Starting Over

Steven Beschloss at America, America:

The funny thing is the Trump operatives probably imagine their authoritarian tricks are working. But refusing to investigate ICE murders and other violent confrontations involving federal agents doesn’t mean these encounters aren’t happening. Deleting data about climate change, pregnancy risks, dangerous chemicals in the environment and rising levels of hunger won’t make these problems go away. Nor will deleting facts collected on websites about the violent attacks on Jan. 6 change the terrible truth of that day’s horror.

Yet the Trump regime—determined to hide its failures and pretend that real problems can simply be erased—is expanding its assault on the truth nonetheless. While it may be one of the oldest tricks in the authoritarian playbook, Trump’s henchmen are running their pernicious operation over and over. As if we cannot see what they are doing and their efforts to reject positive change won’t ultimately be their undoing. Denying the public its right to know enables corrupt and criminal actors to get away with their abuses and undermine democracy. That includes the continuing coverup of the Epstein files in order to protect the rich and powerful involved in child rape and other sex crimes.

The latest assault on truth, reported yesterday by The New York Times, involves stopping FBI investigations of violent incidents involving immigration agents. This would “sharply limit law enforcement scrutiny of immigration agents, as the Trump administration draws mounting criticism over killings at the hands of federal officers,” note reporters Devlin Barrett and Hamed Aleaziz. This follows two murders by ICE agents in Texas and Maine over the last two weeks. This shift was reportedly delivered in a written notice to FBI managers around the country. Such investigations, the Times noted, “can provide a crucial means of gathering evidence implicating the agents themselves.” While both the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) denied the change, this policy would leave it up to DHS to essentially investigate itself, thereby making it harder to hold its agents accountable for any criminal activity, be it murder or otherwise. This comes as the Trump White House is pressuring prosecutors to expand charges against protestors, in fact insisting that anyone making physical contact with a federal agent should be charged with felony assault, a crime that carries a sentence of up to eight years. A Times investigation published Saturday found that of 400 resolved cases involving these assault charges, “nearly half have unraveled: Juries acquitted defendants, judges threw out charges, or prosecutors withdrew them.”

If true, this latest effort continues the regime’s pattern of amassing power and control by degrading the public’s capacity to know what’s true and what’s not—and making it harder to hold it accountable. Consider these examples from this second Trump term:

Last July legally mandated national climate change assessments were removed from government websites—data relied on by decision-makers and those working to mitigate climate risks.

Earlier this month, the Department of Energy removed more than 1,600 webpages that provided guidance for people to cope with heatwaves by saving energy and keeping electricity costs down.

Until last year, according to a Guardian report, people could find out if they live near one of some 12,000 structures storing hazardous, cancer-causing chemicals used to manufacture pesticides or medical devices. But the tool providing such information about the toxic chemicals, which is disproportionately likely to affect poor and minority communities, was taken down.

The same Guardian report found that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stopped tracking dangers to pregnant women that caused an increase in maternal and infant deaths. The lack of survey data, gathered in the Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System (PRAMS), also disproportionately harms women and babies in poorer states with high infant mortality rates and other poor health outcomes.

The Trump regime also ended a comprehensive annual survey that tracked food insecurity and hunger in America, a review that has been completed every year since 1995. This was ended as Trump’s Big Ugly Bill last year made the largest cuts in history to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) that 42 million Americans rely upon.

In May, the Justice Department mass-deleted news releases documenting guilty pleas, jury verdicts and prison sentences involving Jan. 6 defendants, just another effort to rewrite the facts of that heinous day. The department, led by Todd Blanche, proudly stated that it was removing “partisan propaganda” and “reversing the DOJ’s weaponization under the Biden Administration.”