July, 20 2017, 12:15pm EDT
![Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS)](https://assets.rbl.ms/32012677/origin.jpg)
Trump Administration Sidelines Science in Its First Six Months in Office
Pattern of Ignoring and Abusing Science Already Putting Americans at Risk
WASHINGTON
Six months ago today, Donald Trump took the oath of office as the 45th president of the United States. Since then, numerous actions by his administration and its congressional allies have undermined the vital role science plays in policy decisions, according to a new report by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS).
The report, "Sidelining Science Since Day One: How the Trump Administration Has Harmed Public Health and Safety in Its First Six Months," analyzes the ways the federal government uses science to make policy and how the Trump administration has opened the door to new levels of political interference in the process. The report also explains the real-world consequences of ignoring science when making policy, including the threat posed to environmental, public health and workplace protections.
"There's a clear pattern here," said Gretchen Goldman, research director for the Center for Science and Democracy at UCS and a report co-author "This administration and its allies in Congress are pushing science aside, and in the process, they're putting the public at risk."
The report documents that the Trump administration has dismissed key scientific advisors, left critical science positions vacant, restricted federal scientists' ability to speak publicly, denied public access to taxpayer-funded information, and ignored scientific evidence in order to delay or roll back vital public safeguards. In many cases, they have appointed officials with close ties to the industries they will oversee and a record of attacking the very agencies they have been put in charge of.
"If we're not using science and the public interest to make policy, these decisions will be made on behalf of industry lobbyists," said Andrew Rosenberg, director of the Center for Science and Democracy and a former regional administrator for NOAA's National Marine Fisheries Service. "The federal government can't make good decisions without good independent science, but this administration has created a hostile environment for research."
From weather monitoring to food safety inspection to efforts to fight epidemic diseases, federal science matters--and undermining it puts Americans at risk.
UCS is mobilizing scientists and the public to stand up for science and challenge the administration when it ignores the facts or promotes disinformation. To encourage federal scientists to speak out, the organization has established a new legal protection fund for federal employees who help expose censorship and other abuses of scientific integrity.
"Our health, our economy, and America's leadership in the world all depend on science," said UCS President Ken Kimmell, former commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection. "Science plays a crucial role in a healthy democracy, but this administration has taken a wrecking ball to it. The actions they've taken in just six months have already put people at risk, but the damage they do could last for years to come."
The Union of Concerned Scientists is the leading science-based nonprofit working for a healthy environment and a safer world. UCS combines independent scientific research and citizen action to develop innovative, practical solutions and to secure responsible changes in government policy, corporate practices, and consumer choices.
LATEST NEWS
'Nothing To Eat': War-Torn Sudan Faces Mass Famine as Military Delays Aid
Both parties in Sudan's civil war are to blame for a looming mass famine, experts say, and the military's blocking of U.N. aid at a border crossing with Chad exacerbates the problem.
Jul 26, 2024
Sudan's military is blocking United Nations aid trucks from entering at a key border crossing, causing severe disruptions in aid in a country that experts fear may be on the brink of one of the worst famines the world has seen in decades, The New York Timesreported Friday.
The border city of Adré in eastern Chad is the main international crossing into the Darfur region of Sudan, but the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), the state's official military, which is engaged in a civil war with a paramilitary group called the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), has refused to issue permits for U.N. trucks to enter there, as it's an RSF-controlled area.
U.S. and international officials have issued increasingly alarmed calls for steady aid access to help feed the millions of severely malnourished people in Darfur and other areas of Sudan.
Last week, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the United States ambassador to the U.N., said that the SAF's obstruction of the border was "completely unacceptable."
Both warring parties in Sudan continue to perpetrate brazen atrocities, including starvation of civilians as a method of warfare. This piece focuses on the SAF's ongoing obstruction of essential aid. The situation is catastrophic. The policy is criminal. https://t.co/FKhqQh3EI9.
— Tom Dannenbaum (@tomdannenbaum) July 26, 2024
The Sudanese who've made it out of the country and into Adré reported dire and unsafe conditions in their home country.
"We had nothing to eat," Bahja Muhakar, a Sudenese mother of three, told the Times after she crossed into Chad, following a harrowing six-day journey from Al-Fashir, a major city in Darfur. She said the family often had to live off of one shared pancake per day.
Another mother, Dahabaya Ibet, said that her 20-month-old boy had to bear witness to his grandfather being shot and killed in front of his eyes when the family home in Darfur was attacked by gunmen late last year.
Now the mothers and their families are refugees in Adré, where 200,000 Sudanese are living in an overcrowded, under-resourced transit camp.
In addition to those that have made it out of the country, there are 11 million people internally displaced within Sudan, most of whom have become displaced since the civil war began in April 2023.
An unnamed senior American official told the Times that the looming famine in Sudan could be as bad as the 2011 famine in Somalia or even the great Ethiopian famine of the 1980s.
In April, Reutersreported that people in Sudan were eating soil and leaves to survive, and The Washington Postcalled it a nation in "chaos," reporting that World Food Program trucks had been "blocked, hijacked, attacked, looted, and detained."
