sci suppr 4

CURRENT 2 24

SEE MEMORY HOLE ATTACKS ON NOAA DOGE COUP FASCISM EARTH2 DENIAL

SEE THREE ON NCA OCEAN SENSOR

SEE ZELDIN EPA

SEE RFK

SEE COOLING ~ EXPERT

1021 msg error on 3 main

merri ok

see noaa pjt 2025

---

-=-=

MMA

Federal disaster reports under the Trump administration leave journalists to source climate explanations elsewhere

NASA and NOAA analyses still provide detailed meteorology, trends, and preparedness information while omitting explanations of human-caused warming that earlier federal accounts included

*Special* ProgramsClimate & Energy

Written by Evlondo Cooper

Published 09/16/26

On September 9, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced that the contiguous United States had experienced its hottest summer in 132 years of records. Its public summary provided readers, including journalists, with detailed information about record temperatures and expanding drought, but it did not explain how human-caused warming contributed to the conditions it described.

The same pattern appears in NASA’s report on July’s western heat wave and NOAA’s analysis of the July 2025 Texas floods. Across these examples, federal agencies continued to provide detailed information about the meteorology, broken records, damage, and in some cases worsening long-term trends without explaining how climate change had increased those risks.

These omissions are not isolated. The Trump administration has also disrupted other federal sources of information the public relies on to understand climate risk. In April 2025, it terminated the contract supporting the coordinating office of the U.S. Global Change Research Program, which produces the National Climate Assessment. NOAA also stopped updating its billion-dollar disaster database, and Climate.gov stopped publishing after its entire staff was laid off.

Journalists have used that research to explain extreme weather. In October 2024, MSNOW’s (then-MSNBC’s) All In with Chris Hayes referenced NOAA’s billion-dollar disaster data during an interview with agency climatologist Adam Smith. Smith explained that billion-dollar disasters had become much more frequent since the 1980s. He described how climate change adds heat to the ocean and atmosphere, contributing to extreme weather — including heavier rainfall — and noted that communities’ exposure and vulnerability compound the damage.

The billion-dollar database, Climate.gov, and the assessment program are gone. The analyses that remain are as detailed as ever — what the reports examined here no longer explain is why.

Federal climate analyses can shape reporting even when they do not appear in a published story or on-air segment. Journalists may consult them to understand an event, prepare for interviews, identify relevant questions, or check their own understanding before writing or going on air. When those accounts do not explain how climate change is contributing to the extreme weather they describe, reporters have to find that explanation elsewhere, and it may never make it into the published story.

NASA’s 2026 heat-wave analysis omitted the climate explanation previously included in its 2024 analysis

The western heat wave described in NASA’s July 15 report struck when a heat dome settled over the northern Rockies. NASA reported all-time temperature records at sites in Montana, Wyoming, and Utah, along with a tenfold increase in the rate of heat-related emergency department visits across the Mountain states during the July heat.

NASA explained how the high-pressure system trapped hot air and suppressed clouds and precipitation. Its account also placed the event within a longer-term trend, noting that “heat waves like this one have become more frequent in the United States in recent decades” and that summer heat waves “roughly doubled in number between 1980 and 2023, increasing from an average of two to four per month.”

NASA omitted the climate explanation despite contemporaneous analyses linking the same mid-July 2026 heat wave to human-caused warming. Climate Central found that human-caused climate change made the extreme heat “at least three times more likely” across large parts of the western and northern United States from July 13 through July 15, affecting more than 118 million people west of the Mississippi.

Climate Central later found that nearly half of the contiguous United States experienced temperatures “made at least five times more likely by climate change” during the mid-July heat wave.

The omission was not limited to 2026. In its June 26, 2025, account of a heat wave across the Midwest and Northeast, NASA likewise described the heat dome, broken temperature records, dangerous humidity, and widespread heat warnings, but it did not explain how global warming contributed to the extreme heat.

During a comparable eastern heat wave in June 2024, NASA combined descriptions of the meteorology, broken records, health effects, and long-term heat trends with a direct climate explanation. The agency noted at the time that the “frequency and intensity of heatwaves have increased in recent decades because of the rising concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. They expect these increases to continue in the future.”

NOAA’s 2025 Texas flood analysis did not address how warming is changing extreme rainfall

In July 2025, catastrophic flash floods swept through the Texas Hill Country, including communities along the Guadalupe River. By July 23, the reported death toll from the floods was at least 137 people.

NOAA’s analysis, first published on August 11, 2025, described the conditions that set the stage for the flooding, including prolonged drought and an influx of tropical moisture, before detailing the intense rainfall and damage that followed. The report did not connect the extreme rainfall to human-caused climate change.

But that climate connection was well established when the Texas floods struck in 2025. In a July 9, 2025, article about the floods published by The Texas Tribune, University of South Carolina climate scientist Claudia Benitez-Nelson explained that warmer air holds more moisture, enabling heavier rainfall. “Climate change is turning ordinary weather into these disasters,” she said. Climate Central also explained how global warming contributes heavier rainfall.

Earlier federal accounts of extreme flooding did make that connection, though. In an August 3, 2022, report on catastrophic flooding in St. Louis and eastern Kentucky, NASA explained that “once-rare events are becoming more likely as Earth’s atmosphere warms and can hold more moisture.”

Journalists are left to supply the climate context federal accounts omit

From June 29 through July 26, 2026, ABC, CBS, and NBC aired 194 segments about three major heat events without mentioning climate change, according to a Media Matters analysis. These events included the mid-July heat dome described by NASA. Viewers received forecasts, warnings, public health information, and reports of broken records without an explanation of how human-caused warming was intensifying heat.

Federal climate information has previously helped journalists provide that missing context.

During the July 12, 2023, episode of CNN’s Early Start, a correspondent report used the National Climate Assessment to explain how extreme flooding events are becoming more frequent and devastating. A few months later, a November 14 CBS Evening News segment about the National Climate Assessment discussed why the effects of climate change in the United States were “far-reaching and worsening,” highlighted the growing frequency of billion-dollar weather disasters, and connected U.S. greenhouse gas emissions primarily to the burning of fossil fuels.

Journalists can obtain climate explanations from other sources, including attribution researchers who provide rapid, event-specific analysis about how global warming is driving extreme weather. But that work does not replace climate context in federal accounts that reporters may already be consulting as authoritative background. When those accounts leave the connection out, more of the explanatory work shifts to newsrooms, where journalists must first recognize the gap before seeking out additional research and integrating it into their reporting.

If that additional reporting does not happen, audiences can receive detailed coverage of worsening heat, floods, and other disasters without understanding why those risks are increasing. The event, the damage, and even the worsening trend can remain visible while the human cause disappears.

ABC, CBS, and NBC aired nearly 200 segments about three U.S. heat events without mentioning climate change

08/06/26

CNN and MS NOW consistently connected prolonged power outage in Gary, Indiana, to race and poverty, while broadcast news rarely did, and Fox did not

08/28/26

Right-wing media could use a quieter 2026 hurricane forecast to downplay climate risk before storms form

06/29/26

-=-=

===

SCI SUPPRESS

SAME DAY CLIMATE KELP HELVARG JPL KALMUS 6 26

Trump Admin Guts Vital Ocean Monitoring, Treats Sea as "Gas Station and a Garbage Dump" - YouTube

"I Was Just Forced to Resign from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory": Climate Scientist Peter Kalmus - YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3HNlG-HAik

---

Trump team ‘breaking up’ top climate research center

By Robin Bravender | 12/17/2025

The White House says it’s targeting the “premier research stronghold for left-wing climate lunacy.”

The White House plans to break up a major scientific research center as the Trump administration continues its quest to obliterate federal climate change programs.

The National Science Foundation will be “breaking up” the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, White House Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought posted on social media Tuesday.

He called the facility one of the “largest sources of climate alarmism in the country” and said any “vital activities” done by the research center — “such as weather research” — will be moved to another entity or location.

The announcement is the latest move by the Trump administration to target federal work on climate change, which President Donald Trump has forcefully derided as a scam. The Trump administration is also working to wipe out the long-standing government finding that underpins federal climate regulations, and officials have axed federal funding for climate and renewable energy programs they have labeled as part of a “Green New Scam.”

The Trump administration views the research center as a prime target as it aims to yank federal support for climate change research. Trump’s critics, meanwhile, said they were shocked by the announcement and warned the plans will devastate U.S. climate research.

Details of the administration’s plans to restructure the research center weren’t immediately clear.

The National Science Foundation established the center in 1960. The federally funded research center is managed by a nonprofit consortium of more than 120 colleges and universities. It’s headquartered in Boulder and has additional facilities in Wyoming and Hawaii.

The center “houses the largest federal research program on climate change — serving as the premier research stronghold for left-wing climate lunacy,” said a senior White House official granted anonymity to speak freely.

The National Science Foundation will “eliminate Green New Scam research activities,” the White House official said. “Any vital functions, such as weather modeling and supercomputing, will be moved under the purview of another entity or location. Parts of the lab may be moved to another entity.”

The National Science Foundation on Wednesday posted a brief announcement on its website that it is “reviewing the structure” of the research center. NSF “remains committed to providing world-class infrastructure for weather modeling, space weather research and forecasting, and other critical functions,” the agency said.

USA Today first reported the news of the administration targeting the research center.

‘Destruction of knowledge’

The Trump administration’s plans prompted an outcry from Colorado’s Democratic governor and scientists who warn the move will dramatically curtail domestic climate research.

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis (D) issued a statement Tuesday saying that his state had “yet to receive information” about the Trump administration’s plans to dismantle the “global leader in earth system science.”

Climate change “is real, but the work of NCAR goes far beyond climate science,” Polis said. “NCAR delivers data around severe weather events like fires and floods that help our country save lives and property, and prevent devastation for families.”

