The brickbats are meant to knock us senseless. Blow after blow, they bludgeon us. Who could possibly keep them straight?
Which dangerous changes have already taken place? Which are the autocrats working openly, around the clock, to enact? Which are still just talk, things that might happen someday, after the world order has been upended? And which are intended to be merely distractions — like yelling “squirrel” in the presence of a rat terrier?
They urge us to pay no attention to the charlatans behind the curtain who are yanking the safety net from beneath our feet, ignoring the rule of law, dismantling American democracy brick by brick, lining their pockets by driving the planet into ruin. We need not know what’s happening behind the curtain, they assure us. The wizard will tell us all we need to know.
I’ve been keeping a running list of truths I don’t want to lose sight of while a fake wizard and his grossly unqualified team speak lie after brazen lie to the people who elected him and to the rest of us, too.
To wit:
The United States Agency for International Development saves millions of lives.
When he unilaterally — and probably illegally — gutted U.S.A.I.D. by firing staff members and canceling funding approved by Congress, President Trump ensured that people will suffer and die, many of them children. Children will die of polio and tuberculosis and Ebola and H.I.V. and malaria. Children will starve to death. Children will die of thirst. Children will die in war. We have the resources to save their lives. Our government has opted not to.
Vaccines save lives.
Nevertheless, the Trump administration is suppressing information about flu vaccines during a pitiless flu year and has already canceled a meeting during which scientists would have planned for the coming flu season. (It’s not too late to get a flu shot this year.)
The human risk of avian influenza is rising.
Even as bird flu spreads in mammal populations, even as the likelihood rises that it is evolving in a way that makes human-to-human transmission more possible, Mr. Trump’s team is evaluating whether to yank back funding already approved for developing a vaccine that would protect against it. As with Covid-19, human beings have no immunity against avian influenza. A new pandemic may well be brewing, and the Trump administration is hindering our ability to respond to it.
Mr. Trump said Medicaid was safe from cuts. It isn’t.
Tens of millions of Americans rely on Medicaid for health care. Its expansion as part of the Affordable Care Act has been lifesaving for both low-income workers and rural hospitals. In states that did not opt to expand Medicaid under the act, hundreds of hospitals have closed. The same will happen everywhere else if Congress cuts funding and states cannot afford to make up the difference.
Russia invaded Ukraine.
Everyone who pays the barest attention to the news knows this, including Mr. Trump, but that truth didn’t stop him from claiming the opposite as he sought to justify abandoning Ukraine in favor of an alliance with Vladimir Putin, whom Mr. Trump has refused to call a dictator.
Climate change is making natural disasters more disastrous.
The world’s glaciers are melting, with calamitous implications for life on Earth, but the president of the United States calls climate change a “hoax.” Now his administration is making steep cuts to the staff of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which collects and analyzes climate data, including lifesaving roles at the National Weather Service, which warns us when severe weather is headed our way.
The pace of climate change is accelerating.
Even so, Mr. Trump is working to undo the climate resilience measures of the bipartisan Inflation Reduction Act. He has also threatened to scrap the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which is already reeling from job cuts, including the loss of those who are most experienced in helping communities recover from disasters.
Renewable energy is cheaper than fossil fuels.
But that isn’t stopping the Trump administration from halting federal approvals for wind and solar projects or from rolling back funding allocated under the Inflation Reduction Act to speed the transition to clean energy. And he’s making these cuts — as he promised Big Oil executives — though his own voters benefit from those projects the most.
Abortion bans kill.
Medications and operations used in abortions are often the same medications and operations needed to save the life of a woman undergoing a miscarriage or ectopic pregnancy. We know that. What we don’t know is how many deaths have been the result of incoherent red-state anti-abortion laws. That’s because Republicans don’t want us to know. Even without that information, nearly two-thirds of Americans support access to legal abortion.
DOGE isn’t making government more efficient.
The so-called Department of Government Efficiency is a wrecking ball whose efforts are making lines longer and visiting less safe at our beloved national parks, cutting staff at the I.R.S. during tax return season, imperiling crucial scientific research, rendering our nuclear arsenal less safe. Also less safe: consumer products, the air we breathe and the water we drink and the food we eat. Flying. Driving. Our data.
Truth matters. Rewriting American history will not change American history. A law is still a law, even when a felon continues to flout the law. The truth is still the truth, even if you fire people working to combat your lies. Americans have always understood, if imperfectly at times, that truth matters. Even the Trump administration understands the power of truth. Why else would it be deleting data — on climate change, on police misconduct, on census numbers, on medical research and on gender, among others?
Republicans won’t tell us the truth, and Democrats can’t seem to rouse themselves into an organized effort to combat their lies. We must tell the truth ourselves. As unrelentingly as we can and in as many contexts as we can, we have no choice but to keep telling the truth until we have drowned out all the lies. Because the truth will always matter.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
