Trump’s environmental rollbacks contradict RFK Jr’s healthy America promise, report finds | Trump administration

Donald Trump’s aggressive rollback of environmental protections directly contradicts his campaign promises to “make America healthy again,” a new study finds.

Led by Robert F Kennedy Jr, Trump’s Department of Health and Human Services touted commitments to “transform our nation’s food, fitness, air, water, soil and medicine” and to “reverse the childhood chronic disease crisis”. But the President’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is pushing the country in the opposite direction, says the new report from the Center for American Progress (CAP), a nonprofit research and liberal advocacy organization.

An EPA spokesperson called the CAP report “fake news,” saying the EPA was “in sync” with Maha and the entire Trump administration.

Under Administrator Lee Zeldin, the EPA is dismantling dozens of environmental regulations, weakening efforts to limit pollution, and has exempted facilities from clean air regulations. These actions will make children more vulnerable to many of the chronic diseases that the Make America Healthy Again (Maha) program claims to want to eradicate, including cancers, heart disease, diabetes, obesity, autism and attention deficit disorder, according to the new report.

“The administration is trying to deceive Americans, pretending that they care about our health, that they care about children’s health, when in reality they are moving so aggressively to eliminate dozens of protections,” said Cathleen Kelly, a senior fellow at CAP and co-author of the report. “It’s truly heartbreaking to watch.”

The EPA spokesperson said the agency was fulfilling its mandate to roll back “unnecessary” policies “while protecting the environment and public health.”

“We have racked up environmental victory after environmental victory, and under President Trump and Administrator Zeldin, children and families are safer and healthier than ever,” the person said.

The Guardian has also contacted the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) for comment.

In March, Zeldin announced plans to repeal dozens of the nation’s most significant pollution regulations., notes the report. The EPA has since moved to implement these rollbacks, proposing the formal repeal of regulations such as a strengthened Mercury and Air Toxics (MAT) standard – which limits mercury, acid gases and other toxic pollutants from coal and oil-fired power plants – and carbon pollution limits for power plants.

The EPA also finalized a rule to delay key compliance deadlines for methane pollution limits, allowing the oil and gas industry to continue, or increase, its emissions. It also proposes restricting the risk assessment process that informs standards on dozens of substances, a move that critics say would limit regulation.

The EPA spokesperson said, “It is simply false to claim that EPA’s actions will worsen air quality” because “America’s air is the cleanest it has been in decades.” The person also said federal figures project CO₂ emissions are expected to fall by 16 million tons under the Trump administration amid economic growth.

Experts say much deeper cuts are needed.

The MAT amendments that Trump’s EPA has proposed to repeal “directly result in[ed] in coal-fired power plants that are scheduled to close,” the person said, adding that the changes would revert to 2012 standards “that resulted in large reductions in harmful toxic pollutants in the air.”

“Even the Biden-Harris EPA admitted in 2024 that the 2012 MATS rule provided ‘a sufficient margin of safety to protect public health’ and that the proposed 2024 additions would represent a net cost to the country,” the spokesperson said. “Since the Center for American Progress is filled with former Obama and Biden staffers, they should already know this. »

In perhaps its boldest step, the EPA also announced plans to reverse the 2009 findings on the threat, the legal basis for all federal climate regulations. The repeal was reportedly delayed due to concerns that the proposal would be too weak to withstand a legal challenge.

These and other actions would expose children to more toxic pollutants, the report said, including asthma-triggering particles, heavy metals linked to brain damage, toxic and hormone-disrupting chemicals such as benzene linked to an increased risk of autism in early childhood, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons that have been linked to attention deficit disorder.

“The hypocrisy of this situation is astounding,” Kelly said.

The EPA also invited polluting facilities to apply for air emissions exemptions – a move that will further increase exposure to pollution, the report said.

“This essentially gives these companies a free pass to avoid complying with toxic air pollution standards designed specifically to protect children, families and communities from pollution that seriously harms human health,” Kelly said.

The agency offered these two-year regulatory waivers to 170 power plants, chemical and petrochemical manufacturers and other industrial facilities, the authors found in consultation with the green group Environmental Defense Fund. More than 565,000 children under 18 live within 3 miles of a polluting facility that received an exemption, according to the report, while more than 2 million live within 3 miles of facilities still eligible for waivers.

The EPA spokesperson said the president has the authority to grant exemptions to the Clean Air Act “for reasons of national security.”

“Any claim that EPA is weakening enforcement is completely false,” the spokesperson said, adding that the agency is “committed to protecting children’s health and making America healthy again” and is “carrying out its core mission of protecting human health and the environment.”

The Trump administration also “gutted” public health programs that support asthma prevention and pediatric care, Kelly said. “As children become sicker, they will have less access to essential treatments and health services,” she said.

Maha leaders have also promoted raising the U.S. birth rate as a goal, but the EPA’s actions could undermine that effort, the report said, by abandoning limits on soot pollution and repealing restrictions on certain PFAS — “forever chemicals” linked to fertility problems.

Adam Finkel, a former member of the EPA’s scientific advisory board and a former senior executive at the Occupational Safety and Health Administration who did not work on the CAP report, said he was “sympathetic” to the concerns of Maha’s supporters.

“Maha put his finger on a real problem: We have a dysfunctional health care system, we have the worst life expectancy among the richest countries, and so something is clearly wrong, which Americans can see,” he said.

The problem, he said, was that the administration’s actions were “totally inconsistent” with efforts to improve health outcomes, including for children.

“Maha looked at things like Red Dye No. 3… but since we’ve already gotten rid of some of the most dangerous dyes in the United States, it just wasn’t on the priority list for a progressive science agenda,” he said. “For some reason, they’ve focused on these idiosyncratic things while they just look the other way when it comes to environmental concerns.”

In some cases, deregulatory efforts may not even save companies money, Finkel noted, since some environmental standards have historically reduced costs.

The report comes as some Maha supporters have expressed disappointment with the EPA’s actions. Some well-known leaders of the movement published a petition last month calling for Zeldin’s firing because of his environmental setbacks. In the weeks that followed, Zeldin reportedly attended a Maha-focused holiday party, invited the movement’s supporters to a meeting at EPA headquarters, and declared that the EPA would adopt a “Maha agenda.” He also called the agency’s decision to regulate certain chemicals used in plastic production a “big Maha victory.”

But other conflicting efforts with Maha could be on the way from the EPA, as the agency reportedly intends to stop estimating the health benefits of reducing certain air pollutants, Kelly noted.

The Maha program also says it aims to tackle corporate capture. But the EPA’s actions have raised concerns about former chemical industry executives leading the agency’s chemical safety efforts and record donations made by oil and petrochemical companies to Trump’s campaign, Kelly said.

“Administrator Zeldin could lead a master class in corporate capture and how to rig the system to benefit the oil and gas industry, chemical companies, gas and coal power plants and other industrial interests,” she said.