The brickbats are supposed to knock us mindless. Blow after blow, they bludgeon us. Who may probably hold them straight?
Which harmful modifications have already taken place? That are the autocrats working overtly, around the clock, to enact? That are nonetheless simply speak, issues that may occur sometime, after the world order has been upended? And that are supposed to be merely distractions — like yelling “squirrel” within the presence of a rat terrier?
They urge us to pay no consideration to the charlatans behind the scenes who’re yanking the protection web from beneath our toes, ignoring the rule of legislation, dismantling American democracy brick by brick, lining their pockets by driving the planet into smash. We’d like not know what’s taking place behind the scenes, they guarantee us. The wizard will inform us all we have to know.
I’ve been maintaining a operating record of truths I don’t wish to lose sight of whereas a faux wizard and his grossly unqualified staff communicate lie after brazen lie to the individuals who elected him and to the remainder of us, too.
To wit:
The United States Agency for International Development saves millions of lives.
When he unilaterally — and probably illegally — gutted U.S.A.I.D. by firing workers members and canceling funding authorised by Congress, President Trump ensured that folks will endure and die, lots of them kids. Kids will die of polio and tuberculosis and Ebola and H.I.V. and malaria. Kids will starve to demise. Kids will die of thirst. Kids will die in battle. We now have the sources to save lots of their lives. Our authorities has opted to not.
However, the Trump administration is suppressing information about flu vaccines throughout a pitiless flu year and has already canceled a meeting throughout which scientists would have deliberate for the approaching flu season. (It’s not too late to get a flu shot this yr.)
The human risk of avian influenza is rising.
At the same time as hen flu spreads in mammal populations, even because the probability rises that it’s evolving in a manner that makes human-to-human transmission extra potential, Mr. Trump’s staff is evaluating whether or not to yank back funding already approved for growing a vaccine that might shield in opposition to it. As with Covid-19, human beings haven’t any immunity in opposition to avian influenza. A new pandemic may well be brewing, and the Trump administration is hindering our means to answer it.
Mr. Trump said Medicaid was safe from cuts. It isn’t.
Tens of hundreds of thousands of People depend on Medicaid for well being care. Its growth as a part of the Inexpensive Care Act has been lifesaving for each low-income employees and rural hospitals. In states that didn’t decide to broaden Medicaid beneath the act, hundreds of hospitals have closed. The identical will occur in all places else if Congress cuts funding and states can not afford to make up the distinction.
Everybody who pays the barest consideration to the information is aware of this, together with Mr. Trump, however that fact didn’t cease him from claiming the opposite as he sought to justify abandoning Ukraine in favor of an alliance with Vladimir Putin, whom Mr. Trump has refused to call a dictator.
Climate change is making natural disasters more disastrous.
The world’s glaciers are melting, with calamitous implications for all times on Earth, however the president of the US calls climate change a “hoax.” Now his administration is making steep cuts to the workers of the Nationwide Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which collects and analyzes local weather information, including lifesaving roles on the Nationwide Climate Service, which warns us when extreme climate is headed our manner.
The pace of climate change is accelerating.
Even so, Mr. Trump is working to undo the climate resilience measures of the bipartisan Inflation Discount Act. He has additionally threatened to scrap the Federal Emergency Administration Company, which is already reeling from job cuts, together with the lack of those who are most experienced in serving to communities recuperate from disasters.
Renewable energy is cheaper than fossil fuels.
However that isn’t stopping the Trump administration from halting federal approvals for wind and photo voltaic initiatives or from rolling again funding allotted beneath the Inflation Discount Act to hurry the transition to scrub vitality. And he’s making these cuts — as he promised Massive Oil executives — although his own voters benefit from those projects the most.
Drugs and operations utilized in abortions are sometimes the identical medicines and operations wanted to save lots of the lifetime of a girl present process a miscarriage or ectopic being pregnant. We all know that. What we don’t know is what number of deaths have been the results of incoherent red-state anti-abortion legal guidelines. That’s as a result of Republicans don’t want us to know. Even with out that data, practically two-thirds of People support access to legal abortion.
DOGE isn’t making government more efficient.
The so-called Division of Authorities Effectivity is a wrecking ball whose efforts are making lines longer and visiting less safe at our beloved nationwide parks, cutting staff at the I.R.S. throughout tax return season, imperiling crucial scientific research, rendering our nuclear arsenal much less secure. Additionally much less secure: consumer products, the air we breathe and the water we drink and the food we eat. Flying. Driving. Our data.
Reality issues. Rewriting American history won’t change American historical past. A legislation remains to be a legislation, even when a felon continues to flout the law. The reality remains to be the reality, even if you fire people working to combat your lies. People have all the time understood, if imperfectly at instances, that fact issues. Even the Trump administration understands the facility of fact. Why else would it not be deleting information — on climate change, on police misconduct, on census numbers, on medical research and on gender, amongst others?
Republicans gained’t inform us the reality, and Democrats can’t appear to evoke themselves into an organized effort to fight their lies. We should inform the reality ourselves. As unrelentingly as we will and in as many contexts as we will, we have now no alternative however to maintain telling the reality till we have now drowned out all of the lies. As a result of the reality will all the time matter.
