Las Vegas Review-Journal (Sunday)

Take care in the heat, especially if you are seeing someone who doesn’t care

As a scorching triple-digit heat dome descends on Las Vegas this weekend, Donald Trump will bring his fever dream of a campaign to Sunset Park today. With entry to the rally scheduled to open at 9 a.m. and Trump not taking the stage until noon, hundreds of followers of the former one-term president turned convicted felon will be left to fry in the desert sun for at least four hours.

While we may not agree with Trump’s followers on most issues of politics and policy, no one should be asked to risk their health and safety in order to participat­e in civil society. It’s an entirely avoidable recipe for disaster that team Trump should be ashamed of, especially since the ex-president should know better from recent experience.

On Thursday, 11 people in Phoenix were hospitaliz­ed with heat exhaustion after standing outside in line for hours, waiting to get into a Turning Point rally featuring Trump. Adding insult to injury, the Trump campaign allegedly overcommit­ted tickets to the rally and was forced to turn ticketed guests away from the venue after they waited for hours in the scorching heat.

Of course, Trump has never really cared much for the health or safety of his followers or the American people.

During his first 100 days in office, Trump and his Environmen­tal Protection Agency administra­tor, Scott Pruitt, forced the agency to reverse course on a proposal to ban chlorpyrif­os — an insecticid­e that, even in small doses, can harm children’s brains and nervous systems.

By the end of his first year in office, he had blocked another rule that would have limited the use of trichloroe­thylene, or TCE, a known carcinogen that has already contaminat­ed the drinking water of 14 million Americans in 37 states. Among those impacted by TCE are former U.S. service members now suffering from cancer due to exposure to TCE at Camp Lejeune and other U.S. military bases. Also affected were hundreds of children over 40 years in Tucson, Ariz., about 100 miles from the Phoenix rally.

Thanks to Trump, new generation­s of soldiers may be forced to endure the same suffering and death as those who came before them — not at the hands of a foreign enemy, but of their own government, which refused to pass regulation­s protecting them from dangerous chemicals.

If all that weren’t enough, Trump also worked with congressio­nal Republican­s to

reduce inspection standards for mines and meat-processing facilities, repeal laws that require timely and accurate workplace injury and illness logs, and block protection­s for workers who are at risk of being exposed to high levels of crystallin­e silica, beryllium and other deadly chemicals.

By 2020, as he was nearing the end of his term in office, he was standing in the White House press briefing room advocating for Americans to inject bleach into our bodies as a means of fighting the coronaviru­s.

While his followers would engage in some revisionis­t history that eventually led them to joke about Trump’s absurd suggestion, there was nothing funny about the 1.1 million Americans who died as a result of a virus that spread unchecked while our president obstructed scientists and spread dangerous misinforma­tion.

Which brings us back to today’s rally at Sunset Park.

Given his historic willingnes­s to spread lies and risk the lives of the American people in pursuit of his own ego and the “bigliest” possible events, we doubt that Trump will cancel the rally or even advise his followers to exercise care and caution if attending. Nor, given his hubris, do we expect Trump to recognize that his own age and lack of fitness make him vulnerable to the effects of

the oppressive heat currently gripping the region.

But Trump’s ignorance, arrogance, delusional disconnect from reality and lack of empathy for others does not change the forecast. According to the National Weather Service, temperatur­es are expected to climb to over 100 degrees by the time the presumptiv­e GOP nominee takes the stage today. We hope his supporters take this forecast into account and make a thoughtful decision about whether it is safe to attend the rally and when it is time to go home.

We ask that all of our friends, family, neighbors and community members stay safe and take care this summer.

For tips on how to stay cool this summer and a list of cooling locations and hours, visit allin.clarkcount­ynv.gov/initiative/staycool.