Vought on Tuesday reposted news stories on his social media account detailing how the Trump administration was targeting funding for other Colorado projects. Those detailed the cancellation of environmentally focused transportation grants and a move to halt Energy Department funding slated for the state.

In response to a question Wednesday about the plans to break up the Colorado climate research center, the senior White House official said, “Maybe if Colorado had a governor who actually wanted to work with President Trump, his constituents would be better served.”

Michael Mann, director of Penn Center for Science, Sustainability and the Media at the University of Pennsylvania, said defunding the research center “very much undermines the United States’ standing when it comes to the advancement of climate science.”

The center “has played a key role in developing the science of climate modeling and the measurement of climate observations going back more than a half-century,” added Mann. The Trump administration’s move is “symbolic of the actual destruction of knowledge,” he said.

A video on the research center’s website on Wednesday says it’s working to address “the most pressing environmental challenges facing our nation and the world, from more intense hurricanes and larger wildfires to deepening droughts and rising seas.” The center says it’s “building on decades of research breakthroughs that have significantly improved the ability to predict severe weather and detail the consequences of climate change.”

Carlos Martinez, senior climate scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists who served as an early career researcher at the center, was in “complete shock” over the announcement, he said Tuesday in a statement.

Dismantling the center “would impact every earth science and atmospheric science university department in the country,” Martinez said. Its research “influences every piece of weather and climate prediction in the United States, enabling air quality monitoring, forecasting of droughts and extreme precipitation events, and improving hurricane intensity forecasts.”

Eliminating that work, Martinez said, “would leave people across the nation less prepared for the dangers of a warming world.”

---

AN PP 1 26

The Trump administration is directing employees at the U.S. Department of Agriculture to investigate foreign scientists who collaborate with the agency on research papers for evidence of “subversive or criminal activity.”

The new directive, part of a broader effort to increase scrutiny of research done with foreign partners, asks workers in the agency’s research arm to use Google to check the backgrounds of all foreign nationals collaborating with its scientists. The names of flagged scientists are being sent to national security experts at the agency, according to records reviewed by ProPublica.

At a meeting last month, USDA supervisors pushed back against the instructions, with one calling it “dystopic” and others expressing shock and confusion, according to an audio recording reviewed by ProPublica.

The USDA frequently collaborates with scientists based at universities in the U.S. and abroad. Some agency workers told ProPublica they were uncomfortable with the new requirement because they felt it could put those scientists in the crosshairs of the administration. Students and postdocs are particularly vulnerable as many are in the U.S. on temporary visas and green cards, the employees said.

Jennifer Jones, director for the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists, called the directive a “throwback to McCarthyism” that could encourage scientists to avoid working with the “best and brightest” researchers from around the world.

“Asking scientists to spy on and report on their fellow co-authors” is a “classic hallmark of authoritarianism,” Jones said. The Union of Concerned Scientists is an organization that advocates for scientific integrity.

Jones, who hadn’t heard of the instructions until contacted by ProPublica, said she had never witnessed policies so extreme during prior administrations or in her former career as an academic scientist.

The new policy applies to pending scientific publications co-authored by employees in the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service, which conducts research on crop yields, invasive species, plant genetics and other agricultural issues.

The USDA instructed employees to stop agency researchers from collaborating on or publishing papers with scientists from “countries of concern,” including China, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Russia and Venezuela.

But the agency is also vetting scientists from nations not considered “countries of concern” before deciding whether USDA researchers can publish papers with them. Employees are including the names of foreign co-authors from nations such as Canada and Germany on lists shared with the department’s Office of Homeland Security, according to records reviewed by ProPublica. That office leads the USDA’s security initiatives and includes a division that works with federal intelligence agencies. The records don’t say what the office plans to do with the lists of names.

Asked about the changes, the USDA sent a statement noting that in his first term, President Donald Trump signed a memorandum designed to strengthen protections of U.S.-funded research across the federal government against foreign government interference. “USDA under the Biden Administration spent four years failing to implement this directive,” the statement said. The agency said Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins last year rolled out “long-needed changes within USDA’s research enterprise, including a prohibition on authoring a publication with a foreign national from a country of concern.”

International research has been essential to the Agricultural Research Service’s work, according to a page of the USDA website last updated in 2024: “From learning how to mitigate diseases before they reach the United States, to testing models and crops in diverse growing conditions, to accessing resources not available in the United States, cooperation with international partners provides solutions to current and future agricultural challenges.”

Still, the U.S. government has long been worried about agricultural researchers acting as spies, sometimes with good reason. In 2016, the Chinese scientist Mo Hailong was sentenced to three years in prison for conspiring to steal patented corn seeds. And in 2022, Xiang Haitao, admitted to stealing a trade secret from Monsanto.

National security questions have also been raised about recent increases in foreign ownership of agricultural land. In 2022, Congress allocated money for a center to educate U.S. researchers about how to safeguard their data in international collaborations.

Since Trump took office last year, foreign researchers have faced increased obstacles. In March, a French researcher traveling to a conference was denied entry to the U.S. after a search of his phone at the airport turned up messages critical of Trump. The National Institutes of Health blocked researchers from China, Russia and other “countries of concern” from accessing various biomedical databases last spring. And in August, the Department of Homeland Security proposed shortening the length of time foreign students could remain in the country.

But the latest USDA instructions represent a significant escalation, casting suspicion on all researchers from outside the U.S. and asking agency staff to vet the foreign nationals they collaborate with. It’s unclear if employees at other federal agencies have been given similar directions.

The new USDA policy was announced internally in November and followed a July memo from Rollins that highlighted the national security risks of working with scientists who are not U.S. citizens.

“Foreign competitors benefit from USDA-funded projects, receiving loans that support overseas businesses, and grants that enable foreign competitors to undermine U.S. economic and strategic interests,” Rollins wrote in the memo. “Preventing this is the responsibility of every USDA employee.” The memo called for the department to “place America First” by taking a number of steps, including scrutinizing and making lists of the agency’s arrangements to work with foreign researchers and prohibiting USDA employees from participating in foreign programs to recruit scientists, “malign or otherwise.”

Rollins, a lawyer who studied agricultural development, co-founded the pro-Trump America First Policy Institute before being tapped to head the agency.

There have long been restrictions on collaborating with researchers from certain countries, such as Iran and China. But these new instructions create blanket bans on working with scientists from “countries of concern.”

In a late November email to staff members of the Agricultural Research Service at one area office, a research leader instructed managers to immediately stop all research with scientists who come from — or collaborate with institutions in — “countries of concern.”

The email also instructed employees to reject papers with foreign authors if they deal with “sensitive subjects” such as “diversity” or “climate change.” National security concerns were listed as another cause for rejection, with USDA research service employees instructed to ask if a foreigner could use the research against American farmers.

In the audio recording of the December meeting, some employees expressed alarm about the instructions to investigate their fellow scientists. The “part of figuring out if they are foreign … by Googling is very dystopic,” said one person at the meeting, which involved leadership from the Agricultural Research Service.

Faced with questions about how to ascertain the citizenship of a co-author, another person at the meeting said researchers should do their best with a Google search, then put the name on the list “and let Homeland Security do their behind the scenes search.”

Rollins’ July memo specifies that, within 60 days of receiving a list of “current arrangements” that involve foreign people or entities, the USDA’s Office of Homeland Security along with its offices of Chief Scientist and General Counsel should decide which arrangements to terminate. The USDA laid off 70 employees from “countries of concern” last summer as a result of the policy change laid out in the memo, NPR reported.

The USDA and Department of Homeland Security declined to answer questions about what happens to the foreign researchers flagged by the staff beyond potentially having their research papers rejected.

The documents also suggested new guidance would be issued on Jan. 1, but the USDA employees ProPublica interviewed said that the vetting work was continuing and that they had not received any written updates. The staff spoke on the condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to talk publicly.

Scientists are often evaluated based on their output of new scientific research. Delaying or denying publication of pending papers could derail a researcher’s career. Over the past 40 years, the number of international collaborations among scientists has increased across the board, according to Caroline Wagner, an emeritus professor of public policy at the Ohio State University. “The more elite the researcher, the more likely they’re working at the international level,” said Wagner, who has spent more than 25 years researching international collaboration in science and technology.

The changes in how the USDA is approaching collaboration with foreign researchers, she said, “will certainly reduce the novelty, the innovative nature of science and decrease these flows of knowledge that have been extremely productive for science over the last years.”

---

OMFG

MOJO

This story was originally published by theGuardian and is reproduced here as part of the*Climate Desk*collaboration.}:

The Trump administration is breaking up a research center praised as a “crown jewel” of climate research after accusing it of spreading “alarmism” about climate change.

Russell Vought, the director of the White House’s office and management budget, said the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado, would be dismantled under the supervision of the National Science Foundation.

“This facility is one of the largest sources of climate alarmism in the country,” he wrote in a social media post. “A comprehensive review is underway & any vital activities such as weather research will be moved to another entity or location.”

The announcement was the latest in a series of climate-skeptic moves by the administration, which has vowed to eliminate what it calls “green new scam research activities.”

It drew fierce condemnation from climate experts, who said the Colorado center was renowned for advances in the study of weather patterns, including tropical cyclones.

Roger Pielke Jr, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute thinktank, told *USA Today*, which first reported the story, that the facility was “a crown jewel of the US scientific enterprise and deserves to be improved not shuttered.”

He added: “If the US is going to be a global leader in the atmospheric sciences, then it cannot afford to make petty and vindictive decisions based on the hot politics of climate change.”

The move was also criticized by Colorado’s governor, Jared Polis, who said it put “public safety at risk.”

“Climate change is real, but the work of NCAR goes far beyond climate science,” he said. “NCAR delivers data around severe weather events like fires and floods that help our country save lives and property, and prevent devastation for families.”

The center employs approximately 830 staff and includes the Mesa Laboratory in Boulder, which Vought said would be shut. It also operates two aircraft for atmospheric research and manages a government-owned supercomputing facility in Wyoming.

