biomedical research funding within the federal government and nonprofit organizations helped pave the way for early detection of Huntington’s. The genome affects more than 75,000 people with the defective gene (mHTT) and 35,000 people exhibiting symptoms.

Woody influenced generations of folk singers who would weave in their own variations and storytelling within the folk music genera. While there is no cure for Huntington’s Disease, more than two dozen clinic trials are focusing on providing therapeutic resolution to their congenital disease. They have Marjorie to thank for activating investment, awareness, and research.

A Summary of the Seventy Years of Neo-Liberalism, Make America Great Again and a Hypothetical Question:

Imagine how Woody and Marjorie Guthrie would react to our contemporary times. How would they opine and harmonize about all the changes that this world has experienced since World War II: what has been progressed within and what has recently been lost from our country?

Specifically, how do you think they would react to the budget reconciliation bill that Republicans in Congress and President Donald J. Trump dubbed the “One Big, Beautiful Bill”?

I think Woody and Marjorie Guthrie would have supported the various safety net policies enacted by Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration: federal employment services (Public Works Administration, Works Progress Administration, Civilian Conservation Corps, Tennessee Valley Authority); income security post-retirement systems (Social Security Act); subsidized higher education (e.g. the G.I. Bill) and health care (The New Deal). They would have viewed other developments as positive as well: The Fair Deal, The Great Society, the Civil Rights Movement, reproductive rights, and the Americans for Disabilities Act, among other initiatives, were all positive steps. The federal and state governments worked together to support millions of Americans. 

The federal bureaucracy managed programs such as food stamps and Medicaid to assist poor families and pregnant girls and mothers. Other programs such as Pell Grants helped people access education, a vocation or trade, with a view toward financial stability. Federally managed programs provided health insurance (e.g. Medicaid, Medicare Part A, B, C, D), or paths toward careers, home ownership, building communities, public works projects, and K-12 schools.

After World War II, a middle class bloomed during Dwight D. Eisenhower’s administration (1953-1961). Lyndon B. Johnson’s presidency was marked by establishment of Medicare and Medicaid on July 30, 1965. Medicare was the government’s answer to mainly pay for medical insurance for ages 65 and older individuals, specifically those who were retired from their trade or needing managed or institutional care. Medicaid was the federal government’s answer to pay for medical insurance for those in the limited-income bottom tax bracket to provide care for impoverished families, pregnant girls and women, children, persons of disability.

President Barack Obama’s signature accomplishment was establishing the Affordable Care Act, a major health care reform in 2010. Through the Affordable Care Act, 40 states expanded Medicaid.

President Joe Biden created the Green Tax Credit incentives system that would encourage the United States to invest in renewable energy infrastructure systems like wind, solar and hydroelectric power. These progressive and expansive programs not only created added safety nets for more Americans but incentivized forward thinking innovations that could help more people apply earth friendly technology to protect the earth as a biosphere and its multiple biomes.

And yet, Woody Guthrie would note that the rich would always want to make things more lopsided for themselves at the expense of the poorer populations and the biosphere. Interestingly, he mentions in the fourth verse of “This Land is My Land”:

There was a big high wall there that tried to stop me
Sign was painted, said, “Private Property”
But on the back side, it didn’t say nothing
This land was made for you and me.

Woody and Marjorie Guthrie would also identify Donald Trump as a deeply insecure individual. The future president grew up in a privileged and well-connected family in New York City, but failed to learn to show common decency toward his fellow man or woman. He inherited his father’s substantial real estate company, and he was a poor role model. Trump delighted in vindictive behavior by bullying other people that he considered were lower in civil rights, societal privileges, and social stature. He racially profiled tenants and evicted and/or showed “no vacancies” for persons of color seeking a modest apartment. He did not always pay laborers for their completed work sub-contracts, and he treated all relationships in a transactional way. Nothing was based on good faith.

