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Trump EPA Takes 'Yet Another Sledgehammer' to Clean Water Act
"This proposal declares open season on the nation's waterways," one critic charged.
Sep 04, 2026
President Donald Trump's administration sparked fresh fury on Friday when it proposed a supplemental rule to further gut Clean Water Act protections for streams and wetlands in the wake of a "catastrophic" US Supreme Court ruling three years ago.
The supplemental proposal from the Department of the Army and Environmental Protection Agency builds on their widely criticized proposed rule from November for defining "waters of the United States" (WOTUS)—both of which go further than the high court did with its 2023 decision in Sackett v. EPA.
While the American Petroleum Institute and some Republicans in Congress joined Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil Works Adam Telle and EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin in promoting the new proposal, environmental and public health advocates sounded the alarm.
"What the Supreme Court did in its Sackett decision was an inexcusable assault on clean water," Jon Devine, director of freshwater ecosystems at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said in a Friday statement. "Communities and wildlife will pay the price until Congress fixes it. The Trump administration's answer has been to make a bad situation worse."
"This proposal declares open season on the nation's waterways. It denies federal protection to virtually all wetlands and more than three-quarters of our streams, endangering drinking water supplies and flood-prone communities—and the agencies admit it themselves," he noted. "The proposal would virtually eliminate protection for freshwater wetlands. Their own analysis says most streams would lose protection, with the West hit hardest."
Food & Water Watch legal director Tarah Heinzen declared that "Trump is taking yet another sledgehammer to our bedrock Clean Water Act, shamelessly doubling down on his initial terrible proposal to strip protections from countless streams and wetlands."
"Make no mistake: This unlawful proposal gives bad actors the green light to fill, drain, and poison sensitive waterways from coast to coast," she warned. "The result will be dirtier water for everyone. The administration must reverse course on this dangerous proposal."
Gary Belan, senior director of American Rivers' Clean Water Program, stressed that "our nation's water resources are precious and increasingly at risk. This is not the moment to be jeopardizing the nation's water security by narrowing the safeguards of the Clean Water Act."
The public comment period for the initial proposal has closed but, as Belan noted, the publication of the supplemental rule in the Federal Register kicks off a new 30-day period. He said that "while we appreciate EPA's effort to seek more public comment, the proposed changes will have consequences that will impact communities across the nation if finalized."
"The proposed definitions do not reflect the established science on how rivers function and would significantly reduce the scope of the Clean Water Act," he continued. "When headwater and intermittent streams and wetlands lose protection, downstream flooding worsens, the costs of drinking water treatment rises, and water supplies become less reliable."
Jim Murphy, the National Wildlife Federation’s associate vice president for legal advocacy, pointed out that "this is now the fifth effort to define the scope of the waters protected by the Clean Water Act in the past decade. We need Congress' help to get off this merry-go-round at a place that protects our waters, our wildlife, and our way of life."
"The administration is clearly struggling to craft a rule that will hold up in court while satisfying their donors' desire to effectively scrap these protections wherever possible," he added. "One thing is clear: If we don’t protect our streams and wetlands, the cost of dirtier drinking water and increased flooding will flow downstream to households at a time when most Americans are living paycheck to paycheck."
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Nearly 100 Groups Urge Congress to Reject GOP-Led Attacks on Clean Air Protections
If lawmakers pass four Congressional Review Act resolutions, the coalition warns, "families will experience consequences," from further strained household budgets to breathing toxic air.
Aug 24, 2026
Dozens of organizations focused on consumer advocacy, the environment, health, science, and more came together on Monday for a letter urging the Republican-controlled US Congress to vote down four resolutions attacking clean air protections.
Signed by 95 groups, including the Center for Biological Diversity, Earthjustice Action, Physicians for Social Responsibility, Progressives for Democracy in America, Public Citizen, and Sierra Club, the letter takes aim at four resolutions recently introduced by Republicans under the Congressional Review Act (CRA).
The CRA allows lawmakers to overturn rules and regulations issued by federal agencies—and has already been used by Big Oil-backed President Donald Trump and his allies in Congress to roll back policies aimed at limiting pollution.
