The Administration Keeps Promising Substitutes. The Substitutes Keep Failing.

On Thursday, the director of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality told Congress the agency had a $345 million appropriation but had spent less than $15 million on grants and had not issued a new one in over a year. Roger Klein defended the cuts as a "redirection" toward health outcomes and suggested artificial intelligence could replace the work of the agency's own scientists. ^[1][2]

This report lays a policy foundation that frees American scientists to do their most groundbreaking work, revives the national pursuit of ambitious scientific missions, and positions the United States to lead the AI-driven scientific revolution that will define the next century. — Michael Kratsios

The same week, the administration paid the German energy company RWE $1.22 billion to cancel its offshore wind leases — the fifth and largest such buyout of the year, bringing the total spent on lease terminations to roughly $3.9 billion. RWE will redirect $900 million into a liquefied natural gas project and $300 million into natural gas turbine reservations. ^[3] These two events, separated by agency and industry, are connected by a physical chain. The AI the administration has invoked to replace government scientists is itself the largest new driver of electricity demand in the United States. Meta is funding ten dedicated natural gas plants in Louisiana through a fifteen-to-twenty-year agreement to power its data centers. Amazon is seeking permits for six hundred diesel generators at a North Carolina data center campus. ^[4][5] The natural gas plants being built to replace the wind and solar the administration paid to cancel are being consumed by the AI the administration suggested would fill the gap left by the scientists it fired. The substitute defeats the substitute, and the cost falls on households: Entergy estimates its Cottonwood gas plant purchase for Meta could raise average residential bills by eight to thirteen dollars a month. ^[4] This circle is not an anomaly. It is one instance of a single governing pattern visible across every domain of the state. The administration liquidates public capacity, promises a substitute, and leaves the substitute to fill the void. In each case, the substitute is thinner than what it replaced — and in some, it never arrives at all. The energy buyouts are the most expensive version of the pattern. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum frames the lease cancellations as a shift toward "dependable, secure energy infrastructure," arguing taxpayers should not indefinitely subsidize "unreliable projects." ^[3]

Under President Trump, companies are shifting investment back toward dependable, secure energy infrastructure that can power our economy and lower utility costs. — Doug Burgum

But the administration is not simply clearing the way for the market to build. It is paying companies to stop building one thing and promising another will take its place — and the replacement is not reaching the public. Ohio residential electric bills reached record highs in July, up 12 percent year over year and 62 percent over a decade. ^[6] Nationally, electricity bills are projected to rise 8.5 percent this summer, with 13 million customers facing annual shut-offs. ^[7] The same logic governs the administration's approach to science. The restructuring of the $200 billion federal research budget prioritizes AI as the "primary instrument of discovery," redirecting funds from universities to individual scientists and granting political appointees power to override peer review. ^[8][9] The NIH has lost roughly 4,400 employees, more than 20 percent of its workforce, dropping to its lowest level in at least two decades. ^[10] RFK Jr. fired approximately 20,000 HHS employees and all 17 members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. ^[11] The AHRQ has seen roughly three-quarters of its staff depart and its grant review office eliminated, targeting patient safety research on lung cancer detection, high-risk pregnancy, and antibiotic resistance. ^[1] The promise is that AI will fill the gap. The AI needs the gas plants. The gas plants were supposed to replace the wind. In public health, the substitution is ideological rather than technological. The administration canceled 53 of 67 teen pregnancy prevention grants and replaced them with a $63 million abstinence-only funding cycle — programs that have no demonstrated efficacy. ^[12]

Congress never intended pregnancy prevention funding to focus on helping young women prepare for pregnancy rather than preventing it. — Democracy Forward

The cuts were indiscriminate: Fact Forward in South Carolina, which serves conservative communities, lost $1.6 million, and Healthy Futures of Texas shut down entirely. ^[13] The replacement was ideologically preferred rather than evidence-based, and the organizations that had been doing the work simply disappeared. At HUD, the administration suspended $200 million in funding to Los Angeles's homeless services agency and shifted its approach toward "temporary shelters and sobriety-based programs over permanent housing." ^[14]

Ultimately people will lose their lives. — Karen Bass

Mayor Karen Bass warned that people will lose their lives. The substitute — sobriety shelters — is a fraction of the permanent housing infrastructure it is meant to replace. In childcare, there is no substitute at all. After pandemic funding expired and South Carolina paused its scholarship program, one center's enrollment fell from 38 children to 15. The owner described the void in the plainest possible terms. ^[15]

We started out with 38 children, now down to 15. — Barbara Robinson

No private replacement emerged for the withdrawn public funding. The substitute never arrived. The energy circle remains the pattern's sharpest finding because it is self-consuming. The administration is simultaneously pursuing two policy thrusts — AI as the replacement for scientific expertise, and fossil fuels as the replacement for renewable energy — and each invokes the other in a way that makes the whole project more expensive for the people it was supposed to serve. The new gas plants are not replacing the liquidated wind and solar on the public grid; they are being built for data centers, under private agreements between utilities and technology companies. The Alliance for Affordable Energy warns that data center electricity demand may drive up wholesale market costs for all consumers. ^[4] Some federal capital is flowing to grid infrastructure. The Energy Department's Office of Energy Dominance Financing has redirected lending toward baseload gas, nuclear, and transmission — including $3.26 billion to AEP Texas for 2,800 miles of transmission lines and $26.5 billion to Southern Company for gas, nuclear, and grid projects. ^[16] But this represents a fraction of the $83 billion in loans the office has restructured or eliminated from the prior administration, including $9.5 billion previously allocated for wind and solar. ^[16] And it does not directly address the household bill increases already underway — Ohio generation costs rose 103 percent over five years, and one advocate warned prices may not let up for five years. ^[6]

Generation costs are the primary reason electric bills have increased in Ohio, and in Ohio, utilities like AEP Ohio are not permitted to own generation. — American Electric Power

The pattern is not a conspiracy. No single document orders the liquidation of public capacity across every domain. But the mechanism is the same whether the domain is energy, science, housing, or public health: withdraw the public resource, name a replacement, and leave the replacement to fill the space. The childcare center in South Carolina where the phone has stopped ringing is not a metaphor. It is an empty room, and the substitute never arrived. ^[15]