Donald Trump cut funding for agencies that rescue catastrophe victims in order to replace revenues lost from his $4.5 trillion tax cut for the wealthy. It has produced deaths and disease around the world.
TEXAS FLOODS
Trump’s failure to mitigate the suffering and deaths from the Texas floods is part of a pattern of failing to prepare for disasters, ignoring warnings, dismantling and cutting funding for agencies that rescue disaster victims, and misleading Americans about their risks and his progress in addressing them.
Tragically, Trump is dismantling and cutting funds of disaster agencies to replace the revenues he lost by his tax cuts for the wealthy, when these agencies could have saved most – maybe all – of the 120 people killed in Kerr County, Texas and the 170 people still missing.
For months, officials at FEMA have been warning that the agency is unprepared for disasters due to the mass exodus of emergency managers and the looming threat of it being dismantled.
Five months into Trump’s presidency, the U.S. Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which tracks weather and flood risk, didn’t have leaders. Kristy Noem fired the highly qualified head of FEMA who opposed dismantling the agency and hired David Richards who had no background in emergency management, said he had not been aware the country had a hurricane season, and was nowhere to be seen for days after the floods.
Just before a record-breaking hurricane season, the National Weather Service was left with 216 vacant positions due to a government-wide hiring freeze imposed by Trump.
Sadly, the pattern of cutting expenses and failure mitigate suffering from disasters continues. Trump hired researchers that reject the scientists’ consensus on human-caused climate change. They stopped taking in and analyzing data and turned off weather-tracking satellites. Trump also dismissed hundreds of scientists working on the National Climate Assessment and dumped past assessments, which were the most authoritative reports on how climate change will affect the US.
Unable to feel guilt shame or empathy, Trump proposed in his 2026 budget, eliminating NOAA’s weather and climate research and shutting down development of new forecasting technologies. Even now, the two Texas National Weather Service offices that warn about extreme weather lack key staff.
Trump’s Homeland Security Secretary, Kristi Noem, required her personal approval of every contract over $100,000. As a result, FEMA officials couldn’t pre-position search and rescue crews near the disaster zone because Noem hadn’t authorized it until 72 hours after the flooding began. Aerial imagery to aid search operations was also delayed while awaiting Noem’s signature.
Trump’s demolition of our ability to save lives in emergencies has made massive property damage and the loss of lives a near certainty, all out of pure incompetence and in order to save money to pay for his tax cuts.
TRUMP’S DISMAL AND PREVENTABLE COVID FAILURE
In 2016, Trump ran on a promise to cut taxes and generate enough growth to cover the revenues lost from the tax cuts, which, of course, they never did.
In Trump’s first presidency, the U.S., the world’s richest country with the strongest economy, had more cases and deaths from COVID than any other country. The U.S. had only 4.2 percent of the world’s population but 30 percent of COVID-19 cases and 19 percent of COVID deaths.
As Dr. Anthony Fauci said, it didn’t have to be that bad. But Trump continued his pattern of risking and mismanaging disasters and cutting funding that crippled America’s biodefense capabilities to pay for his 2017 tax cuts. Trump’s team ignored a pandemic simulation that would have provided a picture of how a pandemic would roll out because,
Trump ignored multiple warnings that cutting pandemic defenses would expose Americans to the “significant probability of a large and lethal pandemic,” that U.S. capacity wasn’t “sufficient to fight many types of infectious disease outbreaks,” and that unless he invested more in biodefense now, we’d pay much more in “human and economic costs” later.
Because the promised growth and revenues never materialized, Trump needed to cut expenses to recover lost tax revenues, so his 2019 budget proposed a cut to a $30 million emergency response fund.
Trump also fired his Homeland Security Adviser who wanted to invest more in our pandemic defenses and disbanded our entire pandemic response team and never replaced it.
In an unconscionable abdication of responsibility, Trump abandoned America’s leading roll over seven decades in fighting infectious diseases. He ignored the Defense Production Act which authorizes the president to force production and distribution of materials needed in a crisis, precisely because it’s a federal responsibility. Instead he told governors that the federal government is “not a shipping clerk” and that states should procure their own supplies.
Having failed to control the massive spread of COVID, Trump turned to massive misinformation. He told Americans that the mortality rate “within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero,” that it would “disappear like a miracle,” and claimed that “we’re very close to a vaccine,” which Dr. Fauci and the World Health Organization said would take a year to 18 months at best. But Trump continued to assure the public that he had COVID “totally under control,” that everybody “infected is getting better,” and suggested the common flu was worse. His lies led more Americans to be less cautious, avoid vaccines and subject themselves to higher risks of infection and death. CDC statistics showed that the unvaccinated are 68 times more likely to die from COVID than those who are fully vaccinated
TRUMP’S SACRIFICE OF LIVES AND HEALTH GLOBALLY.
Trump’s inability to feel guilt shame or empathy has turned him loose pay for his tax cuts by slashing foreign aid which is expected to cause around 23 million children to lose access to education, 95 million people to lose access to basic healthcare annually and more than 14 million deaths by 2030.
TRUMP’s ASSAULT ON AMERICANS’ HEALTH CONTINUES WITH RFK JR.
Trump’s assault on Americans’ health continues with his hiring of anti-vaxxer RFK JR. as Health and Human Services Secretary who replaced all 17 members of an advisory committee that makes recommendations for the CDC regarding safety, efficacy and clinical need of vaccines.
RFK Jr. announced that the CDC would no longer recommend the COVID vaccine for healthy children and pregnant women and repeated unfounded claims that vaccines cause autism. He has falsely claimed the vaccine routinely causes death, encephalitis and blindness, and had the FDA announce it would limit access to COVID vaccines to those aged 65 and older. He also discouraged the use of measles vaccines even though they prevented 93.7 million deaths, and during an outbreak in Samoa, he repeated his claim and 83 people died.
RFK Jr cut 80% of the staff of health agencies, terminated the Diabetes Prevention Program and gutted the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health which protects workers from physical and chemical hazards? Experts fear that it will take us more than a generation to recover with the science, training and hiring.
Medical associations representing hundreds of thousands of doctors and scientists are suing RFK Jr. for limiting who can get Covid vaccines and for undermining overall vaccine confidence.
Clearly, Trump knowingly exposing Americans to multiple risks of death is horrifying, but not to the Congressional Republicans who enabled him by, among other things, confirming the most unqualified and dangerous cabinet in America’s history.
