Trump recently gave gag orders to the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Agriculture, stopping all press releases from being issued and stopping social media accounts from being used. Grants and funding will also be halted until a Trump-appointed “digital strategist” can come in and vet all of the material that’s set to be released, screening any material that denigrates Trump in any way.
We just recently saw the Badlands National Park Twitter account firing off tweet after tweet about climate change. After these tweets were deleted in a mysterious fashion, the rangers started up an alternative Twitter account to keep defying Trump’s orders.
Scientists all around the country are planning a much broader statement by staging a scientists’ march. The idea took hold online and has since exploded in popularity, already garnering 80,000 members and 26,000 followers for their Twitter account.
Trump has already resorted to totalitarian information restriction, even going so far as the removal of the climate.gov page. This means that all of the critical information on climate change will be lost to the public, maybe forever.
Climate change is by far the biggest threat to humanity today. Despite the fact that Trump and his cronies continue to deny it, it is real and it is happening. All evidence points to the existence of climate change and the human involvement in it. If we do nothing or worse add to the problem, it will only be a matter of time until our planet becomes uninhabitable, at least by humans.
Trump’s administration has been one of the most flagrant we’ve ever seen in terms of imposing gag orders and attempting to control the flow of information. No matter what he does, though, people will continue to resist. There’s nothing Trump can do about those who resist and defy his orders, and that’s what’s so great.
It seems as though Trump came into office expecting that anything he wanted to get done would come about and be heralded as great, further massaging his ego. Instead, he’s been taking pummeling after pummeling by the news media, and with good reason.
We are seeing an age where the President of the United States is trying to shut down the freedom of the press, accusing some organizations as being “fake news” despite not having any proof to support this claim.
In Trump’s America, proof isn’t required. Trump simply thinks that whatever he says is fact and that anyone who disagrees with him is un-American. We’ve truly entered a terrifying new age in politics, one where the Press Secretary can utter clear and obvious falsehoods and then be propped up as delivering “alternative facts” to the people.
If the administration is flagrantly lying about small things, what will stop them from lying about larger, more impactful things? Trump has surrounded himself with yes-men who will parrot everything he says and do absolutely whatever he asks them to do, even if that comes at the expense of the administration.
Trump has also put a freeze on pay for those in the military, directly harming our men and women in uniform. It seems like there’s no low that Trump won’t stoop to to get his despicable agenda to pass.
Those who love the arts will be appalled by the fact that Trump has flirted with the idea of cutting the National Endowment for the Arts as well as the National Endowment for the Humanities. Yes, you read that right.
Trump’s administration has already started to carry out unimaginable and yet very real cuts and restrictions to areas that are vital to the freedome of our democracy. We must fight him on it every step of the way.