24 October 2020 | New Scientist | 17The border wall threatens
birds in Whitewater Draw
Wildlife Area, ArizonaOn 20 January 2017, he signed an
executive order stating his intent
to seek its “prompt repeal” and
allowing US agencies to eliminate
portions of the law that placed
an economic burden on patients,
insurers, drug-makers, doctors
and states. The resulting slash in
funding for programmes helping
people get healthcare through the
ACA led to an estimated 400,
fewer people getting coverage the
following year.
In an effort to make good
on the rest of Trump’s promise,
Republicans in the US Congress
spent much of 2017 attempting
to repeal the law, going on a
rollercoaster ride of proposed and
ultimately failed bills. By October
2017, Trump had taken matters
into his own hands. He signed
an executive order to permit
less robust health insurance
plans under the ACA, such as
short-term plans that can expireObama’s expansion of federal
protection for streams and
wetlands has been reversed,
with long-term consequences.
“The impact that will occur
because headwaters and
intermittent streams in the
wetlands are going to be less
protected will take a while to
actually show up,” says Durelle
Scott at Virginia Tech. Degraded
ecosystems, contaminants in
the water and poorer health for
people and animals could take
five to 10 years to appear, he says.
Trump’s signature campaign
promise to build a border wall
between the US and Mexico
has also taken a toll on natural
resources. “The Trump
administration is extracting
hundreds of millions of gallons
of water from desert aquifers to
mix concrete for the 10-foot-deep
barriers at the border,” says Laiken
Jordahl at the Center for Biological
Diversity Action Fund, who works
in the border region in Arizona.
US Customs and Border
Protection says 580 kilometres
of border wall have been erected.
While the president’s detractors
often point out that much of this
is replacement wall, the new,
taller barriers have a much greater
impact on wildlife, says Jordahl.
It has affected 93 plant and animal
species that are endangered,
threatened or identified as
warranting protection, he says.
An obscured crisis
The Obama-era law Trump has
targeted most vehemently is the
Affordable Care Act (ACA), also
known as Obamacare, which
resulted in 20 million more people
having healthcare insurance. It is
still in place, but the president has
been chipping away at it bit by bit
since the day of his inauguration. SU
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newscientist.com/insightwhen someone is in the middle
of treatment.
In December 2017, as part of
a tax bill signed by Trump, a key
part of the ACA was reversed.
The individual mandate, which
required most people in the US to
have health insurance or pay a fine,
was revoked. This requirement
kept younger, healthy people
insured alongside older people
and those with health conditions,
lowering costs, as younger andThe New Strategic Arms
Reduction Treaty (New START) –
signed in 2010 by Russia and
the US – was a signature policy of
Barack Obama’s administration,
limiting each country to 1550
deployed nuclear weapons. It is
set to expire in February 2021,
two weeks after the next US
presidential inauguration, and
Trump has so far declined to sign
a five-year extension.
This wouldn’t be the first arms
control treaty Trump has pulled
out of. He withdrew the US from
Obama’s 2015 nuclear deal with
Iran and the Intermediate-range
Nuclear Forces treaty with Russia,which banned ground-launched
cruise missiles.
The Trump administration
has argued that China should
be included in a future arms
control treaty that would replace
New START, but has recently
dropped that condition in
negotiations with Russia. That
still hasn’t paved an easy road.
On 14 October, US officials
signalled that a deal was near,
while the Russian deputy foreign
minister announced that this
wasn’t the case. A failure to reach
agreement could see New START
limits slip away, setting the stage
for a nuclear arms race.Nuclear meltdown
healthier people pay in but require
less treatment.
In the ensuing years, the
number of uninsured people in
the US has gone up. According to
Census Bureau data, 25.6 million
people were uninsured in 2017, a
figure that rose to 27.5 million in- More recent figures show
that in the first three years of
Trump’s tenure, up to the end
of 2019, the number of uninsured
people in the US rose 2.3 million.
Because many people in the US
have health insurance through
their employer, the covid-19 crisis
has also led to a marked decrease in
healthcare coverage. The months
between February and May saw
the largest ever increase in the
number of uninsured adults – a
jump of 39 per cent, or 5.4 million
people – according to a study by
The National Center for Coverage
Innovation in Washington DC.
Trump has repeatedly promised
to produce a healthcare plan that
would replace the ACA, but he
hasn’t delivered. In May 2018,
he said his plan would come out
in four weeks. In June 2019, he said
it would be released within two
months. During the pandemic,
he has mentioned on several
occasions that he is on the verge
of revealing a new healthcare
plan. It has yet to materialise.
The focus on the pandemic has
obscured an existing US health
crisis: the large number of deaths
due to opioid overdoses. When
he was campaigning for office in
2016, Trump said he would tackle
this, and while his administration
has taken steps to do so, it hasn’t
been able to stem the tide.
In the 12 months preceding
February 2020, drug overdose
deaths in the US hit an all-time
high of more than 72,000, with
more than two-thirds of that due
to opioids. This is an increase from
about 65,000 overdose deaths >