Bill Nye did not have much to do with politics during the 1990s, when he was making his celebrated Bill Nye the Science Guy TV series on PBS. But Nye has grown increasingly vocal in his objections to changes, budget cuts, and firings at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the National Institutes of Health, NASA, and elsewhere under the Trump Administration. Now he’s using his millennial celebrity to speak out.
“If the U.S. is to lead the world, science cannot be suppressed,” he said at the Stand Up For Science rally in Washington, D.C., in March, where he urged people to make their feelings known to lawmakers. In addition to inspiring action, Nye has attracted the ire of the Administration’s supporters, including Elon Musk, who criticized him on X. But Nye is not inclined to go quietly. “Scientists are citizens, and science has always been political,” he tells TIME. “Where do you apply your intellect and treasure? How do you make decisions on how to spend government resources? What do you require of private industry, of vaccine labs? You need informed policy makers, and they're going to get that information from scientists and engineers.”
Nye has also leveraged his celebrity to grow awareness of ataxia, a neurological disorder that causes motor issues and has affected members of his family for generations. In 2024, he partnered with the National Ataxia Foundation to help educate the public about the rare genetic disease.