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For Immediate Release
March, 12 2025, 04:56pm EDT
Contact:
Christine Ho, christine.ho@sierraclub.org
Donald Trump’s ‘Historic’ Wholesale Attack on the American People
Today, Donald Trump’s EPA announced 31 deadly and dangerous actions the agency is taking, including attacking safeguards to limit pollution from power plants and vehicles, methane and other deadly emissions from oil and gas sources, Mercury and Air Toxics standards, the Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program, wastewater regulations at coal plants, and many other critical protections for the environment and public health.
The standards that the EPA seeks to undermine are based on a strong scientific record and serve a number of public interests, including lowering the amount of deadly toxins fossil fuel-fired plants are allowed to release into the air and water, reducing pollution at steel and aluminum mills, and requiring fossil fuel companies to control pollution, like soot, ozone, and toxic and hazardous air pollutants at power plants.
If these rules are withdrawn, the American public will see devastating health impacts. EPA estimated that just one of the rules would prevent 4,500 premature deaths and save $46 billion in health costs by 2032. The health toll and cost of rescinding all the rules listed in the EPA’s announcement would be vastly higher.
In response, Sierra Club Executive Director Ben Jealous issued the following statement:
“Donald Trump’s actions will cause thousands of Americans to die each year. It will send thousands of children to the hospital and force even more to miss school. It will pollute the air and water in communities across the country. And it will cause our energy bills to go up even more than they already are because of his disastrous policies. But as they put all of us at risk, Trump and his administration are celebrating because it will help corporate polluters pad their profit margin.
“The American people should be furious. The EPA exists to protect us from serious pollution that endangers our lives and wellbeing, but Trump and Lee Zeldin are attempting to turn it into corporate polluters’ best friend.
“Make no mistake about it: we will fight these outrageous rollbacks tooth and nail, and we will use all resources at our disposal to continue protecting the health and safety of all Americans.”
The Sierra Club is the most enduring and influential grassroots environmental organization in the United States. We amplify the power of our 3.8 million members and supporters to defend everyone's right to a healthy world.
(415) 977-5500LATEST NEWS
DNC Sues Trump Admin Over 'Threats to Free and Fair Elections' in 2026 Midterms
DNC Chairman Ken Martin accused Trump of trying to "bully and cheat his way through a midterm election that he knows Republicans will lose."
Mar 10, 2026
The Democratic National Committee is suing the Trump administration and alleging that it is threatening the integrity of the 2026 midterm elections.
In a lawsuit filed on Tuesday in the US District Court for the District of Columbia, the DNC revealed that the Trump administration hasn't complied with any of the 11 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests the Democratic committee made last year regarding any plans for the "potential deployment of federal agents and troops to polling places, drop boxes, and election offices."
The complaint argued that these FOIA requests were necessary given the "repeat threats to free and fair elections from President Trump and his administration," and accused the administration of violating the law by refusing to fulfill them.
The lawsuit also provided extensive documentation of President Donald Trump and other administration officials making threats and taking actions to potentially disrupt voting in the 2026 elections, including Trump in January saying he regretted not ordering the National Guard to seize voting machines in the wake of the 2020 presidential election; White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt subsequently saying that the administration "can't guarantee" federal law enforcement won't be deployed to polling places; and the FBI seizure of 2020 election ballots in Fulton County, Georgia.
The DNC said the court must now enforce FOIA requirements "to ensure that the American people obtain timely knowledge of potential threats to free and fair elections and to enable the DNC to take appropriate action to ensure voting rights are protected."
DNC Chairman Ken Martin accused Trump of trying to "bully and cheat his way through a midterm election that he knows Republicans will lose," then added that "we won’t let him."
"The DNC will stand on the side of voters," continued Martin, "and use every tool in our arsenal to stop voter suppression and intimidation before it can even begin."
The DNC lawsuit follows reporting from Politico in February revealing that Democratic state attorneys general have been conducting "war games" aimed at combating Trump administration moves to tamper with the 2026 elections.
