Weekly Mind Dump: Fleeing America in the Era of Trump

Watch for a brain drain as Americans vote with their feet for abroad.

Week of 4/27-5/3:

Standing up to fascism: “La Marseillaise”

“Things are very bad there. The devil has the people by the throat,” a Bulgarian refugee tells Rick Blaine in the 1942 classic, Casablanca. The interesting thing about that movie, featuring desperate refugees fleeing fascism and seeking to immigrate to America, is that no fewer than 17 of the actors were genuine European refugees fleeing Hitler and his allies. Several — Peter Lorre, Paul Henreid, Conrad Veidt — went on to have very successful Hollywood careers.

America benefited from Europe’s best and brightest who made it to our shores in those dark years. The U.S. Emergency Committee in Aid of Displaced Foreign Scholars was formed in 1933 to help Nazi-persecuted scholars find employment at American universities. Among the refugee scientists were Albert Einstein, Hans Bethe, John von Neumann, James Franck, Edward Teller, Rudolf Peierls, Enrico Fermi and Leo Szilard. Thirty-nine of the scientists who worked on the Manhattan Project which produced the atomic bomb were European refugees, most Jews fleeing Nazi persecution. But those escaping to America also counted leading artists, philosophers and writers, including, Marc Chagall, Bertolt Brecht, and Thomas Mann, Hannah Arendt and Herbert Marcuse.

A number of German scientists who worked for the Third Reich, notably Wernher von Braun — the “father of the U.S. space program” — were brought to the U.S. under a covert program after World War II. Many were war criminals. But that’s a different and sordid story which I center-pieced in my Amazon bestselling political thriller CHASM.

We may soon witness another wave of talent fleeing their homeland — only this time from the U.S. to Europe. The Trump-Musk regime’s war on science and expertise is inflicting a toll on the country. It started with the perverse attacks on Dr. Anthony Fauci whose pioneering work in immunology has made him one of the world’s most frequently cited scientists in scientific journals. But MAGA’s embrace of the Dark Ages has brought threats against Fauci’s life, compelling him to hire 24/7 bodyguard protection.

Since Trump returned to office, he and Musk have so far fired 1,500 NIH employees, including senior scientists and directors of institutes, around 1,300 CDC employees, including members of the Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS), and scores of specialists in the FDA who monitor food and drug safety. Meanwhile, unhinged HHS Secretary RFK Jr. is pushing bizarre anti-vaccination theories and scientifically disproven notions about autism. He has touted ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine as effective COVID treatments and called the coronavirus vaccine the “deadliest vaccine ever made.” He has announced plans to dismiss 20,000 HHS employees.

“This will go down as one of the darkest days in modern scientific history in my 50 years in the business,” prominent epidemiologist Michael Osterholm told Scientific American. “These are going to be huge losses to the research community.”

Nearly 2,000 leading American scientists, including dozens of Nobel Prize winners, have issued an open letter protesting Trump’s anti-science policies. “A climate of fear has descended on the research community,” the letter states. Researchers fearing for their jobs are “removing their names from publications, abandoning studies, and rewriting grant proposals and papers to remove scientifically accurate terms (such as ‘climate change’) that agencies are flagging as objectionable.”

Trump is compounding the damage to the nation’s intellectual resources by waging war against leading universities, including cutting billions in research grants. Many of America’s best scientists and scholars are staring unemployment in the face. A young EPA scientist with a Ph.D. told me recently that she is “fed up with the disrespect and hostility” from Trump managers and expects to be fired any day. Foreign scholars are forced to leave the U.S. as their visas and work permits are denied or canceled. Others have even been arrested with no warrant.

Europe, sensitive to its own history in this area, has taken notice and is openly inviting disaffected American scholars to take up positions in its universities and research centers.

President Emmanuel Macron has issued a message to American scientists: “If you love freedom, come help us to remain free.” He said his government would commit $113 million to lure Americans to work in France. EU President Ursula von der Leyen announced an investment of $566 million to “make Europe a magnet for researchers” over the next two years. This is in addition to a $105 billion research program called “Horizon Europe” focused on genome sequencing and mRNA vaccines. Former French President François Hollande has proposed a law to create “scientific refugee” status for foreign researchers threatened because of their work. German magazine Der Spiegel reported in February that top scientific research institution Max Planck Society is experiencing an uptick in applications from American scientists. Its president said the society regards the U.S. as “a new talent pool.” The irony that Germany may become a refuge for persecuted American scientists should not be lost on anyone.

Will we see a stampede of brainy Americans fleeing the MAGA jackboot to other countries? It’s too early to say. The defection of three prominent Yale professors recently to the University of Toronto made headlines: historians Timothy Snyder, his wife Marci Shore and philosopher Jason Stanley. All three are outspoken Trump critics. Seventy-five percent of American researchers reported in a recent Nature survey that they’re considering moving abroad — primarily to Canada and Europe — because of Trump’s assaults on knowledge and expertise.

While quite a few show business celebrities vowed to leave the country if Trump won the 2024 election, a scan of news media reveals that only a handful of stars have explicitly done so, among them comedian Rosie O’Donnell, talk show host Ellen Degeneres and actresses Eva Longoria, Lena Dunham and America Ferrera.

The question of fleeing Trump’s America is being taken up by many more citizens. Several friends and relatives of fairly recent European ancestry have obtained, or are applying for, Irish, Italian, German or other foreign passports. Ireland’s Department of Foreign Affairs has seen a 50 percent increase in the number of Americans seeking Irish passports, many specifically citing the new administration as a reason. Facing a flood of citizenship claims from Italian-Americans, the Italian government recently tightened up on eligibility. Others are consulting Canadian lawyers regarding the legal requirements for acquiring Canadian permanent residency status. Three in my family are dual Dutch-American nationals. I, alas, am a mononational. But I have options should the MAGAstapo come knocking on my door.

The most moving scene in Casablanca for me is when Rick gives the nod to the band to strike up “La Marseillaise,” to which the refugee-patrons sing the words with gusto. In doing so, they drown out the Nazi officers singing “Wacht am Rhein.” Will a latter-day Casablanca film be made only this time featuring American refugees in some exotic locale fervently searching for visas and freedom in some other land? If so, I look forward to Rick telling the piano player, “Play it Sam,” to which the exiled Americans sing “the land of the free and the home of the brave!” with gusto.