{"id":86239,"date":"2017-02-06T12:00:41","date_gmt":"2017-02-06T12:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=86239"},"modified":"2017-02-02T16:01:18","modified_gmt":"2017-02-02T16:01:18","slug":"ruling-by-chaos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2017\/02\/ruling-by-chaos\/","title":{"rendered":"Ruling by Chaos"},"content":{"rendered":"

Trump’s made so many orders \u2014 on the environment and everything else \u2014 that it’s hard to keep track, much less resist. That’s the point.<\/em><\/p>\n

1 Feb 2017 – <\/em>As Donald Trump was sworn in, my inbox filled up with concerns about the future of the Environmental Protection Agency. Allegedly, scientists were being censored. References to climate change were being erased.<\/p>\n

But all that was just a warm-up act.<\/p>\n

Before we could really act on the EPA, down came Constitution-shredding executive orders against refugees and Muslim immigrants.<\/p>\n

The problem, for those of us who care about due process and the rule of law, is that it\u2019s impossible to put out one fire before the next one begins \u2014 or to even keep track of everything.<\/p>\n

For instance, as lawyers worked to ensure that Iraqis who\u2019d put their lives in danger working for the U.S. weren\u2019t deported back to Iraq, Trump removed the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the director of national intelligence from his National Security Council.<\/p>\n

In their place, he installed the controversial white supremacist Steve Bannon (who\u2019s stated that his goal is to \u201cdestroy the state\u201d<\/a>) and his own chief of staff, Reince Priebus.<\/p>\n

With so much going on, some speculate that Trump is trying to create chaos, so Americans are too distracted to uncover and resist what he\u2019s really doing.<\/p>\n

<\/a>

(Photo: thierry ehrmann \/ Flickr)<\/p><\/div>\n

On the environmental front, some believe that Trump is holding back on his plans until he can succeed in getting his pick for EPA administrator confirmed by the Senate. That nominee, Scott Pruitt, is a climate skeptic with several pending lawsuits against the agency he\u2019s been picked to lead.<\/p>\n

If that\u2019s the case, we should re-examine what\u2019s occurred with regard to the environment since inauguration, in preparation for what\u2019s to come. Some changes were part of the normal change of power in Washington, whereas others were not.<\/p>\n

For instance, any mention of climate change was wiped from the White House website.<\/p>\n

This is in part because the entire website turns over with each new administration, removing all of the old speeches and press releases of the outgoing president. However, Trump\u2019s new energy page presents a reality in which climate change doesn\u2019t exist.<\/p>\n

Moreover, the new administration froze all Obama-era regulations<\/a> that hadn\u2019t yet been finalized. In itself, this is actually a standard action new presidents take. However, the Trump administration went further than all previous presidents, also halting all EPA grants and contracts<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Another standard practice<\/a> is to stop agencies from putting out press releases before the new administration has time to get its feet wet.<\/p>\n

That said, the Trump administration has indicated it might muzzle its environmental scientists, threatening to subject their work to a case-by-case review<\/a> by political appointees before their findings can be made public. That<\/em> isn\u2019t normal.<\/p>\n

Initially, rumor had it that the EPA would remove its climate change<\/a> website. This hasn\u2019t occurred yet, but some believe it\u2019s because Trump wants to hold back until he can get Pruitt, a longtime friend of the fossil fuel industry, confirmed.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Trump has taken steps to reinstate both of the nation\u2019s most controversial oil pipelines, the Keystone XL and the Dakota Access Pipeline.<\/p>\n

Of course, with the Tweeter in Chief now in charge, some of the most interesting developments occurred on Twitter. When Badlands National Park tweeted data about climate change, their tweets were soon removed.<\/p>\n

Shortly thereafter, \u201crogue\u201d government twitter accounts<\/a> appeared, purporting to give citizens the truth from our federal agencies.<\/p>\n

In short, if this is the warm-up, what\u2019s to come is scary.<\/p>\n

The \u201cenvironment\u201d is an abstract concept, but it\u2019s the air we breathe and the water we drink. We all must work to stay informed. Don\u2019t get distracted by chaos when it\u2019s used to cover up even more destructive harm to our nation and the planet it lives on.<\/p>\n

__________________________________<\/p>\n

OtherWords columnist Jill Richardson is the author of\u00a0<\/em>Recipe for America: Why Our Food System Is Broken and What We Can Do to Fix It. Distributed by\u00a0OtherWords.org<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 otherwords.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Trump’s made so many orders \u2014 on the environment and everything else \u2014 that it’s hard to keep track, much less resist. That’s the point.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-86239","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anglo-america"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86239","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=86239"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86239\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86239"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86239"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86239"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}