Among the many possibilities that the AGs are preparing for are that the Trump administration orders the seizure of ballots and voting machines, defunds the post office to block the delivery of mail-in ballots, and sends federal immigration enforcement officials or even the US military to patrol polling places.
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While Spending Billions on Iran War, Trump Quietly Moves to Boot Millions More Off Food Aid
"Americans can't afford their groceries, they can't afford their medicine, they can't afford the cost of living, and yet we're dropping a billion dollars of bombs, it seems, every day in Iran," said one Senate Democrat.
Mar 10, 2026
The Trump administration is quietly pursuing a regulatory change that would strip federal nutrition assistance from an estimated 6 million low-income Americans—including nearly two million children—as it spends billions on an illegal, open-ended war on Iran that has killed more than a thousand people and plunged the global economy into chaos.
The change sought by the US Department of Agriculture would curb broad-based categorical eligibility in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Broad-based categorical eligibility allows states to automatically qualify residents for SNAP if they are already enrolled in other aid programs, such as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, thus reducing administrative hurdles and costs.
The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) estimated in a blog post published late last month—the day before President Donald Trump announced the joint US-Israeli assault on Iran—that gutting broad-based categorical eligibility would likely strip modest federal food aid from around 6 million people, including nearly 2 million children.
"The people losing access to food assistance from SNAP, school meals, and [the Women, Infants, and Children Program] would mainly be working families, older adults, and people with disabilities," the think tank noted. "In other words, the change would primarily harm groups that federal and state policymakers from across the political spectrum have long sought to help: people who work but are living near poverty; older adults and people with disabilities with low, fixed incomes; and people trying to build modest savings in order to become more economically independent."
The Congressional Budget Office has projected that restricting broad-based categorical eligibility would result in roughly $11 billion in savings over a 10-year period—or just over $1 billion a year.
The Trump administration is currently spending around $1 billion per day in US taxpayer money waging war on Iran—a price tag that would be enough to cover the daily costs of SNAP benefits for the more than 40 million Americans on the program.
Over just the first two days of the military onslaught, the Pentagon "burned through $5.6 billion worth of munitions," according to figures reported late Monday by the Washington Post.
"Americans can't afford their groceries, they can't afford their medicine, they can't afford the cost of living, and yet we're dropping a billion dollars of bombs, it seems, every day in Iran," US Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) said in a CNN appearance on Monday.
During Trump's first White House term, his administration proposed a rule that would have curtailed states' option to use broad-based categorical eligibility for SNAP, but the rule was never finalized and the Biden administration later rescinded it.
The Trump Agriculture Department revived the effort late last year, submitting a rule purportedly aimed at ensuring that "categorical eligibility is extended only to households that have sufficiently demonstrated eligibility."
"The end result," CBPP's Katie Bergh recently warned, "will be more hunger and hardship."
The Trump administration's new push comes months after the president signed into law the largest SNAP cuts in US history—around $187 billion over the next decade.
Trump bragged about the cuts during his State of the Union address last month, declaring that his administration has "lifted 2.4 million Americans" off SNAP—a euphemistic description of kicking people off the critical anti-poverty program.
Last week, Republicans on the House Agriculture Committee advanced a farm bill that would do nothing to mitigate the reverberating impacts of the Trump-GOP SNAP cuts.
"Instead of prioritizing the health and well-being of tens of millions of Americans, the committee failed to reverse course and continued down a path that will strip food from the tables of children, veterans, caregivers, older adults, and people experiencing homelessness," said Crystal FitzSimons, president of the Food Research & Action Center.
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In Latest Blow to Trump's Mass Deportation Plan, Judge Blocks Overhaul of Immigration Appeals
"Without this decision, countless immigrants with valid claims would have been hurriedly deported to dangerous conditions, forsaking due process for efficiency," said an immigrant rights advocate who sued the federal government.