In late June, a coalition of U.N. agencies, aid groups, and governments warned that 755,000 people in Sudan faced famine in the coming months.
The U.S. last week announced $203 million in additional aid to Sudan—part of a $2.1 billion pledge that world leaders made in April, which some countries have not yet delivered on.
Some officials including Thomas-Greenfield, who has dubbed the situation in Sudan "the worst humanitarian crisis in the world," have called for the U.N. Security Council to allow aid delivery into the country even in the absence of SAF approval; it's believed that Russia would veto such a measure.
Sudan's civil war has seen a great deal of international interference. Amnesty International on Thursday published an investigatory briefing showing that weapons from Russia, China, Serbia, Turkey, Yemen, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) had been identified in the country. And The Guardian on Friday reported that the passports of Emirati citizens had been found among wreckage in Sudan, indicating the UAE may have troops or intelligence officers on the ground, though the UAE denied the accusation.
The International Service for Human Rights on Friday warned that both the SAF and RSF were engaged in wrongful killings and arrests, especially targeted at lawyers, doctors, and activists. The group called for an immediate cease-fire.
The SAF and Sudanese government figures have cast doubt on international experts' claims about famine in the country.
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JD Vance Doubles Down on Attack on 'Childless Cat Ladies'
Vance "meant no disrespect to cats, but he did mean to demean women and still holds the view in 2024 that they should be punished for not having children."
Jul 26, 2024
After days of condemnation from critics including actress Jennifer Aniston and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, U.S. Sen. JD Vance was given the opportunity on Thursday to clarify his remarks from 2021 in which he said the Democratic Party was run by "childless cat ladies."
Instead, the Ohio Republican and running mate of former President Donald Trump assured SiriusXM host Megyn Kelly on "The Megyn Kelly Show" that while he has "nothing against cats," he meant what he said in terms of "the substance" of his argument.
Vance made it clear, said Aaron Fritschner, deputy chief of staff for Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.), "that he meant no disrespect to cats, but he did mean to demean women and still holds the view in 2024 that they should be punished for not having children."
The comments in question were made by Vance to then-Fox News host Tucker Carlson when Vance was running for the Senate.
Calling out Buttigieg—who, the secretary disclosed this week, was struggling at the time to adopt a child with his husband—and Vice President Kamala Harris, a stepmother of two and the Democratic Party's presumptive presidential nominee, Vance said people without biological children "don't really have a direct stake in" the future of the country and therefore shouldn't hold higher office.
In separate remarks that same year, Vance said parents should "have more power" at the voting booth and that "if you don't have as much of an investment in the future of this country, maybe you shouldn't get nearly the same voice."
He also specifically categorized people who don't have children as "bad" in an interview in 2021, saying the government should "reward the things that we think are good" and "punish the things that we think are bad," with people taxed at a lower rate if they have children.
While a spokesperson for Vance told ABC News that the senator's taxation proposal was "basically no different" than the child tax credit supported by the Democratic Party, Democrats who have pushed for the credit have heralded its proven ability to slash child poverty rates and help families afford groceries, childcare, and other essentials, rather than viewing the tax savings as a way to reward people for procreating.
In his interview with Kelly on Thursday, Vance attempted to pivot away from his own comments, saying his point was to criticize "the Democratic Party for becoming anti-family and anti-child" and claiming without evidence that the Harris campaign had "come out against the child tax credit"—a signature policy of the Biden-Harris administration.
"I'm proud to stand for parents and I hope that parents out there recognize that I'm a guy who wants to fight for you," said Vance. "The Democrats, in the past five, 10 years, Megyn, they have become anti-family. It's built into their policy, it's built into the way they talk about parents and children. I don't think we should back down from it, I think we should be honest about the problem."
Vance and Kelly went on to lament the anxiety "hardcore environmentalists" and progressive lawmakers such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) have expressed about the damage fossil fuel extraction is doing the planet, accusing them of pushing people to forgo having families—but said nothing about Republican policies that have made child-rearing less accessible.
In recent years, the entire Republican caucus in Congress was joined by conservative then-Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia in blocking the extension of the enhanced child tax credit, which had been credited with cutting the national child poverty rate in half. Republicans also allowed a pandemic-era universal school meal program to expire, while several Democratic-led states have passed state-level programs to ensure all children can have meals at school, regardless of their family's income.
Under Republican abortion bans, numerous stories have cropped up of pregnant people who have been forced to carry pregnancies to term despite finding out that their fetuses had fatal abnormalities and would die soon after birth—as have stories of children who were forced to give birth or had to cross state lines in order to get abortion care.
As with his position that nonparents should be "punished" for not having children, "who else does 'pro-child/family' Vance think should 'face consequences and reality' by way of curtailing choices, rights, and freedoms?" asked writer Alheli Picazo. "Women and girls who become pregnant through rape/incest."
University of North Carolina law professor Carissa Byrne Hessick said that one could test "empirically" Vance's claim that Democratic policies are anti-family.
