Never Mind the Tweets, Look at Devastation of EPA Under Trump

President Donald Trump’s vicious tweets attacking CNN and the MSNBC “Morning Joe” hosts are just a big distraction to efforts made by his administration and the Republicans in Congress to roll back years of positive legislation on a number of fronts — from banking protections and regulations to healthcare to the environment.

Sunday’s New York Times published an absolutely frightening story about what’s happened at the Environmental Protection Agency since Trump took office.  Read the entire story here.

From the piece:

In the four months since he took office as the Environmental Protection Agency’s administrator, Scott Pruitt has moved to undo, delay or otherwise block more than 30 environmental rules, a regulatory rollback larger in scope than any other over so short a time in the agency’s 47-year history, according to experts in environmental law.

Mr. Pruitt’s supporters, including President Trump, have hailed his moves as an uprooting of the administrative state and a clearing of onerous regulations that have stymied American business. Environmental advocates have watched in horror as Mr. Pruitt has worked to disable the authority of the agency charged with protecting the nation’s air, water and public health.

…

Since February, Mr. Pruitt has filed a proposal of intent to undo or weaken Mr. Obama’s climate change regulations, known as the Clean Power Plan. In late June, he filed a legal plan to repeal an Obama-era rule curbing pollution in the nation’s waterways. He delayed a rule that would require fossil fuel companies to rein in leaks of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, from oil and gas wells. He delayed the date by which companies must comply with a rule to prevent explosions and spills at chemical plants. And he reversed a ban on the use of a pesticide that the E.P.A.’s own scientists have said is linked to damage of children’s nervous systems.

….

In a sign of both Mr. Pruitt’s influence in the White House and the high regard in which Mr. Trump holds him, he will take a leading role in devising the legal path to withdraw from the 194-nation Paris agreement on climate change, a job that would typically fall to lawyers at the State Department.

And he is doing all this largely without the input of the 15,000 career employees at the agency he heads, according to interviews with over 20 current and former E.P.A. senior career staff members.

And there’s a looming battle between the EPA and the State of California which has an exemption to call for tougher environmental standards that the EPA requires of other states. From the Los Angeles Sentinel, this:

A study released by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration showed certain levels of car-specific pollutants have dropped by 98 percent in Los Angeles since the 1960s, even though drivers use three times as much fuel today.

Health care and black elected officials say the fight is particularly important to African Americans because statistics show African-American communities suffer disproportionately from high levels of air pollution.

Due to California’s success, 13 other states, Arizona, Connecticut, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington, have adopted its clean car standards.

Now, those states fear the EPA will no longer allow them the exemptions that it has done through every Republican and Democratic administration since the law was initiated.

During his Senate confirmation hearing, Pruitt, who sued the EPA 14 times as Oklahoma attorney general and has called scientific evidence of a correlation between climate change and human activity “religious beliefs,” declined to assure refused to say whether the EPA under his direction will allow states to maintain higher emission control standards.

Newly-elected California Sen. Kamala Harris repeatedly questioned Pruitt about the states’ concerns.

“I don’t know without going through the process to determine that,” Pruitt responded. “One would not want to presume the outcome.”

Harris, who opposed Pruitt’s confirmation, said last week she was troubled by Pruitt’s response.

“California is a recognized leader on clean energy development and global effort to combat climate change,” Harris said in an interview. “During his hearing, I asked multiple times if he would uphold California’s motor vehicle pollution standards, and each time he shied away from that guarantee.”

So while First Lady Melania Trump’s campaign against cyberbullying would improve 1,000 percent by taking away her husband’s phone, don’t pay attention to Trump’s tweets so much as the actions in the EPA, the Department of Health and Human Services or the Department of Education.  That’s where the real shock and awe is being delivered.