The decision to dismantle it is consistent with Donald Trump’s frequent characterisations of climate change as a “con job” or a “hoax.”

The White House has accused the centre of following a “woke direction” and identified several projects that administration officials say are wasteful and frivolous, USA Today reported.

These include a Rising Voices Center for Indigenous and Earth Sciences that seeks to “make the sciences more welcoming, inclusive, and justice-centered,” as well as research into wind turbines, an innovation that Trump has repeatedly denounced.

The administration has already proposed a 30 percent cut to the funding of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, slashing spending on its climate, weather and ocean laboratories, which work to improve forecasting and better understand weather patterns.

---

At Climate Week, The New York Times has an opportunity to hold Energy Secretary accountable for recent remarks downplaying climate change and disparaging renewable energy

Here are three remarks climate journalists should press Chris Wright on

Special ProgramsClimate & Energy

Written by Allison Fisher

Published 09/23/25 mma

Energy Secretary Chris Wright, who recently called pledges to reduce greenhouse gases “silly” and said that climate change is “not incredibly important,” will speak at The New York Times’ “Climate Forward” event tomorrow — a forum about climate solutions meant to hold “newsmakers ... accountable in front of a live audience.” The Times should take the opportunity to hold Wright accountable for his commentary.

Wright often appears in supportive media, having appeared across Fox’s networks at least 57 times since his confirmation as head of the Department of Energy. Regularly giving interviews on networks known to be safe spaces for Trump administration officials has allowed Wright to shape the discourse around climate and energy issues while uncritically spinning some of the administration's most controversial actions, including its effort to overturn the endangerment finding and its all-out assault on clean energy.

And during a rare non-Fox appearance on CNN on August 5, Wright was allowed to spew climate denial, asserting that “nobody who is a credible economist or scientist” sees climate change as a major threat and characterized carbon dioxide as just “a fertilizer” that benefits plant growth.

But climate journalists at The New York Times who have covered these issues for years should be better positioned than TV anchors to challenge climate denial arguments, misinformation, and false narratives. And they must, as this interview represents a rare opportunity to set the record straight on the climate crisis, its impacts, and what we can do to mitigate them by demanding direct, public-facing accountability outside of the protective ecosystem Fox News creates for Trump administration officials.

Here are 3 things Secretary Wright recently said on Fox that The New York Times should hold him accountable for during his appearance at Climate Forward:

## 1. Wright claimed that a climate report his agency released was about restoring “confidence in science” — but the report has been widely criticized for misrepresenting climate science.

On its July 29 episode, Fox News’ America Reports hosted Wright and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin to discuss the Trump administration's proposal to repeal the EPA’s 2009 endangerment finding, which affirmed that greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare, and the Department of Energy’s recently released “critical review” of climate science.

To author that report, which would serve as the basis for the endangerment finding’s repeal, Wright tapped five climate contrarians whose discredited and debunked arguments have been promoted by right-wing media in order to manufacture doubt about the science that compels climate action.

During the interview, Wright claimed that the goal of repealing the endangerment finding was to “restore confidence in science, in data, in rationalism.” He then touted his agency’s climate report as a key objective in reaching that goal, saying, “So at the Department of Energy, we released a report, which is sort of a critical overview on what do we know today about climate science, about climate data, and what impacts that might have on the American people.”

But the DOE’s climate report has been widely criticized by the scientific community, including by climate scientist Zeke Hausfather, whose work was cited and reportedly “cherrypick[ed]” by the authors. On September 3, in response to a lawsuit alleging that the group’s formation violated federal law “in several ways,” Wright dissolved the working group, but he notably did not withdraw the report.

Meanwhile, the agency “dismissed hundreds of scientists and experts who had been compiling the federal government’s flagship analysis of how climate change is affecting the country,” known as the National Climate Assessment, and “deleted all previous congressionally mandated National Climate Assessment reports from government websites.” As The New York Times reported:

> This year Mr. Wright handpicked a group of people who reject the scientific consensus on climate change to write a report downplaying global warming. Hundreds of the world’s top scientists gathered by the United Nations have found that greenhouse gases from the burning of coal, oil and gas are heating the planet and already having profound effects on communities by increasing the frequency and intensity of heat waves, wildfires, drought, floods and other extreme weather.

To avoid those worsening effects, those scientists say that a rapid transition from deriving energy from coal, oil and gas to nonpolluting sources is necessary.

## 2. Wright called the environmental impacts of offshore wind “massive” while ignoring the larger environmental impacts and damage of offshore drilling, which the Trump administration is expanding.

On the August 31 edition of *Varney & Co.*, Fox Business host Stuart Varney invited Wright to respond to a Washington Post article on “Trump’s crusade against wind power,” asking, “Will the president’s approach to wind lead to higher costs?”

Wright dedicated substantial time in his response to the “environmental impacts” of the projects, as well as local opposition, claiming, “The problem with wind turbines, particularly offshore wind turbines, is their environmental impacts are pretty massive. You know, they’re out there in these critical fisheries, these breeding grounds for whales. Fishermen and local people who live near these projects do not like them. Those people were ignored and shut out of the conversation before.”

Meanwhile, the Trump administration is moving to expand offshore drilling, including by opening up 625 million acres along the Atlantic and Pacific coastlines for drilling. Offshore drilling, however, is significantly more harmful to the environment than offshore wind.

As the BBC reported: “Decades of research from around the world suggests that oil production affects birds, whales and other wildlife in many different ways. Apart from the climate factor, there is the risk of oil spills as well as smaller, chronic leaks, scientists say, which can harm seabirds, whales, dolphins and other wildlife.”

Politico reported that one oil and gas effort in particular, for example — a $44 billion Alaskan project to expand exports of liquefied natural gas — will harm the Beluga whale, resulting in “the same type of marine mammal disruption that Trump and his administration falsely claim is killing whales on the East Coast as developers build wind turbines.”

Pollution and spills are another risk associated with offshore drilling. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, thousands of oil spills occur annually in the U.S. alone, and the impacts of oil spills extend well beyond marine life. They are far-reaching, can last for decades, and include both harm to those exposed to the polluting materials and economic losses for coastal communities and industries that depend on clean beaches and oceans.

## 3. Wright claimed that Obama's and Biden’s clean energy policies “drove electricity prices up.”

On the September 4 edition of Fox News' *The Ingraham Angle*, Wright responded to a question from host Laura Ingraham about rising electricity prices: “President Obama came in, told us the world was ending and we had to change how we got electricity somehow to save the world. … Biden doubled down on it and drove electricity prices up. That's not rocket science. That was guaranteed to happen.”

But Politico reports that states where wind and solar produce the greatest share of electricity are “among the 20 cheapest states for electricity, according to federal data,” and as Time reported, “A recent analysis by Heatmap found that, in states with higher adoption of renewables, prices have risen more modestly than average or even fallen."

In fact, per Forbes, solar energy combined with battery storage is the “cheapest and fastest-to-build option” to meet rising electricity demand. Clean energy technologies constituted93% of the new energy generation capacity added to the grid last year, and solar is the fastest growing source of new electricity generation — not only in the U.S., but across the globe.

In reality, a number of factors are impacting supply and demand in the electricity sector and driving up prices, including climate-fueled extreme weather events.

According to Heatmap: “In the Southeast, for instance, severe storms and hurricanes have knocked out huge swaths of the distribution grid, requiring emergency line crews to come in and rebuild. Those one-time, storm-induced costs then get recovered through higher utility rates over time.”

The New York Times also noted that, besides absorbing some of the costs incurred by data centers, utilities are also “spending billions of dollars to harden their systems against wildfires, hurricanes, heat waves, winter storms and other extreme weather.”

mma

### In March, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin denied NY Times reporting that the agency would eliminate its research arm. On Friday, the EPA did just that.

07/21/25

---

e and e politico

Trump administration on Monday dismissed all of the scientists working on the newest version of the National Climate Assessment, a sweeping report that outlines the growing dangers of rising temperatures for lawmakers, policy experts and the public.

The sixth installment of the congressionally mandated report, which was due to come out by 2028, has typically been put together by about 400 researchers, many of whom are top scientists at universities who volunteer their time. The assessment is used to craft environmental rules, legislation and infrastructure project planning. It seen by experts as the definitive body of research about how global warming is transforming the country.

Work had already begun on the sixth version. The Trump administration ended that with a note sent to researchers Monday.

“At this time, the scope of the NCA6 is currently being reevaluated in accordance with the Global Change Research Act of 1990,” contributors were told in an email obtained by POLITICO’s E&E News.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The move was roundly criticized by climate scientists late Monday as the news spread. The assessments help Americans “understand how climate change is impacting their daily lives already and what to expect in the future,” said Rachel Cleetus, one of the researchers who was dismissed.

“Trying to bury this report won’t alter the scientific facts one bit, but without this information our country risks flying blind into a world made more dangerous by human-caused climate change,” said Cleetus, a senior policy director at the Union of Concerned Scientists, in a statement. “The only beneficiaries of disrupting or killing this report are the fossil fuel industry and those intent on boosting oil and gas profits at the expense of people’s health and the nation’s economic well-being.”

The plan closely tracks with a proposal by White House budget director Russ Vought, who has urged the Trump administration to toss out all work on the assessment that began under former President Joe Biden. Vought wants to help pick a new group of researchers to issue a report that reflects the administration’s claims that climate change is not a serious threat. That report might focus on how climate change “benefits” the U.S., according to a plan he outlined in Project 2025, the conservative policy proposal produced by the Heritage Foundation.

Earlier this month, the administration defunded the U.S. Global Change Research Program, which supports the assessment. The program, which coordinated the work of 13 federal agencies, had existed for 35 years through Republican and Democratic presidencies, including Trump’s first term.

