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Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire [1]

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Date: 2025-04-17

As children, we used a favorite taunt when we caught someone in a lie: Liar, liar, pants on fire. I don’t remember if we used the second part of the rhyme: “Hanging on a telephone wire.” There is a strong resemblance between these two lines and the first stanza of an 1810 poem, “The Liar,” falsely attributed to William Blake. “Deceiver, dissembler / Your trousers are alight / From what pole or gallows / Shall they dangle in the night?” Enter irony since the poem is a “liar, liar” because it was written by an imposter in about 2010. (See https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/liar-liar-pants-on-fire-origin-phrase-history). Some reports about the rhyme appear in the 1930s, which adds some Pinocchio imagery: “nose as long as a telephone wire!”

Fast forward to today, and we have PolitiFact, a nonpartisan fact-checking organization launched in 2007. Their “Truth-O-Meter” rates political statements on a scale from True to Pants on Fire — the most egregious level of falsehood. Donald Trump, perhaps unsurprisingly, has his own section with seven pages of documented whoppers going back to 2011 — the Art of the Lie, perfected. (See https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/list/?ruling=pants-fire&speaker=donald-trump&utm)

One memorable Trump falsehood came on June 15, 2020, when he declared, “If we stop testing right now, we’d have very few cases, if any,” (Source: https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/502819-trump-on-coronavirus-if-we-stop-testing-right-now-wed-have-very-few-cases/) while addressing the COVID-19 pandemic. That’s not logic — that’s magical thinking. In reality, infections would continue to spread unchecked; we’d just be blind to it. That’s not faith in science — it’s blind faith in Trump.

His same disregard for science is now being applied to the climate crisis. Trump’s famous 2012 tweet — “The conceptof global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive” — set the tone for a decade-plus of denialism.

Back in office in 2025, Trump immediately got to work unraveling climate policy. On January 20, he signed executive orders that began withdrawing the U.S. from the Paris Climate Accord (again) and ended all federal environmental justice programs. He followed that by ordering all federal agencies to scrub websites of references to “climate change,” “global warming,” and “climate crisis” — a repeat of what he did in his first term. This censorship effort has already triggered two lawsuits, though they are still in early legal proceedings.

Then came the blow to the National Climate Assessment (NCA), the federal government’s most important climate report. On April 9, 2025, NASA announced the cancellation of its contract with ICF International, the firm coordinating the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP), which includes contributions from 14 federal agencies. The NCA is a foundational, legally mandated climate report — its next edition is due in 2027. According to The Guardian, the NCA is “the most comprehensive, far-reaching and up-to-date analysis of the climate crisis, playing a key role in local and national decision-making about agriculture, energy production, and land and water use.” (Source: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/09/trump-national-climate-assessment-usgcrf)

Just because Trump finds global warming fantastical or inconvenient or a Chinese hoax doesn’t mean it waits on presidential moods or Truth Social tantrums. It continues.

Next in the crosshairs is the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), whose budget is slated to be slashed by 25% for 2026. Hundreds of employees have already departed, and another thousand are expected to be cut. The proposed budget also eliminates the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (OAR), dismantling key programs on climate modeling and earth system science. The result: diminished forecasting capabilities and a nation flying blind into intensifying weather disasters.

Meanwhile, Trump is actively taking steps that worsen global warming:

* Expanding oil and gas leasing, including on public lands and offshore areas once considered off-limits

*Halting new wind farm development

*Rolling back environmental regulations

*Weakening protections for wetlands and waterways under the Clean Water Act

*Cutting support for renewable energy

*Reviving coal, including promoting new coal mining projects and relaxing rules on coal plant emissions

*Eliminating energy efficiency standards — all so, as Trump once joked, “My toilet works better,” and his hair is easier to rinse away shampoo because of increased water pressure.

On April 8, 2025, he signed yet another executive order: “Protecting American Energy from State Overreach” (Source: https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/04/protecting-american-energy-from-state-overreach/), empowering Attorney General Pam Bondi to sue states and municipalities attempting to enact their own climate or clean energy policies. So much for the Republican banner of “states’ rights.”

Donald Trump’s second term is not just a rollback — it’s a bulldozing of climate science, environmental policy, and truth itself. From erasing climate change from federal websites to gutting agencies like NOAA and killing the National Climate Assessment, this is more than ignorance — it’s calculated sabotage. The consequences won’t wait until after 2028. They’re happening now with every hurricane, heat wave, and 500 year flood.

And no, Mr. Trump — scrubbing a website doesn’t scrub reality. The planet is warming, the seas are rising, and no amount of rhetorical fireproofing can keep the truth from catching up. Destroying America isn’t enough; he has to destroy the planet.

Liar, liar, pants still on fire.

Day 88: days left to January 20, 2029: 1,373 days

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