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For Immediate Release
September, 12 2019, 12:00am EDT
Contact:
Alex Formuzis, (202) 667-6982, alex@ewg.org
Trump Completes Repeal of Clean Water Rule, Imperiling Drinking Water Sources for 117M People
Today the Trump administration will finalize its plan to repeal critical safeguards that prohibit the dumping of industrial and agricultural pollution into sensitive waterways that provide tap water for more than 117 million A
WASHINGTON
Today the Trump administration will finalize its plan to repeal critical safeguards that prohibit the dumping of industrial and agricultural pollution into sensitive waterways that provide tap water for more than 117 million Americans.
The Washington Post reports that Environmental Protection Agency chief Andrew Wheeler will announce the rollback at the headquarters of the National Association of Manufacturers.
The repeal of the Waters of the U.S. rule, or WOTUS, will remove protections for many small streams and wetlands, which were put in place under President Obama, in 2015. The rule determines which streams, rivers and lakes are protected from pollution by the federal Clean Water Act and extends protection for millions of acres of wetlands that filter drinking water.
Small streams are where big rivers start, and the best science confirms that dirty streams lead to even dirtier rivers. Millions of Americans drink water directly connected to 234,000 miles of small streams that will now be unprotected as a result of the repeal.
In 30 states, small streams provide some percentage of drinking water for 1 million or more people. As a 2017 analysis by EWG showed, more than 40 million of those people are in New York, Texas, Pennsylvania, Ohio and California.
"Much of the nation's drinking water sources, already threatened by pollution from industry and agribusiness, will now be left unprotected as a result of this action," said Craig Cox, EWG's senior vice president for agriculture and natural resources. "The decision to announce the repeal of the water rule from the headquarters of an industry lobby group that represents many of the nation's worst polluters says it all: Under President Trump, the EPA is no longer in the business of safeguarding our resources and protecting us from pollution, but is openly working to advance the agenda of those who profit from fouling our water and threatening our health."
The Environmental Working Group is a community 30 million strong, working to protect our environmental health by changing industry standards.
(202) 667-6982LATEST NEWS
Running for California Governor, Tom Steyer Says Billionaires Like Him ‘Should Pay More Taxes’
"I'm the billionaire who wants to tax people like me more. I'm the billionaire who's willing to stand up to the monopolies and the people who are ripping off Californians."
Apr 22, 2026
In a California gubernatorial race characterized by a lack of clear progressive choices and the specter of an all-Republican general election under the state's so-called "jungle primary," a hedge fund billionaire who believes that plutocrats like himself should pay more taxes is gaining progressive support.
On Tuesday, Farallon Capital founder Tom Steyer was endorsed by Our Revolution, the progressive political action group launched as a continuation of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) kneecapped 2016 presidential campaign.
Our Rev said that Steyer "has stepped forward with a platform that is clearly aligned with the priorities of our movement—single-payer healthcare, taxing extreme wealth, bold climate action, and getting money out of politics."
Steyer was interviewed Tuesday by The Lever's David Sirota, who asked about Our Revolution's support for a plebiscite to "tax billionaires like yourself," and how he squares "being the progressive movement's choice in this race while being one of the people who there's a ballot initiative to tax more."
The California Billionaire Tax would impose a one-time 5% wealth tax on people worth $1 billion or more, to be paid in annual installments of 1% over five years. According to Forbes, Steyer is currently worth $2.4 billion.
"Well, David, I think people like me who are billionaires should pay more taxes," Steyer said.
"I'm the billionaire who wants to tax people like me more," Steyer added. "I'm the billionaire who's willing to stand up to the monopolies and the people who are ripping off Californians. I've done it for 15 years and I'll keep doing it."
That message has been echoed in one of Steyer's campaign ads, in which he asserts that "it's time for billionaires like me and big corporations to buy into the future of California and be willing to pay more."
Steyer continues:
A lot of people in California are acting as if we have a zero-sum game and they're defending their wealth and they're trying to make sure that they minimize their taxes. I am not scared about paying more money. Working Californians are being priced out of this state. It is not okay. We are creating more than enough money in this state for us all to succeed together without anybody suffering... [I] think that everybody who succeeded in this state owes a huge debt to the people who built this state and the working people who make this state run and work their asses off.
"We need to change our tax system," Steyer concludes in the ad. "We need more revenue. We need to be fair and I pledge to do all of those things. This is not rocket science."