Trump was also uncaring for the economically disadvantaged, showed disrespect to girls and women (i.e. misogynistic), people with disabilities, the ugly and infirmed, veterans, profoundly developmentally disabled children and their families, the LGTBQIA+ community, and specifically the transgender community. He did not care for immigrants that came from afar (e.g. asylum seekers, refugees, especially those who were not Caucasian). As president, he established travel bans to prevent Muslim asylum seekers from seeking refuge in the U.S.. He also idolized authoritarian leaders and disregarded our own government’s intelligence community’s assessment in favor of manipulative propaganda from some foreign powers.

During his first term, Trump and Republicans enacted massive tax cuts that disproportionately helped the wealthy. And the president dealt a blow to civil rights by appointing three justices to the U.S. Supreme Court. The court’s conservative majority has overturned many precedents, most famously Roe v. Wade in 2022, ending nearly a half-century of reproductive rights and bodily autonomy for girls and women.

Despite misconduct that prompted two impeachments, including inciting the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, almost all Republicans in Congress stood by Trump, enabling his return to power after the one-term Biden administration. (It helped that Biden’s Attorney General Merrick Garland failed to move swiftly with criminal investigations of Trump.)

Since beginning his second term in January 2025, Trump has “flooded the zone” with more executive orders than any other president within the first six months of his tenure. He dismantled civil rights protections such as Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) programs. He pardoned more than 1,500 people convicted of crimes related to the January 6 attacks. He dismantled the U.S. Agency for International Development, the principal mechanism for administering aid to the world’s most impoverished nations. Trump’s appointees cut off food, clinical trials, medicine including vaccinations and HIV preventative medications, leaving life-saving material to rot in warehouses or on the loading docks.  

Trump has assaulted the civil rights of people who do not identify with their birthright gender. The military has dismissed transgender service members and denied them their proper honorable discharge, despite exemplary qualifications, technical skills, leadership capabilities, respect amongst their commanding officers and fellow service members.

The president’s cabinet is stacked with unqualified, conspiracy theorists who are loyal to him and not to the Constitution. Trump’s sweeping changes to immigration and customs enforcement has fostered terror in many communities as federal officials carry out racial profiling and discrimination towards Asian, African, Haitian, South and Central American asylum seekers. 

Undocumented immigrants who are the backbone of the U.S. economy’s hospitality, agricultural and food security service sectors have been rounded up and detained in squalid detention facilities run by private prisons. The majority of these undocumented workers labored, cared for their families, paid their taxes and followed the law, with little to no civil or criminal law enforcement infractions.

A review of Iowa’s Congressional delegation

Critics of the “One Big, Beautiful Bill” have characterized it as a “reverse Robin Hood” tax model. The highest tax brackets (“The Haves”) get the most benefits, while the bill cuts benefits from households with the most to lose (“The Have Nots”). The least fortunate will be paying a greater percentage of their assets to the federal government. I can’t imagine Woody Guthrie’s reaction.

Iowa’s four U.S. House members all supported the budget reconciliation measure. That is, Mariannette Miller-Meeks (IA-01), Ashley Hinson (IA-02), Zach Nunn (IA-03), and Randy Feenstra (IA-04) joined Republican colleagues to enact massive cuts to Medicaid and food assistance. The law is expected to kick 12 million Americans off of Medicaid over the next ten years through cumbersome new reporting and work requirements. Some 42 million Americans living in poverty may lose all or part of their food assistance. This is the reality of the “beautiful” bill.

Trump created a so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and put billionaire Elon Musk in charge. The wealthiest man in the world, Musk had spent hundreds of millions of dollars to help Trump get elected, and his Space X company is a major government contractor. DOGE has wreaked havoc through mass firings of federal workers, citing unsubstantiated claims of waste, fraud, and abuse. Musk’s hand-picked employees have gained access to sensitive government software systems and personal information.

The Republican-controlled Congress has done nothing to rein in DOGE or provide oversight. Iowa’s junior Senator Joni Ernst became chair of the Senate’s “DOGE Caucus,” while Miller-Meeks and Hinson joined the DOGE Caucus in the House.

National Republican leaders have discouraged their members from holding in-person town halls. Telephone town halls are preferred, because staff can filter constituent questions and avoid the bad optics we’ve seen this year from some in-person town halls.