After Trump returned to power last year, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) transmitted to Congress three emission waivers that the Biden administration granted to California, which led to CRA resolutions that lawmakers passed and the president signed—measures condemned at the time as his "latest betrayal of democracy" and a gift to polluters.
This past June, the Trump EPA announced that it was submitting four more to Congress, resulting in new resolutions that, as the letter notes, "seek to overturn four long-standing Clean Air Act preemption waivers that states rely on to protect the health and safety of their residents (HJRes. 202/SJRes 206, HJRes. 205/SJRes. 207, HJRes. 211/SJRes. 208, HJRes. 214/SJRes. 205)."
As the letter details, these resolutions target waivers for:
- Greenhouse gas (GHG) emission standards for passenger cars, light-duty trucks, and medium-duty vehicles that the auto industry has already been complying with since 2009;
- Smog-forming pollutant and GHG emissions limits for light-duty vehicles that the auto industry has already been complying with since 2015 (Advanced Clean Cars I (ACC I) program);
- The 2022 reinstatement of the 2013 ACC I waiver (after the EPA unlawfully purported to withdraw it in 2019); and
- The Small Off-Road Engine (SORE) amendments, which set exhaust standards for garden equipment and other polluting small engines in California (and cannot be adopted by other states).
These waivers "are essential for saving families money and protecting air quality," and "given the affordability crisis facing millions of people today, it would be a disastrous waste of time and resources to attempt to nullify" them, the letter argues. "Vehicles and off-road engines currently in use already meet the standards that Congress is attacking—and these standards mean that our cars, trucks, and off-road engines cost less at the gas pump and that our air is cleaner. There's nothing to fix."
While votes for the resolutions are not yet planned, the coalition warned that "if Congress attempts to improperly block the implementation of these long-established state standards, families will experience consequences," from breathing toxic air to further straining household budgets as "gas prices are skyrocketing" thanks to Trump's illegal war on Iran.
Already, "more than 152 million people live in counties with unhealthy levels of ozone or particulate pollution," the groups noted, citing the American Lung Association (ALA). "Smogforming pollution from combustion cars, trucks, lawn mowers, and leaf blowers can worsen asthma, decrease lung function, and lead to premature death, particularly in children and the elderly."
"Fine particulate matter (PM2.5) from transportation is singlehandedly responsible for up to 20,000 premature deaths each year," they continued. "All of these burdens disproportionately affect communities of color and low-income communities who are more likely to live near major trucking routes and transportation hubs."
Pointing to the ALA's 2025 and 2026 reports that "document a stark reversal forcing more people to live in counties graded 'F' for ozone pollution," the letter stresses that "the waivers are more essential than ever. These improper CRA resolutions threaten the ability of states to take action to protect their residents from harmful air pollution and its negative public health impacts."
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Green Groups Sue Trump EPA for Approving Toxic Semiconductor Chemicals Amid AI Data Center Boom
“The rush to build more and more data centers is causing harm far beyond the data centers themselves."
Aug 14, 2026
A trio of green groups on Friday sued the US Environmental Protection Agency over its approval of two new chemicals for semiconductor manufacturing, arguing that the EPA allowed potentially dangerous substances to be sold despite acknowledging significant gaps in its understanding of their health risks.
CHIPS Communities United and the Sierra Club, represented by Earthjustice, filed suit in the US Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit in San Francisco challenging the approvals. The groups contend that the EPA violated the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) by permitting the chemicals’ use without adequately assessing their risks to employees in semiconductor plants and the communities in which they are located.
According to Earthjustice, the EPA identified potential hazards including cancer, neurological damage, and even sudden death, but also acknowledged that it lacked sufficient information to determine the full extent of those risks. The names of the chemicals are redacted in the complaint—in which they are identified by their EPA premanufacture notice numbers, P-26-0029 and P-26-0045—because the agency has designated their identities as confidential business information.
“The Trump administration is rushing dangerous chemicals to market without the review or the protection that the law requires,” Earthjustice senior attorney Jonathan Kalmuss-Katz said in a statement announcing the lawsuit. “Here, EPA admits that it has not evaluated the full extent of these chemicals’ health risks, yet it is still sending them into communities across the country and leaving the public to discover their effects one doctor’s visit at a time.”
