Imagine this: A historic hurricane barrels towards Florida’s Gulf Coast, or massive fires move quickly through California, or a giant tornedo tears through the Midwest. But there is no way to know these disasters are coming because the Trump administration has fired hundreds of workers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the agency that tracks and monitors weather events that threaten massive numbers of people who live in susceptible areas.

There is no help during or after these disasters occur because the Trump administration has made deep cuts to staff at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) that are alarming state officials and some Republican lawmakers.

Imagine kids going hungry because as the Food Research and Action Center notes, millions of people throughout the country are struggling to make ends meet while Congress is cutting food programs that feed hungry kids. SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, is among the cutbacks that provide school meals critical to children’s health and learning. More than 42 million people rely on SNAP to put food on the table.

The program not only reduces hunger. It improves health outcomes and reduces health care costs. Any cuts to SNAP harm children, older adults, and people with disabilities, who make up the majority of SNAP households. Reducing SNAP benefits increases food insecurity and shifts the burden to local governments and charities who can’t fill the gap. Local economies are also harmed, especially in rural areas. Cuts to other food programs result in some schools not being able to serve free school meals affecting 12 million children.

The list of purge problems continues. According to Kevin Caroll, author of a piece in The Dispatch in February and a former military intelligence officer and CIA case officer points out that investing in intelligence saves U.S. taxpayers’ money and American Lives.

There are eighteen agencies in the intelligence community augmented by civilian and military intelligence organizations. They prevent attacks by terrorists and vigilantes. They aid in diplomacy efforts through intelligence about foreign countries.

The economic costs to Americans are disconcerting. According to a Wall Street Journal report on price hikes due to tariffs, cars, fuel, building materials, appliances, beef, clothing, and computers will take a hit of up to a 10 to 45 percent increase. Cars, for example, will go up to $50,000 to 59, 000 while computers will rise above $1000.

Imagine how climate changes are rapidly imperiling the planet. As John Wesley Powell wrote after navigating the river at the Grand Canyon in 1896, “We are now ready to start our way down the Great Unknown. We have an unknown distance yet to run, an unknown river to explore. What falls there are, we know not; what rocks beset the channel, we know not; what walls rise over the river, we know not.”

It seems apt given an article by Yale Climate Connections that addresses the importance of climate change when we consider budget cuts like those taken at NOAA, FEMA and other federal agencies. The article states that “the impacts of climate change will be apocalyptic for many nations and people, particularly those that are not rich and White. People and communities with the least resources tend to be the first and hardest hit by climate change, not only because poorer people and communities are inherently more vulnerable to the impacts of any disaster, but also because the extremes induced by climate change tend to be worse in the tropics and subtropics, home to many poor nations.”

Global extreme weather events are becoming more common and increasingly worrisome. Japan’s tsunami is not that far behind us and recent warnings of possible other lethal waves have occurred. The Santorini earthquakes and elsewhere are alarming along with fires that burned large swaths of Los Angeles. We’ve seen photos of scary floods, starvation from droughts, and fluctuating temperatures globally.

All these events have policy implications. As Thomas Edsall wrote in The New York Times on March 3rd, (edited for length) we should “Expect the elimination of thousands of jobs, the decimation of liberal institutions, reduced funding of safety nets, more homelessness, hunger and disease, poverty, financial starvation of universities and nongovernmental organizations, unannounced raids, unreliable data, an increasingly authoritarians worldwide, pervasive suspicion and revenge. Expect more suffering, fear, less security and happiness.” That’s not hyperbolic. The purges are impacting American and global economies, housing crises, absent insurance policies, agriculture and food supplies, not to mention morbidity and mortality.

Given deep worries about looming healthcare crises I must include the horrific impact of shutting down research and practices that relate to whether we live or die. Imagine this: you or someone you love is in treatment for cancer but will no longer be able to access experimental protocols or proven therapies, or your child has a chronic condition that requires inaccessible special care and protection, or measles, polio, and pandemics like those now rampant in other countries, return with a vengeance but there are no vaccines, or data, available.

