Connect-The-Dots: The NOAA temperature dataset for the U.S. reveals that for the last 22 years and 3 months, the U.S. continental temperature change has been cooling at a minus -0.02°F per decade.
The chart above was produced by NOAA at their 'Climate at a Glance' web page. In the upper right corner of the chart, NOAA shows its calculated per decade trend of -0.02°F for a period that spans 1996-2018.
After posting this chart and an accompanying article, it just seemed that something was likely wrong with the trend calculation produced by NOAA's web site.
After an Excel analysis of the absolute and anomaly temperature dataset, which can be downloaded from the same web page that produced the above chart, that NOAA trend calculation cannot be confirmed with any confidence. In fact, that NOAA decade trend calculation seems egregiously wrong and very misleading.
Thus, we replaced all of the article's text with the above explanation since the NOAA information looks to be incorrect. That is not to say definitively that they are wrong but that we are completely unable to replicate their calculated trend.
Lesson Learned: Don't trust government work - always double-check.
Note: Chart was produced at this NOAA climate page. Time period selected for the chart was from January 1996 through March 2018.