Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)

Trump’s Environmental Massacre

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Original article by Derrick Z. Jackson republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

The pictured oil refinery, owned by Exxon Mobil, is the second largest in the country on 28th February 2020 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, United States.  (Photo by Barry Lewis/InPictures via Getty Images)

The EPA’s decision to erase the value of lives lost or saved by regulations is a horror beyond the pale. It opens the door for government-sanctioned death with a baked-in cover-up.

Last March, I interviewed staffers at the Environmental Protection Agency’s Region 5 headquarters in Chicago who were horrified by the Trump administration’s staff and funding cuts, which notably included eliminating environmental justice and diversity, equity, and inclusion programs.

The threat of those cuts was so severe that Brian Kelly, an on-site emergency coordinator based in Michigan, predicted: “People will die. There will be additional deaths if we roll back these protections.”

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How many additional deaths? The Trump EPA will not say. As part of President Donald Trump’s crusade to destroy federal science and roll back environmental safeguards, his EPA announced recently that it will no longer consider the monetary value of saving lives by regulating fine particulate matter, commonly called soot, smaller than 2.5 micrometers in diameter (PM 2.5) and ozone smog from vehicles, fossil-fuel-burning power plants, and other polluting industries.

In other words, the agency intends to conduct cost-benefit analyses by only considering the cost.

We Need Stronger Pollution Regs

The data documenting soot’s deadly damage even with environmental rules in place is voluminous, much coming from the federal government itself, suggesting that we need stronger regulations, not weaker ones.

A 1997 EPA report found the first 20 years of the 1970 Clean Air Act were so effective that 205,000 premature deaths were avoided from all air pollution sources in 1990. The same report concluded that the 1990 amendments to the law would save more than 230,000 lives a year by 2020 and prevent 2.4 million asthma attacks.

By disbanding DEI and environmental justice programs, the Trump administration is ensuring that communities of color are collateral damage in sucking the Earth dry of oil and gas and mining for the last lump of coal.

Even so, air pollution remains mortally high in a nation that is now the world’s biggest producer of oil and gas and stubbornly prioritizes individually owned vehicles over public transportation. A 2021 study funded by the EPA and published in the journal Science Advances found that PM 2.5 alone still accounts for 85,000 to 200,000 excess deaths a year.

The conclusions of nongovernmental studies echo the EPA’s own findings. A 2022 University of Wisconsin study, for example, estimated that if the United States eliminated all fine particulate, sulfur dioxide, and nitrogen oxide emissions from electricity generation, vehicles, factories, and buildings, 53,200 premature deaths a year could be prevented, providing $600 billion in health benefits from avoided illness and mortality.

Drill Baby Drill’s Collateral Damage

The Trump EPA’s recent announcement is just another of a string of nonsensical—and dangerous—moves by the agency. They include abandoning the Paris Climate Accord and killing the agency’s 2009 “endangerment finding” determining that carbon pollution threatens human health, which the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) estimates will cut short the lives of as many as 58,000 people over the next 30 years due to additional pollution.

Taken together, the Trump administration’s assault on public health has the potential of triggering an environmental massacre, particularly among the most vulnerable Americans.

Because of our nation’s history of housing discrimination, communities of color, regardless of income, face more than twice the risk of exposure to PM 2.5 than white communities. According to the 2021 Sciences Advances study, this “phenomenon is systemic, holding for nearly all major sectors, as well as across states and urban and rural areas, income levels, and exposure levels…. Targeting locally important sources for mitigation could be one way to counter this persistence.”

By disbanding DEI and environmental justice programs, the Trump administration is ensuring that communities of color are collateral damage in sucking the Earth dry of oil and gas and mining for the last lump of coal. An August 2025 Science Advances study found that the life cycle of oil and gas extraction, storage, transporting, refining, and combustion results in 91,000 annual premature deaths due to exposure to PM 2.5, nitrogen dioxide, and ozone. It found that, with rare exception, “Asian, Black, Hispanic, and Native American groups experience the worst exposures and burdens for all life-cycle stages and pollutants.” A 2023 New England Journal of Medicine study, meanwhile, concluded that reducing PM 2.5 pollution alone would disproportionately benefit Blacks at all income levels as well as low-income whites.

