The Election, GOP Rhetoric, and the Fate of NOAA

Back in the 1980s someone described Republican rhetoric as “An army of empty slogans marching over the landscape in search for an idea.” In retrospect, that seems pretty insightful.  Trump’s rhetoric today is more like an army of falsehoods, fictions, and grievances marching in smaller and smaller circles. He can’t find a simple fact, let alone recognize anything as complex as an idea. Yet his nonsense is a logical extension of older GOP slogans.

The emptiness of Trump’s GOP rhetoric is clearly shown by the utter disregard for the principles Republicans once so loudly promoted. Respect for the constitution, democracy, fair elections, law and order, the rule of law, small, non-intrusive government, deficit reduction, fiscal responsibility, strong national defense, respect for the military—Trump has made a mockery of all that. 

Yet no one should be fooled by the nonsensical rhetoric; behind the hollow slogans lies a very detailed plan of how the next Trump administration would operate. This plan is “Project 2025.” Trump tries to deny any knowledge of it, but some 100 former Trump staffers worked on it. It is a product of the very pro-Trump Heritage foundation, and the forward was written by his VP pick, Senator J.D. Vance. It puts into writing numerous ideas Trump has promoted.

Project 2025 would give enormous power to the president. Together with the recent tragic Supreme court ruling that Presidents have immunity for “official acts” it would give Trump (should he win) almost imperial power. Countless serious problems with Project 2025 have been discussed in the press. A lot remains unreported—it is over 900 pages long! How would 2025 impact our local community?

For starters it would eliminate NOAA. The details are on page 664:

“The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) should be dismantled and many of its functions eliminated, sent to other agencies, privatized, or placed under the control of states and territories.”

I stress this in particular because I recently listened to a local Republican complain about the current state of affairs here. He stressed three main things: in his view jobs are leaving the community, tax money is being wasted (he mentioned investments in Newport Terminals), and that the fishing industry is in decline. If NOAA were to leave Newport, a lot of good jobs would go with it. Other support funding would probably go too- like for dredging the harbor. The huge investment in NOAA facilities would become a waste. Finally, our local fisherman often stake their lives on good weather data: where would that data come from?

Behind these obvious bad impacts from dismantling NOAA, it would further a major goal of project 2025. There are numerous mentions in the long document about removing references from government documents about climate change, diversity and inclusion. Why? Their theory seems to be the same tragic calculus that Trump applied to Covid 19: no testing = no cases = no problem. In other words, if you have no authoritative weather data, climate change ceases to be a problem.

People really need to understand that this ostrich-like “bury your head in the sand” approach to real problems is not ever going to bring about practical solutions. They also need to understand that even if Trump does not enact every aspect of Project 2025, another enormous danger will still exist if he is elected. Trump’s plan for paying for his many projects is by imposing large tariffs on other countries. Any credible economist will tell you that tariffs are just a sales tax. Trump pretends to believe that foreign countries will pay for the tax. In truth, American consumers will pay. Tariffs will do nothing to help the working and middle class pay their bills or reduce inflation. What most Americans probably don’t know is that Trump can impose huge tariffs on his first day without any consultation and without approval of congress. So, a huge tax increase is what he has promised. Once in power there is nothing to stop him from imposing it. Food for thought.

We can’t afford another 4 years of Trump. Please protect democracy and sensible government. Vote for the Harris/Walz ticket and every other democrat down the ballot.