In addition to his stance on taxation, Steyer has gained progressive support by funding climate initiatives, opposing the Trump administration's deadly anti-immigrant crackdown, and pouring more than $120 million into efforts to impeach President Donald Trump and in support of Proposition 50, the successful state ballot measure to redraw the state's congressional map in retaliation for Trump-backed Republican gerrymandering in Texas. He is also a prolific philanthropist.
On the flip side, the fact that Steyer is a hedge fund billionaire whose heavily self-funded campaign is the opposite of grassroots continues to fuel skepticism among progressives, many of whom view the mere existence of billionaires as an abject public policy failure. Steyer also came under fire over the revelation that his portfolio had been invested in private prison stocks decades ago.
Steyer said during his interview with Sirota that he doesn't agree with the assertion that billionaires are a public policy failure.
"I think that phrase obviously goes back to Karl Marx," he said. "And I believe if someone wants to come to California who has an idea to change the world and forms a company around it and it does really well and as a result they make a lot of money, that's fine with me."
With a dearth of progressives to choose from, more and more left-leaning groups and individuals are throwing their support behind Steyer. These include Courage California, Third Act, the California Teachers Association and other labor groups, and state lawmakers including Assemblymen Ash Kalra (D-25) and Alex Lee (D-24).
Some progressives are reluctantly backing Steyer due to the very real possibility of an all-Republican general election under California's open primary—in which the top two vote-getters advance, regardless of party. The "jungle primary" is set for June 2.
The latest weighted polling shows Trump-backed Fox News host Steve Hilton leading the race with 16% support, followed closely by Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco at 14%. Those Republicans are trailed by Steyer (13%) and other Democrats: former California Attorney General Xavier Becerra (13%), former Congresswoman Katie Porter (10%), and San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan—the top choice of numerous Big Tech billionaires—at 5%.
Erstwhile Democratic frontrunner and now former Congressman Eric Swalwell suspended his race for governor and quit Congress earlier this month amid mounting allegations of rape and other sex crimes that he has denied.
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With Help From Platner, Former Top Obama Official Admits 'Forever War Has Been Destroying America From Within'
"We like to frame our wars as virtuous, but they are not," says Ben Rhodes.
Apr 22, 2026
Ben Rhodes, who served deputy national security advisor under former US President Barack Obama from 2009 to 2017, has done a fair number of mea culpas in the years since he left government service. But a New York Times op-ed published Wednesday punctuates with a fresh admission: "We like to frame our wars as virtuous, but they are not."
Rhodes comes to this statement circuitously as he writes about recent time spent with Graham Platner, the US Army and Marine veteran who served tours in both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars as an infantryman who is now running as a Democrat for the US Senate in Maine to unseat Republican Sen. Susan Collins.
Platner, who has recently opened up a double-digit lead against his primary rival, two-time Maine Gov. Janet Mills, has been an outspoken anti-war voice since putting his hat in the ring for elected office and Rhodes, who cut his teeth defending the forever wars during the Obama years, says Democratic Party leaders—and voters wherever they are—would be wise to listen to what he has to say.
"The forever war has been destroying America from within, like an organism that must keep growing to survive, filling us with fear of outsiders and contempt for one another," writes Rhodes.
Most Democrats, observes Rhodes, don't talk about war the way Platner does, and that's not just a feature of his wartime experience compared to those in positions of power or paid to pontificate for think tanks or on the corporate news networks.
After traveling around with Platner on the campaign trail in Maine, Rhodes concludes that "Americans must change their relationship to war itself."
"One reason we have a hard time reckoning with the forever war is that it undermines our own story," he continues. "We like to think of America as a force for good, acting out of enlightened self-interest, our military fighting for freedom around the globe. Is that really what’s been happening?"
In their conversation, Platner explained that "most people get it," suggesting those who live and work in the real world, outside of DC or within media echo chambers, understand the costs of the nation's endless wars. “Do you think this country should spend more on schools and hospitals and less on bombs?" asked Platner rhetorically. "A lot of people are like, yeah, that’s pretty obvious.”
When Platner had his epiphany that the wars he fought in Iraq and Afghanistan were a mistake, Rhodes said he, still working for the White House in those years, was exactly the kind of person the soldier was thinking of when he said that the "people running the war didn’t even seem to know the point of the war," calling it "a self-licking ice cream cone" that could not admit its failures.