Trump officials were caught by surprise by the timing of the fourth National Climate Assessment as it was being prepared for release in 2018. Some wanted to withhold the report and fire the scientists who worked on it, but that plan was scuttled. Instead, the White House tried to downplay the report by releasing it the day after Thanksgiving, but that only increased the attention it received.

It’s unclear whom Vought would try to recruit for the next assessment, if there is one.

There is a relatively small pool of credentialed researchers who downplay the scientific consensus that climate change could push the planet past a series of dangerous tipping points. Some have already told E&E News that they are willing to be involved with the new effort.

On Monday, some of the dismissed researchers pledged to continue their work in some fashion. That includes Bob Kopp, a climate scientist at Rutgers University, and an author of the chapter on ocean coasts that was being prepared for the sixth report.

“I know many of the authors would like to find a way to ensure that Americans can still have an updated, evidence-based assessment of our country’s climate,” he wrote on Bluesky.

---

ggl 9 25

American Enterprise Institute

A Close Look at Australia’s New Climate Assessments

Today's is the first in a series of posts for THB Australia Week. Coming soon, an update on trends in Australian normalized disaster losses...

.9 hours ago

Media Matters for America

At Climate Week, The New York Times has an opportunity to hold Energy Secretary accountable for recent remarks downplaying climate change and disparaging renewable energy

Energy Secretary Chris Wright, who recently called pledges to reduce greenhouse gases “silly” and said that climate change is “not...

.19 minutes ago

Science | AAAS

Contrarian climate assessment from U.S. government draws swift pushback

The report makes some points that mainstream climate scientists would acknowledge. It decries media hype and points out that global warming is...

.1 month ago

AGU Newsroom

AGU and AMS join forces on special collection to maintain momentum of research supporting the U.S. National Climate assessment

Congressionally mandated, the NCA draws on the latest scientific research to evaluate how climate change is affecting the United States.

.May 2, 2025

Washington State Department of Ecology (.gov)

Sept. 5 - Ecology debunks federal climate report, reaffirms commitment to real science

Today the Washington Department of Ecology issued an official rebuke of a draft report by the U.S. Department of Energy being used to...

.2 weeks ago

GlobeNewswire

NYAM and Yale Center on Climate Change and Health Partner to Address Sustainable Health Systems

Summit explores resilient healthcare systems that protect communities from climate-related health impacts...

.4 hours ago

NPR

White House dismisses authors of major climate report

The Trump administration dismissed all the scientists working on the next National Climate Assessment. The report is the most comprehensive...

.Apr 29, 2025

The New York Times

All Authors Working on Flagship U.S. Climate Report Are Dismissed

The Trump administration has dismissed the hundreds of scientists and experts who had been compiling the federal government's flagship report on how global...

.Jul 8, 2025

E&E News by POLITICO

Trump dismisses scientists writing the National Climate Assessment

The move was roundly criticized by climate scientists late Monday as the news spread. The assessments help Americans “understand how climate...

.Apr 29, 2025

Earth.Org

‘Maintain Momentum’: US Research Organizations to Keep National Climate Assessment Alive Amid Trump’s Cuts

Two major US research organizations have stepped up after the Trump administration dismissed all the scientists working on an assessment of climate change in...

.May 6, 2025

---

===

cnn

no lnx

The perfectly fine, already-paid-for satellites Trump wants to destroy in a fiery atmospheric reentry

Andrew Freedman

Aug 13, 2025

An artist's rendering shows NASA's Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO-2).

NASA is planning to decommission premier satellite missions that gather information on planet-warming pollution and other climate vital signs beginning as soon as October, sources inside and outside of the agency told CNN.

The destruction of the satellites — which will be abandoned and allowed to eventually burn up in a fiery descent into Earth’s atmosphere — marks the latest step by the Trump administration to scale back federal climate science.

President Donald Trump’s budget proposal takes a hatchet to NASA’s Earth science spending for fiscal year 2026, which begins in October.

The greenhouse gas monitoring missions, known collectively as the Orbiting Carbon Observatory, are some of the many Earth science casualties in the proposal.

Other satellites and instruments on the chopping block include the long-lived Aqua satellite, which carries a high-resolution Earth imaging instrument called MODIS, that among other uses, helps detect wildfires worldwide. Also at risk are the Terra and Aura missions, each of which have climate science applications, and planned satellites that would precisely measure solar radiation, heavy precipitation and clouds.

While the Trump administration says it is looking to end the OCO and other missions to cut costs, scientists involved in the projects see an anti-climate science pattern at work.

Dave Crisp speaks during an Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 briefing in June 2014.

Congress is still considering Trump’s budget request and may reject some, or all, of the Earth science cuts, but NASA is proceeding as if the White House spending blueprint will be implemented as-written.

David Crisp, a former NASA scientist who worked on the OCO missions and managed them until he retired in 2022, confirmed the decommissioning planning for OCO-2 and OCO-3. Other sources, including one NASA employee, also confirmed this plan, speaking on condition of anonymity because they weren’t approved to discuss the issue.

NASA calls a mission’s closeout phase — the period when the program team works out how to end it — “Phase F.” The Phase F state of planning for the OCO missions was first reported by NPR.

In response to questions from CNN, a NASA spokesperson pointed to Trump’s budget request. “It would not be appropriate for us to comment at this time as the budget process is still happening. Should the budget pass as proposed — it still needs to make its way through Congress — this will be implemented upon the start of the next fiscal year.”

An expensive decision with global impact

A United Launch Alliance Delta II rocket launches with the Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 satellite onboard in July 2014.

Together, the OCO-2, a free-flying satellite, and OCO-3, which is mounted on the International Space Station, measure the composition of the Earth’s atmosphere, specifically sniffing out climate pollution.

The OCO missions are particularly useful for tracking fossil fuel and ecosystem-related emissions, scientists told CNN. The instruments also help scientists monitor plant productivity — critical for farmers and the researchers studying forest loss.

While OCO-3 could be switched off and remain attached to the ISS, perhaps to be turned on again in the future, the decommissioning process for OCO-2 is far more complicated — and fiery. The satellite would be moved into a much lower orbit and exist there as space junk for years until it burns up in the Earth’s atmosphere.

The purposeful abandonment or destruction of multimillion-dollar satellites and instruments is essentially unprecedented, scientists told CNN. They are particularly baffled by the decision to destroy OCO-2, given it already has enough fuel on it to last through 2040.

The OCO missions are still functioning and are thought to have many years left of data-gathering, in addition to the fuel onboard, which has already been bought by American taxpayers. It is not business as usual to shut off working satellites without conducting a comprehensive review, sources told CNN, nor is it typical to kill functional spacecraft that can cost billions to put into space in the first place.

View of the Orbiting Carbon Observatory-3 (OCO-3) on the Japanese Experiment Module Exposed Facility of the International Space Station in June 2019.

“The reality is that as long as these instruments are producing high-quality data, it’s essentially unheard of to decommission the satellites, because keeping them going is so cheap compared to building them and launching them in the first place,” Anna Michalak, a climate researcher at Carnegie Science and Stanford University who works with greenhouse gas emissions data, told CNN.

The OCO missions are important for other countries, too, since they also use the data, Michalak said: “It’s not just that these are the only two NASA-funded missions. It’s that these have been the most impactful missions in this space, globally, period.”

Losing the OCO missions would hurt US leadership in climate science and create a multiyear gap in space-based climate pollution measurements, said Ben Poulter of Spark Climate Solutions, a nonprofit focused on climate risks and innovative fixes. Poulter was previously a NASA scientist and helped lead greenhouse gas monitoring efforts for the Biden administration.

“Losing these satellites prematurely gives away the leadership to Europe and to China in terms of monitoring CO2 concentrations and emissions,” Poulter said. Prematurely ending the OCO missions is consistent with the perception that the Trump administration “doesn’t want to do anything related to climate science and climate services,” he added.

In scathing letter, NASA workers rebuke ‘rapid and wasteful changes’ at agency

Crisp, the former NASA scientist, also told CNN that decommissioning so many Earth science missions at the same time fits a pattern.

“My guess is that they perceive these missions as missions that were designed for climate, for reinforcing climate hysteria or something,” Crisp said of the Trump administration. “They think these missions were designed for a regulatory reason, for example. But I want to point out NASA is not a regulatory agency.”

Billionaires to the rescue?

There are at least two possibilities for saving the carbon observatory mission, though researchers are not optimistic about either one coming to fruition.

The first is Congress. Lawmakers could reject Trump’s proposal and offer NASA the budget it needs to maintain US climate and Earth science status quo. Trump would also have to sign such a bill.

The second possibility is to create a public-private partnership that pays the expenses for maintaining these instruments and processing the data back on Earth. This could take the form of a philanthropic organization, a wealthy individual or perhaps a university taking over OCO-2 or OCO-3, or perhaps both, for a period of time.

The space agency has already issued a call for partnerships for OCO-3, and it is expected to put out a similar call for operating OCO-2 at some point this week, multiple researchers who work with OCO data said.

“There’s this scramble to see what can be done before any sort of decommissioning or Phase F protocols go into effect later this year,” Poulter said.

However, involving the private sector in operating OCO or other Earth-observing satellites can present complications, Michalak said, as it could diminish NASA’s role in providing an accurate backbone of Earth observations.

As the search for a partnership to save OCO-2 and OCO-3 begins, NASA only has less than two months to figure out how to keep the missions going.

The GISS facility is located at Columbia University’s Armstrong Hall in New York City.

NASA scientists describe ‘absolute sh*tshow’ at agency as Trump budget seeks to dismantle top US climate lab

Targeting Medical Journals

On Apr. 14, Martin sent a list of questions to the editor of Chest magazine, a medical journal published by the American College of Chest Physicians. The letter accused the journal and others like it of “being partisans in various scientific debates” and asked a series of contentious questions, such as “How do you clearly articulate when you have certain viewpoints that are influenced by your ongoing relations with supporters, funders, advertisers, and others?” and “How do you handle allegations that authors of works in your journals may have misled readers?”