I made a table, which can be viewed here, with information about Iowa’s current U.S. House members and senators: years elected to public service, their salaries, their assigned Committees, Subcommittees, Caucuses, the dates and locations of their ‘In Person’ Town Halls, Telephone Town Halls, their talking points and constituents’ concerns.

Near the bottom of this table, I included some qualitative descriptions of the meetings and the mood of the constituents at any town hall meetings

Here are some highlights:  

IA-01

Miller-Meeks has boasted that she has worked since she was sixteen and therefore if you were not a person of disability or had a dependent child or parent to care for, that everyone on Medicaid should be enrolled full time in secondary education, a trades school and work at least 80 hours per month.

Miller-Meeks supports requiring people on Medicaid to show documentation of their volunteer work related hours to qualify for medical services, and if their policies changed, lost their job, changed their marital status, had children. All these hourly work adjustments needed to be tabulated.

Counter to Miller-Meeks’ assertions, evidence from similar programs in Arkansas and Georgia showed that the reporting requirements were cumbersome for those on Medicaid and cost the taxpayers more money than was ever saved. Constituents were concerned about the Veterans’ Affairs cuts that were going to happen in Iowa City. News reports from Miller-Meeks’ one telephone town hall cited the number of people who listened in, but did not make clear whether she received any scrutiny.

Biomedical researchers at the University of Iowa, its hospitals and clinics, and members of the graduate student union and the American Association of University Professors have protested the Trump administration’s cuts to grant funding from the National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation. Protesters also opposed Trump’s anti-DEI directives, intrusions onto academic freedom, and cuts to funding and programs focused on LGTBQIA+ or other marginalized community groups.

IA-02

At public meetings, Hinson has parroted Trump’s talking points about DOGE and the benefits of the budget reconciliation bill. One constituent complained that Hinson was spending too much time talking. One man talked about his daughters having a rare genetic eye mutation. He said that thanks to DOGE and federal funding cuts, the research was canceled at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics.

Hinson’s in-person town halls were sometimes contentious and at times it seemed that she was not listening to her constituents’ concerns. Reports suggest fewer contentious moments during her telephone town hall (not surprising, since staff control who has the microphone).

IA-03

Zach Nunn has never held an in person town hall, this year or in any previous years. He was deployed to Guard Duty during the May recess after voting for the first version of the budget reconciliation bill.

Democrats have organized several events in Nunn’s district, including a town hall in March featuring Minnesota Governor and 2024 vice presidential nominee Tim Walz. There have been repeated protests in front of Nunn’s office in downtown Des Moines as well as large “Hands Off” and “No Kings” rallies near the Iowa state capitol.

IA-04

While Randy Feenstra hosted a few small In person events, these were not open town halls. I didn’t get a clear sense from local news reports of what was discussed from these meetings. Feenstra has not served in any specific leadership positions within his listed caucuses (Table I). His strong anti-abortion stance was evident.

Feenstra is poised to run for governor in 2026, closing out his tenure in Congress. I suspect that his interest in questionable corporate out of state carbon capture systems technology and eminent domain over farmland will play out in the Republican primary.

Another point worth mentioning: Feenstra did nothing to stop DOGE from firing U.S.D.A. federal workers, including specialists who worked with emerging zoonotic viral pathogens like Avian Influenza or “bird flu” (specifically H5N1). Poultry were rightfully not allowed into specific states for poultry exhibitions (e.g. shows and fairs in California) for a good reason. To rein in the spread of this zoonotic virus, poultry farmers needed to conduct massive culling of flocks to control the highly infectious spread of H5N1, which subsequently led to record level egg prices.

Feenstra’s only solution was mass vaccination of all poultry with a developed H5N1 Vaccine. Nevertheless, this was not advised. Blanket vaccinations of poultry as well for as pigs and cattle would be very costly: not only would there be the literal cost of the vaccinations but also the mass vaccinations would mask those vaccinated animals that had a compromised immune system and would not show evident symptoms of a H5N1 virus infection. This would then serve as a ground zero organism for a new H5N1 mutation that could circumvent the immunocompromised animal, have a breakout infection and enable a new mutant H5N1 to overcome the current H5N1 Vaccine.

