Jeff Appelhans
DemocraticQ1 As a member of Congress, you would vote on appropriations for federal science agencies, including the National Science Foundation and the National Institute of Health. What priorities (if any) would guide your decisions on federal science funding?
I would fund science as public infrastructure: stable, multi-year support for basic and translational research; competitive peer review; public-health, climate, energy, materials, computing, and social science; modern facilities; and a skilled workforce. High-risk work needs time beyond an election calendar; clear criteria, conflict disclosure, audits, and honest negative findings protect public trust.
That judgment is practical. My first classroom assignment was honors and general eighth-grade physical science. At APS, I applied that experience to our America 250 project, America’s Scientific Revolutionaries. I presented its research and public-education work at Science on Tap; its programs have included MIT astrophysicist and exoplanet pioneer Sara Seager and CHOP vaccine scientist Paul Offit. Sustained support becomes discovery, education, and public understanding—not merely a line item.
Geophysicist Marcia McNutt, who led the National Academy of Sciences until earlier this year, described science during her ASR program as how we escape a zero-sum game. Public funding should expand capacity and public return: usable access; responsible technology transfer; broad geographic and institutional opportunity; secure stewardship of sensitive data. AI should expand research capacity, not replace scientific judgment or consume public resources without transparent terms.
Q2 Delaware’s electricity is delivered through PJM interconnection, the regional grid operator for the mid-atlantic. Across the PJM region, electricity demand is rising in part due to large-scale data center development. What evidence-based policies, if any, would you support addressing the effects of AI-driven data center growth on electricity costs and grid reliability for Delaware’s residents?
Delaware families should not subsidize an AI buildout whose costs and risks are hidden. I would require large data-center loads to disclose projected demand, generation and transmission needs, water use, backup power, emissions, and who pays. FERC and PJM rules should require credible load forecasts, transparent interconnection studies, cost causation, and enforceable protections against shifting data-center-specific infrastructure costs onto households and small businesses.
Reliability comes first: new large loads should bring or contract for deliverable capacity, flexibility, storage, or other resources sufficient to avoid weakening the grid. Any federal subsidy should carry labor, efficiency, water, community-benefit, and public-reporting conditions, with periodic review if promised jobs or resource performance do not materialize.
AI can be foundational infrastructure for science, but importance is not entitlement. Reliable, affordable energy is a right; a data center is not. Communities must be able to set terms for the power, water, land, and public burden they are asked to carry, while preserving federal and state roles rather than pretending Washington directly sets Delaware retail rates or local siting decisions.
Q4 The U.S. Senate confirms presidential appointments to agencies that shape national science policy, including the directors of the NIH, NSF, and the Office of Science and Technology Policy. What qualifications, if any, would you prioritize when evaluating nominees to lead federal scientific agencies.
As someone with a terminal research degree, I would start with competence and integrity: substantial experience in the science an agency supports, demonstrated respect for peer review and reproducibility, and the ability to manage a large public institution. A nominee should disclose conflicts, protect research from partisan or commercial interference, explain uncertainty honestly, and defend the lawful work of career scientists.
Science can tell us what evidence supports; it cannot by itself settle questions of values, budgets, or rights. I would therefore ask whether a nominee can translate evidence into decisions without hiding those democratic choices behind expertise.
The Senate’s job is not to demand ideological conformity. It is to determine whether a nominee will steward public money, preserve public trust, publish methods and results where law permits, correct errors openly, and keep an agency capable of serving the whole country. I would reject a nominee who treats expertise as a loyalty test, suppresses inconvenient findings, or confuses scientific leadership with obedience to a president or donor.