Two other medical journal publishers received similar letters, The New York Times reported. The letters have raised grave concerns about curbing free speech and government intimidation of scientific publications.

---

ref1

---

no lnx nyt

Edward Martin wears a gray suit and blue tie as he speaks at a desk with a microphone at the Capitol.

Edward Martin Jr., a Republican activist serving as interim U.S. attorney in Washington, D.C., sent letters to science and medical journals, accusing them of bias.Credit...Amanda Andrade-Rhoades/Associated Press

Teddy RosenbluthRebecca Robbins

By Teddy Rosenbluth and Rebecca Robbins

April 18, 2025

A federal prosecutor has sent letters to at least three medical journals accusing them of political bias and asking a series of probing questions suggesting that the journals mislead readers, suppress opposing viewpoints and are inappropriately swayed by their funders.

The letters were signed by Edward Martin Jr., a Republican activist serving as interim U.S. attorney in Washington, D.C. He has been criticized for using his office to target opponents of President Trump.

Some scientists and doctors said they viewed the letters as a threat from the Trump administration that could have a chilling effect on what journals publish. The health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has said he wants to prosecute medical journals, accusing them of lying to the public and colluding with pharmaceutical companies.

One of the letters was sent to the journal Chest, published by the American College of Chest Physicians. The New York Times obtained a copy of the letter.

The Times confirmed that at least two other publishers had received nearly identically worded letters, but those publishers would not speak publicly because they feared retribution from the Trump administration.

In the letter to Chest, dated Monday, Mr. Martin wrote, “It has been brought to my attention that more and more journals and publications like CHEST Journal are conceding that they are partisans in various scientific debates.”

He demanded that the journal’s publishers answer a series of questions by May 2. Do they accept submissions from “competing viewpoints?” What do they do if the authors they published “may have misled their readers?” Are they transparent about influence from “supporters, funders, advertisers and others?”

And he specifically singled out the National Institutes of Health, which funds some of the research the journals publish, asking about the agency’s role “in the development of submitted articles.”

The prosecutor’s inquiry amounts to “blatant political intimidation of our medical journals,” Dr. Adam Gaffney, a pulmonologist and researcher in Massachusetts whose articles have been published in Chest, wrote on X.

It was not clear how many journals had been targeted. Several prominent medical and science publishers said they had not received letters. Others declined requests for comment. News of the letters was earlier reported by MedPage Today, a medical news website.

The U.S. attorney’s office in Washington also declined to comment. Andrew Nixon, a spokesman for the Health and Human Services Department, declined to comment on whether Mr. Kennedy had any involvement.

Laura DiMasi, a spokeswoman for the American College of Chest Physicians, confirmed that the organization had received the letter but declined an interview request.

Most of what medical journals publish is highly technical, aimed at an audience of specialists. But they and the organizations that publish them have increasingly come under attack. Right-leaning sites like Breitbart have derided them as “woke medical journals.”

The Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative Christian legal group, has been attacking the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, which publishes a journal and runs a variety of reproductive health programs. It has received federal funding for an effort to promote maternal health. The alliance recently urged the Trump administration to cut funding and investigate the group, saying it was pushing liberal ideas about diversity and gender.

Several journals or their publishers have publicly opposed Mr. Trump.

In January, the American Public Health Association, which publishes a journal, was among several groups that sued the Trump administration over a memo freezing federal funding. That policy that has now been rescinded, though the administration has since halted other funds.

In March, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists called mass layoffs at H.H.S. an “attack on public health.”

In 2020, The New England Journal of Medicine published an editorial condemning Mr. Trump’s response to the pandemic — the first time the journal had taken a position in an election in its 208-year history. The journal Nature endorsed Joseph R. Biden Jr. for president in the 2020 election and spoke out against a second Trump term during the 2024 election.

Medical journals are afforded the same First Amendment protections as any other news media outlet.

Kent Anderson, a consultant for scientific publishers who has written about conservative attacks on medical journals, said that Mr. Martin’s inquiry could have a chilling effect among publishers.

“This is a fishing expedition from a U.S. attorney, and that makes people nervous,” Mr. Anderson said. “It may make them think twice about an editorial about treating women who have a spontaneous abortion or about transgender teens dealing with a health issue, because it may make them think that somebody is going to knock on the door.”

Mr. Kennedy had been nursing grievances about scientific journals for years. Medical and science publishers have long rejected article submissions that purport to show a link between vaccines and autism. (Dozens of studies have failed to establish such a link.)

He said in a podcast interview last year that he would seek to prosecute medical journals under the federal anti-corruption statute.

“I’m going to litigate against you under the racketeering laws, under the general tort laws,” he said. “I’m going to find a way to sue you unless you come up with a plan right now to show how you’re going to start publishing real science and stop retracting the real science and publishing the fake pharmaceutical science by these phony industry mercenaries.”

As examples, he pointed to two prominent journals, The New England Journal of Medicine and The Lancet, and the scientific publishing giant, Elsevier.

Other top health officials in the Trump administration have also criticized the big scientific publishers. In a book published last year, Dr. Martin A. Makary, the new commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, accused journal editorial boards of “gate-keeping” and publishing only information that supports a “groupthink narrative.”

Before becoming director of the N.I.H., Dr. Jay Bhattacharya publicly chastised the editor in chief of a prominent journal, Science, claiming he had “publicly denigrated scientists” who opposed Covid-era lockdowns. Dr. Bhattacharya was widely denounced by mainstream scientists during the pandemic for proposing that the virus should allowed to spread naturally through the population.

Dr. Bhattacharya also co-founded a new journal pitched as an alternative to traditional scientific publishing. It has published contrarian views on Covid.

Christina Jewett contributed reporting.

Teddy Rosenbluth is a health reporter and a member of the 2024-25 Times Fellowship class, a program for journalists early in their careers.

Rebecca Robbins is a reporter covering the pharmaceutical industry. She has been reporting on health and medicine since 2015.

See more on: U.S. Politics, 2024 Elections: News, Polls and Analysis, American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, National Institutes of Health, Health and Human Services Department, Donald Trump

---

omfg

no lnx

Home | Breathing is now a political act — thanks to the GOP

Thom Hartmann April 24, 2025

Breathing is no longer a basic human right in America: it’s now a political battleground.

Over 156 million Americans are inhaling toxic air today, not because we don’t know how to fix it, but because the Republican Party has decided that clean air is something only Democrats care about.

While children gasp through inhalers and wildfires choke entire cities, Trump and his fossil-fueled allies are dismantling environmental protections with surgical cruelty. This isn’t ignorance — it’s policy. It’s profit. It’s war on your lungs, your family, and your future.

The American Lung Association just released a new report documenting how over 156 million Americans are breathing poisonous air. Trump and the Republicans don’t give a damn; if anything, they’re enthusiastic about it.

Fossil fuel billionaires and the industry that made them rich have been major patrons of Republican politicians ever since Ronald Reagan floated into the White House in 1980 on a tsunami of oil and coal money. Donald Trump is no different.

Claiming that climate science research “promotes exaggerated and implausible climate threats, contributing to a phenomenon known as ‘climate anxiety,’ which has increased significantly among America’s youth,” the Trump regime last week cut millions from a Nobel Prize winning scientist’s program’s collaboration between the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and Princeton University.

Last month they also attacked the Renew America’s Schools program that provides funding for more than 3,400 schools across the country to install heat pumps, insulation, electric school busses, and other efforts to reduce their carbon footprints.

Lost in the news of Trump’s latest stock market pump-and-dump scheme for insiders and his kidnapping legal US citizens for foreign rendition, they also announced last Friday that they were zeroing out funding for the nation’s premiere annual climate change analysis, the U.S. Global Change Research Program, and the 13 agencies that collaborate on the National Climate Assessment. The report is mandated by Congress, but Trump is ignoring the law.

This follows by a few weeks EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin’s announcement that the official position of the US government’s warning of climate change will soon be reversed. As Politico reported on March 12th:

“President Donald Trump’s environmental chief announced Wednesday that he will seek to overturn the federal government’s core scientific finding about the dangers of greenhouse gases — along with 30 other key regulatory actions stretching back years or decades.”

The report added that that Zeldin will also be gutting CO2 limits for coal-fired power plants, tailpipe emissions, methane leaks, and ending a program requiring major industries to report their CO2 emissions. In other words, “To hell with the health of our children and our climate; there’s money to be made and campaign contributions to be solicited!”

Tuesday of last week, Trump signed an executive order declaring war on individual state initiatives to dial back carbon emissions, ordering the Department of Justice to “stop the enforcement” of such state laws. The EO specifically attacked “climate Superfund” programs in Vermont and New York that would have required fossil fuel companies to reimburse those states for damages caused by climate change-fueled storms, as well as going after California’s cap-and-trade carbon credit auctions.

Fossil fuel oligarchs are, no doubt, breaking out the champagne. And the dark money for attack ads against Democrats in 2026 and 2028.

This widespread and wholesale destruction of programs intended to research and fight climate change will directly damage the future of young people in America, but Trump and the GOP frankly don’t give a damn. There are, after all, big bucks to be made and campaign contributions to be collected.

This insanity began in its modern form when five corrupt Republicans on the US Supreme Court ruled in their 1978 Bellotti decision (written by Lewis Powell) that money was the same thing as “free speech,” protected by the First Amendment, and that corporations are “persons,” protected by the Bill of Rights and the 14th Amendment. That floated Reagan into office in 1980 on a tsunami of oligarch money, as I noted in The Hidden History of the Supreme Court and the Betrayal of America.

Five corrupt Republicans on the Court doubled down on that in 2010 with Citizens United, which led to an absolute explosion of billionaire money in politics. As a result, in 2024 just 150 billionaire families spent $2.6 billion to elect candidates, money that went to the GOP on a more than 2:1 basis.