CHIPS Communities United coalition director Judith Barish said: “Neighbors and workers are exposed to toxic chemicals in semiconductor factories. Over decades, workers in chip [factories] have been harmed by workplace exposure and residents of nearby communities have been impacted by hazardous air or water that is contaminated by these chemicals."
"We call on the EPA to stop approving chemicals that can harm public health without understanding the risks," Barish added.
As Earthjustice noted:
Semiconductor manufacturing is a major ongoing source of [per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances], a large class of toxic “forever chemicals,” along with other industrial manufacturing sources. PFAS don’t easily break down and can persist in our bodies and the environment for decades or more. Semiconductors are also foundational hardware for artificial intelligence (AI) data centers, affecting many communities in addition to those surrounding the massive polluting chip factories.
The groups' lawsuit comes over a month after the EPA under President Donald Trump—who campaigned on what critics say was a largely empty promise to "make America healthy again"—and agency Administrator Lee Zeldin approved a fifth “forever chemical” pesticide pushed by industry lobbyists.
"EPA’s approval of these unstudied chemicals is just the latest example of the Trump EPA refusing to follow the legal risk assessment processes under TSCA and prioritizing industry profits over public health," Earthjustice said on Friday. "Last year, the agency proposed shifts to how it conducts risk evaluations for chemicals already in use and on the market that would let it ignore the real-world risks posed by toxic chemicals."
Harmful chemicals associated with data center cooling, fire suppression, and production of semiconductors and other electronic components include refrigerants such as Freon and Opteon, Teflon coatings for cable insulation, Krytox for pumps and robotics, and Viton for sealing.
Additionally, as the Natural Resources Defense Council explained, data center cooling systems "can consume vast quantities of water and pollute large quantities of water, depending on the type of cooling system used. For example, evaporative cooling consumes large quantities of water while some immersion cooling techniques rely on harmful chemicals such as PFAS."
While much critical attention on the lack of guardrails on unchecked AI development has focused on the risks of the technology itself and its economic implications—which experts say includes the shorter-term danger of mass unemployment and the long-term threat that superintelligent machines could one day subjugate or even wipe out humanity—the green groups are highlighting environmental and health hazards amid the worsening climate emergency.
"The rush to build more and more data centers is causing harm far beyond the data centers themselves," Jane Williams, chair of the Grassroots Network National Clean Air Team at Sierra Club, said Friday.
“From the plants where toxic chemicals are used to make semiconductors, to the roads these chemicals are transported on, and finally to the incinerators where they are disposed, EPA’s approval of these dangerously unstudied chemicals places the public at risk," Williams added. "These chemicals are suspected to be persistent bioaccumulative toxins, a category of chemicals that contaminate breast milk, cord blood, and the next generation. This action is an assault on the future.”
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'This Is the PFAS Presidency': Trump EPA Approves Another Forever Chemical Pesticide
"The Trump administration's EPA is once again showing its disdain for Americans' health and the natural world."
Jul 01, 2026
Environmental and public health advocates on Wednesday ripped the US Environmental Protection Agency's fifth approval of a "forever chemical" pesticide during the current term of President Donald Trump, who campaigned on a promise to "Make America Healthy Again."
Despite that pledge, Trump's second administration—much like his first—has served the pesticide industry in various ways, including by putting out a MAHA report that echoes industry talking points, installing a former industry lobbyist in a key EPA post, backing Bayer-owned Monsanto over cancer patients at the US Supreme Court, and issuing an executive order that mandates the production of glyphosate.
Under Trump, the EPA has also approved or reapproved various controversial pesticides, from atrazine and dicamba to trifludimoxazin, which was approved late Tuesday. Like diflufenican and epyrifenacil, which were authorized by the EPA earlier Tuesday, as well as cyclobutrifluram and isocycloseram, which got a green light from the agency last November, trifludimoxazin is what some scientists and campaigners call a forever chemical pesticide.
Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS)—which have been used in not only pesticides but also fabrics, firefighting foam, nonstick cookware, and other household products—are widely known as forever chemicals because they don't break down naturally. They're also linked to a range of health issues, including various cancers.
"This is the PFAS presidency brought to you by Donald Trump and EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin," Nathan Donley, environmental health science director at the Center for Biological Diversity, declared Wednesday.