"But I haven't heard the GOP talk much about things that would help my family and my kids," she said, "like reducing childcare and tuition costs."
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House Dems Unveil Sweeping Bill to Protect Worker Rights and Safety
"This bill will help level the playing field and, once again, restore the balance of power between workers and their employers," said Rep. Bobby Scott.
Jul 26, 2024
A group of Democratic U.S. House members on Friday unveiled legislation "aimed at bolstering protections for America's workers and ensuring accountability for employers who flout labor and employment laws."
The Labor Enforcement to Securely (LET'S) Protect Workers Act was introduced by Rep. Bobby Scott (D-Va.)—the ranking member of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce—and House Labor Caucus Co-Chairs Mark Pocan (D-Wis.), Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.), Donald Norcross (D-N.J.), and Steven Horsford (D-Nev.).
The bill's sponsors said their legislation is based on the premise that "employment laws are a promise to our nation's workers" meant to "secure the most basic rights of work."
"That promise is broken," they contended. "Recent shocking revelations about massive increases in the number of children illegally overworked and trafficked into dangerous jobs—just over 85 years since the passage of the Fair Labor Standards Act, which was enacted to eliminate that very problem—is the latest example of the ways that this promise to America's workers is broken."
Across the U.S., Republican state lawmakers have been advancing legislation to remove restrictions on child labor, despite several high-profile workplace deaths of minors. At the federal level, Sen. James Risch (R-Idaho) and Rep. Jared Golden (D-Maine) last year introduced a bill that would allow 16- and 17-year-olds to work in the logging industry.
The LET'S Protect Workers Act sponsors highlighted rampant wage theft and overtime violations, workplace injuries, and union-busting by employers who "know that even if a resource-starved Department of Labor catches a violation, the penalties are a mere slap on the wrist."
"People should be able to come home at the end of the day—alive, well, in one piece, and with all the wages they worked hard to earn," the lawmakers asserted. "Children should be in schools, not dangerous workplaces, and workers should be able to organize a union without interference or the threat of retaliation from their employers."
According to House Education and Workforce Committee Democrats, if passed, the LET'S Protect Workers Act would:
- Increase civil monetary penalties for violations of child labor, minimum wage and overtime, worker health and safety, and farmworker protection standards;
- Improve mine safety and reliable funding of black lung benefits through new and increased civil monetary penalties and the option to shut down scofflaw operators;
- Set new penalties for retaliation against workers who exercise their family and medical leave rights;
- Strengthen enforcement of mental health parity requirements for employer-sponsored health plans;
- Close a loophole that allows employers to escape penalties for failing to keep records of workplace injuries if [the Occupational Safety and Health Administration] does not detect the violation within six months; and
- Create new penalties for violations of the National Labor Relations Act, consistent with the Richard L. Trumka Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act.
"Every American should be fairly compensated and be able to return home safely at the end of the day," Scott said in a statement Friday. "Unfortunately, shortcomings in our labor laws enable unethical employers to exploit workers, endanger children, and suppress the right to organize—with little accountability."
"That's why I'm proud to introduce the LET'S Protect Workers Act, which will hold bad actors accountable and strengthen penalties for labor law violations," he added. "This bill will help level the playing field and, once again, restore the balance of power between workers and their employers."
In a joint statement, Dingell, Horsford, Norcross, and Pocan said that "the lack of meaningful enforcement makes it all too easy for bad faith actors to get away with illegally violating workers' rights—from firing workers for organizing a union, to allowing children to work overnight shifts, or jeopardizing workers' safety by ignoring workplace regulations."
"We're proud to join Ranking Member Scott in introducing this bill to crack down on unscrupulous employers and to ensure that workers receive the protections they deserve," the lawmakers added.
Earlier this month, nearly 50 labor organizations led by the AFL-CIO and representing a wide range of U.S. workers urged congressional Democrats to resist Republican efforts to roll back rules enacted by the Biden administration to protect worker rights amid relentless attacks by abusive employers.
Specifically, the labor groups warned that Republicans are trying to use the Congressional Review Act—which was enacted to strengthen oversight of federal rulemaking—to overturn pro-worker rules enacted by the Department of Labor and other government bodies.
Meanwhile, Republicans including former President Donald Trump—the 2024 GOP nominee—have been trying to woo U.S. workers with proposals including a tax exemption for tipped employees panned as a "
hollow promise" by experts and by inviting Teamsters president Sean O'Brien to speak at the Republican National Convention last week.
In response to Republicans' dubious courting of U.S. labor, Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas)—who is a co-sponsor of the LET'S Protect Workers Act—recently called for holding what would be a largely symbolic vote on the PRO Act. The bill was revived last year by Scott and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and, if passed, would expand labor protections including the right to organize and collectively bargain.
"If Republicans wanna talk like they're pro-worker, then let's have a vote on the PRO Act next week," Casar
said on social media last week. "Let's see which politicians are for unions and which ones are all talk. Dems are ready to vote, how about you guys?"
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