And now, in a manner demonstrative of a fully corrupt banana republic mindset, the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress are giving the fossil fuel industry everything they could want. In addition to the outrages listed above, in just the first three months of this regime, they have further gifted the industry by:

— Exempting Coal Plants from Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS): The Trump administration granted two-year exemptions to 47 coal-fired power plants, allowing them to bypass MATS regulations. This decision increases the risk of mercury pollution, which can cause neurological damage (particularly in children) and respiratory illnesses.

— Declaring a National Energy Emergency: Trump declared a national energy emergency to accelerate fossil fuel development, weakening environmental reviews and potentially increasing pollution.

— Rolling Back Vehicle Emissions Standards: The administration overturned emissions standards for vehicles, leading to increased air pollution and associated health risks.

— Reducing EPA Enforcement: Under Trump, the EPA brought fewer cases against polluters and sought lower penalties, diminishing deterrents against environmental violations. Now Musk and his Doge teenagers are further gutting the EPA itself.

— Weakening Methane Emission Regulations: The administration rolled back rules limiting methane emissions from oil and gas operations, contributing to climate change and air quality issues.

— Providing Direct Channels for Pollution Exemptions: Fossil fuel companies were given a direct email line to request exemptions from air pollution regulations, undermining public health protections.

— Eliminating Climate and Environmental Justice Webpages: The removal of federal climate and environmental justice webpages hindered public access to crucial information for addressing pollution and climate impacts and served to hide or cover up Trump’s naked corruption.

— Reversing the Clean Power Plan: The administration replaced the Clean Power Plan with the Affordable Clean Energy rule, which could lead to thousands of additional premature deaths annually due to increased air pollution.

— Cutting Funding for Environmental Protections: Significant budget cuts to the EPA and other environmental programs reduced the capacity to monitor and enforce pollution controls.

— Reducing Public Land Protections: The administration reduced the size of national monuments and opened protected lands to fossil fuel extraction, threatening ecosystems and biodiversity.

— Rolling Back Clean Water Protections: By narrowing the definition of “protected waters,” the administration allowed more pollutants to enter waterways, affecting drinking water and aquatic life.

— Undermining Scientific Research: Policies were enacted to limit the use of scientific studies in policy-making, particularly those related to environmental and public health research.

— Reversing the Paris Climate Agreement Commitment: The U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Agreement under Trump signaled a retreat from global efforts to combat climate change.

— Promoting Fossil Fuel Exports: The administration lifted restrictions on fossil fuel exports, encouraging increased production and consumption globally, contributing to greenhouse gas emissions.

— Reducing Air Quality Monitoring: Cuts to air pollution monitoring programs made it more difficult to detect and address harmful emissions, posing risks to public health but increasing the profits and impunity of the fossil fuel industry.

Trump and Republican cronies in his administration and Congress are committed to trading millions of cases of asthma, childhood cancers, and environmental damage — not to mention the thousands who are dying every year from climate-change-related violent weather, floods, and fires — in exchange for blood-money cash.

Republicans refuse to do town halls, refuse to answer questions about this, and hide behind a timid media that’s afraid to even ask serious questions about this criminal corruption of the protective role of government.

Which leaves it up to us.

— Get out in the streets as often as possible.

— Call your representatives, particularly if they’re Republicans (only 4 or 5 Republicans in the House and Senate could change the course of history).

— Make your voice heard on social media, letters to the editor, calling into to talk radio, and sharing messages like these with friends and family.

— Contribute, if you can, to politicians who are taking brave stands against the oligarchy.

This is not just politics — it’s a slow-motion slaughter disguised as deregulation.

Republicans won’t answer for it, won’t debate it, and won’t hold town halls to face the people they’re sacrificing. The media tiptoes. The billionaires cheer. And Trump signs away your children’s futures with a grin and a pen.

But here’s the truth they don’t want us to grasp: If we want our children to grow up with lungs that work, we better start working and voting like our lives — and theirs — depend on it.

This isn’t just about air. It’s about whether democracy itself can breathe.

Tag—you’re it.

===

MMA 4 25

April 22, 2025, edition of Fox News' Hannity

SEAN HANNITY (HOST): Make no mistake, at the end of the day, this has nothing to do with the Earth cooling, global warming, which has evolved into the generic climate change, so if it gets warm, they have a name for it. If it gets cold, they have a name for it. If it snows, they've got a name for it. If it doesn't snow, they have a name for it.

Look at this list. It's the Green New Deal. Look, everything on this list has nothing to do really with climate. Climate warming, climate cooling, climate changing is the left's mechanism for Marxism, statism as represented by that list, to each according to their need, from each according to their ability. The only thing Democrats really care actually is political power and you being dependent on them.

---

AN 4 25

One prestigious journal for doctors who work in pulmonary health is now confirming the receipt of a letter sent by Ed Martin, who is the interim U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia in President Donald Trump's Department of Justice.

NBC News reported Friday that the CHEST journal — which is published by the 22,000-member American College of Chest Physicians (ACCP) — got a letter from Martin asking various questions about its editorial practices. This reportedly included whether it was influenced by advertisers, allowed for "viewpoint diversity" and if it protects readers from misinformation.

"“It has been brought to my attention that more and more journals and publications like CHEST Journal are conceding that they are partisans in various scientific debates,” the letter read, which also warned editors: “You have certain responsibilities.”

Eric Reinhart, who is a Chicago-based clinician, political anthropologist and social psychiatrist, obtained a copy of the letter and posted it to his X account. He called on editors of journals like CHEST to form a unified opposition to the administration.

IFrame Content

"The Trump regime is now using US Attorneys to intimidate academic journals by sending them letters demanding they explain how they ensure ‘viewpoint diversity,'" Reinhart tweeted. "Journal editors should be public about this and coordinate to refuse to comply with these fascist tactics."

JT Morris, who is a senior supervising attorney for the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), expressed a similar sentiment regarding Martin's letter to the CHEST journal.

“It’s really unusual when you see a U.S. Attorney from the Distinct of Columbia sending a letter to a publication based in Illinois inquiring about their editorial practices, in particular, a journal from a medical organization,” Morris said. “That screams of a government official going after a publication because it disagrees with what the publication is saying.”

Click here to read NBC's report in its entirety.

---

an 4 25

Historian and presidential biographer Jon Meacham says the United States is not a stable and safe environment for scientists and builders anymore, because they can no longer pursue ideas that "may not find favor with" the Republican Party.

He referred to the Trump administration's recent steps to cut funding for the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which will lead to a decline in crucial scientific research, as a "self-inflicted wound" during an appearance on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" on Tuesday.

"I think that's one of the particular tragedies," he said, adding that several things are "unfolding at the moment, but it's a self-inflicted wound and one that may or may not be generational."

ALSO READ:'Unconstitutional usurpation of power': Small businesses sue Trump over 'devastating' tariffs

Meacham, who serves as the Canon Historian of the Washington National Cathedral, said that former Presidents Harry Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower, who served between the 1940s and 1960s, could not "stand each other," but were still able to agree to invest government resources in research.

IFrame Content

"We might not see instant returns on a dollar, but that's what research is," Meacham said, referring to the views held by leaders during the Cold War period.

He added that many supporters of President Donald Trump don't want to "undo" the America that was "built by the institutions, the impulses, the investments."

"I don't think they really voted for that. They voted for this man. And whatever this man does, they're willing to follow," he said.

ALSO READ:The 'war on vaccines has started': Scientists blast 'ridiculous' Trump admin request

The cancellations of NIH-funded scientific projects “tears the long-standing fabric of the government’s contract to pursue medical research that seeks to better the healthspan and lifespan for all Americans”, Francis Collins, a geneticist who led the NIH, based in Bethesda, Maryland, for 12 years, told scientific journal Nature last week.

On Monday, the Trump administration said it would suspend $2.2 billion in multi-year grants and $60 million in multi-year contract funding for Harvard University after the institution indicated it would not comply with the administration's policy requests. Earlier that day, Harvard announced its decision to decline the administration's demands for policy modifications.

ALSO READ:'Bloodbath': Shock as Trump fires thousands at HHS amid outbreaks

Watch the video below or at this link.

---

AN 4 25

Co-authors working on a scientific paper abruptly pulled its publication because it was a paper on evolution -- and feared retaliation from President Donald Trump's administration.

The paper “was months of work, but at the same time I know the current situation, and I’m scared for my friends in the U.S.,” said a European evolutionary biologist speaking anonymously for fear if retaliation. “I told them, ‘If you think it is too dangerous, don’t do it.’”

The co-authors, who are legal immigrants, told fellow researchers they feared deportation for daring to publish a paper on evolution, according to Washington Post reporter Mark Johnson. One of the co-authors had just lost a job because of a canceled government grant and the other feared more canceled grants for even broaching the topic in a nation riddled with anti-science. Both worried they might lose their residency if their names appeared on a “controversial article” despite being in the U.S. legally, Johnson writes.

One of the paper’s editors, European astrobiologist Michael L. Wong, confirmed authors pulled their submission from the Royal Society journal because of the nation’s embrace of anti-science.

IFrame Content

“I was so looking forward to reading this paper because I think the ideas in it are potentially transformative,” said Wong. “But the fact that people, scientific researchers, are afraid of just engaging in normal scientific discourse, putting their well thought out ideas into the public sphere so that everybody can see them, read them, come to their own conclusions about them and then debate them ― it is so disheartening.”

United States officials have detained French scientists entering the United States after daring to criticize President Donald Trump's cuts to science funding, and international scientists are increasingly leery of traveling to the U.S. The Washington Post obtained an email from the French National Centre for Scientific Research advising U.S. visitors that they could have their laptops and cellphones seized and examined at the border and their spoken or written criticisms of U.S. government used against them while in the country.

“I have friends who are currently afraid to have a layover in the U.S.,” a University of Toronto molecular biology student told the Post. The student also spoke anonymously out of fear of retaliation.