"Listening to [Platner] talk, I knew intuitively what he was saying," writes Rhodes. "I would have been one of those people back in 2011, believing that what we were doing was helping Afghans."
For someone so enmeshed in the politics of US war-making and defending the foreign policy of past US governments from criticism, Rhodes confesses the pitfalls of American exceptionalism and where it can lead. And again, he quotes Platner:
We are so broken emotionally when it comes to our politics that we’ve literally created this story that it’s inherent in being a competent political leader to kill civilians. If you’re not willing to do some hard things and drop some bombs, then you’re not up to the task of power. I think it’s the opposite. You’re not up to the task of being in power if you do not think about the cost of violence. If that’s not at the front of your mind, then I don’t think you are morally in the right place to be in positions of power.
Such an argument directly implicates not just past presidents, but certainly US President Donald Trump, currently waging a new war of choice against Iran, as well as his Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who openly celebrates the killing prowess ("lethality") of the US military while characterizing the laws of war as impediments.
Contextualizing why he has come to conclude that contemporary US wars lack virtue, Rhodes writes that the conflicts we have been waging abroad for most of this century have also done tremendous and lasting damage here at home. "They resemble," writes Rhodes, "a declining empire sowing chaos along its periphery as a matter of strategy: Economic and political elites profit while the Americans who fight suffer along with the places they attack."
As Platner told Rhodes, such admissions must be spoken about publicly in order for them to lead to meaningful change in the country. And voices like Platner's, argues Rhodes, must be listened to because the "visceral and moral reckoning he advocates is the only way to truly dismantle the forever war, change our priorities and detoxify our country."
"To save ourselves, we must stop this cycle of violence," Rhodes concludes. "We must find meaning not in our capacity to kill or control others, but in each other."
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Trump Promised 'Cleanest Air.' Report Shows Half of All US Children Live Amid Dangerous Pollution
The head of the American Lung Association said President Donald Trump's Environmental Protection Agency has "rolled back rules that would have protected kids from power plant and vehicle pollution."
Apr 22, 2026
Close to half of the children in the United States—more than 33 million kids—live in counties with dangerously high levels of toxic air pollution, according to the American Lung Association's annual air quality report out Wednesday.
The 27th iteration of the ALA's report examines "two of the most widespread and dangerous air pollutants"—fine particles and ground-level ozone, commonly known as smog—and assigns grades to counties and cities based on pollution levels, both daily and annually. In what the report describes as a "grim indication of the deterioration of air quality nationwide," just one city—Bangor, Maine—was "ranked on all three cleanest-cities lists by earning an 'A' for ozone and short-term particle pollution and being listed among the 25 cities with the lowest year-round particle levels."
"Last year, there were two (the other metro area being San Juan-Bayamón, Puerto Rico)," the report notes. "Past reports have been graced by as many as half a dozen metro areas meeting these criteria."
The report, which uses air quality data collected between 2022 and 2024, estimated that 46% of all children in the US live in counties that received a failing grade on at least one measure of air pollution analyzed by the ALA. More than 7 million children—10% of all kids in the country—live in an area with failing grades for all three of the ALA's measures.
Harold Wimmer, president and CEO of the ALA, said at a time when the federal government should be strengthening air quality standards, President Donald Trump's Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) "is doing the opposite," despite Trump's campaign promise to deliver "the cleanest air."
"In the last year, EPA has weakened enforcement and rolled back rules that would have protected kids from power plant and vehicle pollution," said Wimmer. "Children need clean air to grow and play, and communities need clean air to thrive. Leaders at every level must act to improve and protect America’s air quality."
For the seventh consecutive year, Bakersfield, California ranked as the US metropolitan area with the worse year-round particle pollution. Fairbanks, Alaska ranked as the city with the worse short-term particle pollution, while Los Angeles topped the list of cities with the worst ozone pollution.
The Trump administration has gleefully taken an ax to climate regulations—including air pollution standards—and the legal finding underpinning environmental rules while aggressively promoting the oil, gas, and coal industries, threatening decades of progress toward cleaner air and water.
The Guardian noted Wednesday that "since returning to office last year, the Trump administration has initiated at least 70 actions to roll back environmental and climate protections. Among them is the loosening of regulations on power plants that limit mercury and other hazardous air toxins."
"Other rollbacks include overturning limits on major air pollution sources, disbanding EPA advisory committees on air quality, and ending the practice of estimating the monetary value of lives saved by limiting fine particulate matter and ozone while still calculating costs to companies," the outlet added.
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