Senator Joni Ernst

Ernst had a viral moment at a town hall in May. When a constituent yelled out that “People will die” because of the budget reconciliation bill’s cuts to Medicaid and food assistance, Ernst responded, “Well, we all are going to die.” While this statement is technically true, it does not acknowledge that the masses will die sooner rather because of denied government health care coverage. The comment, and the tone in which the senator delivered it, was a “Let them eat cake” moment for Ernst, who enjoys generous government benefits herself.

The DOGE Caucus co-chair continues to defend the wholesale firing of federal workers, comparing it to a baseball batting average that “isn’t perfect” and admitting, “There have been ‘a few’ hiccups’…”

Senator Chuck Grassley, Miller-Meeks, and Hinson are also on the DOGE Caucus. Incidentally, a Democratic member (Representative Jared Moskowitz of Florida) has said that the DOGE Congressional Oversight Committee hasn’t met in months and is in his words “dead.”

Senator Chuck Grassley

Iowa’s senior senator is also Senate president pro tempore (PPT), meaning that he is fourth in line to be president (after Trump, Vice President JD Vance, and the Speaker of the House).

Grassley has continued to hold in person town halls this year. At age 91, he still prefers them to tele-town halls. Photos have shown Grassley walking with a cordless microphone in packed rooms. At some events, Iowans have spoken from the heart on how law-abiding undocumented immigrants were being rounded up around Iowa and were being separated from their dependents, detained and indefinitely incarcerated.

When challenged in April about the wrongful deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia to a horrific El Salvador mega prison, Grassley seemed to care less about this man or any of the deported Hispanic men or their due process in court. His feeble hand gestures and somewhat mumbled response was, “Well, we can’t fix our mistake because “he’s not in the U.S. anymore.” That was his excuse.

Grassley may have thought his answer would placate the assembled Iowans, but those in attendance didn’t let him off the hook. They demanded due process that the U.S. Constitution affords all citizens and undocumented immigrants. Abrego Garcia now back in the U.S., facing politically motivated criminal charges, but at least he is represented by attorneys.

 It seemed absurd, but in his capacity as Senate Judiciary Committee chair, Grassley announced at a June 18 Hearing that he would be issuing an investigation into whether Joe Biden was mentally competent while president. 

Imagine Grassley, who is ten years old than Biden, implicating a man he served with for 28 years in the U.S. Senate (1981 to 2009). Grassley’s investigation looks like a bid to satisfy the Trump administration and the weaponized U.S. Attorney General’s office.

Trump’s assault on science

Trump signed the budget reconciliation bill with much fanfare on July 4, the day after he headlined a partisan rally at the Iowa State Fairgrounds.

Congress has yet to approve a budget for the next fiscal year (beginning on October 1). But if Trump gets his way, there will be massive cuts to scientific research.

In the 2024 fiscal year, Iowa received a combined $67 million in National Science Foundation and $218 million in National Institutes of Health funding. That works out to about $89,000 in combined federal funding for scientific research for every 1,000 Iowa residents. But Trump has already moved to significantly reduce the U.S. government’s role in supporting science research.

Here are some of the massive shifts in priorities that Trump has proposed in the budget he submitted to Congress. (We will see this fall whether Iowa’s delegation and other Republicans go along with the plan.)

Overall, Trump’s proposed budget for 2026 would cut non-defense discretionary spending by 23 percent, from $708 billion to $545 billion. Non-defense discretionary spending makes up only about 15 percent of the entire U.S. 2026 budget ($6.75 to $7 trillion).

Mary Woolley, president and CEO of Research!America, a science advocacy organization, decried the president’s proposed budget as “a surrender of our leadership role.” It would enact massive cuts to science. The NIH’s budget would drop 40 percent from the 2025 level, from $47.4 billion to $27 billion in 2026.