:{---

AN 3 25

:{:{Thousands of informational government webpages have been taken down so far in the second Trump administration, including on public health, scientific research and LGBTQ rights. Amid this mass erasure of public information, the Internet Archive is racing to save copies of those deleted resources.}:

The San Francisco-based nonprofit operates the Wayback Machine, a popular tool that saves snapshots of websites that may otherwise be lost forever, and it has archived federal government websites at each presidential transition since 2004. While it’s normal for a new administration to overhaul some of its online resources, the Trump administration’s pace of destruction has shocked many archivists. “There have been thousands and thousands of pages removed,” says Mark Graham, director of the Wayback Machine, who notes that even a page about the U.S. Constitution was scrubbed from the White House website}:

IFrame Content

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman.

We end today’s show with Mark Graham, director of the Wayback Machine at the Internet Archive, to look at efforts to preserve thousands of government webpages being deleted by the Trump administration.

In this first part of our interview that we do, Mark, if you can tell us what exactly is happening?

MARK GRAHAM: Sure. Let me first give a little bit of context. The Internet Archive is a nonprofit digital library with a mission of universal access to all knowledge. About 28 years ago, the founder of the Internet Archive, Brewster Kahle, pressed record on a new media called the web. And we’ve been working very hard every day since getting better at doing just that: archiving much of the public web. We archive more than the web. We archive books and television news and microfiche and microfilm and academic papers, and I could go on and on. But the bread and butter of the operation here, and through the Wayback Machine, is archiving the public web.

What I think we want to focus on today is efforts around archiving and making available material from the U.S. government. So, in 2004, and every four years since, we have, in collaboration with others, focused on archiving much of what is published by the U.S. government before and after each presidential election. This is referred to as the End of Term Archive. You can read more about this by going to EOTArchive.org. So, every four years, we do a deep dive on tens of thousands of government websites and millions and millions of pages.

So, this last time around, we endeavored to do this. We compiled a list of webpages and websites in collaboration with the Library of Congress, the National Archives and Records Administration and the U.S. Government Publishing Office. So we had this big list. And before the election, we went through and we worked to archive as much of that material as we could. That was phase one. We did a second phase after the election, and we’re now involved in a third phase of this work, which we started post-inauguration.

AMY GOODMAN: So, can you tell us about what you understand the Trump administration is doing right now, removing thousands of pages related to what?

MARK GRAHAM: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: Diversity and gender ideology, as they say, as well as targeted —

MARK GRAHAM: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: — scientific research and environmental justice data?

MARK GRAHAM: Yeah, absolutely. There have been thousands and thousands of pages removed, many websites. For example, the USAID site, if you go to it right now, it just basically tells you how you can get your materials if you had been an employee there. A site called ReproductiveRights.gov. I could go on. Many, many sites are just gone. And then, like I said, at least 8,000 — we don’t actually know the number at this time — webpages have been removed. These are webpages that deal with topics like education and health issues, climate change, aviation, weather. There was even a webpage on the White House website about U.S. Constitution that’s not there anymore.

And so, the good news is that we’ve gotten pretty good at this effort. We, as I said, had done a very thorough job of archiving this material. I should also say that we do this work in collaboration with many other organizations. This End of Term Archive is a team effort. We work with Harvard’s Library Innovation Lab, the University of North Texas, Stanford Libraries, the Common Crawl Foundation and EDGI, Environmental Data and Governance Initiative. And I want to highlight the work of EDGI, because what they have historically done is, after the fact, after a change of presidential administration, they’ve gone in and tried to analyze what, in fact, had changed when the new administration came in. So they’re deep doing that work now. We also, at the Internet Archive —

AMY GOODMAN: We have 20 seconds for the segment, Mark.

MARK GRAHAM: Excellent, OK. So, you know, I’d say the Wayback Machine is available to anyone. It’s a free public service at web.archive.org.

AMY GOODMAN: Will it stay up? Will it be — will it stay up?

MARK GRAHAM: It’s stayed up for 28 years, and we’re pretty sure it’s going to stay up for at least 28 more. Absolutely.

AMY GOODMAN: So, Mark, we want you to stay with us. This is all too important. Mark Graham is the director of the Wayback Machine at the Internet Archive, also part of the End of Term Archive for federal websites. We’ll do Part 2, web exclusive, post it online. I’m Amy Goodman. Thanks so much for joining us.

---

===

mma

Scott Perry and right-wing host enthusiastically praised Project 2025

Prompted by host Chris Stigall, Perry pushed Project 2025 as a solution for conservatives to bring “some accountability” to government

Written by Eric Hananoki

Published 10/03/24

During an interview in July, Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA) and right-wing podcaster Chris Stigall enthusiastically praised and defended Project 2025. After Stigall says he's “thrilled” that Project 2025 is “thinking beyond today,” Perry replied that he was “exactly right,” and touted the Heritage Foundation initiative, saying, “These people on the left ... they're scared to death that there's actually a plan.”

Project 2025 is the deeply unpopular, radical right-wing blueprint organized by The Heritage Foundation that is intended to provide policy and personnel recommendations to the next Republican presidential administration.

It has become an albatross for Trump, who has claimed that he knows “nothing” about the project despite his numerous connections to it.

But the project did get a strong defense during the July 13 edition of The Chris Stigall Podcast, where Perry and the show’s conservative host praised Project 2025.

Video

CitationFrom the July 13, 2024, edition of The Chris Stigall Podcast

Stigall began the discussion about Project 2025 by defending it, saying: “I don't think this is a huge scandal. I don't think there's anything secret or subversive about it. I totally understand what it is. The Heritage Foundation has the idea, we want to stock the halls of government, which are vast and full of left-wing progressives. We would like to actually bring conservatives from around the country in to stockpile and staff all of these many bureaucracies. I think it's nothing more complicated than that. Have I got it about right, Scott?”

Perry agreed, saying, in part: “Yeah, you've got it completely right. It's a coalition of different organizations that are generally like-minded but not completely that are trying to be prepared for a future Trump presidency.”

The two continued, with Stigall stating that he’s “thrilled” about Project 2025. Perry then said that liberals are attacking it because “there actually could be some accountability” in government and it’s a plan to “get rid of their agenda and stop their agenda.”

CHRIS STIGALL (HOST): I'm thrilled that conservatives for once are thinking beyond today. They're looking down the road because the left always does.

SCOTT PERRY (CONGRESSMAN): Yeah, that’s exactly right. And at this point, because of what happened the last time when President Trump came in, not knowing all the people in Washington and thinking that actually people in Washington would accept his agenda and know that there were career government employees. But there was a new sheriff in town and now we're going to do something different. And then he found out that's not how it works.

These people on the left are scared to death that there actually could be some accountability and that they're not going to be able to just sit in there and promote their leftist agenda and say, “Oh, Mr. President, we don't work for you. We're just going to wait you out for four years and we're going to continue to march towards communism.” They're scared to death that there's actually a plan and that the right [inaudible]paring to remove them from the halls of power and get rid of their agenda and stop their agenda. You know, they just saw that President Trump is an anomaly and they want to march towards socialism and Marxism and they don't want anybody to get in the way of that. And anything that looks like it could get in the way of that must be confronted and must be defeated. And so that's where this falls into that category.

Perry also has connections to The Heritage Foundation. He appeared on the of Kevin Roberts’ podcast and said he was “honored” and “thrilled” to be on the show. Roberts is the president of The Heritage Foundation and the architect of Project 2025.

And in January of this year, Perry co-wrote an op-ed with Victoria Coates criticizing a retracted plan by the National Park Service to remove a statue of William Penn in Pennsylvania. Coates is a Heritage Foundation vice president who is listed as a Project 2025 contributor.

Perry’s has deep connections with right-wing media, including with a 9/11 conspiracy theorist

Perry is a repeat guest on various right-wing media networks, including on Fox News, Newsmax, and One America News. He also has repeatedly appeared on the show of Ken Matthews and said during one appearance: “I love Ken Matthews. He's awesome. He's one of the only people in the media with courage to really talk about the important things.”

Matthews is a 9/11 conspiracy theorist who devoted a show to pushing 9/11 conspiracy theories with a leading 9/11 conspiracy theorist. He also said, “I question the crash at Flight 77 into the Pentagon. I have so many questions about the Pentagon. Everything about it. The building, the damage, the burn. I always question burns and explosives and things like that. But no video of the aircraft.” (In fact, there was video of the aircraft.)

Matthews also said: “I lost respect for science over 9/11. That’s when I really lost respect for scientists, excuse me. I don’t — I respect science, but the scientists? What 9/11 proved, what COVID proved, scientists are just as buyable as everybody else.”

Perry has also shared an antisemitic meme and a post from a social media account that has promoted pro-Nazi material, shared white nationalist propaganda, and attacked people for being Jewish.

---

===

mma

Project 2025 architect Kevin Roberts touted a decrease in weather-related deaths. The decrease is partially due to NOAA, an agency Project 2025 wants to dismantle.

09/26/24

As “life-threatening” Hurricane Helene approached Florida, the Miami Herald called out Project 2025's proposal to dismantle NOAA

09/27/24

===

September 17, 2024, edition of OutKick's OutKick The Show

CLAY TRAVIS (HOST): Finally, Scientific American magazine has endorsed Kamala Harris. It's the second endorsement that this magazine has felt compelled to make in its 179-year history. The last endorsement they had was for Joe Biden. Now they are endorsing Kamala Harris. Why? What has Kamala Harris done that you look at Donald Trump if you were truly being honest and not just a victim of Trump derangement syndrome?

What has Trump done? And what has Kamala done such that you have to have a magazine that has nothing to do with politics decide to endorse a political candidate for a second time, both times anti-Trump, no matter who the candidate was, I think they would have made that choice.

...

