It’s understandable if you thought this was a graph of the stock market under Donald Trump’s second term, but this is actually depicting his proposed funding cuts for NASA. Trump has, stunningly, made Elon “I’m obviously a Nazi” Musk sound sober and sane when he said this was “troubling.” Ars Technica shares some context as to why:

“However, science policy experts have been more alarmed, characterizing such cuts as an “extinction level” event for what is seen as the crown jewel of the space agency. Nearly all of NASA’s most significant achievements over the last 25 years have been delivered by the science programs, including feats such as Ingenuity flying on Mars, New Horizons swooping by Pluto, and Cassini’s discovery of water plumes on Enceladus.”

As troubling as it is, it’s not surprising. Scientists, like the judges, press, and intellectuals he is currently attacking, challenge his fascist agenda of spewing propaganda and lies. This is also yet another example of Trump using the Project 2025 playbook. Carl Sagan’s quote from his book The Demon Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark was remarkably prescient:

“Science is more than a body of knowledge; it is a way of thinking. I have a foreboding of America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time – when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few; and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what’s good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.”