EPA Now Stands for Every Polluter’s Ally

Without a single fact to back up its claim, the Trump EPA—led by the fossil fuel industry-friendly Lee Zeldin—stated it did away with calculating lives saved because prior estimates were done with “false precision and confidence.” In fact, the agency is now simply repeating the talking points of the oil and gas industry and the US Chamber of Commerce, which has a long history of lobbying Congress to resist climate legislation and filing endless amicus briefs on behalf of polluters to counter environmental lawsuits.

In 2018, during the first the Trump administration, the chamber asserted—also with no evidence—that previous to the Trump EPA, the agency “historically misinformed and misled the public by using inconsistent and opaque analytical and communication methods regarding costs and benefits.”

That same year, the Trump EPA offered a revealing nugget of information that was hardly opaque. It admitted that its effort to kill the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan, which would have reined in power plant carbon pollution, would result in in as many as 1,400 premature deaths a year by 2030, and thousands more annual cases of respiratory diseases. At the time, Trump was also trying to roll back Obama-era clean air vehicle standards that were projected to save nearly 40,000 lives a year by 2030.

In its last year in office, the Biden administration proposed tightening PM 2.5 standards, estimating that it could prevent as many as 4,500 premature deaths in 2032 and lead to $46 billion in health benefits in 2032.

There is not a single word about protecting lives or lowering healthcare costs in the EPA’s February 12 press release announcing its repeal of the endangerment finding nor in its February 20 press release hailing the repeal of tighter mercury and air toxics standards enacted by the Biden administration. Instead, Zeldin claimed—without proof—that the air pollution rules would have “destroyed reliable American energy” and revoking the endangerment finding would save Americans more than $1.3 trillion, including an average cost savings of more than $2,400 on a new vehicle.

While Zeldin is trying to use the greater availability of cheaper, gas-guzzling cars as a lure to seduce the public to look the other way on environmental regulations, the pollution they emit will smoke the nation. EDF estimates that higher-polluting vehicles could, by 2055:

  • Cost US drivers as much as $1.4 trillion in increased fuel costs;
  • Emit carbon pollution that will intensify climate change-related extreme weather events, costing $1.5 trillion to $4.2 trillion; and
  • Increase respiratory and heart disease, as well as the number of premature deaths, costing $170 billion to $500 billion.

None of that mattered to the first Trump administration, which admitted its regulatory rollbacks could kill people. When the second Trump administration barreled into office with its cutbacks and deep-sixing of environmental justice and DEI programs, staffers in the EPA Chicago Region 5 office feared the worst. They included Kayla Butler, a Superfund community involvement coordinator. The stories her team collects in the field of people living with toxic horrors are precisely the stories she said the Trump administration is “trying to erase.”

The EPA’s decision to erase the value of lives lost or saved by regulations is a horror beyond the pale. It opens the door for government-sanctioned death with a baked-in cover-up. With the death toll from air pollution still so high, the Trump EPA is burying the data with the bodies, so we will never know the cause.

This article first appeared at the Money Trail blog and is reposted here at Common Dreams with permission.

Original article by Derrick Z. Jackson republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Donald Trump urges you to be a Climate Science denier like him. He says that he makes millions and millions for destroying the planet, Burn, Baby, Burn and Flood, Baby, Flood.
Donald Trump urges you to be a Climate Science denier like him. He says that he makes millions and millions for destroying the planet, Burn, Baby, Burn and Flood, Baby, Flood.
Orcas discuss how Trump was re-elected and him being an obviously insane, xenophobic Fascist.
Orcas discuss how Trump was re-elected and him being an obviously insane, xenophobic Fascist.
Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
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Make Smog Great Again: Trump puts pollution profits over people

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Original article by Rob Warzyniak republished from People’s World under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/

Make Smog Great Again: Trump puts pollution profits over people

Charlie Riedel/AP

In 1976, the film Network premiered, featuring one of the most iconic scenes in film history. Howard Beale, played by Peter Finch, unleashes a rant that would be right at home in the present day: 

“We know things are bad—worse than bad. They’re crazy. It’s like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don’t go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, ‘Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms.’” 

He was right, then and now. And while Beale was raving against the media’s pursuit of sensationalism over journalistic integrity, we see the same thing happening today. Things are indeed bad, to put it mildly, and we do not have the luxury of hiding away in our living rooms. 

In early January of this year, a New York Times headline read, “The EPA will stop considering lives saved when setting pollution limits and instead calculate only the cost to businesses.” The EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) is openly letting the American people know that it does not care about us. Dead people are just the cost of doing business, and boy, business is booming.