As with his Tuesday critique of the Trump EPA approving diflufenican and epyrifenacil, Donley pointed to the Supreme Court's recent ruling in favor of Trump-backed Bayer, rather than the thousands of Americans who argue that Monsanto's glyphosate-based weedkiller Roundup caused their cancer.
"Waiting to open the floodgates on new pesticide approvals until after the Supreme Court granted immunity to pesticide companies takes a special kind of callousness," he said.
Bill Freese, science director at Center for Food Safety (CFS), similarly said Wednesday that "with yesterday's pesticide approvals, the Trump administration's EPA is once again showing its disdain for Americans' health and the natural world."
"The EPA's pesticide division is seemingly no longer able to recognize evidence that a pesticide causes cancer, even when it's the pesticide company's own studies that show it," he continued. "And as per usual, EPA dismisses out of hand incriminating independent studies by scientists not affiliated with the pesticide industry."
In addition to the PFAS pesticides, the EPA is under fire this week for approving new uses for chlormequat, a non-PFAS pesticide tied to reproductive issues, and the fungicide fluoxapiprolin.
CFS co-executive director Sylvia Wu pointed out that the agency dismissed studies showing that fluoxapiprolin and epyrifenacil both produce tumors in laboratory rodents and classified both as "not likely to be carcinogenic to humans."
"The EPA's illegitimate rejection of the evidence that these two pesticides cause cancer is very similar to the tricks it pulled in denying glyphosate could cause cancer," Wu said. "These blatant violations of the agency's own cancer guidelines are unacceptable."
As for chlormequat, Freese said that "EPA should never have approved this endocrine-disrupting pesticide, particularly since its persistence and potential for widespread use on wheat and other widely consumed grains will mean universal exposure."
Already, "chlormequat is found in the urine of 90% of Americans, thought to come mostly from residues on imported foods where the pesticide has been used," the Center for Biological Diversity noted Wednesday. Like Freese, the group warned that "approval of its use on US wheat and oats ensures that exposure to the US population will increase dramatically."
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'A National Outrage': Days After Monsanto Ruling, Trump EPA Approves More Forever Chemical Pesticides
Ripping "Trump's reckless push to ignore science and embrace these extremely harmful, long-lasting pesticides," one critic said his legacy will be the millions "his shortsighted policies will sicken and prematurely kill."
Jun 30, 2026
The US Environmental Protection Agency on Tuesday continued its betrayal of President Donald Trump's campaign promise to "Make America Healthy Again," approving the use of multiple "forever chemical" pesticides on crops despite public health concerns.
Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are called forever chemicals because they don't naturally break down—instead accumulating in human and animal bodies as well as the environment. They have been used in everything from fabrics for clothing and furniture to firefighting foam to nonstick cookware, and are tied to various health problems, including increased risk of some cancers.
The Trump EPA on Tuesday finalized its approval of using two PFAS pesticides, diflufenican and epyrifenacil, on corn and soybeans, the two most widely grown crops in the United States.
The agency also expanded its allowances for another previously approved forever chemical pesticide, bifenthrin, and greenlighted the first food use of chlormequat, a non-PFAS pesticide tied to reproductive issues.
"While the Biden administration had approved one PFAS pesticide in the prior four years, this is the third and fourth approval of a PFAS pesticide under Trump in just his second year in office," the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) noted in a Tuesday statement. "The previous two PFAS pesticide approvals were cyclobutrifluram and isocycloseram."
As the center detailed:
The EPA has stated in press materials that these new fluorinated pesticides are not PFAS. That assertion is based on the fact that they do not meet the chemicals office's unilateral regulatory PFAS definition. But the new pesticides do meet the much more widely accepted PFAS definition that was developed transparently by dozens of scientists around the world. That definition has subsequently been endorsed by more than 150 leading PFAS researchers, is used by nearly every US state for regulating PFAS, and specifically was written into past versions of the National Defense Authorization Act.
Using the scientific definition of a PFAS that is widely accepted in this country and around the world, these pesticides are PFAS.
