This year’s decisive election results remind us that voters, not pundits or political operatives, will decide what we can accomplish in America. Voters yesterday proved we are paying attention, we are outraged and we will put a stop to the Trump administration’s attacks on our health and environment.
The Trump administration was counting on our complacency. The professional political class expected it. But voters in Virginia, New Jersey and elsewhere have them all rewriting their playbooks today.
We’ll get tired of resisting, they must think. Cynical corporate polluters assume Americans won’t notice when the president nominates a coal lobbyist to help run the EPA. They’re betting parents won’t figure out the Trump administration is trying to weaken common-sense safeguards that keep our children’s air and water safe. We’re just too busy to keep up with Big Oil’s takeover of our government, and if we start to catch on the president can always distract us with outrageous tweets, right?
Wrong.
The government isn’t Donald Trump’s, it’s ours. We’ll decide when it stops reflecting our values, and then we’ll change it.
Kevin S. Curtis is executive director of the NRDC Action Fund.