Most notably, Trump seeks to hold NIH grant indirect cost reimbursements to 15 percent. That would force the host university to come up with the balance due for overhead costs that supports the overall research operation but are not directly tied to the specific research project (i.e. costs for maintaining the facilities/infrastructure and administrative costs that indirectly enable the research). For Iowa’s research universities alone, the financial effect of the 15 percent indirect cost cap translates to a $33.5 million loss at the University of Iowa Colleges of Medicine and a $3.3 million loss at the Iowa State University Schools of Veterinary Medicine.

Trump would “celebrate” the 75th anniversary of the NSF by cutting its budget by 55 percent, from $9 billion to $4 billion. Targeted extramural grants focused on climate, clean energy, and “woke” social and behavioral studies, as well as economic sectors will be cut. Only artificial intelligence and quantum information research will be spared. The Department of Energy’s budget would drop 14 percent to $7.1 billion, NASA’s budget would be cut 24 percent ($7.5 billion) to $18.8 billion, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration would be cut by 24 percent ($1.5 billion) to $4.5 billion, the U.S. Geological Society would be dropped 35 percent to $1 billion, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture will be dropped 22.5 percent (i.e. $6.7 billion decrease) to $23 billion.

Nearly 82 percent of the NIH’s budget is distributed as extramural grants throughout the United States’ academic institutions via thousands of approved grants. In normal times, applying for an NIH or an NSF grant is highly competitive. Tenure track professors and early career scientists often need to apply multiple times to achieve an approved federal funding grant.

If approved by Congress, Trump’s cuts would make the competition more daunting. That would discourage young scientists from pursuing research and academic scholarship through the scientific career pipeline, especially for those in underrepresented populations. Thousands of federal scientists would be fired.

In a matter of months, the Trump administration “irreversibly damaged” the U.S. scientific enterprise, which took 70 to 80 years to build and traditionally enjoyed bipartisan U.S. Congressional support. Some NIH grants may have been terminated because the research involved topics now considered to be taboo, such as DEI or “gender ideology.”

Trump’s proposed budget would cut grant spending by 53 percent across four agencies (NIH, NSF, Defense, and Energy), with NIH grants getting the most severe cuts. One scientist within an affected federal research agency has described an atmosphere of “chaos and fear, frustration and anger,” and “A feeling of utter powerlessness and repeated insults.”

Probably the most devastating assault upon the science community is the slashing of the workforce funding for early career scientists from underrepresented communities (e.g. people of color, women, persons of disability). Approved NSF fellowships will be halved from 2,037 fellowships in 2024 to only 1,000 fellowships in 2025.

In addition, the Trump administration has indefinitely frozen or terminated grants within large research grant universities across the country. Some 60 universities are under investigation for supposed “antisemitism” with $17 billion in federal research funds in jeopardy. 40 other research universities are under investigation for alleged racial discrimination.

Eight elite research universities alone have $5 billion frozen: Harvard University, $2.2 billion; Cornell University, $1 billion, Northwestern University, $790 million, Brown, $510 million; Columbia University, $400 million; Princeton University, $210 million; University of Pennsylvania, $175 million; University of Maine, $36 million.

However, not all states are treated with equality: 2025 federal frozen grants in red states like Iowa have not been reinstated. But some universities in blue states (e.g. Illinois, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, California, Minnesota) have had funding restored after their state attorneys general successfully sued the federal government over the grant cancellations. 

NIH funding in 2024 supported 407,782 professional level federal jobs and generated $94.58 billion in new economic activity. NIH research funding in past years demonstrated a strong return on investment such that every U.S. dollar invested generated $2,45 to $2.56 in economic activity.

The budget reconciliation bill combines big tax cuts for the top bracks with an estimated $1 trillion in Medicaid cuts and around $295 cut from food assistance. Changes to Medicaid may cause 12 million Americans to lose their health insurance coverage over the next decade, which translates to 113,979 Iowans projected to lose their Medicaid.