The EPA had even initially acknowledged that these pesticides met the more broadly accepted PFAS definition on its fluorinated pesticides webpage. Yet three weeks after creating the webpage, it removed any mention of the conflicting definition, instead portraying the agency’s unilateral definition as the only PFAS definition.
Under the Freedom of Information Act, CBD obtained documents showing that those website revisions were overseen by EPA Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention's assistant administrator, Douglas Troutman, and Kyle Kunkler—a former American Soybean Association (ASA) lobbyist controversially installed as the office's deputy assistant administrator for pesticides—and reviewed by agency Administrator Lee Zeldin.
While ASA president and Ohio soybean farmer Scott Metzger welcomed the Tuesday approvals, saying that "we appreciate EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin and the agency" for advancing the registrations, Nathan Donley, CBD's environmental health science director, was deeply critical and tied the developments to the Trump administration's other actions serving the pesticide industry.
"It's a national outrage that Trump's EPA is expanding use of dangerous, cancer-linked PFAS pesticides just days after the Supreme Court limited the American people's right to sue pesticide companies," said Donley, referring to last week's ruling in favor of Monsanto and against thousands of people who argue that its glyphosate-based weedkiller Roundup caused their cancer.
In addition to the Trump administration backing Bayer—which bought Monsanto in 2018—in the case before the high court, the president in February issued an executive order mandating the production of glyphosate. Since returning to office last year, Trump has also faced criticism for EPA approvals of other pesticides, from atrazine to dicamba, and for his administration's MAHA report that echoes industry talking points.
Donley declared Tuesday that "Trump's reckless push to ignore science and embrace these extremely harmful, long-lasting pesticides ensures his legacy won't be the many monuments he's built to himself, but the many millions of people his shortsighted policies will sicken and prematurely kill."
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‘Profits Over Safety’: Chemical Disasters Under Trump Pile Up as More Safety Cuts Loom
"Instead of protecting workers and families from death, injury, and illness, Trump’s EPA is putting communities at greater risk of harm," said the Coalition to Prevent Chemical Disasters.
Jun 01, 2026
Two recent high-profile chemical plant disasters are putting a spotlight on the Trump administration's aggressive deregulation of the industry, with even more cuts to chemical safety regulations expected in the coming months.
The disasters—one at a paper mill in Washington state that killed 11 people and the other in an aerospace plastics facility in California that forced tens of thousands of people to evacuate their homes—came after months of warnings from experts and labor unions about the impact of the administration's deregulatory agenda.
In late March, for instance, members of United Steelworkers (USW) rallied in Washington, DC to protest against a US Environmental Protection Agency plan to scrap regulations enacted under former President Joe Biden, which included "new safeguards such as identifying safer technologies and chemical alternatives, requiring implementation of safeguard measures in certain cases, more thorough incident investigations, and third-party auditing."
USW Local 13-228 process safety specialist Phil Stagg at the time warned that scrapping the rule would put "profits over safety" by prioritizing cost cutting over worker safety.
Following last week's twin disasters, the Coalition to Prevent Chemical Disasters also pointed to plans to weaken Biden-era safety regulations as a grave mistake that will put American workers at greater risk.
"The fatal and shocking incidents communities have faced in recent days demonstrate the urgent need to implement and build on existing regulatory safeguards so communities near chemical facilities are protected from chemical disasters," the group said. "But, instead of protecting workers and families from death, injury, and illness, Trump’s EPA is putting communities at greater risk of harm by weakening the nation’s primary defense against chemical facility incidents."
The administration has also been targeting the Chemical Safety Board (CSB), an independent federal watchdog charged with investigating the root causes of industrial chemical accidents.
As The New York Times reported last month, Trump's proposed budget all but eliminates the CSB by cutting its funding down to $0 while arguing that the watchdog merely duplicates work already done by the EPA.
Rep. Marie Glusenkamp Perez (D-Wash.) said in a Sunday social media post that the CSB did essential work in preventing future accidents, and she vowed to fight the administration's plans to zero out its budget.
"I’ll be making it my priority ensuring [CSB] has the resources they need for a through, unbiased investigation," Perez said. "They also have three vacancies currently on that board of directors, and my hope is that we're able to work with the administration to ensure that people with real trades experience are appointed to that board."
