2020 – Donald Trump

97% of climate scientists, NASA, and the Department of Defense agree that climate change is a threat to our communities — meaning more extreme weather, including storms and heat waves. However, Donald Trump continues to deny climate change and even called it a “hoax.” His ignorance and distrust of science goes so deep that he is blocking critical scientific data from being used at the EPA and has scrubbed climate change from government websites. 

This is the same approach that Trump has taken with the coronavirus pandemic, and his refusal to trust scientists and experts is costing us. Trump was unprepared for this pandemic, didn’t take the virus seriously at the beginning, and throughout the crisis has ignored experts and refused to take responsibility for his failure to contain the coronavirus, falsely blaming others for his own mistakes. Now, this health and economic crisis is tragically hitting communities of color, low-income communities and Indigenous communities hardest; data shows that coronavirus is killing members of the Black and Latinx communities at disproportionately high rates. 

Undermining the institutions and experts that safeguard our communities is a common thread in Trump’s failed responses to crises. Trump disbanded the U.S. pandemic response team and tried to scale back CDC pandemic response operations in 39 of 49 countries, which would have left our country even more vulnerable to serious public health outbreaks. Similarly, Trump spent the first years of his administration rolling back 100 environmental safeguards and weakening federal agencies like EPA, leaving our communities more vulnerable to everything from air pollution to water contamination to extreme weather fueled by climate change.  

This pandemic shows what happens when science and the experts are ignored, and the institutions we rely on to protect us are undermined.

The climate crisis is a ticking time bomb that threatens every aspect of American life — from the stability of our financial system to the health and well-being of communities in every corner of the country. Experts estimate we only have 10 years left to avoid the worst impacts of the climate crisis, yet since taking office Donald Trump has dangerously driven back decades of progress. 

From rolling back limits on carbon pollution to removing evidence of climate science from government documents to pulling America out of international agreements like the Paris Climate Accord, Trump’s willingness to do the bidding of corporate polluters combined with his disregard for science has put our children and families, especially low-income communities and communities of color, at risk. 

It’s clear that Trump is doing more for the profit margins of Big Oil than the health and security of our country. Trump drastically expanded the potential for drilling on public lands and issued an executive order that would open nearly all federal waters to offshore drilling. Trump is destroying regulations on methane — a potent greenhouse gas that is also linked to severe health complications. And Trump pushed the dirty and dangerous Keystone XL pipeline forward, increasing production of the dirty fossil fuels we need to be leaving behind. 

Even during the COVID-19 pandemic — a respiratory health crisis — Trump finalized weakening cleaner car standards, undoing the government’s biggest effort to combat climate change and making our air dirtier. Experts estimate that his replacement standard would lead to nearly a billion more tons of carbon dioxide released and research shows that death rates from the coronavirus are much higher in areas that have more air pollution. 

The world must act quickly and in unison in order to stop the worst case scenario of climate change. And yet last year, Trump began the process to pull the U.S. out of the Paris Climate Agreement. Trump’s climate change denial has left a vacuum in international climate leadership that puts the entire planet and all who inhabit it at risk. 

For all this and more, the 2020 election is our last best chance to fight the climate crisis.

Donald Trump’s administration is letting dangerous chemicals from corporate polluters into our drinking water – chemicals like pesticides, lead, and other carcinogens that can cause health risks like cancer and brain damage in children. 

Trump has failed to take action on one of the most pressing threats to our drinking water: PFAS chemicals. Researchers have found PFAS chemicals in virtually every major U.S. drinking water source, putting families at risk of health problems such as thyroid issues, birth defects, and cancer. But unbelievably there is little required testing or cleanup — and the Trump administration has opposed federal action to stop these chemicals from entering our homes, even saying that Trump would veto a PFAS protection bill were it to come to his desk.

In another attack on our families’ drinking water, the Trump administration gutted vital Clean Water Act protections, undoing decades of progress we’ve made in cleaning our waterways and putting the drinking water for tens of millions at risk. Even some of Trump’s own appointees disagree with this decision, which ignores science, disregards the intent of the law, will turn our streams into dumping grounds for big polluters and could destroy millions of acres of wetlands.

Donald Trump likes to say the United States has the “cleanest air,” but data shows that air pollution is getting worse after years of improvement. He’s repeatedly tried to gut environmental programs and blocked rules that protect our air from pollution, which can cause higher rates of asthma, heart and lung disease, and even cancer

The air quality throughout the country is dramatically declining. 150 million people, or nearly half of America’s population, is breathing heavily polluted air — putting lives at risk. And Trump’s administration is actively working to make our air dirtier, benefitting corporate polluters’ profits. 

Trump’s administration has loosened and even eliminated rules that stop polluters from spewing dangerous pollutants – like carbon, mercury, lead, and arsenic – into the air. Now, after decades of improvement, U.S. air quality is getting worse — two years into the Trump administration, there were 15% more unhealthy air days than there were in the four years before. And experts say the air pollution can cause higher rates of asthma, heart, and lung disease and even cancer including in children.

This is especially dangerous for communities of color who are already more likely to carry the burden of toxic air pollution, living or working near pollution resources or in cities with dirtier air, resulting in much higher rates of asthma, cancers, and other life-threatening disease. For low-income communities of color, the inequities are even greater.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the last thing Trump should have done is make it harder to breathe, but that’s exactly what happened when Trump’s EPA proposed to not strengthen the National Ambient Air Quality Standards for Particulate Matter. This proposal will allow unsafe levels of the soot pollution that some research already shows could increase the risk of dying from COVID-19 or suffering from asthma in areas across the country. To make matters tragically worse, these high pollution areas are far more likely to be in communities of color or low-wealth communities.

Trump also gutted protections under the Clean Power Plan, which puts more pollution into our air — making it harder for kids to breathe and forcing 140,000 more missed school days. By doing away with the first-ever carbon pollution limits on power plants, Trump put thousands of lives at risk, intensified the climate crisis, and threatened our transition to a clean, safe energy future for the sole benefit of corporate polluters.