One year ago, many of us laughed over the news that the top selling Halloween masks would be those carrying the image of presidential candidate Donald Trump.

This Halloween, we’ve learned what a truly scary nightmare it is having Trump as our president.

The speed at which he and his administration are stripping civil rights, trashing the environment and threatening nuclear Armageddon is frightening.

The war on women’s rights continues apace. Just as Congress passed another ban on abortion, Trump promulgated a federal rule that broadens the rationale for denying women birth control through employers’ insurance policies. Thanks to the Affordable Care Act, about 55 million American women obtain free birth control counseling and services through such plans.

Currently, churches, religious orders and closely held family businesses with “religious” objections can obtain exemptions from this provision. Now this so-called “conscience protection” is being extended to any employer with “moral” objections. The list of new “objecting entities” is so long, according to legal analyst Linda Greenhouse, that the government could have saved keystrokes by simply writing “anyone.”

The rules that will impose this restriction run for 163 mind-numbing pages. They include false statements by representatives of the Ave Maria Law Center and other faith-based groups about the ineffectiveness and dangers of contraception.

The result of this policy is that millions of women will be denied birth control while men will continue to obtain Viagra on their insurance policies. Promoting male tumescence while restricting birth control makes sense only as part of a theocratic or fascist agenda. Yet, it is happening here and now.

Meanwhile, Trump accelerates the degradation of our environment. Scott Pruitt, Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, is going to extraordinary lengths to keep secret his meetings with corporate titans who will profit from the repeal of environmental protections and exploitation of federal lands.

Already overturned are anti-dumping limits on coal companies and the freeze on new coal leases on public lands. Gone is the off-shore drilling ban in the Atlantic and Arctic Oceans. Fracking regulations on public lands and methane reporting requirements by oil and gas companies have been eliminated. Regulations requiring fair royalties for resources extracted from federal and tribal lands have been revoked.

Trump has withdrawn the US from the Paris Climate Accord and Pruitt is nixing limits on carbon emissions from coal and gas-fired plants. The Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines are back in business. Flood standards for federal infrastructure projects have been eliminated, even in the wake of massive flooding from historic hurricanes.

Our country and planet are careening toward catastrophe. Trump and his crazy corporate profiteers are not offering any concessions or constructive suggestions for survival. Everything they promote points instead to the abyss.

I see some hope in the way other signatories of the Paris Climate Accord have committed to continue working toward its goals. I admire the leadership of Governor Jerry Brown of California who pledged that the Golden State will pursue its own slate of environmental protections. We can all do things to reduce our own carbon footprints.

My fears of environmental catastrophe and incipient fascism may fade into insignificance if the madman occupying the White House attacks North Korea.

Like millions worldwide this Halloween, I just want this nightmare to end.

Trump policies against women and the environment the biggest scare this Halloween

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