trump's assault on our Environment is destroying our country wholesale!

By the end of 2018, the Trump administration had weakened or killed 47 environmental rules and was in the process of rolling back another 31.

A Dismal Record

First the bad news: our 60-page report documents 80 Trump administration attacks on science. A sample list includes:
Hollowing out federal science agencies, filling fewer than half of key science appointee positions, and ensuring that political appointees and career staff ignore scientific advice;
Doctoring and killing scientific studies that contradicted industry-friendly policies;
Disbanding key EPA scientific advisory committees, cutting back on how often the remaining committees can meet, and banning scientists who have EPA grants from serving on them; and
Stacking advisory committees with lobbyists from polluting industries.
In fact, the Trump administration has packed the entire executive branch with lobbyists. When Trump promised to “drain the swamp” during his campaign, he wasn’t talking about ridding the government of cronyism and corruption; he was talking about getting rid of civil servants. As of today, the Interior Department is being run by a former oil industry lobbyist, the Defense Department is being run by a former aerospace industry executive, the Department of Health and Human Services is being run by a former pharmaceutical industry lobbyist and the EPA is being run by a former coal industry lobbyist.

The extent of this corporate coup extends well beyond department heads. A March 2018 ProPublica report found that at least 187 political appointees had been lobbyists, and many of them are now overseeing the industries they used to represent. It also found that more than 250 people associated with Trump’s presidential campaign and at least 125 staff members from nonprofit libertarian groups are now deep inside federal agencies, working to repeal decades of consumer, workplace, health and environmental protections.

Thus far, Trump appointees have been all too successful. According to a recent analysis by The New York Times, the administration had weakened or killed 47 environmental rules by the end of last year and were in the process of rolling back another 31. That doesn’t bode well for public health. A May 2018 analysis by a Harvard economist and statistician conservatively estimated that the administration’s environmental rollbacks could lead to 80,000 extra premature deaths per decade and respiratory problems for more than 1 million Americans.

At the same time the administration is weakening and killing environmental safeguards, it has taken the EPA cop off the beat. Civil penalties for polluters have dropped to their lowest average level since 1994, according to an analysis by a former EPA enforcement official. For the 20 years before Trump was elected, EPA civil fines averaged $500 million a year. Last fiscal year’s total was only $72 million—an 85 percent drop.

The Trump administration also has opened up more public land to development at bargain basement rates. The amount of land on the chopping block has jumped 500 percent since 2016, and the Bureau of Land Management has streamlined and shortened the leasing application process.

Then there’s the administration’s scientifically indefensible position on climate change. According to our recent report, the administration “has repeatedly ignored, dismissed, or suppressed the science of climate change, limiting the ability of federal scientists to speak about, report on, or even study it.” Remarkably, the administration refrained from censoring the latest edition of the National Climate Assessment, but it released it on the Friday after Thanksgiving to limit its impact. Trump, meanwhile, rejected the report out of hand. “I’ve seen it. I’ve read some of it. It’s fine,” he told a CNN reporter. But when the reporter then mentioned that the study concluded that “the economic impact [of climate change] will be devastating,” Trump responded, “I don’t believe it.”

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