In yet another glaring example of the business owners and the ruling class placing profits over people, the EPA under the current Republican administration is shifting its policy from environmental protection to the economic costs of regulations. The EPA will no longer track the health impacts of air pollution or quantify the financial impacts of health improvements; instead, it will focus on the financial impact of regulations on businesses. The return of the days when smog was a staple in large metro areas is looking to make a comeback, and it’s only a matter of time before the Cuyahoga River catches fire again. 

The shift at the EPA is at odds with the Make America Healthy Again movement, but then again, so is nearly everything else in this administration. While the MAHA movement continues to wage a war against vaccines, thereby ensuring a victory for preventable diseases, the American people will soon be dealing with a rise in air pollution. Clean air and water, once considered a human right, are an impediment to big business shareholders, and the Trump administration sided with big business. 

At the same time, the EPA under the Trump administration revoked all scientific findings that greenhouse gases endanger public health. This revocation comes on the heels of the past three years being the hottest years on record. While states and cities grapple with the escalating costs of dealing with extreme weather, the federal government has not only effectively abandoned them but also removed years of climate research and findings.

President Donald Trump departs with Environmental Protection Agency director Lee Zeldin and Office of Management and Budget director Russell Vought, right after announcing the EPA will no longer regulate greenhouse gases, in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, Thursday, Feb. 12, 2026, in Washington.| Evan Vucci/AP

“President Trump will be taking the most significant deregulatory actions in history to further unleash American energy dominance and drive down costs,” said White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt. Lower costs are not only a plus, but they will also be necessary, as we will need more money to offset the rising healthcare costs associated with polluted air. 

Michelle Roos, executive director of the Environmental Protection Network, a group of former EPA employees, said, “Communities across the country will bear the brunt of this decision–through dirtier air, higher health costs, and increased climate harm. The Trump EPA is surrendering its responsibility, turning its back on families and communities already facing the highest pollution and health risks, and dismantling decades of science and progress.” 

It comes as no surprise, then, that Big Oil spent almost half a billion dollars on the last election. Oil company CEOs and shareholders need allies in powerful places, and it doesn’t get any higher than Congress and the President. And no one spends that much money without expecting large dividends. 

A panel of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) recently released a statement reading, in part, “The evidence for current and future harm to human health and welfare created by human-caused greenhouse gases is beyond scientific dispute.” The current argument against this is “nuh uh,” often used by the dumbest people you went to high school with, making it very difficult to know who to believe. 

The most recent National Climate Assessment, released in 2023, reported that temperatures in the contiguous U.S. have increased by 1.4 °C since 1970. The frequency of annual heat waves has tripled since the 1960s, while storms are producing heavier rainfall, and wildfires have become more severe. Since the Earth is on track to reach 2-3 °C, we are rapidly approaching the point of no return, where climate scientists say that no matter what we do to mitigate climate change, it will be too little, too late. 

Recent scientific findings point to tipping points that, in turn, lead to feedback loops. The destruction of the Amazon rainforest releases carbon into the air that would otherwise not have been released, thereby amplifying global warming. Capitalists are actively killing the planet in the name of profit, and since money is all they care about, there is no incentive for them to stop. It also doesn’t help that most of them are sociopaths. And because there is a lack of class consciousness in the U.S., this Steinbeck quote is all the more relevant: “I guess the trouble was that we didn’t have any self-admitted proletarians. Everyone was a temporarily embarrassed capitalist.”

The ruling class loves to place the blame on the working class, insisting that we carpool and recycle our cardboard boxes and plastic bottles. And while we should do these things, that alone will not solve our problem, and it ignores the fact that over 70% of emissions come from 100 corporations. They want us to carpool so they don’t have to pay for public transportation, and they want us to recycle our cardboard so we feel like we’re saving the planet from the comfort of our living room. We do not have that luxury, which means Howard Beale was right.

As with all news-analysis and op-ed articles published by People’s World, the views reflected here are those of the author.

We hope you appreciated this article. At People’s World, we believe news and information should be free and accessible to all, but we need your help. Our journalism is free of corporate influence and paywalls because we are totally reader-supported. Only you, our readers and supporters, make this possible. If you enjoy reading People’s World and the stories we bring you, please support our work by donating or becoming a monthly sustainer today. Thank you!

