Credit: AP/Getty

Science, according to a Trump appointee at the Department of the Interior, is “a Democrat thing.” Those words were reportedly used to justify the abrupt 2017 cancellation of a study into the health effects of mountaintop removal for coal-mining. At the time, then-Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke claimed that the study was canceled after a careful review of the grant process.

But during a Tuesday congressional hearing on this issue, Rep. Alan Lowenthal, D-Calif., citing the inspector general’s report into the matter, said that a Trump appointee named Landon “Tucker” Davis had offered a likelier explanation for why a study that was more than halfway done was abruptly shut down: In Davis’ words, “Science was a Democrat thing.”

“I was deeply offended,” Lowenthal told Salon when asked about Davis’s comment. “Without independent science, evidence, facts and expertise, policy is made in the dark and special interests can lie to the public and rewrite the rules for their own benefit.”

“If the administration dismisses science as a ‘Democrat thing,’ the results will speak for themselves: worse public health, environmental […]