We all knew we were facing some unfavorable (to put it lightly) changes in the next four years, but I don’t think we all realized it would start so soon after Trump’s inauguration. After he was inaugurated, he and his team gained control of government websites, as would be expected for a change of administrations. However, what was not expected was the sudden lack of civil rights and climate related issues from these websites, vastly different than under the Obama administration.
Before the Trump team took over, the White House website had an entire section under “Issues” dedicated to climate change. Now, the section is gone, along with any mention of climate change. Along with Trump’s plans to lift regulations protecting climate and water, we can most certainly assume that environmental protection will not be a priority. Maybe if we just pretend these problems don’t exist they’ll just go away. That seems to be the only current plan to address them, and we can all guess how that’ll work out.
Along with climate change being missing, so is the Civil Rights section. And the LGBT+ section. In fact, there are no mentions of LGBT+ issues on the White House’s site at all. Searching gay, or same-sex, or trans won’t get you anything either (OK, technically you get results for gay and trans, but nothing relevant to LGBT+ issues). The website for the Department of Labor has also already removed the report for Advancing LGBT Workplace Rights.
The Affordable Care Act is missing as well, including almost all mentions of healthcare, in general, is gone. As if it wasn’t already clear enough that there isn’t a plan to give coverage to the millions who were protected under Obamacare. Women’s rights aren’t mentioned anywhere on the site, and the only mention of immigrants comes from Trump’s promise to build a wall and stop the “gangs and violence, … and the drugs from pouring in.”
The Trump administration might not think these are important issues to discuss and protect, but we do. The coming four years will surely result in the removal of rights for many. But we’ve been here before, and we’ve been in cases far worse. We will have to fight against every attempt they try to make to deprive us of our rights, of a safe, clean world to live in. We will have losses, but we will surely have some wins. This President is not our President; he does not speak for us and we will remind him of that as often as we can. We will come back from this as a country, as citizens, as people, and we will win in the end. He can try to erase us but we will not be erased.
