Trump policy shop filters facts to fit his message
‘It’s just another example of how we’re moving to a post-fact era,’ a former official says.
Source: Politico
President Donald Trump’s appointees in the health department have deleted positive references to Obamacare, altered a report that undermined the administration’s positions on refugees and added anti-abortion language to the strategic plan — part of an ideological overhaul of the agency’s research office.
While every administration puts its imprint on the executive branch and promotes ideas that advance its own agenda, this one has ventured several steps further — from scrubbing links to climate change studies from an Environmental Protection Agency website to canceling an Interior Department study on coal mining risks and suppressing reports on water contamination and the dangers of formaldehyde.
Inside the Health and Human Services policy research shop, staffers say the political pressures to tailor facts to fit Trump’s message have been unprecedented.
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Other reports also have run into political interference. Researchers last year concluded that the net financial benefit of refugees to the United States government was $63 billion over 10 years, because of the taxes they pay and other economic contributions. However, the 55-page report was quashed out of concerns that it would bolster the case for admitting refugees as the Trump administration prepared to reduce admissions, The New York Times first reported.
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/07/28/trump-facts-policy-shop-administration-research-714353
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