The horrifying loss of life in Longview last week demands a thorough impartial investigation conducted by the independent watchdog Chemical Safety Board.
Unfortunately the presidents proposed budget has zeroed out the CSB budget.
Next week, I’ll be making it my priority to… pic.twitter.com/3SqbDSASWJ
— Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (@RepMGP) May 31, 2026
Jordan Barab, a former deputy assistant secretary at the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), explained in an interview published by Mountain State Spotlight last week that CSB produces invaluable work about chemical disasters' root causes, whereas the EPA's work focuses on whether disasters were caused by violating federal regulations.
In particular, Barab noted that CSB can "look at other problems, other causes that aren’t necessarily covered by regulations or standards," and added that "a lot of the ways the industry has modernized to improve safety are based on recommendations that came out of the CSB."
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Ocasio-Cortez Corners EPA Administrator on Water Quality Near Data Centers
Ocasio-Cortez recently met with families in Morgan County, Georgia who said a nearby Meta data center had degraded their local wells and "now rely on bottled water to drink and prepare meals."
May 21, 2026
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Wednesday confronted a Trump Environmental Protection Agency official about the impact of artificial intelligence data centers on Americans' drinking water.
During a hearing held by the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) grilled EPA Assistant Administrator for Water Jessica Kramer about whether the Trump administration had looked into complaints from communities across the US about nearby data centers causing a decline in water quality.
Kramer indicated that she was aware of the complaints being made about data centers' water usage, but said she hadn't heard anything about their negative impact on water quality.
At this point, the New York Democrat discussed a recent trip she made to Morgan County, Georgia, where local residents said that their tap water had turned brown since tech giant Meta began building a massive data center campus nearby.
"They are clear-cutting forests and began heavy construction, including blasting," Ocasio-Cortez said. "And families in the area are starting to see not only their water pressure decrease... but their appliances have all stopped working because it is decimating their water quality. They now rely on bottled water to drink and prepare meals, and nearby residents' water bills are expected to increase by 33%."
Ocasio-Cortez then pulled out a jar of brown water that she had taken from a local tap in Morgan County to demonstrate the severe decline in quality.
"The only difference between clear water and this was that data center," she said. "This wasn't just one well. This wasn't just one family's situation. This is what the drinking water now looks like next to that data center."
EXCLUSIVE: @AOC calls for a congressional investigation into the impact of data centers.
We took her to meet residents in a Trump +50 county in Georgia whose well water was polluted by Meta’s massive data center.
“That absolutely merits...national congressional investigation." pic.twitter.com/VS7I38MzAB
— More Perfect Union (@MorePerfectUS) May 18, 2026
Ocasio-Cortez pressed Kramer about whether the Trump EPA was planning to investigate whether data centers were causing mass degradation of water throughout the country.
"As soon as I get back into my office, I will be looking into exactly what you just talked about," replied Kramer. "Because anywhere, whatever type of construction it is, it is a priority to ensure that water quality standards established by EPA are being met. So we'll be looking into that."
Earlier this year, Ocasio-Cortez joined with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) to introduce a bill that would impose a nationwide moratorium on AI data center construction "until strong national safeguards are in place to protect workers, consumers, and communities, defend privacy and civil rights, and ensure these technologies do not harm our environment."
At the same time, Leading the Future—a super political action committee backed by venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale, and other AI heavyweights—is spending at least $100 million in the 2026 midterm elections to elect lawmakers who aim to pass legislation that would set a single set of AI regulations across the US, overriding any restrictions placed on the technology by state governments.
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'Telling the Public to Drink Poison': Trump EPA Targets Drinking Water Limits for 'Forever Chemicals'
"You cannot make America healthy again while allowing toxic PFAS to flow freely from our taps," said the Environmental Working Group's president.
May 18, 2026
President Donald Trump is yet again facing accusations of breaking his campaign promise to "Make America Healthy Again" after the US Environmental Protection Agency on Monday proposed repealing and delaying some landmark limits on "forever chemicals" in drinking water.
Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are commonly called forever chemicals because they persist in the environment, humans, and wildlife for long periods. Despite their links to various health issues, including cancer, they have been used in products such as firefighting foam, food packaging, nonstick pans, and water-resistant fabrics for clothing and furniture.
