Trump sparks fear with cabinet appointees

The 2016 Presidential Election is over, but the controversy remains as Trump began to appoint his cabinet.  From under-qualified choices to people involved in the alt-right movement, Trump’s appointees are questionable at best.  The Presidential Cabinet encompasses the Vice President and the heads of fifteen executive departments, including Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense.  His Cabinet so far consists of Mike Pompeo, John F. Kelly, Elaine L. Chao, Tom Price, Ben Carson, and many others.  The cabinet should advise the president on issues dealing with policy and aid him in carrying out his tasks.  However, both the cabinet and the president have a lot cut out for them as the blind lead the blind.

The most notable member of the cabinet is the Vice President, Mike Pence.  Pence is a former Governor of Indiana, and the controversy that he created continues to haunt him.  As Governor, he signed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act into law in 2015, which instantly became a national issue as many feared that it would allow discrimination against the LGBT+ community.

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Pence has continuously been viewed as a threat of the LGBT+ community, as he supported a constitutional amendment that would have defined marriage as between a man and woman only. He claimed that not allowing same sex marriage was not an act of discrimination but an enforcement of “God’s idea.”

 Indiana, under Pence,  became one of the states with one of the strictest abortion laws in the country.  In 2015, Pence signed a bill that banned women from seeking an abortion because the child would be born with a disability.  In 2011, Pence passed a bill through the House of Representatives that would defund Planned Parenthood.  Pence became governor in 2013 and by 2014 state funding of Planned Parenthood had been cut in half compared to 2005.

The controversy of Trump’s cabinet continues as he appointed Steve Bannon as his Chief White House Strategist and Senior Counselor.  Steve Bannon has been depicted as a leader of the alt-right movement, which-according to The New York Times-is a loosely organized group of mostly young men who believe in white supremacy.  Members typically oppose immigration, feminism and multiculturalism and oppress Muslims, African Americans, and other minority groups.

Bannon worked as the executive chairman of the Breitbart News Network which became defined by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a “white ethno-nationalist propaganda mill.”  Some of Bannon’s article include, “Birth Control Makes Women Unattractive and Crazy” and “Gabby Giffords: The Gun Control Movement’s Human Shield.”  Bannon published an article just two weeks after a white supremacist murdered nine African Americans in a church in Charleston, SC titled, “Hoist it High and Proud: The Confederate Flag Proclaims a Glorious Heritage.” A glorious heritage? If glorious is a term used for the mistreatment of, owning of, and oppressing black slaves

The cabinet continues to get better as Trump revealed that he would be appointing Scott Pruitt as Head of the Environmental Protection Agency.  Pruitt is the Oklahoma Attorney General and served as a state senator until 2006.  Pruitt has been known as a climate change denier and someone who has been critical of the EPA’s environmental protection laws.  Trump has discussed weakening the EPA and revoking many of Obama’s environmental protection acts, and Pruitt might just be the man to do it.  This might be a step back from the progress the US was making in terms of reversing climate change.

Trump’s cabinet may be controversial and even scary to women, minorities, and the LGBT+ community, but the country can only hope for the future.  Now is the time for change as the people who are afraid for this presidency need to come together and raise their voices for their beliefs and maintain the American ideals of freedom and equality for all.