Arizona Democratic Reaction to Know Nothing-Climate Change Denying Trump Shutting Down the Science Division at the EPA

In another assault in his war against knowledge and scientific literacy, Donald Trump and his band of Know Nothing-Project 2025 climate change denying apostates have shut down the science research division of the Environmental Protection Agency (E.P.A.).

According to reporting from the New York Times, the science research division at the E.P.A.:

“Provides the independent research that underpins nearly all of the agency’s policies and regulations. It has analyzed the risks of hazardous chemicals, the impact of wildfire smoke on public health and the contamination of drinking water by hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. Its research has often justified stricter environmental rules, prompting pushback from chemical manufacturers and other industries.”

It is precisely for these reasons and to justify repealing sensible regulations that the back to the fossil fuel age Trump and his polluter friendly donors and ignorant supporters want to get rid of the very scientists (including various chemists, biologists, toxicologists) that give reality based assessments of the climate situation around the country and planet.

Reacting to the move, Arizona Representative Greg Stanton posted on social media:

Trump is killing the EPA’s scientific research arm so polluters can run wild. Arizona’s air, water, and environment are on the line. If Congress doesn’t step up, we’re handing polluters the keys to our future.

Senate Democratic Leader Priya Sundareshan commented to Blog for Arizona:

“This action is but the latest in Trump’s consistent pattern of anti-science actions that hamstring America’s science and innovation leadership. Eliminating the EPA’s scientific research division will lead to devastating health outcomes for millions of Americans as we lose our ability to independently investigate whether oil, gas, petrochemical, and other industries are poisoning our air and water with the production and release of harmful chemicals. The story of Erin Brockovich and her fight to tag nearby industries as the culprit for cancer clusters in her community; careless disposal of hazardous waste causing birth defects in Love Canal in New York; lead in the water pipes in Flint Michigan; these stories will multiply across the country, without any federal support to understand the cause. This follows the recent hamhanded cuts by Trump and Elon Musk’s so-called “DOGE” that slashed indiscriminately at agencies and undermined their expertise and efficiency. I joined the March for Science in DC during Trump’s first presidency, and the need for collective action continues today. Scientists and all truth seekers should realize that the entire Republican party has turned its back on the American pursuit of knowledge in an attempt to please their fickle know-nothing leaders and their industry puppetmasters in implementing Project 2025.”

Arizona Congressional District Seven Democratic Nominee Adelita Grijalva also commented to Blog for Arizona, offering:

“Gutting the EPA’s scientific core is a reckless attack on public health, climate action, and the truth. These firings are unconscionable. We need science-driven policy—not political censorship—to protect our communities and our planet.”

Grijalva, Sundareshan, and Stanton are all right.

What Trump and his Project 2025 band of climate science denying illiterates have done “is a reckless attack on public health, climate action, and the truth.”

This Republican war on science which dates back to the Bush II Administration, will “hamstring America’s science and innovation leadership” and “devastate health outcomes for millions of Americans.”

It is “handing polluters the keys to our future.”

While most of the rest of the world, to varying degrees, moves forward in science and innovation to combat climate change and develop cleaner energy technologies, Donald Trump and his MAGA faithful are sticking their heads in the sand, ignoring reality, and making this country sicker and placing us behind economically and scientifically behind other nations including adversaries like China.

This is not what winning is supposed to look like.

The only people who will do well on all these backward moves are the MAGA plutocratic donors in the fossil fuel industry who will keep their dying industries alive a little longer and the health care monopolies who will have all these new patients to care for.

It will be a Golden Age for them.