Donald Trump hates most people in the United States. It sounds strange to say because he is, after all, the president of our country. However, I am drawn to this conclusion due to the daily policy initiatives proposed by his administration. Every day, he announces a policy that would weaken our environmental standards and leave us more susceptible to foodborne or bacterial viruses. Or a new plan is announced that would weaken the civil or human rights of a particular BIPOC population. He must hate us.
I have written often about the horrendous reconciliation bill that severely cuts the Medicaid and SNAP programs. I have often expounded on Trump’s relentless tormenting and harassing of members of the media and institutions of higher learning.
Not to mention the daily deportations of citizens and legal residents of the U.S. that the president and his henchman carry out. But with so much garbage coming out of this White House, it is often difficult to parse through all of the sins of this administration. Here are a couple of things you might have missed.
Trump is a Nonbeliever in Climate Change
Donald Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator, Lee Zeldin, via internal documents reviewed by the New York Times, has drafted a plan to eliminate all limits on greenhouse gases from coal and gas-fired power plants. Zeldin, a former Congressman from New York, says he is proposing the changes because these types of gases do not contribute significantly to pollution as they are a declining share of overall global emissions.
This is in addition to the EPA’s March announcement that it’s taking action to reverse the Biden administration’s directed emissions regulations, which require automakers to produce electric vehicles to meet the federal government’s standards. This action would lead to a significant decline in air quality in the U.S. and worldwide. And like so many of Trump’s proposals, his plan to eliminate all limits on greenhouse gases does not adequately reflect the true danger of these emissions.
According to Vickie Patton, general counsel for the Environmental Defense Fund, an environmental group.
“Fossil fuel power plants are the single largest industrial source of climate destabilizing carbon dioxide in the United States and emit pollution levels that exceed the vast majority of countries in the world. It flies in the face of common sense and puts millions of people in harm’s way to say the single largest industrial source of carbon dioxide in the United States is not significant.”
This proposed policy will face numerous lawsuits before it is finalized. Removing this restriction could easily lead to the abolition of other climate regulations. Only China releases more pollution from its power plants than the United States.
STEM Education Research Takes a Hit
Significant changes are underway at the National Science Foundation as it attempts to comply with the directives of the Trump administration. More than half of their grants that have been terminated since April fund programs that help students train in science, engineering, and math. These cuts to STEM education research corrode programs that prepare students from preschool to grad school in their preparation to become leaders in their respective fields of study.
Count STEM education research as another victim of Trump’s all-out war on DEI programs. Mike Steele, a math education researcher at Ball State University and a former program officer in the National Science Foundation’s directorate of STEM education, explains it this way.
“The work of STEM education has always been about creating a bigger tent, giving access to more students of all backgrounds so that our STEM workforce better reflects the diversity and demographics of the American public.”
Scientists fear that the dismantling of STEM research programs will eventually lead to a delay in critical scientific discoveries. It also reduces the funds available for undergraduate, graduate students, and postdoctoral researchers’ education, which would shrink the nation’s future scientific workforce. According to Robert Atkinson, the president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, which is a nonpartisan science and technology policy research institute.
“These cuts are the height of self-inflicted harm. If they succeed in these cuts, the result will be slower economic growth, less innovation, and new tech startups, and even more diminished competitiveness vis-à-vis China.”
Conclusion
I hope after reading this, you can see how much Donald Trump hates the people of this country. Why else would he inflict so much pain and suffering on average Americans? And with an impotent Congress, many of the Constitutional checks and balances that serve as guardrails have been tossed aside. It will take a groundswell of citizens in this country to stand up and say, ‘Enough is enough.’ For the sake of democracy, I hope it happens soon.
