Trump is determined to keep us in the dark

If President Donald Trump and his pals controlled the flashlight industry, they would ban batteries. They heard someplace that democracy dies in darkness.

They don’t want us to see what’s happening or what they are doing. For this regime, withholding knowledge is power. But what we don’t know can hurt us.

Take the Household Food Security Report, which has provided an annual picture of food insecurity in America annually for 30 years. Is hunger easing or increasing? Do low-income people have access to adequate nutrition? Are government efforts making a difference?

It’s important data, if you care about the hunger that exists in a country regularly called the greatest on earth.

So, of course, the Trump administration has decided to end the survey.

His USDA calls the survey “redundant, costly, politicized and extraneous” and “rife with inaccuracies.”

“For 30 years, this study — initially created by the Clinton administration as a means to support the increase of SNAP eligibility and benefit allotment —failed to present anything more than subjective, liberal fodder,” the USDA said in a statement.

Don’t overthink this. The Big, Bulging Beastly Bill cut funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, SNAP, by $187 billion over the next decade and shifted some costs to states that may force them to reduce benefits. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office says 4 million people will lose food help.

So, getting rid of the food security report will make it tougher to figure out the effect of those cuts. Various organizations and researchers focused on hunger will be flying blind. Who cares if we know how whether children and the elderly are going hungry?

Trump’s USDA claims food insecurity isn’t rising, which, shockingly, isn’t accurate. Accessibility to adequate food improved while extra SNAP benefits were offered during the pandemic. But in 2024, with those benefits gone, the rate of hunger increased.

Well-informed policy decisions are not part of the Trump brand. The current regime prefers smashing, slashing and bashing. None of his guests at Mar-a-Lago will be harmed by cuts in food assistance.

And Iowa Republicans are happy to help.

“What I don't want to continue to see is reports that are maybe full of misinformation or improperly compiled information,” U.S. Rep. Ashley Hinson told reporters last week. “I think they're (Trump administration officials) taking a look at all of that to make sure what we're putting out is true and honest, and so that's what I support about the admin, and I look forward to working with them.”

So, data gathered for three decades, through Republican and Democratic administrations, is now full of misinformation, just after Hinson and other Iowa Republicans voted to cut SNAP. Hinson, a loyal Trump foot soldier, wants us to believe this action will lead to better numbers.

It’s accurate numbers this administration fears most.

When the Department of Labor issued a negative jobs report Trump didn’t like, he fired the director of the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

We also, apparently, don’t need to know about climate change.

The regime’s grand plan is to get rid of NOAA’s research functions, which provide some of the world’s most accurate and trusted data on climate change.

If you find yourself trapped in a woke wildfire, dial Project 2025 for help.

Trump told the U.N. Generally Assembly climate change is“the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world,”

And this is a guy who understands con jobs.

We also don’t need to know what the Pentagon is up to.

Trump’s secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, has decreed that reporters covering the Pentagon must promise to publish only information approved for public release. If they don’t sign a pledge, reporters will be barred from the Pentagon and U.S. military facilities.

David Sanger, who has been on the national security beat for 30 years, wrote a New York Times column imagining coverage of past wars and conflicts if Hegseth’s rule had been in effect. We would have received only the official account of the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan. Would reporters still question the deeply flawed evidence that led us to the invasion of Iraq?

“And in Vietnam, the reporters who leaped on and off helicopters, recording the day-to-day reality in a conflict that today seems hopelessly misbegotten, might have risked losing their access to the battlefield for reporting the obvious: What was happening on the ground didn’t remotely match what optimistic American military leadership was describing at briefings known as the “Five O’Clock Follies,” Sanger wrote.

The Times reported Friday that Tulsi Gabbard, Director of National Intelligence, is scrapping Global Trends, a public report considering threats on the horizon. Climate change is one of those threats, so the report must go. This is what now passes for intelligence.

Trump also does not want us to know much about history.

Trump has decided we shouldn’t explore the full story of our nation’s history, with triumphs, tragedies and all the times we failed to live up to our founding principles. Focusing on the darker side of history means we hate America.

In commemoration of “America 250 – It Was a Good Run” we’re going to sanitize the Smithsonian, whitewash our national park exhibits and spruce up all the confederate statues so important to our heritage.

This is called "Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History." Nobody creates meaningless slogans like an autocrat.

Hunger, unemployment, history and war are not minor issues. We’ve always had a government that kept secrets, but we used to want the secrets exposed. Now keeping information from Americans is standard operating procedure. And that’s just dandy according to Congress and the Supreme Court.

This is what authoritarian governments do. They hide information, take revenge on critics and concoct ridiculous rules to thwart the press. There’s nothing to see here, folks. Just relax. Watch the “Golden Bachelor.” We’ll take it from here.

And, sadly, much of the nation just shrugs.

"Whenever the people are well informed, they can be trusted with their own government; that whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them to rights,” Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1789.

When the shadows grew long at Monticello, Jefferson lit his Agrand Lamp, which was on the cutting edge of interior lighting at that time. He picked one up in London. Its light outshined six to eight candles.

Trump is very fond of gaslighting, the kind that steadily dims our democracy. Can we be trusted to keep the lights on?

(319) 398-8262; todd.dorman@thegazette.com