I am of the opinion that science should be much like the First Amendment, filled with a variety of perspectives, and you should be challenging consensus all the time. I think we would have been far better off if more people had challenged shutting down schools, shutting down businesses, making people wear masks, social distancing by six feet, the COVID shot. I think if all those things had been challenged, we would be far better off as a country.

The history of science, if you study it, is actually of scientists being incredibly wrong about almost everything. And when they are initially challenged, they try to shut down anyone who challenges the conventional authority. Go back and study history, this is the truth. So I'm actually skeptical any time science lines up and says this is the answer, you cannot challenge it. I think we need robust uninhibited debate.

Candace Owens: “I'm not a flat earther. I'm not a round earther. Actually, what I am is I am somebody who has left the cult of science.”

07/02/24 mma

an 3 24

kentucky state Rep. Mark Hart has been drinking fluoridated water his entire life. In 1954, five years before Hart was born, his home state mandated adding or adjusting levels of the mineral, which occurs naturally in water, in drinking water systems of populations larger than 3,000.

But after hearing from a constituent a few years ago, Hart believes the matter of what’s in Kentucky cities’ drinking water should be a decision made by those drinking it. He’s been trying to reverse the state’s mandate since 2018, with several unsuccessful legislative attempts.

This year, with more than 20 co-sponsors, his bill has so far passed out of committee on its route to the House floor.

In 1945, Grand Rapids, Michigan, became the first city to fluoridate its water. The decline in tooth decay that followed the widespread adoption of fluoridation has been hailed as one of the greatest public health achievements of the past century. Fluoridation lessens tooth decay in children and adults by 25%, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

But there’s been pushback against fluoridation, including a lawsuit by advocates seeking the federal government to ban the practice entirely. Some state lawmakers want to reverse or relax requirements for communities to fluoridate, and several localities across the country in recent years have chosen to stop doing it. Health experts say the rise in anti-fluoridation measures is an example of the increased skepticism toward science and public health measures — exacerbated by the mask and vaccine mandates during the pandemic.

“At the heart of these big public health issues — including water fluoridation — is science. But over the past few years, there’s been skepticism of science,” said Jane Grover, senior director of the Council on Access, Prevention and Interprofessional Relations at the American Dental Association.

Roughly 73% of the U.S. population with public water access in 2020 received drinking water with fluoride adjusted to the “optimal” concentration of 0.7 milligrams per liter, according to the CDC.

At least a dozen states have laws mandating that larger communities fluoridate. Among them are California, Delaware, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Minnesota, Mississippi, Nebraska, Nevada, Ohio and South Dakota.

Yet lawmakers in three of those states — Georgia, Kentucky and Nebraska— have filed bills that would reverse the mandates and leave the choice up to a local voter referendum or to the governing body of local water systems.

Three states — Maine, New Hampshire and Utah — require a public vote for fluoridation by municipalities and their public water systems.

What the science says

Hart, a Republican, said he didn’t give much thought to his drinking water until a constituent sent him studies that linked very high levels of fluoridation to lower IQs in rural communities of China and India. (U.S. public health experts say those cases don’t correspond to fluoridation in the United States.)

“I was shocked by all the research I was reading. I hadn’t put much stock into my drinking water when I first joined the [Kentucky legislature],” said Hart.

He’d personally rather avoid fluoridated water altogether, but said at a minimum Kentucky’s statewide mandate ought to be overturned.

“What goes in your drinking water isn’t for the states or big government to decide. That to me is a local control issue — give people a choice on what they’re drinking, you know?” Hart said.

Much of the research used by anti-fluoride activists has been resoundingly debunked by the medical community. Public health officials note that studies touted by anti-fluoridation groups are often cited out of context, may not be peer-reviewed, and often are conducted in countries where fluoridation levels can be several times that of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s recommendation.

“Good public health policy is built on decades and decades of scientific review, not junk science. Because we need reputable, peer-reviewed science to assess what’s necessary to protect public health,” said Kathleen Hoke, a University of Maryland law professor and the eastern region director of the Network for Public Health Law, a professional group that provides technical legal assistance on public health matters.

“The EPA’s recommendation for fluoride levels is based on scientific, peer-reviewed data. It’s up to our public health measures to reflect that same type of reputable science,” she added.

And organizations such as the CDC, the American Dental Association and the National Cancer Institute are in consensus that U.S. fluoridation is safe, and is not linked to lower IQs or critical health problems.

Local debates

For most of the United States, fluoridation already is a matter of local control. Hawaii is the only state that bans fluoridation; most others leave it to individual water systems or localities.

There are bills in Hawaiiand New Jersey to mandate water fluoridation statewide, but the legislation is stalled in committee.

From flush to faucet: More places look to turn sewage into tap water

IFrame Content

Hawaii state Sen. Stanley Chang, a Democrat, said his concern over the oral health of his newborn daughter inspired the bill, which would require all state suppliers of public water to meet fluoridation levels set by the EPA.

“I think this will prevail in the end. When it comes to health and science, there’s an information plateau if you’re not an expert,” Chang told Stateline. “I’m not an expert. It’s why my job is to ask experts, so that I can be equipped to make that information accessible and reliable for my constituents.”

Debora Teixeira, the oral health systems coordinator at the Vermont Department of Public Health, said her agency will send educators to local communities to talk about fluoridation in the hope of helping residents understand the benefits.

“When requested, we go to the place where fluoridation is being challenged,” Teixeira said.

“It’s less of advocating law, and more of an education and information about the science behind it,” she said. “Because there’s decades and decades of research that supports fluoridation, but we want to engage with those who may be skeptical or have been misinformed.”

This year, local governments in Union County, North Carolina,and Collier County, Florida, prohibited the adding of fluoride to their drinking water.

Last year, State College, Pennsylvania, and Brushy Creek, Texas, stopped adding fluoride to their water systems.

In a September 2023memo announcing the decision to terminate fluoridation, Shean R. Dalton, general manager of Brushy Creek Municipal Utility District, cited health concerns, personal choice and cost-effectiveness as reasons to forgo the practice.

Sewer rates soar as private companies buy up local water systems

IFrame Content

A 2022 University of Calgary study showed increases in tooth decay procedures in Calgary, Canada, and Juneau, Alaska, after each city ended water fluoridation.

Last month, a federal court in San Francisco heard arguments in a lawsuit by Food and Water Watch and anti-fluoridation advocacy groups against the EPA, arguing that fluoride ought to be regulated as a toxin. The lawsuit, filed in 2017, is seeking a ban on fluoridation of drinking water “to protect fetuses and children” from the risk of neurodevelopmental problems.

“There is a very real trend of states looking to reverse these mandates. We believe that the court’s ruling — which we hope is in our favor — will give more states cause to look at what we’re doing to our drinking water,” said Stuart Cooper, executive director of the Fluoride Action Network, an anti-fluoride advocacy group that is among the plaintiffs in the case.

Meanwhile, residents of Buffalo, New York, have filed a class-action lawsuit against the city after it quietly ended fluoridation without informing residents. One resident said her elementary school-aged son suffered from oral health problems from a lack of fluoride.

The latest effort at stopping fluoridation was in Rutland, Vermont, where residents this week took their second vote in less than a decade on whether to keep adding the mineral to their drinking water. In 2016, the ballot measure failed.

On Tuesday, it failed again. Rutland will keep its fluoride.

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org. Follow Stateline on Facebook and Twitter.

---

sci supp mma 2 24

Fox News' Mark Levin says that variability in local weather reporting disproves scientists ability to predict climate change | Media Matters for America

---

aha stories are tribal // echo boost ampl by soc med: chicken-egg ID --> story? vv? both?

scientists are global elite, eggheads who look down on us yokels/ppl of faith? goes back to scopes? crises--> magical thinking/end times? how much of sci sceptic comes from climate denial [trump i don't think sci really knows]

https://www.alternet.org/2021/10/here-s-why-anti-vaxxers-appear-more-likely-to-embrace-unproven-drugs-report/

Anti-vaxxers, often motivated by baseless conspiracy theories, have a long history of questioning the work of the scientific community while discrediting medical breakthroughs. However, there is also a bizarre phenomenon of these same people having no qualms about embracing unproven drugs.

In fact, reports began circulating in September when anti-vax residents in Mississippi began using the anti-parasital drug Ivermectin as an alternative treatment for COVID. Since the drug is typically used to treat animals, it is strongly opposed to human consumption. So why would people who are deeply critical of medicine and the scientific community be open to trying unproven drugs?

Vox reporter Dylan Scott explores the mind-boggling hypocrisy behind it. Speaking to the publication, a number of psychological experts offered their take on the situation. Jay Van Bavel, director of New York University's Social Identity and Morality Lab, explained the psychology behind how people convince themselves to believe things that are known to be false.

"When you really want to believe something — like 'you can't trust the vaccines' — you'll come up with any number of rationalizations," Van Bavel said. "It's like whack-a-mole. You falsify one premise and they just create a new one."

Van Bavel also highlighted the irony of anti-vaxxers' stance and how it doesn't add up.

"On the face of it, it doesn't make sense that you don't trust doctors and science, but then the next moment, you're sharing news about some other medical cure and taking that and putting it in your body," said Van Bavel. "These are not trivial beliefs. These are some of the most significant decisions you can make in a once-in-a-century pandemic."

Scott also explained how difficult it is for new information to be presented in areas where people are predominantly skeptical about vaccinations.

"New information isn't necessarily treated as an opportunity to reassess their beliefs," Scott wrote. "Instead, new facts are seen either as affirmation of what this community already believes or as a distraction that should be dismissed because it doesn't neatly sort into their anti-vaccine narrative."

David Dunning, a psychology professor at the University of Michigan also offered a similar opinion. "People listen to people 'from their group' and whom they think they can trust,"Dunning said. "People really don't know what science is, and so do you feel you can trust the person giving you advice, rather than appraising their expertise, becomes the thing."

---