A swamp is a priceless treasure, according to one National Geographic article: "one of the most valuable ecosystems on earth." Swamps serve as sponges, protecting coasts and inland areas from flooding. They also serve as filters, cleaning water that flows through them, capturing pollutants, absorbing toxins or trapping them at the bottom, "buried in sand and sediment."
Swamps provide rich habitat for fish, birds and other creatures. Recent research also shows they're far more effective in capturing and storing carbon than even the most mature forest. Acre for acre, swamps are among the most effective ecosystems in combating climate change and preserving biodiversity, but also the most at risk of vanishing.
Swamps and other wetlands can take thousands of years to form. Fill them in and their benefits vanish. Attempts to reclaim them are expensive, time consuming, and never fully effective.
So - do we really want to drain swamps? Not if we understand what they are, what they do, and what we've lost when they're gone.
But swamps are not really on the top of my mind. The Drain the Swamp battle cry was about government. Not just government corruption, but government as we know it. Checks and balances, regulations, administrative procedures.
How do you drain a swamp? You bulldoze it.
Ethics rules? Reverse them.
Commitments to non-partisan entities, support for longstanding programs, respect for international neighbors, treaties and laws?
According to President Trump, there's nothing in place he can't overturn with a hasty executive order.
He signed 37 executive orders in his first week in office.
At least one is clearly unconstitutional:
“Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship” purports to revoke citizenship for children born to undocumented immigrants, despite the 14th Amendment's promise that "all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.".
The National Immigration Law Center, commenting on another order, "Realigning the United States Refugee Admissions Program”, states;
This Order does not appear to provide any exceptions for people being trafficked into the United States, unaccompanied children, or those whose deportation would send them back to persecution or torture. The Order thus stands in clear violation of U.S. federal law and the United States’ obligations under the international Refugee Convention, which prevents countries from deporting refugees back to harm.
"Withdrawing the United States from the World Health Organization," "effective immediately", in reality by law requires a year to take effect. Lawrence Gostin, professor of global health law at Georgetown University and director of WHO's Center on Global Health Law, calls the order "the most cataclysmic decision . . . . a grave wound to American national interests and our national security." Another infectious disease expert said "“This represents one of the darkest days of public health that I can recall.”
Every order so far raises questions, so many that it's a challenge to say which is most alarming and bizarre. Every one of them suggests a deep lack of understanding about how systems work and the harm that results when systems are bulldozed without caution or review.
“Reevaluating and Realigning United States Foreign Aid” "places a 90-day pause on foreign aid or assistance to U.S. allies while the administration evaluates current aid programs." What happens to aid workers, hospitals, children on life support during that 90 day pause? "Those workers were told to stop working and “please head home.”
“I’ve been an infectious disease doctor for 30 years, and I’ve never seen anything that scares me as much as this,” said Dr. Jennifer Furin, a Harvard Medical School physician who received a stop-work order for a program designing treatment plans for people with the most drug-resistant forms of tuberculosis. Infectious diseases do not know borders, she pointed out. “It’s terrifying.” . . .
Critics say the past week has also undermined US security by opening a vacuum for international adversaries to fill, while putting millions of the world's most vulnerable at immediate and long-term risk.
“A chaotic, unexplained and abrupt pause with no guidance has left all our partners around the world high and dry and America looking like a severely unreliable actor to do business with,” a USAID official told ProPublica, adding that other countries will now have good reason to look to China or Russia for the help they’re no longer getting from the U.S. “There’s nothing that was left untouched.”
The actions of the Trump administration suggest a deep disinterest in the rule of law and a dangerous lack of understanding about how government works and what happens when structures and protections, developed across decades, are cavalierly ignored.
I lived for fourteen years in Northern Virginia, where many friends and neighbors worked for the federal government. I knew people who worked in environmental regulation, international aide, security for US embassies, protection of US currency, intelligence, defense. All underwent lengthy security clearances. All had strict standards for conduct and communications. All were dedicated, caring, hard-working civil servants who cared deeply for our nation.
It's painful to me to see leaders who would never pass those clearance reviews stepping into leadership in roles they don't understand, without respect for the laws that govern those roles or the conscientious career experts they're attempting to remove. When those people are gone, when the laws are dismantled, we will all be in a more dangerous world.
Of course there are needed reforms. Of course there are ways to streamline and save funds. But a bulldozer is not the right tool for evaluating what works and what doesn't and ensuring careful reform.
And like swamps, governments, once dismantled, are very hard to rebuild.
Twelve years ago, I helped start a group called Friends of Exton Park to protect fragile habitat, including a small wetland, in a park a few miles from my home. We convinced the township that owned the land that over-development would create more flooding at a library just downstream. Since then we've helped expand riparian buffers and supported work on a new master plan with less ball fields and pavement and more passive open space. On that scale, activism was successful.
Nine years ago, I helped start Fair Districts PA, an organization dedicated to ending gerrymandering in Pennsylvania and changing the PA constitution to create an independent citizen redistricting commission. The bills we supported weren't passed in time for the 2021 redistricting, but citizen action and advocacy helped yield better maps for this decade. This past week I was part of a press conference announcing co-sponsor memos on new bills, House Bill 31 and Senate Bill 131. On the statewide scale, activism is hard, but attention can make a difference.
On the national scale? On a global scale? Is there anything one citizen can do?
I'll be writing more on this in the weeks ahead.
