As I have frequently posted, Trump and the MAGA movement occupy an alternate reality–an informational environment carefully selected from “news” sources that reinforce their grievances and conspiracy theories. The choice to inhabit a bubble of “evidence” confirming their preferred worldview is why political debates are no longer about policy–public policy, after all, is crafted to address recognized issues and problems, and when the parties to that debate essentially live on different planets with very different issues, policy conversations are no longer possible.
Science and empirical evidence are inconsistent with this devotion to a preferred “reality,” an inconsistency that explains Trump’s persistent war on science and fact and accurate history, his support of RFK, Jr.’s rejection of medical science, his insistence that climate change is a “hoax” and windmills cause cancer…
Most recently, the administration has announced the closing of 75% of U.S. Forest Research Facilities–a federal restructuring that will eliminate regional offices, centralize authority, and expand logging priorities–all while wildfire risks rise. As Fast Company recently reported, the announcement has experts worried not only about the number of scientists who will leave the agency, but also about the probable negative effect on the gathering and dissemination of crucial wildfire and climate change data.
The Forest Service oversees 193 million acres of forests and grasslands across the country. It manages timber harvesting, researches how forests can provide clean air and water to communities, monitors climate impacts over time, and works on wildfire prediction and risk management, among other tasks.
Julian Reyes, chief of staff at the Union of Concerned Scientists and previously a federal government civil servant who worked directly with Forest Service R&D scientists on climate research, says the move doesn’t make any sense, given the wildfire season we’re heading into.
State agencies and utility companies use Forest Service data to mitigate, prepare for, and respond to wildfires, and the dismantling of the research and development arm of the Forest Service will negatively affect firefighting capabilities. Then, of course, there’s the probable loss of governmental institutional memory. During Trump’s first term, a similar assault “reorganizing” the Bureau of Land Management saw 87% of employees quit or retire.
Why the assault on the Forest Service? According to Lincoln Square,
In March, the administration ordered an immediate expansion of domestic timber production, directing agencies to increase supply from public lands. The Department of Agriculture has also announced more than $100 million in financing for sawmills and wood-processing facilities, part of a broader effort to expand industrial capacity tied to federal timber output.
Those two shifts—centralizing authority and expanding industrial demand—are not separate. One concentrates decision-making power. The other creates pressure to use that power to increase extraction.
We shouldn’t be surprised that an administration that prefers coal and oil to renewable energy would prioritize expanded production of lumber over the preservation of forests; it’s all part of the administration’s rejection of–and war on–knowledge. According to Fast Company, the government has lost more than 10,000 STEM PhDs since Donald Trump took office, and the Forest Service lost 6,000 employees during Elon Musk’s DOGE rampage.
As an analyst with the Union of Concerned Scientists writes, there is an unmistakable pattern the administration “sidelining, ignoring, or willfully undermining science in their decisions and policies.”
These attacks follow the plan laid out in Project 2025, whose authors inside and outside of government have seen 47% of their proposals implemented in just the first eight months of the second Trump presidency. These decisions and policies have clear and tangible negative impacts on real people, our communities, and our planet.
Between January 20th and August 31st 2025, there have been 479 attacks on science. These are 479 actions, decisions, or policies that undermine, co-opt, or blatantly ignore science in the federal government.
Lest you find my description of administration actions as “war” overheated, let me conclude with some evidence.
Over 30 FEMA employees were put on administrative leave after signing an open letter expressing concern about the agency’s direction and leadership. At the EPA, over 100 federal workers and scientists were put on administrative leave for speaking out against the administration’s anti-science actions and decisions. Large numbers were subsequently fired.
Throughout the government, we’ve seen political officials given authority over career scientists and staffers–and given extensive power over research and science policy. One Trump Executive Order gave political appointees the power to personally approve or deny federal grant funding from their agencies.
Unfortunately for the sane inhabitants of America, objective reality operates independently of ideology and lunacy. The results of Trump’s war won’t be pretty.
The results of Trump’s war on science will be/are disastrous. The brain drain is “merely” about a niche of American humans who will leave to other countries taking their fine educations and ideas with them. Trump is a very, very stupid “man”. Science and the details therein scare the living crap out of him and his mental pathology. What he DOES understand is money.
He’s doing everything he can to enrich his donor class in ALL the energy industries. Who needs forestry when you can denude our forests while cutting lumber purchasing from Canada? All the wildlife and water management means nothing to him or his P-2025 fellow idiots … like Vought. Have you heard this guy talk? What a monster.
We don’t develop very good ideologues. They’re pretty simple actually: Money over people. Self-enrichment or the betterment of society. Capitalism run amok. Karl Marx was right.
His announcement that wildfires were due to people not raking forest areas, his medical cure/prevention of Covid-19 was Clorox injections and exposure to LED lights was a helpful prevention should have been the warning that his attacks on science would only get worse if reelected. His solution to high gas prices is now to “shoot to kill” those who attempt to protect their homeland and surrounding ocean areas as his 2nd or 3rd extended Cease Fire talk times is moving us closer to nuclear action by a national leader who is out of patience with America’s tolerance with Donald Trump and all that name implies.
The Trump family is now getting wealthier via the robotics manufacturing and AI, they can always blame those sciences for all that is going wrong during their family and friends administration.
Would having more trees in the USA help out toilet paper-making corporations? Would it increase profits for those companies that need wood for their operation but have to import their supplies?
Koch Energy also makes toilet paper. Needless to say, Koch has a lot of need for timber, since Canada is “diversifying” its portfolio to reduce business with the USA because of Trump. Worse yet, much of it will be with China.
Because of Trump’s idiocy and his EGO, he said that we’ll have a “persistent ceasefire” with Iran. Doesn’t that mean “we lost,” or we give up?
