While much of America was away spending time with family and friends, the Trump administration continued its assault on our public health, clean air and water, wildlife, the climate, and common sense. Between December 21st and January 1st, Donald Trump and his administration took dangerous actions to repeal or undermine lifesaving standards and were caught (once again) subverting science, decency, and the law. All the while, this administration has still yet to find the time to help millions of Americans still suffering without power or access to safe drinking water in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands more than three months after Hurricane Maria struck.
While some were preparing for the holiday break or visiting family and friends, Trump’s Department of Housing and Urban Development announced, in an act of pettiness surpassed only by its shortsightedness, that it will block the flood-protection standard promulgated by the Obama administration, which sought to protect Department-backed properties -- including Federal Housing Mortgages -- from repetitive losses caused by flood events.
On December 29th, the Department of the Interior rescinded an Obama-era rule to strengthen safety standards for fracking on public lands, requiring among other items, for oil and gas companies to disclose the hundreds of potentially hazardous chemicals used in fracking fluids. In its announcement of the rollback, Interior touted how much money they’re saving the fossil fuel industry, which Secretary Ryan Zinke clearly believes is the agency’s primary mission.
On the same day, the administration proposed revising or rolling back safety standards for offshore drilling that were put in place in response to the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster. In its apparent quest to make offshore drilling as dangerous as possible, Interior also ordered the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine to suspend all work on a study to review and update their safety inspection program for offshore oil and gas operations.
Donald Trump took time to remind the world that he not only doesn’t comprehend climate science or the Paris Climate agreement, but he still doesn’t know the difference between climate and weather:
In an attempt to giving the oil and gas industry more freedom to pollute and destroy public lands and the climate, Ryan Zinke announced that they Interior will no longer prosecute industry when energy projects kill birds. Apparently, in Zinke’s eyes, industry should be free to not merely threaten the American people’s public health and safety, but wildlife’s as well.
Zinke then took to helping out Trump’s daughter Ivanka when he reversed protections of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, renewing copper and nickel mining leases adjacent to the Minnesota wilderness area. This reversal was taken for an audience of one: the Chilean billionaire who is currently renting a mansion to Ivanka Trump and her family and owns a mining firm that has fought to renew the leases.
Speaking of Trump and his administration abusing their power to enrich themselves and their friends, it was reported last week that EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt tapped his longtime friend, Oklahoma banker Albert Kelly, to oversee the Superfund program just two weeks after he had been banned from the banking industry for life by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) over his “unfitness to serve.”
Pruitt wasn’t alone in his misuse of government funds. Ryan Zinke was caught paying for a nearly $40,000 helicopter ride out of the agency’s wildfire preparedness funds. This was, of course, just the latest example of Zinke’s love for taxpayer-funded helicopter travel at the American taxpayer’s expense.
Finally, Scott Pruitt, the man who has spent the past year undermining and attacking climate science and nearly every public health and environmental safeguard, mused about “true environmentalism,” and that he believes that he has “an obligation to feed the world and power the world, with a sensitivity, as far as environmental stewardship, for future generations.” As Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune said in response to the absurdity of the statement, perhaps Pruitt is a student of Orwell and “if he repeats something enough, again and again and again, at least some portion of the public will begin to believe it.”
Donald Trump and his administration were unable to pretend the American people are unaware of the actions taken while many were on vacation, and they cannot continue to pretend as if their inaction to help Americans in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands is acceptable.