Original article by Rob Warzyniak republished from People’s World under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/

Donald Trump urges you to be a Climate Science denier like him. He says that he makes millions and millions for destroying the planet, Burn, Baby, Burn and Flood, Baby, Flood.
Donald Trump urges you to be a Climate Science denier like him. He says that he makes millions and millions for destroying the planet, Burn, Baby, Burn and Flood, Baby, Flood.
Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him and his Deputy Richard Tice. He says that Reform UK has received £Millions and £Millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.
Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him and his Deputy Richard Tice. He says that Reform UK has received £Millions and £Millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.
Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
Continue ReadingMake Smog Great Again: Trump puts pollution profits over people

Who Are the Climate Deniers Fighting the Endangerment Finding?

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Original article by Geoff Dembicki republished from DeSmog

EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announcing the plan to repeal the endangerment finding on July 29, 2025 at a truck plant in Indiana. Credit: EPA

DeSmog has been tracking the efforts of fossil fuel trade associations, policymakers, and industry backed-groups out to demolish U.S. climate policy for years.

In late July, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lee Zeldin announced at a trucking facility in Indiana that the Trump administration would be moving to rescind the “endangerment finding,” an agency declaration which provides the legal foundation for many major U.S. climate regulations.

Zeldin was joined at the press conference by U.S. Energy Secretary and former fracking executive Chris Wright, as well as Republican policymakers and representatives of auto groups including the American Trucking Associations (ATA).

This was just a small sampling of a powerful anti-climate coalition that for over a decade has attempted to overturn the endangerment finding, a 2009 scientific determination from the EPA that for the first time recognized carbon dioxide and five other greenhouse gases as  “pollutants” that are “harmful” and therefore must be regulated.

It’s a finding that helps provide the legal justification for EPA regulations on greenhouse gases from power plants, methane pollution from oil and gas operations, and limits on tailpipe emissions from cars and trucks. Now, the Trump administration will be seeking public comments and moving to officially repeal the finding by sometime next year.

DeSmog has been tracking and building databases on the anti-endangerment coalition for years. Below is our guide to the top fossil fuel groups, conservative policymakers, and climate deniers leading the effort to demolish the bedrock of American climate policy.

American Petroleum Institute

When the EPA first issued the endangerment finding in 2009, the American Petroleum Institute (API), the main lobby group for U.S. oil and gas producers, was immediately opposed. “[It] poses an endangerment to the American economy and to every American family,” the institute’s then-president Jack Gerard claimed.

API joined with other fossil fuel and industrial lobby organizations, including the National Association of Manufacturers, to wage an unsuccessful legal challenge against the finding. It recently applauded Zeldin’s announcement of rescinding endangerment and rolling back auto emissions regulations, arguing that the Trump administration is “protecting the freedom of all Americans to decide what they drive.”

U.S. Chamber of Commerce

Another early business opponent of the endangerment finding was the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a lobby group representing millions of businesses whose membership has included oil and gas majors, fossil fuel utilities, and coal companies. Like API, it helped lead an unsuccessful legal action against the finding.

The Chamber of Commerce has a long record of climate obstruction, including being a member of an infamous climate denial organization known as the Global Climate Coalition. Yet its leadership is now trying to distance itself from Zeldin’s proposed repeal of endangerment, telling Reuters that, “While we did not call for this proposal, we are reviewing it and will consult with members so we can provide constructive feedback to the agency.”

Project 2025

The radical plan for dismantling the U.S. government published by the Heritage Foundation contains specific proposals for the EPA, calling for “a system, with an appropriate deadline, to update the 2009 endangerment finding.” One of the contributors to the EPA chapter is Aaron Szabo, now an assistant administrator at the agency.

Szabo was an advisor to a pro-Trump think tank known as the America First Policy Institute. He was also a former lobbyist “who pushed the interests of major polluters like members of the American Petroleum Institute,” according to Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, who spoke against Szabo at his EPA confirmation hearing.

One of Project 2025’s top architects, Russ Vought, now leads the White House Office of Management and Budget. He has also called for the repeal of the endangerment finding. “It’s long overdue to look at the impacts on our people of the underlying Obama endangerment finding,” he said in an EPA press release in March. 

Trump’s Climate Working Group

The EPA has justified its repeal of the endangerment finding — which states unequivocally that greenhouse gases are harmful to human health and the climate — by citing a recent Department of Energy report written by five prominent climate crisis deniers.