Mar 10, 2026
Immigrant rights advocates on Monday hailed a federal judge's ruling that blocked significant portions of President Donald Trump's proposed policy changes regarding the Board of Immigration Appeals, which had been scheduled to go into effect this week and would have "eviscerated noncitizens’ right to appeal decisions in their immigration cases," according to rights groups.
In the US District Court for the District of Columbia, Judge Randolph Moss issued a late-night order on Sunday calling Trump's rule titled “Appellate Procedures for the Board of Immigration Appeals,” which was proposed last month, “a fast-track mechanism for disposing of the vast majority” of immigration court appeals.
The proposed rule would have reduced the time immigrants have to file appeals from 30 days to just 10 days; required summary dismissal of appeals unless a majority of the Board of Immigration Appeals' (BIA) 15 permanent members voted to accept the case for review within 10 days; and permitted case dismissals before records were transmitted to the board.
Moss said the administration had violated the legal requirement for the government to notify the public of its proposed changes to a federal rule and provide an opportunity for public comment. The Trump administration could potentially try again to change the immigration appeals process.
Laura St. John, legal director for the Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project, said the ruling "keeps in place a basic, yet critical, protection for immigrants facing removal: the ability to appeal their case."
"Allowing the Trump administration’s reckless proposal to block immigrants from a fair opportunity for review of bad decisions would have resulted in people being returned to danger and families unjustly separated, all to serve a racist mass deportation agenda."
"As the administration continues to try to deport as many people as they can quickly and often without a fair day in court, it is critical for everyone to have the opportunity to file an appeal," said St. John. "Without this decision, countless immigrants with valid claims would have been hurriedly deported to dangerous conditions, forsaking due process for efficiency.”
The Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project is one of several groups that sued the administration over the proposed rule, with Democracy Forward, the American Immigration Council, and the National Immigrant Justice Center representing the plaintiffs.
St. John argued in court that it can take at least a week for advocacy groups to prepare materials and file an appeal to the BIA after it has determined a noncitizen can be deported. Forcing immigrants and their legal teams to file an appeal within 10 days would leave many without any "meaningful review" of their cases, St. John said.
While the Executive Office for Immigration Review claimed the new policy would swiftly reduce the backlog of cases before the BIA, Moss wrote in his opinion, the plaintiffs argued that the provisions would "operate in combination to deprive almost all affected parties of the administrative appellate review 'that they were previously entitled to.'"
Erez Reuveni, senior counsel at Democracy Forward, said the decision "makes it clear that the Trump-Vance administration cannot play games with the immigration appeals system to eliminate basic due process and fast-track deportations."
Reuveni is a former Department of Justice lawyer who revealed in a whistleblower complaint last year that DOJ staffers had been advised by the Trump administration to ignore court orders in order to swiftly carry out Trump's mass deportation agenda.
“Once again, no matter how hard this administration tries to hide its cruel and unlawful actions behind an ‘immigration policy,’ a federal court has made clear that the government must follow the law and cannot strip people of their basic rights," he said. "We will continue representing our plaintiffs in court to defend their rights and hold this administration accountable.”
The Department of Homeland Security has not regularly disclosed the number of people it is deporting under the Trump administration; internal Immigration and Customs Enforcement data showed last year that more than 10,000 people were being deported per month.
Moss' ruling came less than a month after US District Judge Sunshine Sykes in the Central District of California threw out a BIA decision that endorsed the administration's policy of denying bond hearings to immigrants with no criminal records who have been detained. A federal appeals court issued a temporary pause on that ruling last Friday after the White House appealed.
Mary Georgevich, a senior litigation attorney at the National Immigrant Justice Center, said Moss' ruling was "an important win in the face of an administration that is intent on dismantling our immigration system at any cost, including betraying our country’s shared values of the importance of due process and access to counsel."
"Allowing the Trump administration’s reckless proposal to block immigrants from a fair opportunity for review of bad decisions would have resulted in people being returned to danger and families unjustly separated," she said, "all to serve a racist mass deportation agenda."
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