Leid Stories—Reading the Political Landscape: Are We Clear Yet About Trump?—01.26.17

In office barely a week, President Donald Trump has set about the task of making real his campaign promises. He’s already taken executive actions that: begin the dismantling of Obamacare; withdraw the United States from the Trans-Pacific Partnership; freeze all federal regulations for review, but speed up those for manufacturing applications; fast-track the Keystone and Dakota Access oil pipelines, and further requiring that all pipeline material, including for repair, be U.S.-manufactured; beef up and accelerate the U.S.’s deportation program, including blocking grants to “sanctuary cities” that are seen as unwilling to enforce immigration laws; and building a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico, adding 5,000 more border patrol agents.

Trends This Week – Fact or opinion? – 01.25.17

“Reporters” abandoned the facts in exchange for their personal opinions while reporting what occurred during President Donald J. Trump’s Inauguration. The paid-to-put-out pressitutes described the President and his mannerisms as dark, gloomy, and Hitlarian, stating that his sense of nationalism is unlike anything seen since World War II.

Andrea Cristina Mercado – Sustaining the Momentum of the Women’s March: Where We Go From Here

This weekend I marched in Washington, DC, with my younger sister, in a contingent with hundreds of immigrant women, women of color, domestic workers, Native American women, and grassroots environmental activists. Like so many who attended the Women’s March, I was awestruck to see the sheer size of the march, the number of women who mobilized — many of whom …

Chase Purdy – Trump has gagged the US Agriculture Department’s research arm from publicly sharing its work

An order of silence has been handed down to the US Department of Agriculture’s research arm, prohibiting the taxpayer-funded agency from releasing its work to the public, according to a report by BuzzFeed. The message was handed down to the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) just days after Donald Trump was sworn into office as president. At least a couple of …

PATRICK COCKBURN – The Rise of Trump and Isis Have More in Common Than You Might Think

It is an era of instability and disintegration which began in the Middle East and North Africa in 2011 and in Europe and the US in 2016. These regions are very different, but their recent political convulsions have basic features in common, notably a feeling shared by people from the Mississippi to the Euphrates that they are unhappy with the …

Melissa Dahl – Your Brain Gives Up When Discerning Truth From Lies Gets Too Hard

You can call it “post-truth,” you can call it “fake news,” or you can, as Kellyanne Conway helpfully suggested on Meet the Press over the weekend, call it “alternative facts.” Or you can borrow Dan Rather’s phrasing from earlier this year: “A lie, is a lie, is a lie.” In a fantastic recent piece for Politico, psychology writer Maria Konnikova …

Lauren McCauley – Trump Issues Media Blackout at Multiple Federal Agencies

Though the majority of President Donald Trump’s controversial cabinet nominations have not yet been confirmed, his so-called “beachhead” teams have arrived at their respective agencies, carrying out orders that make clear that the “War on Science” has begun. On Tuesday, BuzzFeed broke the news that scientists at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) are no longer allowed to share information …

Lauren McCauley – Trump Didn’t Even Have to Ask CDC to Cancel Climate Summit

In another signal of the anti-science chill that has descended upon federal government, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has quietly cancelled a long-planned climate summit in anticipation of its unpopularity within the Donald Trump administration. The February summit—intended to provide a forum for public health officials to discuss the risks that climate change poses to human health—was …