As the Trump Administration floods the already inundated zone with unending announcements, it’s difficult to keep up, despite the scale of the health concerns at stake.
Political analyst Bruce Wolpe estimates that it takes him about three hours each day, just trying to keep up with Trump’s tidal wave.
Wolpe spoke with ABC broadcaster Sabra Lane at a recent event in nipaluna/Hobart (watch in full and also below) on 5 June, marking his latest book, What Trump’s Second Term Means for Australia.
Illustrating his point, in the week since that discussion, much health-related news has broken – never mind the wider abuses of power now playing out in California and elsewhere.
On 9 June, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr fired all 17 members of the advisory committee on immunisation to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
This unprecedented dismissal jeopardises public health and threatens to erode trust in health institutions at a critical time, according to former US Surgeon-General Dr Jerome Adams.
On 11 June, RF Kennedy revealed the eight new advisors to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on vaccine policy. Stat News reports that the new committee includes several well-known vaccine critics, others affiliated with organisations that have questioned vaccine safety, and also members who appear to have little or no vaccine expertise.
Also on 11 June, the Environmental Protection Agency announced plans to repeal two Biden-era regulations addressing some major drivers of climate change – mercury air pollution and carbon dioxide emissions from power plants.
In a statement responding to the news, Dr Lisa Patel, executive director of the Medical Society Consortium on Climate & Health, said: “This decision is yet another in a series of attacks on our health, our children, our climate, and the basic idea of clean air and water.
“As a paediatrician, it’s unconscionable to think that our country would move backwards on something as common sense as protecting children from mercury and our planet from worsening hurricanes, wildfires, floods and poor air quality driven by climate change,” she said.
“This decision harms everyone, but people living closest to fossil fuel power plants will feel it the most… Repealing these protections hurts our patients, puts a strain on health care systems, and leads to lost workdays.”
The Guardian revealed this week that the Trump Administration will eliminate all USAID (United States Agency for International Development) overseas positions worldwide by 30 September in a dramatic restructuring of remaining US foreign aid operations.
Secretary of state Marco Rubio ordered the termination of the agency’s entire international workforce, transferring control of foreign assistance programs directly to the State Department.
Meanwhile, the BBC reported this week that hundreds of thousands of people are “slowly starving” in Kenyan refugee camps after US funding cuts reduced food rations to their lowest ever levels.
Amidst the deluge of Trumpian announcements, there is relatively little space for news of organised resistance and collective action.
However, the Bethesda Declaration cut through this week.
On 9 June, more than 300 National Institutes of Health staff signed an open letter to NIH director Dr Jay Bhattacharya dissenting from Trump Administration policies that they said undermine the NIH mission and harm the health of people in America and globally.
To date, more than 23,000 people, including many Nobel Laureates, have signed in support of the declaration.
During the event in nipaluna/Hobart last week, Wolpe, a former Democrat staffer, shared his disappointment that key Democrats, including former President Barack Obama, had not been more outspoken and organised in resistance.
This was imperative given Trump’s effectiveness, he suggested.
“President Trump is in command, and out of control,” said Wolpe. “Because he absolutely knows what he is doing, and where he is going.”
On related, don’t miss Dr Lesley Russell’s recent article at Inside Story investigating Trump’s vindictive, wide-ranging attacks on universities that have “inevitably” been compared with crackdowns on universities by figures such as Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini and Mao.
“In just a few short months Trump has inflicted serious and long-term damage on America’s higher education system,” Russell writes.
“Despite their problems, these universities and research institutions have been an important source of America’s enormous economic prosperity and influence. It’s impossible to know how and where these efforts – what Vance describes as “necessary correctives” required for “basic democratic accountability” – will end.
“But there is one certainty: there will be long-term national and international ramifications.”
Watch the discussion
See Croakey’s archive of articles on the Trump Administration
