There are things that any President does that should be applauded, and others that should be condemned.
I have been troubled by the sense today that some, on both sides of the political divide, would choose to condemn everything from a President they don’t like and approve of everything done by a President they do like. This is expressed by some on the right wing as TDS, claiming that there are people who oppose everything that Mr. Trump does simply because it came from him. And I guess there is also BDS from those same people who can’t find a thing that Biden did that was good.
I reject this approach. Opposition to a particular administration does not require the rejection of everything that it does.
To be specific, here are a few of the things that Mr. Trump has done, that I applaud:
- The Abraham accords
- Stopping minting of pennies
- Operation Warp Speed
- The First Step Act
- The DC Infrastructure Act
- Increasing funding for HBCU’s
- Fighting Chinese ownership of Tik Tok
- Researching psychedelics for use in PTSD and other traumatic mental states.
You may have your own list. There is no requirement that we all agree on what we should approve; but we should acknowledge those things that we believe should be applauded. Nor are we required to approve those things that others applaud. No one has a monopoly on judgement. We should celebrate independent thought.
On the other hand, and also to be specific, here are a few things that Mr. Biden did that I did not applaud:
- The too rash withdrawal from Afghanistan
- The too weak response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine
- The slow response to Israel’s weapons requests
- Not keeping his word not to run for a second term
Again, you may have your own list as you would for the things that Mr. Biden did that you applaud.
The point I am trying to make is that for honest American Patriots, there must be a fair scrutiny of Presidential performance. And we need to publicly acknowledge those positions.
Regarding policy decisions, elections have consequences. I have often been reminded by my Republican friends that Mr. Trump won the last election and his party controls both houses of Congress. They conclude that we should allow them to govern based on the voters’ choice.
I hope that these same Americans will feel the corresponding way if the Democratic Party takes control of the House and/or the Senate in 2026, or the Presidency in 2028.
POLICIES CAN BE REVERSED
For those policy issues that are debated between the two parties, legislatures will always be able to review, edit, and replace laws and regulations placed on the books by other administrations. This is standard procedure for every legislature whether it is a new majority or a continued one. And the concept of reversibility is one of the core narratives of the U.S. Constitution.
Tax policy can be rewritten; environmental regulations can be revisited, modified, or replaced; tariffs can be transitory.
One can argue the value of the arguments made supporting policy decisions; but those arguments will continue to be up for discussion in future congresses. Alongside the ebb and flow of majorities in Congress, those opinion differences and legislation from which it results, will rise and fall.
MY PROBLEM WITH MR. TRUMP
This brings me to the issue that troubles me the most; the actions that Mr. Trump has taken that are NOT reversible.
In September 2025, Trump explicitly told reporters that a government shutdown could be used as an opportunity to make "irreversible" changes, "We can do things during the shutdown that are irreversible, that are bad for them and irreversible by them. Like cutting vast numbers of people out, cutting things that they like, cutting programs that they like".
His implication was that even without legislative action, a President can accomplish permanent policy changes through executive actions alone. This flies in the face of established Constitutional standards.
THE IMPORTANCE OF PRESERVING SCIENCE
One of the particularly important things to keep in mind when reviewing the actions of this administration is something that I have written about in the past: “Discovery versus Invention”.
Discovery is finding out something that already exists, but that has been as yet unknown.
Invention is taking what is known and creating something that has not existed before.
Invention is what is done by industry. It is evaluated by its “Return on Investment”, ROI. It is the R&D that provides companies with new or improved products.
Science focuses on Discovery.
Discovery does not fall within the needs of companies and is generally not funded by industry. Thus, it must, necessarily, be funded by governmental agencies. There is no obvious ROI on research into how something works. The grants awarded to those researchers are designed to increase human knowledge, not to solve problems. A great example is cancer. Discovery research is designed to try to understand what cancer is, how it develops, what differentiates it from normal cell growth. This includes the basic understanding of how cells differentiate, how they control growth, and how they mutate, both naturally, and through outside influences. “Basic” research is NOT “how to cure cancer”. When a basic discovery is found, then, and only then, can inventors take that new understanding and attempt to capitalize on it by devising new ways to apply that new knowledge.