This so-called “Climate Working Group” includes Steve Koonin, John Christy, Ross McKitrick, Judith Curry, and Roy Spencer, all of whom have worked for years to publicly downplay the urgency of the climate crisis or deny that it exists. They argue in their report that carbon dioxide is good for humankind because it boosts “agricultural productivity,” an assessment that isn’t shared by actual climate scientists warning of dire threats to the global food supply from higher global temperatures.      

Heartland Institute

One of the longest-running U.S. climate denial groups, the Heartland Institute was a partner of Project 2025, and for years has advocated against the endangerment finding. It applauded Zeldin’s announcement, saying in a statement that “President Trump is doing the right thing for the economy, the environment, and the American people.”

The Heartland Institute has a major UK ally in Nigel Farage, head of the right-wing political party Reform UK, who last year helped launch a European branch of the denial group. At the Jordan Peterson conference known as the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC) earlier this year, Farage invoked a frequent climate denier talking point about endangerment, claiming that it’s “absolutely nuts” that carbon dioxide is considered a pollutant.

Koch Network

Climate denial groups that have received funding from foundations linked to the oil and gas billionaires Charles and David Koch are some of the most stalwart opponents of the EPA’s greenhouse gas finding. They include the CO2 Coalition, whose co-founder William Happer was on the National Security Council in Trump’s first administration, as well as the American Energy Alliance and the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

Koch-backed groups have achieved key U.S. Supreme Court victories that have paved way to undo the endangerment finding, including the case West Virginia vs. EPA, which weakened the agency’s ability to address climate change.

Zeldin cited that legal precedent explicitly in his announcement on Tuesday, saying, “would you want the administrator of the EPA to be ignoring the Supreme Court decisions in West Virginia vs. EPA?” He also cited the court’s rejection of the Chevron Deference — a long-standing doctrine giving federal agencies power to interpret the law where vague — which was the result of legal efforts backed in part by Charles Koch.

Critics argue this powerful anti-climate coalition ultimately serves the interest of companies profiting from polluting and warming our atmosphere. Senator Whitehouse said in a statement that “the Trump Administration’s repeal [of the endangerment finding] has the fossil fuel industry’s oily fingerprints all over it.” He added that “Trump chose his fossil fuel megadonors over the American people.”

Original article by Geoff Dembicki republished from DeSmog

Donald Trump urges you to be a Climate Science denier like him. He says that he makes millions and millions for destroying the planet, Burn, Baby, Burn and Flood, Baby, Flood.
Donald Trump urges you to be a Climate Science denier like him. He says that he makes millions and millions for destroying the planet, Burn, Baby, Burn and Flood, Baby, Flood.
Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
Orcas discuss Donald Trump and the killer apes' concept of democracy. Front Orca warns that Trump is crashing his country's economy and that everything he does he does for the fantastically wealthy.
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Continue ReadingWho Are the Climate Deniers Fighting the Endangerment Finding?

Contrarian climate assessment from U.S. government draws swift pushback

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https://www.science.org/content/article/contrarian-climate-assessment-u-s-government-draws-swift-pushback

U.S. Department of Energy Secretary Chris Wright handpicked the five contrarian scientists who authored a controversial new climate report.Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images

Researchers say DOE report cherry-picks data to downplay threat of greenhouse gases

The last assessment of the state of climate science from the United Nations’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), published in its final form 2 years ago, was a monumental effort, with 721 volunteer scientists synthesizing all available published research. Yesterday, the Department of Energy (DOE) released its own climate assessment, as part of a campaign by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to overturn its landmark endangerment finding from 2009, which found that burning fossil fuels endangers public health and established carbon dioxide as a pollutant EPA could regulate. But the DOE report—called A Critical Review of Impacts of Greenhouse Gas Emissions on the U.S. Climate—had fewer authors than IPCC’s: just five.

Handpicked by DOE Secretary Chris Wright, a fossil fuel entrepreneur, the authors are well known to climate scientists. Although the members of this Climate Working Group all hold scientific doctorates, they hold contrarian views on climate science that are out of step with the mainstream. The report, assembled in months, argues that some of the warming attributed to fossil fuel burning is instead driven by natural cycles or variability in the Sun, and that sea level rise has not been accelerating. Climate researchers say the authors cherry-picked evidence and highlighted uncertainties to achieve the net effect of downplaying the impacts of climate change. “This shows how far we have sunk,” says Naomi Oreskes, a historian of science at Harvard University. “Climate denial is now the official policy of the U.S. government.”

