Derek Thompson: “Job growth isn’t the only inconvenient statistic that the Trump administration has tried to suppress in its first seven months.”
“In April, the Trump administration dismissed hundreds of experts who had been putting together the National Climate Assessment, an official report on climate change that is required by Congress. This report isn’t just bathroom reading material for folks who care about sea levels. State and local governments use it to allocate funds toward possible extreme weather events. The insurance industry relies on the assessment to assess risk from extreme weather events for reinsurance coverage. But since the administration is busy waging ideological warfare against any idea that seems too progressive, climate change reports got swept up in the mass cancellation of inconvenient data.”
“Then in June, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. fired all 17 members of the advisory committee on immunization to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention…
“Across government, Trump administration is commandeering independent agencies to turn them into mouthpieces for pro-Trump narratives, across climate, health, and the economy. The White House is trying to program reality as if it were reality TV.”
“But reality exists, whether or not you choose to measure it.”

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