Some rural hospitals will face closure because their slim profit margins will more than likely be turned upside down when the federal government will not be reimbursing the smaller rural clinics for their Medicaid services. Within Iowa alone, twenty nursing home facilities are at risk of closing with five facing closure. An estimated 26,000 Iowans will lose $25 per month in food assistance; qualifying Americans will lose on average $53 per month or $636 per year.

Trump and Republicans in Congress are rolling back tax credits for renewable energy infrastructure investments, derailing Iowa’s future potential solar, wind and renewable energy projects. Meanwhile, they are not extending tax credits that have subsidized many Americans who buy health insurance policies through Affordable Care Act exchanges.

Even as it reduced spending on food assistance, the budget reconcilation bill massively increased spending on immigration-related detention centers. Trump wants to increase the defense budget as well. The “beautiful” bill raised the debt ceiling by $5 trillion and is projected to increase deficits by more than $3 trillion over the next decade. Our national debt already stands at around $36 trillion.

In Closing – Woody and Marjorie Guthrie’s Hypothetical Answer and Follow Up Queries

I imagine how Woody and Marjorie would interpret these affronts to democracy. I imagine that they would support the organic, yet organized grassroots protests, like the “No Kings” events held in thousands of communities, large and small.

But I suspect they would also wonder, “How did we get here?” How did we Iowans re-elect these Republicans to Congress? Why are so many U.S. citizens in favor of an oligarchy with an authoritarian government, and a racist, antisemitic, misogynistic, narcissistic president? How has the U.S. population simply abdicated their power to the top 5 to 0.01 percent of the population by duly electing these legislators who reward billionaires while increasing the burden on lower income tax brackets? 

I think these times would confuse Woody and Marjorie. How did we not see how we elected an enabled members of Congress who harm our state for their own benefit? Why have these U.S. representatives and senators abdicated their power and showed acquiescence to a dangerous executive branch?

How did we go along with this economic threat to ourselves, our neighbors, our communities? Why would Americans living in what was considered the most robust economy in the world support a mentally adrift president seeking to drive the off the cliff, while enriching himself and his billionaire cohorts, grifting the U.S. taxpayers? And why would Congress allow bureaucratic chaos through mass federal employee layoffs, and deprive taxpayers of quality health care and retirement?

Woody and Marjorie Guthrie would not only be displeased with the federal government, the majority of Republicans in Congress, the U.S. Supreme Court and our reelected, criminally indicted president. The Guthries would be disappointed with the U.S. population, its shift to an isolationist state. So much has been erased so quickly from our government’s guardrails: checks and balances, programs and protections for girls and women, and underrepresented discriminated groups such as people of disability, people of color and marginalized LGTBQIA+ communities.

In addition, I sadly do not envision any new discoveries of genetically elucidated diseases like Huntington’s Chorea, at least not in the United States. Other countries in Europe and/or Asia will likely lead the way through grant sharing and lab collaborations.

I anticipate a missed opportunity for the U.S., which over the past 70 to 80 years created a bipartisan, federally funded successful system for training grants, scientific peer reviewed rigor and investigation.

The Trump administration’s proposed cuts to science will further slow our country’s dwindling competitive edge. Speaking to members of the Senate Appropriations Committee in April, AAAS CEO, Sudip Parikh warned that the U.S. would no doubt lose its global leadership position. Future non-American joint labs that are interested in international collaborations will lead the way with these future biomedical designs.

National grants used to fund basic science research across the U.S., such as the Human Genome Project and the National Protein Data Bank. Those projects have led to big gains in applied biomedical research technologies like RNA based Viral Vaccines (including COVID vaccines). They have supported clinical trials to help patients through gene editing technologies to deliver functional allele selective genes into patients with congenital defects (e.g. Sickle Cell Anemia, Cystic Fibrosus, Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis ‘Lou Gehrig’s disease’), and even Woody Guthrie’s vexing Huntington’s Disease.

So many grants have been inexplicably cancelled, and the end of Trump’s second term is three and a half years away.

Guthrie’s genius was his simplicity. I really don’t know how such a simple message in “This Land is My Land” could be misconstrued so easily. 

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