NJ protesters going to DC anti-Trump rally
TRENTON >> Thousands of people from New Jersey and many more across the United States are expected to participate in a large-scale political demonstration in the nation’s capital this Saturday to send a powerful message to President Donald Trump on his iconic 100th day in office.
“This is one of the most critical events in the first 100 days of President Trump,” New Jersey Sierra Club Director Jeff Tittel said Wednesday during a conference call with state lawmakers and environmental activists. “We believe that given the administration’s clear anti-science, antienvironment and anti-climate agenda, it’s critical for people to show up in Washington on Saturday to demand action on climate change.”
The Peoples Climate Movement march is intended to promote environmental protection and social justice.
“I am not just a legislator,” said New Jersey Assemblyman Andrew Zwicker of South Brunswick. “I’m a scientist.”
Indeed, the elected Democratic lawmaker serves as a Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory educator. “This attack on science has started well before this administration and continued,” Zwicker said during Wednesday’s conference call. “Science is about facts; science is not about politics. And science has always historically won out over these political attacks in the past and it will today and tomorrow by insisting that our politicians, our elected officials make decisions based upon evidence instead of an ideology.”
Assemblywoman Liz Muoio (D-Mercer/Hunterdon) on the conference call suggested “it is so important that New Jersey show up in big numbers down on D.C. on Saturday, because we are the most densely populated
state in the nation. It makes us extremely vulnerable to the
harmful policies of the Trump administration.”
Trump has presented Congress with a 2018 budget proposal that seeks to cut the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s budget by 31 percent or $2.6 billion, which would result in about 3,200 fewer positions at the agency and the elimination of more than 50 EPA programs.
The billionaire businessman-turned-U.S.-president has also proposed reducing federal spending on the National Institutes of Health by $5.8 billion and zeroing out more than $250 million in National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration grants and programs that support coastal and marine management, research and education.
The Republican commander-in-chief has called for steep cuts to the EPA, NIH,
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