The time to address these likely catastrophes driven by narcissists, oligarchs, and bullies is now, whether in the halls of Congress, the media, on the streets, in town halls, and in voting booths. We can do this if we really try, and try we must.

# # #

Elayne Clift writes from Brattleboro, VT

The Pope uses the power of the pulpit to tell his followers that they should “vote for the lesser of two evils.” Politicians call for mandating schools to teach the Bible. Oklahoma's top education official orders public schools to teach the Bible while Louisiana leaders direct schools to display the Ten Commandments and Texas leaders propose a curriculum that incorporates biblical lessons.

In 1947 when a woman named Vashti McCollum argued in the Supreme Court that religious education had no place in public schools, SCOTUS interpreting the First Amendment religious establishment clause known as “separation of church and state.” Though not explicitly stated in the First Amendment, the clause has been interpreted ever since to mean that the Constitution requires that separation.

I was a young student some years after that, and I still remember feeling that I didn’t belong. In today’s parlance I was astutely aware that I was the Other. I resented having to sing Christmas carols around a tree in December, having my absent days to mark the Jewish New Year considered an unexcused absence, and being obliged to recite the Lord’s Prayer every morning. So I’m acutely aware of the impact such a sense of exclusion can have and the damage it can cause to a child’s sense of self.

Today, I am acutely aware that the eroding distinction between church and state is eating away at our American identity. That distinction and identity is essential to a democracy, as our founders realized, and it’s been disappearing before our eyes. It’s also driving us further toward autocracy as part of a system of governance, which so many other countries have experienced.

It’s dangerous when popes, priests, politicians, educators and others use their power to alter our personal way of life and it’s distressful when controlling what we believe, what we think, what we choose, or choose to ignore, is no longer an option.

It’s also stressful, and illegitimate, when the courts, namely SCOTUS, mandate that no distinction should be made between church and state. Two years ago, “the conservative majority of the Supreme Court made it clear that there was little room for the separation of church and state,” as the .ACLU put it, when they ruled on two relevant key cases.

They were referring to two major decisions in 2022 that over-ruled “75 years in which the court had recognized that both of the First Amendment’s religious clauses were vital to protecting religious freedom.” One of those cases involved the Establishment Clause which protected citizens from the government imposing religion on citizens or endorsing a religious position. The other case was about the Free Exercise Clause which ensured people’s right to practice their faith as long as it didn’t harm others. These were two incidents in which the Supreme Court overthrew settled precedent. In her dissent, Justice Sonika Sotomayor said these two cases led “us to a place where separation of church and state becomes a constitutional violation.”

The ACLU also points out that SCOTUS has allowed “official, nearly exclusively Christian prayer at government meetings and has sided with those who, in the name of religion, discriminate against customers, and recipients of government funded social services.”

Almost two decades ago, as ACLU shares, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor noted that “when we see around the world the violent consequences of the assumption of religious authority by government,” we need constitutional boundaries that protect us from similar worries. Why, she asked, “would we trade a system that has served us so well for one that has served others so poorly.”

Why indeed. This election cycle it’s imperative that we keep in mind that we are voting not just for who will occupy the White House with their finger on the button, but who will be appointed to our Federal and Supreme courts for lifetime terms. We owe it to the generations who follow us to leave them with a legal legacy that protects their freedoms, their lifestyles, and their democratic way of life, even when they are in elementary school.

The Pope’s words were misguided and should have been called out. The clergy writ large needs to realize that they are spiritual leaders and not political idealogues when they stand before us. Politicians who like to play God must be removed from office and never elected again. Educators must honor their mandate to educate children in ways that encourage their intellectual, social, and personal growth, and not their religious beliefs. And all of us need to remember the principles upon which our country was founded, because they will keep us free, and because no one, least of all a child, should feel like they don’t belong in their schools, their places of worship, their communities or their families.

Thomas Jefferson put it this way in 1802: "I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between Church & State."

# # #

Elayne Clift writes from Brattleboro, Vt.