LETTER TO THE EDITOR
This morning at the Texas Tribune Festival, I sat in on a conversation hosted by The Atlantic, featuring managing editor Andrea Valdez and staff writers Tom Bartlett and Adam Serwer. I want to begin by thanking them, and the Festival, for elevating one of the most urgent threats facing our country: the deliberate political attack on knowledge itself.
What they described is not just a culture war skirmish. It is a structural crisis. It is an assault on the very machinery that produces truth, safety, science, and freedom. And unless we act, it will define the next century of American decline.
The Problem: A Government at War With Expertise The current presidential administration has systematically replaced credentialed experts with political loyalists, often individuals with no professional background in the fields they now oversee. When the Secretary of Health and Human Services casts doubt on vaccine efficacy, and the President publicly claims that Tylenol causes autism, this is not “politics as usual.” This is epistemic sabotage.
What Serwer described on stage was even more alarming: universities being pressured to seek “permission slips” to teach. Research institutions losing funding for lines of inquiry deemed politically inconvenient. Agencies threatened with retaliation if their scientists present data that contradicts the administration’s preferred narrative.
If this continues, America will not simply become less informed. We could become less free. Because the attack on knowledge is an attack on freedom. A misinformed population is an unfree population because they cannot chart their own course.
The Solution: Treat Knowledge as Public Infrastructure
•- We maintain roads because a nation cannot move without them.
•- We must maintain knowledge because a nation cannot govern without it.
To do that, Congress should adopt a package I’ll call the Knowledge Infrastructure & Integrity Act, built on three pillars: expertise, protection, and independence.
1. Expertise: Minimum Qualifications for Critical Federal Roles Woodrow Wilson once recognized that a modern nation cannot run on patronage appointments and political favoritism. His era began the professionalization of the federal civil service, moving America away from the spoils system and toward a merit-based government. It is time for the next evolution of that idea.
Statutory Minimum
Qualifications
Congress should require baseline professional expertise for leadership roles in agencies that protect the public: HHS, CDC, FDA, EPA, Education, and others.
For example:
•- HHS Secretary: Advanced degree + 10 years in public health, health administration, epidemiology, or clinical practice
•- EPA Administrator: Advanced training in environmental science, engineering, or a related field
•- CDC Director: Medical or public health expertise with research or epidemiological experience This isn’t partisan. It’s basic governance.
2. Protection: Strengthening Civil Servants & Whistleblowers As long as federal experts can be punished for telling the truth, knowledge will remain politically vulnerable.
A. Protected Speech for Scientists and Analysts Congress should codify that disagreement over data, warnings about public health, publication of peer-reviewed research, and testifying to Congress truthfully are all explicitly protected forms of speech for federal employees working in technical or scientific roles.
If you can’t even disagree with misinformation inside your own agency without risking your job, the public has no defense against corruption.
B. Mechanics of Civil Service Protection
•- Here’s how you make this real, not symbolic:
•- Define scientific and analytic positions in statute as protected merit roles.
•- Prohibit mass reclassification of those roles into at-will positions without congressional approval.
•- Guarantee fast-track, confidential review for retaliation complaints.
•- Shift the burden of proof to management in cases of alleged scientific misconduct or truthbased retaliation.
•- Allow reinstatement and damages when whistleblowers prevail.
•- Establish an independent ombudsman with subpoena power and insulated budgeting.
This is how you prevent a repeat of prior attempts to convert thousands of civil service roles into politically controlled jobs. Expertise should serve the nation, not a single leader’s ego.
3. Independence: Academic Freedom & Research Integrity Serwer’s line about “permission slips to teach” should shock every American.
When political actors can pressure research universities, cancel grants mid-stream, or defund departments for reaching unwanted conclusions, the country begins to lose its ability to innovate or even self-correct.
We need
A. A Federal Baseline for Academic Freedom If an institution receives federal research dollars or student aid:
•- Faculty cannot be disciplined for lawful research or instruction within accepted professional norms or for speaking their mind during personal time.
•- Governing boards must follow transparent procedures before intervening in academic matters.
•- Federal agencies cannot weaponize funding to silence politically disfavored scholarship.
B. Insulation of Long-Term Research Multi-year federal grants should not be revocable for political reasons unless fraud or misconduct is documented in writing and independently reviewed. Scientific progress requires consistency and time, two things authoritarian tendencies cannot abide.
Why This Matters
Because the forces attacking knowledge know exactly what they’re doing.
•- If you erode expertise, you can replace it with obedience.
•- If you undermine universities, you can dictate the boundaries of permissible truth.
•- If you punish scientists, you can control the narrative on health, climate, and public safety.
•- If you politicize information, you can politicize reality.
•- And a nation that cannot see reality clearly cannot govern itself.
•- We cannot run a 21stcentury country on 13thcentury epistemology.
Knowledge is public infrastructure.
Our roads, bridges, and power lines keep our bodies moving. Our schools, labs, and public institutions keep our minds moving.
Destroy either, and the country collapses.
The Path Forward
•- This is not a Democratic or Republican problem.
•- This is a democracy problem.
If America wishes to remain a free, modern, selfgoverning nation, we must defend the institutions that create and preserve truth as fiercely as we defend our borders or our economy. Because without knowledge, none of those things survive.
The attack on knowledge is an attack on freedom. A misinformed population is an unfree population because they cannot chart their It’s time to rebuild the intellectual backbone of America before someone with power and no interest in truth snaps it completely.
Cheers, Chase Norris
