BONUS: This is why you can't sleep at night

Stefanik casts "deciding vote" in passing cuts to make life worse for constituents

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Trying to decide why you can't sleep at night is something more and more of us are grappling with these days.

There is just so much.

One day you worry courts, judges and the entire rule of law upon which our country is founded is ending.

The next is the concern that firing of scientists and ending their research will leave our country in the dark ages.

Then you see the president of the United States enriching himself in a clear pay to play scheme and no one seems to care.

You forget about even that when you hear cabinet-level officials unable to answer questions that junior-year high school students can.

My son regularly shakes his head while watching the news and says, "Well, 250 years, we had a good run."

I've given up chastising him for his pessimism, because I'm starting to feel the same way.

On Wednesday, The New York Times addressed what is perhaps the granddaddy of concerns because climate change might just make all other corruption mute.

The story was at the top left of the front page with a one column headline:

U.S. Embraces

Climate Denial

In Science Cuts

The story by David Gelles is remarkable for its simplicity in connecting the dots.

"When the Trump administration declared two weeks ago that it would largely disregard the economic cost of climate change as it sets policies and regulations, it was just the latest step in a multi-pronged effort to erase global warming from the American agenda," Gelles writes in the lead. "But President Trump is doing more than just turning a blind eye to the fact that the planet is growing hotter. He is weakening the country’s capacity to understand global warming and to prepare for its consequences."

Trump is going to leave us all ignorant of what is happening to our environment so others can making money harvesting oil and gas.

Here are some of the facts Gelles cites:

- Trump as stopped climate research, fired some of the nation's top scientists and gutted efforts to chart how fast greenhouse gases are building up in the atmosphere.

- We will not know how our economy, employment, agriculture and health are being impacted by climate change.

- And with no further research, that will eliminate any further discussion by the public because there is no longer proof the world is getting hotter except from our own persperation.

- The administration is also moving to loosen restrictions on air pollution and curtail programs that promote wind and solar power.

“We’re not doing that climate change, you know, crud, anymore,” Gelles quotes Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins from an appearance on Fox Business on May 8.

"By getting rid of data, the administration is trying to halt the national discussion about how to deal with global warming, climate scientists Daniel Swain told Gelles. “The notion of there being any shared factual reality just seems to be completely out the window."

After all, the planet probably won't be compromised in an "end of days" way for another 50 to 100 years, so why not live it up?

Here is another one:

- Companion cuts to the National Weather Service and FEMA has compromised the federal governments's ability to prepare for and recover from hurricanes, wildfires, droughts and other extreme weather.

Like what happened in southern California earlier this year.

Like what happened last week with tornadoes in the Midwest.

Gelles points out that these moves combined mean the world's biggest economy - that's us - is "less informed, less prepared and, over time, more polluted."

President Trump's response: Rising seas will create more "oceanfront property."

I hear they are selling lots in Gaza.

Let's go back to the beginning of Armageddon on Jan. 20 when President Trump declared a national energy emergency even though the United States produced more oil and gas than any country in history.

He said he wants to save coal miners jobs that are a fraction of those employed in wind and solar jobs he is trying to eliminate.

Gelles also reported this:

Last month, the Trump administration dismissed hundreds of scientists and experts who had been working on the National Climate Assessment, a report mandated by Congress that details how global warming is affecting specific regions across the country.

- In recent weeks, more than 500 people have left the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the government’s premier agency for climate and weather science. That has led the National Weather Service being shorthanded while stopping montly briefing calls on climate change. It has also purged phrases "climate crisis" and "climate science" from government websites.

The lack of research will impact the ability to provide early warnings for storms.

The administration's goal is to get out of the "disaster help" business.

While experts generally agree that the energy industry is over-regulated, U.S. policy on climate change makes it an outlier in the world. We're the only nation that does not believe it is happening.

Just this past week, the Trump administration it informed residents of North Carolina FEMA would not fund the cleanup left from the flooding caused by Hurricane Helene last fall.

Not only will victims no longer know when they are being hit by hurricanes and tornadoes, but they won't know what hit them when they have no help afterward.

Countries all over the world are racing to adapt to a warming planet and looking for ways to combat it, but not the United States.

"The American retreat from climate action has made the United States a global outlier,"Gelles wrote. "Nearly every other government has recognized that a hotter plant poses a profound thereat to human and ecosystems. Not the Trump administration which made the United States the only nation to formally withdraw from the 2015 Paris Agreements to limit planetary warming."

Meanwhile, China has made adopting clean energy and selling it abroad a business model. Gelles reports it is dominating global markets for electric vehicles, solar panels and other technologies. Saudi Arabia, with all its oil, is also investing in wind and solar power.

Maybe the reason that Qatari was giving Trump that plane was because it wasn't energy efficient and they were looking for some idiot to take that gas-guzzler off its hands.

This is why our children don't have much hope for the future.

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Deciding vote

After the House of Representatives passed a budget bill that will give tax breaks to the richest and cut Medicaid to the the poorest by one vote (215-214), Rep. Elise Stefanik said she was “proud to be the deciding vote.”

While technically another 213 people could also make that claim, I think voters in her district should remember that she was the "deciding vote" as they see cuts to health care take effect.

The bill did nothing to improve the current health care system while taking it away from millions. Times columnist Nicholas Kristof reported that the Trump administration is also cutting 7,000 workers at the Social Security Administration even thought employment there as at a 50-year low.

Kristof wrote there are already reports of "disruptions" and "extra-long waits for assistance."

"As they wait on hold for hours, callers should be encouraged to think about how Trump and Musk have made their lives more difficult," Kirstof wrote.

In a Saturday editorial, the New York Times wrote:

We are heartened that the Republican plan is so unpopular that members of the party have tried to claim that they oppose cutting Medicaid. Last month a dozen House Republicans signed a letter expressing their “strong support for this program that ensures our constituents have reliable health care.” Medicaid cuts, they pointed out, would “threaten the viability of hospitals, nursing homes and safety-net providers nationwide.” And President Trump recently said, “We’re not cutting Medicaid, we’re not cutting Medicare, and we’re not cutting Social Security.”

But the bill that the House passed by a single vote on Thursday morning and that now heads to the Senate would indeed cut Medicaid and deny health care to millions of Americans. Word games do not change that reality.

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No help

Here's more on those FEMA cuts to clean up debris in North Carolina.

You may remember Hurricane Helene caused devastating floods in North Carolina last fall that killed 107 people and damaged 75,000 homes?

Zack Colman of Politico reported on Substack this week that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has denied North Carolina's request to pay for the removal of debris after President Joe Biden assured residents it would.

You might also remember that President Trump falsely told North Carolina voters in the days before the presidential election they would not get help because Biden had given FEMA money to undocumented immigrants.

Heather Cox Richardson reported on Substack that other MAGA supporters spread the word on social media that FEMA was coming to steal people's land and that Biden had actually "directed" the storm to North Carolina while 28 babies had frozen to death in tents in western Norther Carolina.

None of it was true

Trump said he would respond more effectively. The two hardest hits counties - Avery and Haywood - backed Trump with 75.7 and 61.8 percent of the vote in the election.

Now, they will get no help for the cleanup.

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Ken Tingley spent more than four decades working in small community newspapers in upstate New York. Since retirement in 2020 he has written three books and is currently adapting his second book "The Last American Newspaper" into a play. He currently lives in Queensbury, N.Y.