The Donald Trump War on Science: Week 1: How bad could it be? [Confessions of a Science Librarian]

How bad could it be? On so may fronts, the first week or so of the Donald Trump administration was the shit show to end all shit shows.

But we’re only going to talk about the science stuff here.

As the more astute observers among my readership will observe, I still haven’t updated the Pre-Inauguration Edition of this post. Nor should this post really be considered a true beginning to tracking the post-inauguration devastation that the Trump administration will wreck on science, technology, the environment and public health. I’m hitting the high lights here with a more complete accounting to come with the first real chronology post. As well, some of the actions I list below may have been reversed in the days after they were suggested or inacted, but I still include them because the intention to do something negative still counts.

But it’s a start. It’s a wake-up call.

Note: This post will eventually be rolled into the first real chronology of the Trump presidency and science, which I expect to post probably in February or March sometime. My plan is also to disconnect lists of commentary from lists of incidents. In the pre-inauguration post, there are together, which is partly the reason why it’s taking me so long to update. What I will be doing is bare bones lists of commentary fairly frequently and updating the list of incidents only occasionally. Or at least that’s the plan.

Here is a list of the damage done during the first week of the Donald Trump presidency.

• Jan 2017. EPA studies, data must undergo political review before release (more: 1 2 3 4 5 6)
• Jan 2017. GOP makes plans to invalidate Endangered Species Act (more: 1 2 3 4)
• Jan 2017. Donald Trump will eliminate landmark climate protection plan, says first post on White House website
• Jan 2017. Trump’s Wall Could Cause Serious Environmental Damage (more: 1 2 3)
• Jan 2017. Trump Administration Orders EPA to Remove Its Climate Change Web Page (more: 1)
• Jan 2017. Trump Appoints Anti-Regulation Net Neutrality Enemy to Head FCC (more: 1 2)
• Jan 2017. White House orders ‘immediate regulatory freeze’ and proposes slashing regulations (more: 1 2 3 4 5)
• Jan 2017. Donald Trump is the sole reliable source of truth, says chair of House Science Committee (more: 1)
• Jan 2017. Reported Trump Science Adviser Rejects Climate Science and is generally anti-intellectual (more: 1 2 3)
• Jan 2017. Trump’s Anti-Muslim Order Could Have ‘Chilling’ Effect On Science (more: 1 2 3)
• Jan 2017. Climate change summit canceled by CDC amid uncertainty of a Trump presidency (more: 1 2 3 4 5)

   

• Jan 2017. Myron Ebell, Trump Adviser, Calling for Overhaul of ‘Junk Science’ at EPA (more: 1 2)
• Jan 2017. Trump bans agencies (USDA, NPS, EPA, DoT, etc) from ‘providing updates on social media or to reporters’ (more: 1 2 3 4)
• Jan 2017. Trump’s unsupported claim he has ‘received awards on the environment’ (more: 1 2)
• Jan 2017. Minutes after Trump becomes president, White House website deletes all mention of climate change (more: 1 2 3)
• Jan 2017. Trump Issues Executive Orders Freezing Federal Hiring (more: 1 2)
• Jan 2017. White House warns Prince Charles against ‘lecturing’ on climate change (more: 1)

As usual with these posts, I rely on you, my readership, to catch the things I’m missing. Please let me know in the comments or via email at dupuisj at gmail dot com. Any incidents I report need to be documented in some form on the open web, either a media report or some sort of blog post or something. Suggestions to beef up the “more” sections of each item will definitely be welcomed, especially the ones where I haven’t added to much additional information.