When Science Becomes a Slogan

The president of the United States cannot control the trajectory of a hurricane, but he can we learned in 2019-force the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to endorse a trajectory that he invented.

- By Sarah Zhang

Thus went Sharpiegate, the brief episode that began when Donald Trump tweeted a warning about Hurricane Dorian's danger to several states. It was one of his more anodyne tweets, but he erroneously included Alabama. He doubled down when questioned, producing as proof a NOAA forecast altered with what looked suspiciously like a Sharpie.

When this failed to quiet criticism, he strong-armed the agency into a statement that affirmed his tweet.

By then, Dorian was already making landfall nowhere near Alabama. But so what? Even if Trump could not bend reality, he found that he could bend the federal bureaucracy to his lies. Given another four years in the White House, he will certainly do so again and again.

When science gets in his way, Trump is happy to attack or distort it or block it altogether. His administration kicked scientists off EPA advisory panels, replacing them with allies who questioned the need to regulate smog and greenhouse gases. It canceled a $1 million study on the risks of mountaintop-removal coal mining. It stopped funding children's health centers that studied the impact of pollution.