Once again, President Trump and the Republican Party have tried to take climate change off the agenda. As the New York Times reported today, the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine have bowed to pressure and deleted an entire chapter of their handbook prepared for judges. The purpose of that book is to provide an overview of scientific issues that may have a bearing on legal cases. In Trumpland, however, climate science is unclear and cannot be trusted, and only deluded Democrats think it is reliable. But erasing scientific evidence is not an argument, it is censorship.
At the very moment when climate change disappeared from judicial advice, CBS News reports that the month of July, 2026 was the hottest ever recorded for the contiguous United States. As a direct result, wild fires in North America have become more common. By 2020 the smoke from these fires increased the death rate by 24,000 every year. That is five times as many as die in swimming accidents (4500) and eleven times more than die in residential fires (2200). Since 2020, the intensity and the frequency of these fires has increased. But don't tell a judge that global warming is clearly linked to the rising death toll.
The Trump Administration has also attacked museum exhibits, cancelled academic grants after they had won approval through peer review, and begun to remove and rewrite historical information available at national parks. Under Trump, the truth is supposed to be whatever the president claims it is. However, the wild fires devastating Europe and North America do not disappear just because the White House tells a lie about global warming. Nor does rain magically increase. In Europe, the water in the Rhine River is so low that navigation is difficult and may soon become impossible. In the American West, the Colorado River has so little water flow that its reservoirs are at their lowest level in ninety years. The snow pack this year was so small that the Colorado dams cannot be replenished.
If the Trump assault on science continues without check, then a name change will soon be needed. The National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine should drop the facade of objectivity, and instead be named, "The National Academies that Legitimate Political Convenience and Wishful Thinking."
