Trump’s Need to Contain Research… and Truth

 

Trump’s Need to Contain Research… and Truth

Empirical Research Creates Truth Toxic to Trump’s Fundamental Reliance on Conspiracy Theories

There’s more to Donald Trump’s obsession to cut federal scientific and medical research, even statistical demographic analyses. Counting on a rising populist antipathy to elitist educational institutions, from which Trump is a graduate, Trump has been catering to his MAGA base’s everyman populism, seeking to blame others for their economic malaise and underscore the “credibility” of popular conspiracy theories as viable alternatives to scientific or empirical facts. Trump has been obsessed with his 2020 election loss, claiming the January 6th Capitol attackers were all “patriots” seeking to determine that Trump was the true victor in that presidential race… the ultimate conspiracy theory after 60 losses as Trump and his supporters sought to overturn the election by filing those unsuccessful lawsuits. The current resurgence of investigating that election will not change the underlying facts!

Trump has been willing to twist the bona fide challenges to top universities by alleging “antisemitism” – including any pro-Palestinian support and any criticisms of Israel that do not include anti-religious sentiments. He has directed the DOJ to attack “elite universities” and, with backing from HHS head RFK, Jr (a major conspiracy theorist), cancel federal funding for their unrelated medical and scientific research, which programs have been the backbone of so many major achievements and cures for complex disease patterns. Elon Musk, whose principal successes have been based on science and engineering, embraced his chainsaw DOGE mission with science federal funding crippling cuts… and in the end saved taxpayers almost nothing while decimating careers of those federal employees who lost their jobs.

With the Epstein scandal combined with the skyrocketing consumer costs generated by Trump’s illegal (as determined by the US Supreme Court) tariffs and his failing efforts from his private war against Iran, which has sent oil and gas prices soaring, you might think that as his popularity sinks to new polling depths, he just might moderate his other war… against science. But having wrongfully declared that climate change is still a “hoax,” Trump seems to continue his “double down” philosophy to crush anyone who disagrees with him. Internationally, despite Trump’s claim to the contrary, the United States is more than the “odd man out”; his “drill, baby, drill” has become an international joke… as China is running away with a most profitable effort to reign supreme in the world of building and supporting alternative energy technologies, EVs and needed infrastructure. American companies are not even in the competitive running.

In all of this, Trump’s “whatever corporate America wants” (deregulation) combines with his climate change denial and his general attack on scientific research to produce a rather dramatic dismantling of the Environment Protection Agency under the aegis of former Republican New York congressman, Lee Zeldin, who has embraced his instruction to take down the agency with particular zeal. Writing for the April 27th New York Times, Lisa Friedman describes the de facto closing of an agency that has (had?) protected consumers against everything from carcinogenic weed killers and toxic effluents dumped into public waterways to greenhouse gas emissions that have produced a litany of major “natural disasters” costing lives, livelihoods and hundreds of billions of dollars of hard losses rather directly related to global warming:

“For more than a half-century, a prestigious scientific arm of the federal government did groundbreaking research aimed at saving American lives. It studied fertility, asthma, wildfires, drinking water, climate change and myriad other health threats… In just one year, it has been almost completely dismantled.

“One scientist, a doctor and expert in lung health, has recently been reassigned to a finance office. Another, an epidemiologist, has been told she has a new job issuing permits to handle hazardous waste. A toxicologist researching so-called forever chemicals on the East Coast has been asked to move to Dallas and hasn’t been told whether the research project will continue.

“They are among more than 1,500 biologists, chemists and other experts at the Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Research and Development who have been laid off, reassigned or pressured to retire. Today, only 124 researchers remain, and this month [April] they must decide whether to remain employed they will abandon their work and move to different parts of the agency, or the country.

“Those who stay will no longer serve in an independent unit designed to be free from political interference. Instead, they will be overseen by Trump appointees or in a new unit directly under the administrator, Lee Zeldin. An internal memo in one office reviewed by The New York Times says its future research must ‘align with agency and administration priorities.’…

“Dismantling the research arm will significantly damage the agency and weaken the government’s ability to protect public health, according to more than two dozen current and former E.P.A. officials interviewed for this article. Some spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.

“The science office operated the world’s only laboratory specializing in controlled human-exposure studies to determine the health effects of vehicle exhaust, wildfire smoke, ozone and other pollutants. That laboratory has been closed… Scientists at the E.P.A. had created a way to search for fluorinated chemicals in water supplies, allowing them to detect a toxic man-made substance known as GenX in North Carolina’s Cape Fear River Basin. Many of those researchers have been reassigned.

“And during the Biden administration, the office dived into the health consequences of climate change and discovered, among other things, that extreme heat could significantly worsen dementia. The Trump administration’s version of the E.P.A. no longer has researchers dedicated to climate science.” Corporate America does not want to install updated electrostatic precipitators to further reduce air pollution, stop selling weed killers banned in most of the rest of the world, stop using cheap coal (noting there is no such thing as “clean” coal) and fossil fuels to generate electrical power and most US-made vehicles. The rest of the world seems to find US cars, driven by petroleum products, to be obsolete using old world technology that is fading out fast. We are poised to become the one of last remaining supporters of yesterday's tech.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I wonder how many Americans will die or be seriously, medically impacted by this Trumpian purge of the EPA.