“In developing regulations the EPA was directed to weigh only one concern: public health. The costs to industry were explicitly deemed irrelevant.” — Jane Mayer, Dark Money, January 2016
Donald Trump went against that.
NBC NEWS – RFK Jr. wants more scrutiny of chemicals, but Trump’s EPA did the opposite Trump’s EPA pressured scientists to downplay the potential harms of some chemicals, according to current and former staffers and the agency’s inspector general. That’s at odds with RFK Jr.’s “Make America Healthy Again” agenda. Sept. 24, 2024, 12:47 PM EDT By Aria Bendix Karen McCormack, a retired EPA employee, said the agency had a decades-long culture of penalizing employees who expressed dissenting opinions about the harms of some chemicals. But that culture got worse during Trump’s presidency, she said. “The EPA was sort of paralyzed under the Trump administration,” she said. McCormack worked at the EPA for more than 40 years, in roles including scientist and communications officer, before retiring in 2017, Trump’s first year in office. That year, she said, EPA employees who wanted to publish information about certain chemicals in the Federal Register — the government’s hub for rules, proposals and public notices — were required to fill out a form describing how that information would impact chemical companies and whether the companies agreed with it.
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