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(The bolded sentences are some of Trump's "proposals" for science)

Nonetheless, the Republican frontrunner, Donald Trump, has made public remarks that give voters a glimpse into what some of his scientific policies might be. We asked some science and policy experts to discuss Trump’s stances, and what that could mean for Americans in the future.
Go slow on climate action: Trump has tweeted that climate change is a Chinese-driven hoax, though he later called the Tweet a joke. In an interview with Fox and Friends, he called climate change “just a very, very expensive form of tax” and “very hard on business.”

Sizing up the science: “There’s been a misperception that either you get a good economy or you protect the environment,” says Peter LaPuma, an associate professor in the Milken Institute School of Public Health at George Washington University.

LaPuma, who worked as a sustainable energy consultant for Booz Allen Hamilton before joining George Washington, says many companies have found that sustainable practices actually boost their bottom lines. For example, IT companies like Apple have begun using renewable energy to power their data centers, a switch that often saves money because the cost of energy sources like solar has dropped so much.

Immediate action to combat climate change has immediate benefits, according to LaPuma. “Climate change is not just polar bears 100 years from now,” he says. Replacing a coal-fired power plant with a solar farm can benefit health immediately, as well as clearing the air for better views of the country’s natural landscape.
Cut the EPA: Trump has said he would cut funding for the Environmental Protection Agency and return environmental protection responsibilities to the states. He claims the agency hurts business, and in an interview with The Wall Street Journal, called the EPA “the laughingstock of the world.”

Sizing up the science: “There would be serious repercussions” by 2020 if the EPA were severely downsized or abolished, according to Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy professor Neal F. Lane, who directed the National Science Foundation and later the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy under President Clinton.

Lane says the EPA plays a critical role in protecting clean air and drinking water, and that its regulations have helped rehabilitate polluted water bodies like Lake Erie, which was pronounced “dead” in the 1960s. “This is not just a bunch of regulators hugging trees,” he adds. Though states do have a part to play in regulation, the country needs a federal regulating body, according to Lane, because contaminated water and air can cross state borders.

That’s not to say citizens shouldn’t weigh in on the agency’s proposed rules. “There will always be a healthy debate between the private sector and the federal government on these regulations,” says Lane. For this reason, he said, the EPA solicits public comment before making new rules.

If Congress supported Trump in slashing funds for the EPA or changing the law to remove the agency’s power to regulate, Lane predicts there would be an outcry from overwhelmed governors and “reasonable people who care about their families, their children and their life style.”

Alter vaccination schedules to avoid autism: Trump says he favors vaccines, but giving children smaller doses over a longer period of time. He has blamed vaccines for causing autism in children.

Sizing up the science: “I remember wanting to throw something at the TV when I heard it,” Hotez says of Trump’s debate statement linking vaccinations and autism.

Hotez, who develops vaccinations and also has a daughter with autism, says studies have found no link between autism and vaccination. “The anti-vaxxers keep moving the goalposts,” he says. After scientific studies debunked accusations against specific vaccinations, Hotez says those against vaccinations started a different fad: arguing to change the vaccination schedule to protect children.

But infants’ immune systems face up to hundreds of new antigens every day, according to Hotez. Adding a few more in the form of a vaccination does not harm infants. He says changing the FDA’s approved vaccination schedule without clinical testing about immune response could decrease vaccines’ efficacy.

To imagine what a future with fewer or less effective vaccines might look like, Hotez suggests voters think of California’s recent outbreak of measles, a true threat to children’s health. “It’s one of the great killers of children in the world,” he says. “One hundred thousand children die every year of measles.”

Defund Planned Parenthood: Although Trump says Planned Parenthood does a lot of good for women’s health, he says he would defund its clinics because of their abortion services.

Sizing up the science: “The good thing is that he doesn’t think [Planned Parenthood] is evil,” says Amy Tsui, a professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. But, she says, no federal funding has gone to abortion since the Hyde Amendment of 1976 (though Medicaid can fund abortion in the case of rape, incest, or endangerment of the mother’s life).

If Trump defunds all Planned Parenthood clinics, even those that don’t perform abortions, then he’ll be “throwing the baby out with the bathwater,” according to Tsui. She says Planned Parenthood’s low-cost care and urban clinic locations, helps low-income women in particular.

In fact, Leighton Ku, Director of the Center for Health Policy Research at George Washington University, says that decreased access to Planned Parenthood’s contraception services could increase the rate of unwanted pregnancies and possibly cause a spike in abortions.

Homelessness is super sad, President Donald Trump conceded — at least for the white-collar workers walking by unsheltered people to get into their office buildings.

For the people actually experiencing homelessness, though, Trump didn’t offer much sympathy in an interview with Fox News’ Tucker Carlson Monday night.

Trump said the government “may intercede” in cleaning up West Coast cities swamped with tent cities and vehicle encampments after Carlson suggested people were living in “filth.” To be sure, Trump’s administration has proposed eliminating the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness — twice. The council was established in 1987 to coordinate the government’s homelessness efforts across federal agencies.

“Perhaps they like living that way,” Trump said of unsheltered people. “They can’t do that. We cannot ruin our cities.”

“You have people that work in those cities,” Trump continued. “They work in office buildings and to get into the building, they have to walk through a scene that nobody would have believed possible three years ago."

Homelessness has been gradually increasing in recent years to at least 553,000 people on a single night in 2018, according to government data. (Advocates and scholars have repeatedly said such “point-in-time” counts vastly underestimate the true number of people experiencing homelessness on any given day.)

Currently, about 59,000 people in Los Angeles County alone are homeless — a 12% increase from last year that’s shocked local lawmakers and spurred increased coverage on Fox News over the past month. The crisis is exacerbated by a shortage of affordable rental units in major cities, an inadequate amount of shelter beds, and a lack of resources for drug users or people experiencing mental illness.

But the homelessness epidemic has been used by conservative voices like Carlson to deride left-leaning cities like San Francisco, Seattle, and Los Angeles, where visible homelessness is concentrated and, in some cases, growing worse. During the recent G-20 summit in Osaka, Trump told reporters that San Francisco and Los Angeles have become “sad to look at” due to their liberal leadership.

Fox News recently increased its coverage of the issue, according to the left-leaning group Media Matters, but has mostly argued the crisis is caused by “virtue signaling” and city officials failing to take control of their residents.

“You only have one solution: You bulldoze the 50-block radius, and you institutionalize everybody and detoxify them, and then you let them out,” Fox News host Jesse Watters said of homeless encampments in June.

Cities have tried something pretty close to that: sweeping people off the streets and arresting them, or literally shipping people out of town. Advocates say those efforts don’t help. In fact, Trump mentioned that he “ended” homelessness in Washington D.C. because he was concerned world leaders were “looking at scenes like you see in Los Angeles and San Francisco.”

It’s unclear whether or not “ending” homelessness in D.C. meant that people were given help — but D.C. has greatly increased its efforts to remove homeless camps over the past two years, according to NBC4 in Washington.

“We have to take the people and do something, it’s destroying a whole way of life,” Trump told Carlson.

Cover: Homeless people move belongings from a street near Los Angeles City Hall as crews prepared to clean the area Monday, July 1, 2019. (AP Photo/Richard Vogel)