As someone with a phd and is a professor at a community college, with the current governmental chaos there's no way I would recommend anyone starting a phd in the USA. In addition to the poor pay (and I was in the department of communication and I distinctly remember fellow grad students in stem complaining about their pay... which was literally double mine), there is also the fact that no one knows what is going to happen with funding. In my case, not only is there the federal government, but I live in a state with a republican supermajority so I have zero optimism about future prospects of higher education here. I'm just hoping I can hang on until retirement in a 15 years or so.