The Biden administration was praised for its historic steps to reduce PFAS contamination of tap water and urged to go even further. However, the Trump EPA is now pushing to delay those limits for two common contaminants, PFOA and PFOS, and abandon the restrictions for four others: PFBS, PFHxS, and PFNA, and HFPO-DA—also known as GenX.
Announcing the proposed rules on Monday, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin and US Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. claimed not only that the Biden administration failed to follow federal law in implementing its restrictions, but also that the new proposals are part of the president's Make America Healthy Again pledge. They highlighted "innovative" technologies plus funding for states to address PFAS in tap water.
However, campaigners who have long called for stricter PFAS policies excoriated the Trump administration over its two proposed rules—which are set to be published in the Federal Register with a 60-day public comment period, and the subject of an EPA hearing scheduled for July 7.
"Zeldin and Kennedy are trying to sell potions out of the back of a covered wagon. The millions of Americans demanding safe drinking water are not going to fall for their hocus pocus," said Anna Reade, director of PFAS advocacy at the Natural Resources Defense Council, in a statement. "By repealing and delaying PFAS standards, EPA is abandoning communities in desperate need of drinking water protections, especially those who live near polluting industries."
Food and Water Watch's water program director, Mary Grant, declared that "with today's proposals, the Trump administration is telling the public to drink poison. It has once again shown that it represents the interests of billionaire corporate polluters—not the health of people in this country."
"One thing is absolutely clear, we cannot roll back or delay protections against PFAS," she said. "For decades, communities have been sounding the alarm and demanding action on these toxic forever chemicals. Instead of implementing commonsense regulations, Trump's EPA has doubled down on weakening our drinking water protections. Every person deserves and needs clean, safe water, and today's proposed rules are threats to millions of people."
Grant argued that "EPA must not delay or roll back these hard-won limits on toxic PFAS contaminants in drinking water. It must immediately cease these deregulatory actions, stop approving new PFAS chemicals, ban all nonessential uses, hold polluters accountable for clean up, expand protections to regulate the entire class, and ramp up support to ensure that every community has access to safe, affordable water."
Ken Cook, president and co-founder of the Environmental Working Group (EWG), which has tracked PFAS contamination across the United States and publicly released its findings, was similarly outraged by the EPA proposals.
"You cannot make America healthy again while allowing toxic PFAS to flow freely from our taps," Cook said. "The Trump EPA is caving to chemical industry lobbyists and water utility pressure—and in doing so, it is condemning millions of Americans to drink contaminated water for years to come."
"The price of this decision will be paid by ordinary people, in the form of more PFAS-related diseases," he warned.
While Trump's agency leaders claimed Monday that the Biden administration ran afoul of the Safe Drinking Water Act, EWG accused them of violating that same law, given its requirement that any revision to a tap water standard "maintain, or provide for greater, protection of the health of persons."
Melanie Benesh, vice president of government affairs at EWG, said that "this is a deliberate decision to expose American families to chemicals linked to cancer and other serious health harms. Rolling back limits on four PFAS and then allowing water systems to push compliance deadlines to 2031, when contamination is ongoing, is unconscionable."
"The communities least able to protect themselves will pay the highest price," she added. "That is not regulatory reform. It is an environmental injustice."
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Bayer Continues Push to 'Close the Door' on Glyphosate Victims at US Supreme Court
"Bayer is intent on preserving its right to harm at all costs—a pursuit the Trump administration is all too willing to endorse," said a Food and Water Watch campaigner.
Apr 27, 2026
As pesticide critics held a "The People v. Poison" rally outside the US Supreme Court on Monday, the justices heard arguments in Monsanto Company v. Durnell, a case whose conclusion is expected to have sweeping implications for cancer patients trying to take on the Roundup maker—now owned by Bayer—in the country's legal system.
The case stems from John Durnell's 2019 lawsuit against Monsanto in Missouri state court, alleging that exposure to the herbicide Roundup—whose active ingredient is glyphosate—caused his non-Hodgkin lymphoma, a type of blood cancer. A jury found that the company failed to warn users of the risks associated with the weedkiller, and awarded Durnell $1.25 million in damages.