…

Article continues at https://www.science.org/content/article/contrarian-climate-assessment-u-s-government-draws-swift-pushback

Donald Trump urges you to be a Climate Science denier like him. He says that he makes millions and millions for destroying the planet, Burn, Baby, Burn and Flood, Baby, Flood.
Donald Trump urges you to be a Climate Science denier like him. He says that he makes millions and millions for destroying the planet, Burn, Baby, Burn and Flood, Baby, Flood.
Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
Orcas discuss Donald Trump and the killer apes' concept of democracy. Front Orca warns that Trump is crashing his country's economy and that everything he does he does for the fantastically wealthy.
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Continue ReadingContrarian climate assessment from U.S. government draws swift pushback

Trump Eases Pollution Rules for 100+ Facilities, Including Chemical and Coal Plants

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Original article by Jessica Corbett republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

The coal-fired Cardinal Power Plant in Brilliant, Ohio is among the facilities for which U.S. President Trump eased pollution rules on July 17, 2025.
 (Photo: Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

“Trump is illegally delaying clean air laws from his desk because polluters make more money when they just dump their toxic chemicals in our air,” said one critic.

Continuing a trend of prioritizing polluters over public health and the planet, U.S. President Donald Trump late Thursday signed a series of proclamations to provide what the Republican called “regulatory relief” to various industries.

While the names of Trump’s four proclamations suggest they are intended to promote American “security” regarding energy, chemical manufacturing, iron ore processing, and sterile medical equipment, what they actually do is allow over 100 facilities across the country to not comply with rules put in place under Democratic former President Joe Biden.

A Trump White House fact sheet describes the rules from Biden’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as “burdensome.” Meanwhile, environmental and health advocates blasted Trump over his new exemptions for coal-fired power plants, ethylene oxide commercial sterilizers, and facilities that manufacture chemicals and process taconite iron.

“If your family lives downwind of these plants, this is going to mean more toxic chemicals in the air you breathe.”

Patrice Simms, vice president of litigation at Earthjustice’s Healthy Communities Program, said in a Friday statement that “Trump is illegally delaying clean air laws from his desk because polluters make more money when they just dump their toxic chemicals in our air.”

“Trump’s action on behalf of big corporate polluters will cause more cancer, more birth defects, and more children to suffer [from] asthma,” Simms warned. “The country deserves better.”

The proclamation is not the first handout Trump has given the coal industry since returning to office in January. As Earthjustice noted:

In April 2025, the Trump administration exempted 68 coal-fired power plants from pollution limits set in the strengthened MATS rule, even though pollution controls are widely available and already in use. These came after EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin invited corporations to email the agency to request exemptions from clean air standards. Companies were told they could cite “national security” or “lack of available technology” as justification.

John Walke, clean air director for the environmental group Natural Resources Defense Council, told The Associated Press that Trump’s claims about national security concerns and technology issues were “pretexts” to further enrich large corporations.

“President Trump just signed a literal free pass for polluters,” Walke said of the new proclamations. “If your family lives downwind of these plants, this is going to mean more toxic chemicals in the air you breathe.”

The AP reported that “in a related development, the EPA said Thursday it will give utility companies an additional year to inspect and report on contamination from toxic coal ash landfills across the country,” which Zeldin also called “regulatory relief.”

Earthjustice senior counsel Lisa Evans told The New York Times on Thursday that while it may not seem like a lengthy delay, “a year’s time is not irrelevant when you are living next to a coal plant.”

“It’s one more year of hazardous contaminants getting into the groundwater,” Evans said. “And the more chemicals that get into the groundwater, the more difficult and expensive it is to remediate.”

Neo-Fascist Climate Science Denier Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.
Neo-Fascist Climate Science Denier Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.
Donald Trump urges you to be a Climate Science denier like him. He says that he makes millions and millions for destroying the planet, Burn, Baby, Burn and Flood, Baby, Flood.
Donald Trump urges you to be a Climate Science denier like him. He says that he makes millions and millions for destroying the planet, Burn, Baby, Burn and Flood, Baby, Flood.

Continue ReadingTrump Eases Pollution Rules for 100+ Facilities, Including Chemical and Coal Plants