Idiots like Trump don’t understand simple cause and effect. However, when Bibi and his American Billionaire Zionists own you, that’s not an acceptable solution.
Trump’s war on alternative energy doesn’t look like a good decision right now since Iran controls the Strait of Hormuz. Less than a month before the midterm elections. I’ve watched red-state governors like Indiana’s stand in line for AI data centers because of the great jobs they offer. LOL
These data centers consume enormous amounts of energy, so look at any chart on energy demand and supply. Once again, the idiot who thought windmills “kill birds and cause cancer,” we are stuck on coal and oil, which are in short supply, so guess what is happening to energy-focused operations, consumers’ electric bills are going to go through the roof, and the data only has 7-10 employees. What a great trade-off!!!
Did you see how quickly gas prices went up, and have stayed up? Any betting man connected to Trump can make a lot of money off options or betting on the Polymarket
I was watching an interview with Max Blumenthal, and he casually mentioned that Barron Trump struggles in school from the beginning and doesn’t have much of a skill set, so how has he amassed $123 million?
And, then, were have Trump and Kennedy debating the percentages of people getting/not getting illnesses. It’s like Beavis and Butthead riding again!
Mr. “Dumbest student I ever had” is getting even with the world for not conforming to his idiocy.
Well, on another hand, maybe he’s got a bet that Stephen Hawking’s prediction that humankind will not survive this century and is, in effect, loading the dice, unaware that if Hawking is correct, he will not collect; not that he’s gong to live to the end of the century anyway.
End stage Capitalism has us in a trick box. Corporations make the rules. The CEO, CFO, and shareholders don’t care about us, because they can move away from the shithole and not hear our crying.
“Unfortunately for the sane inhabitants of America, objective reality operates independently of ideology and lunacy. The results of Trump’s war won’t be pretty.” Sheila Kennedy
“It is so easy to break down and destroy. The heroes are those who make peace and build.” Nelson Mandela
“The Constitution is our conscience.” Mark Felt
Just sayin’
Forgive me if my memory isn’t as good as it once was, but I seem to recall a huge push from the right to focus on STEM education. They claimed that future employment would in science, technology, engineering and math, so we needed to prepare the workforce to take those jobs. Enter MAGA and now those jobs are going away, because the right can’t bring itself to believe in anything beyond their own strange notions of how everything works.
We have created two generations of workers who are now unemployable. The only positions that have a future are oligarchs and owners. Meanwhile, we are busy destroying the very things that make life better for everyone. The Boundary Waters, are the latest pristine place to be sold out. I guess that will teach Minnesota to toe the line.
There is a fine example from the twentieth century of what happens when political ideology is the top requirement for employment in a science laden industry. When Russia developed its nuclear power system its officials in charge buried any and all reports of “problems” so as to make them able to boast of the “best” and the “greatest” power system in the world. It lasted until the Chernobyl nuclear power station blew up taking with it thousands of lives, lost land, and a collapsed country.
These lost years of MAGA rule under Trump are laying the groundwork for an ecologically disaster of our own. This country needed to be addressing climate change and it ramifications since 2016, instead we have a diminished government, an exodus of science leaders, a demoralized population, a loss of alliances, and an economy on the brink of serious recession.
Here is a scientific fact… you don’t get lost time back.
More of the same but even more mindless as all his attacks on science are. The progress of America is rooted in much of the nation’s investment in science and in the enterprises that promote and fund it, NIH, etc., and colleges and universities. What Trump and his Project 2025 have set in motion will not be easily reversed. What a travesty. How MAGA can see value in this war against science–and, yes, Sheila, you are right, it is a war–is way beyond my comprehension.. Surely among its members are those seeking cures and hoping for progress in preventing inherited threats to their health from becoming manifest, and yet, and yet….
Project 25’s money making agenda is an exclusive club for the extreme right and trump’s family and friends. Their conjured reality follows no realistic/scientific outcomes for all Americans in all areas. How to take over business/resources sell off all assets and run it into the ground is what they have applied to US government.
The disregard for long term effects on environment with trump’s rape like mentality toward US natural resources needs massive pushback. People are working to defend land resources at local levels. Volunteer firefighters are readying for the dry season in Denver area, since they didn’t get much snow this year.
US needs a Potus like Teddy Roosevelt who was a trust buster and preserved US natural resources into the future with his Foundation.
Rose; even Charles Manson was aware that we were “raping this earth” decades ago; that put him one-up on Trump when he and his family tried to destroy the bulldozers to stop it. But Charlie preached to his “family” to “come to the now” which meant to come to his way of thinking as the only way; we are watching the actual Trump family coming to his way of thinking to rape the earth and come to his way of thinking to scam and rob their way to higher and higher wealth.
We need to carry a large jar of Vaseline with us at all times; even in our own homes as Trump continues coming up with new ways to rape the public. Trump has created an entirely new form of Political Science to destroy the sciences necessary if we are to survive him for the next 2 1/2+ years.
JoAnn, He has no right to do what he’s doing i.e. tearing down the white house, having the justice department pay out settlements (millions) to his not Russian hoax friends and on and on. Psychopathy for sure. History has shown there is no good end to anyone who disregards reality/science and concern for others, and I think the majority of US citizens don’t want to go with him.
It is all very simple
1) Stop collecting data – a radical enterprise created by WOKE people and other Lefties.
2) What little evidence (data) that leads to Leftie/WOKE ideas gets buried, destroyed, or overruled by your appointees.
3) The truth has now become whatever you want it to be. There can be no counter-arguments.
4) Bonus – now when you line your pockets, you have the “Truth” on your side (since you define “Truth”).