Here is a story:
The story begins in 1910 when the Italian physician Giuseppe Ciuffo was able to demonstrate that common skin warts were caused by an infectious agent that could be filtered from the area around the wart. Now, warts are pretty common. They often appear on the hands and feet and often disappear on their own over a period of time. It they persist, there are simple chemical remedies or they can be removed by a dermatologist. They pose no health problems, so there have been very little commercial efforts to develop treatments or products from which to profit.
Jump forward to 1970. The German virologist Harold zur Hausen, flying in the face of current medical dogma, was curious about whether cervical cancer might be related to warts, and might be caused by that same infectious agent identified by Dr. Ciuffo 60 years before. This research would never have been funded by pharmaceutical companies or other industrial companies. Nor would it be likely that current Venture Capitalists would find the work to have had commercial applications. However, the grant committees, composed of established scientists at the Ministry of Research in Germany found the proposed work solid and fundable.
Dr. Hausen and his team tested cancer samples from multiple cervical cancers and were able to isolate many different types of viruses. After ten years of research, that team was able to determine that one particular virus was present in about half of the cervical cancer samples they had collected. Another variant of the same virus was found in another 20% of the patients.
These specific viruses were identified as members of a large group of viruses generally called “Human Papilloma Viruses”, or HPV. Hausen and his team were able to show that of the hundreds of strains of those viruses, two specific variants, viruses which only infect humans, are necessary for the creation of cervical cancer, although not every woman who carries the virus will get cervical cancer. In science this is referred to as “HPV virus is necessary for cervical cancer, but not sufficient to cause it”.
Dr. Hausen and his team showed a basic link between HPV and cervical cancer. That allowed us to know something that had existed but had not been known before: DISCOVERY.
In 2008 Dr. Hausen was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology for this work.
The International Biological Study on Cervical Cancer group was established in 1989 and was funded by the UK and found that samples from 22 countries of cervical cancer showed over 90% contained these HPV viruses. Subsequent work with better detection capacities has now shown that over 99.7% of cervical cancers have the presence of this virus. DISCOVERY
Ten years after Dr. Hausen’s work, Dr. Karen Vousden at the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research at Oxford was able to identify which molecules on the specific HPV viruses allowed the virus to infect cells and cause cancer.
DISCOVERY
In 1991 work in Australia and at the NIH created “virus-like particles”, non-infectious particles that looked like the outer shell of the HPV virus, but without the genetic material necessary for infection. These particles were shown to be able to generate an immune response to HPV without causing illness.
And, finally, in 2006 Merck developed, tested, and gained FDA approval for a vaccine for HPV (Gardasil). This was followed in 2009 with GlaxoSmithKline’s Cervarix. These vaccines were new products that had not existed before:
INVENTION
These vaccines were developed based on the new understandings funded by governments, not industry. They have reduced cervical cancer in women by 88%.
DISCOVERY led to INVENTION which led to PROGRESS.
The largest economic returns from new products come from the discoveries made by “basic” discovery researchers.
Discovery is the fuel that powers invention.
For the purpose of this essay, it is critical to understand that those researchers, involved in discovery, have very specific expertise, extensive experience in their fields developed over years, and an understanding of issues that is not held by people in industry or focused on invention. When those researchers are lost or dispersed, they are not easily replaced. Their expertise is not easily translated into fields that industry needs. They are almost always impossible to be rehired, because they take new positions, often in other countries; their research teams are scattered, their equipment is scuttled or sold off. It is not possible to simply hire new Ph.D.’s out of graduate school to repopulate those laboratories.
When institutions of discovery are shut down, they are SHUT DOWN. Reopening is effectively impossible. Renewing financing cannot reestablish the people and the facilities.
In Part 2 of this essay, I will provide some specific examples of the irreversible changes that Mr. Trump has made to this country.