Bayer argued before the Supreme Court on Monday that Durnell—and others like him—should not be able to bring such a suit because the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act preempts state rules for labeling pesticides when the Environmental Protection Agency doesn't require a cancer warning. Bayer and the EPA continue to insist that glyphosate is safe, despite the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer classifying it as probably carcinogenic to humans over a decade ago.
As The Associated Press and Reuters reported, the justices appeared "divided" on Monday, with the AP noting that several "seemed sympathetic to the company's argument that it can't be sued under state law because federal regulators have found Roundup likely doesn't cause cancer. Others, though, grilled attorneys about whether that wrongly stops states from responding to changing research."
Patti Goldman, senior attorney at Earthjustice—which filed an amicus brief in this case on behalf of farmworker organizations—said in a statement that "questions from the justices recognized that the Environmental Protection Agency approves pesticide labels based on the evidence before the agency at a single moment in time, but that evidence can become outdated as real-world exposure grows and scientific studies document resulting harms."
"Federal law requires the manufacturers to update their labels to provide sufficient warnings and directions to protect the public," Goldman stressed, "and state failure-to-warn claims reinforce that obligation—while ensuring children, families, and workers have a path to seek remedies for the harm they suffer."
Other groups that have submitted amicus briefs include Environmental Protection Network—which is made up of former EPA staffers—and the Center for Food Safety, one of the advocacy organizations that joined the rally outside the court. The event was also attended by members of Congress from both major political parties.
"This isn't left v. right—it's right v. wrong," said US Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ). "Big corporations and their lobbyists have captured both parties, putting profits over our families' health. I've fought Monsanto and Bayer for years, and just filed an amicus brief to the Supreme Court to protect our right to sue them for illnesses caused by their products."
Despite President Donald Trump's campaign promise to "Make America Healthy Again," the Republican recently issued an executive order mandating the production of glyphosate, and the US Department of Justice has sided with Bayer in this case—part of a broader trend of his administration serving the pesticide industry's interests.
"Monsanto Company v. Durnell will have enormous consequences for environmental health litigation," Food and Water Watch legal director Tarah Heinzen said Monday. "Bayer is intent on preserving its right to harm at all costs—a pursuit the Trump administration is all too willing to endorse. This case threatens to close the courthouse doors to the many Americans harmed by pesticides."
Heinzen argued that "should the Supreme Court hold that the Environmental Protection Agency's failed pesticide regulatory scheme preempts state failure to warn lawsuits, leaving tens of thousands of sick Americans without legal recourse, Trump and his industry-dominated EPA will be to blame."
"This high stakes case should be a wake-up call for Congress to act," the campaigner added. "Industrial agriculture's pesticide addiction is poisoning America. Congress must pass the Pesticide Injury Accountability Act to safeguard access to justice for all harmed by toxic pesticides."
As The American Prospect noted Monday in its "three-part series on Bayer's crusade for immunity from Roundup-related cancer claims," the company "is now aggressively lobbying Congress to permanently close the door" on the weedkiller's victims, and managed to get an immunity provision included in the 2026 Farm Bill that advanced out of the US House Agriculture Committee last month.
After joining the rally at the Supreme Court on Monday, Friends of the Earth (FOE) US led a protest outside Bayer's headquarters in downtown Washington, DC, delivering hundreds of thousands of petition signatures are calling on the company to phase out the production of toxic pesticides, including glyphosate and neonicotinoids.
"People are sick and tired of being exposed to toxic pesticides while pesticide corporations shirk responsibility," said FOE senior campaigner Sarah Starman, who spoke at the rally. "Bayer and other pesticide companies should not be allowed to profit from chemicals that threaten our health, harm our environment, and undermine the future of our food system. The hundreds of people who rallied outside the Supreme Court and the 200,000 people who signed comments to Bayer are demanding change."
In the leadup to the arguments before the nation's top court, the Environmental Working Group last week sued the Trump administration at the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, accusing the EPA of unlawfully delaying its response to an EWG petition seeking stronger restrictions on glyphosate.
"The EPA's silence leaves families in the dark and falls far short of its responsibility to protect public health," declared EWG president and co-founder Ken Cook. "It's time for the agency to stop stalling and do its job."Keep ReadingShow Less
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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