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Stop Tyrant Trump's Lawless Attack on the Regulations Keeping Us Safe
Trump deserves Impeachment and Removal from Office. Congress should act now, before more Americans die, get sick, or are injured from the destruction of long-established, critical protections.
Feb 21, 2026
“Deregulation” is an antiseptic word loved by the giant corporations that rule the people. In reality, health and safety “deregulation” spells death, injury, and disease for the American people of all ages and backgrounds. This is especially so with the deranged dictates from the Tyrant Trump, who is happily beholden to his corporate paymasters, who are making him richer by the day.
President Donald Trump’s mindless deregulation mania got underway in January 2025 with his illegal shutting down of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), which has saved lives in poor countries—by providing food, water, medicine, etc.—for a pittance. USAID spends less in a year than the Pentagon spends in a week. International aid groups predict that the ongoing cuts could lead to 9.4 million preventable deaths occurring in poor countries by 2030 unless the vicious and cruel, unlawful Trumpian shutdown is reversed.
It turns out Trump was just warming up for his illegal violence against innocent American families in both blue and red states. He has abolished requirements for the auto industry to limit its emissions and maintain fuel efficiencies. The result: more disease-bearing gases and particulates into the lungs of Americans, including the most vulnerable—children and people suffering from respiratory diseases.
Trump wants to roll back the regulations that would require auto company fleets to average 50 miles per gallon by 2031. In 2024, the US Department of Transportation’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said its proposed vehicle fuel economy standards would save Americans more than $23 billion in fuel costs while reducing pollution.
Rather than faithfully execute federal laws, and ensure the well-being of the people, Dictator Donald is using his position and time in the White House to enrich himself and to get his name on anything he can get away with.
Month after month, Trump is illegally reducing or shutting down lifesaving programs without the required congressional approval. One of his major targets is the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). This month, his puppet EPA head, Lee Zeldin, celebrated the elimination of lethal greenhouse gases from the EPA’s regulatory controls. Zeldin and Trump are in effect telling Americans, “Let them breathe toxic air.” Plus, more climate catastrophes.
Smothering wind and solar projects while boosting the omnicidal polluting oil, gas, and coal production is another way Trump is exposing people to sickening gases and particulates. A corporate cynic once joked, “No problem, you can always refuse to inhale.”
Trump’s treachery toward coal miners, whom he praises, is shocking. He cut the funds for free testing of coal miners’ lungs, often afflicted with the deadly black lung diseases that have taken hundreds of thousands of coal miners’ lives over the past century and a half. We worked to pass the Federal Coal Mine Health and Safety Act of 1969, to control the levels of coal dust causing this disease, but Trump is unraveling it by cutting law enforcement. The Trump administration says it is “reconsidering” the long-awaited proposed silica control regulations. More unnecessary delay. In 2024, Politico reported that “Mine Safety and Health Administration projects that the final rule will avert up to 1,067 deaths and 3,746 silica-related illnesses.”
In his mass firings of federal civil servants, Trump has included the ranks of federal safety inspectors for meat and poultry plants (USDA), for occupational health and safety (OSHA), and specialized areas like you would never imagine—such as nuclear security. Tyrant Trump worsened the potential danger for workers and communities by firing most of the inspectors general—again illegally—who are the powerful watchdogs over federal departments and agencies. Many inspector general positions are still vacant.
In terms of short and long-run perils, Trump’s attacks on scientific research and discovery to reduce or prevent diseases would be enough to give him the grisly record for knowingly letting Americans die. The assault on vaccines, including for contagious diseases, is staggering, led by RFK, Jr., the secretary of Health and Human Services.
RFK, Jr. becomes more extreme by the day. His actions go way beyond any legitimate skepticism of the drug companies. He is going along with officials in states like Florida who are about to ban children’s vaccine mandates, even for polio, measles, and whooping cough. He has severely slashed, without congressional authority, budgets for basic and applied science programs underway at universities and other public institutions. His salvos are resulting in the reduction of families getting their children vaccinated, who, if contagious, could infect their classmates. The so-called powerful medical societies have not risen to their optimal level of resistance to what is fast coming, a green light for epidemics—starting with the resurgence of measles now underway in places like South Carolina.
The crazed Menace-in-Chief wanted to abolish the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and its rescue responses to hyper-hurricanes, floods, and giant wildfires. He recklessly says the states can handle the carnage from such disasters. The real reason is that he doesn’t want to be held responsible for failing to properly respond to such disasters. Remember the criticism of George W. Bush’s response to Katrina?
Again, with Trump, it is all about him, feeding his insatiable MONSTROUS EGO, rather than saving American lives. Recently, tragic events have forced him to reconsider. He is bringing back some of the experts and rescuers he fired from FEMA earlier last year.
Rather than faithfully execute federal laws, and ensure the well-being of the people, Dictator Donald is using his position and time in the White House to enrich himself and to get his name on anything he can get away with—the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the US Institute of Peace, the US Treasury Department’s relief checks during Covid-19, the federal investment accounts, special visas, and a discount drug program. (See the February 16, 2026, article in the New York Times by Peter Baker titled, A Superman, Jedi and Pope).
Chronically lying; threatening violence against his opponents and people abroad; slandering anyone he feels like via the compliant mass media, including journalists and editors; and generally wrecking America as a serial law violator, Trump deserves to be told, “YOU’RE FIRED.” (This was his favorite TV show catchphrase). Trump deserves Impeachment and Removal from Office. Congress should act now, before more Americans die, get sick, or are injured from the destruction of long-established, critical protections under both Republican and Democratic administrations.
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The Trump Administration Is Waging a Global War on Children
By cutting aid abroad and the social safety net at home, while spreading vaccine skepticism, the administration is ensuring that more children will suffer and die.
Feb 15, 2026
Most of us understand that children are vulnerable, innocent, and must be protected and nourished. But too often in our country, and the world, that doesn’t happen—and now the US government is waging a global war on children.
It started with the closing of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), thus removing US humanitarian and development aid to people in the worst situations in the world. The cruel closure of USAID denied and continues to deny more than 95 million people access to basic healthcare and nutrition, leading to an estimated 1.6 million additional deaths in 2025, many of which were children.
The current administration also significantly weakened the President’s Emergency Fund for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). These cuts, plus the closing of USAID, severely limit the international efforts of humanitarian organizations which work to control mother-to-child transmission of HIV. If funding for HIV prevention and treatment continues to fall, by 2040, an estimated 3 million children will contract HIV and nearly 1.8 million will die of AIDS-related causes.
As if that were not enough, the administration pulled out of the vaccine alliance Gavi, an international organization that has paid for more than 1 billion children to be vaccinated worldwide. This allows vaccine-preventable diseases to flourish among unvaccinated and vulnerable children. Many will be permanently disabled or die.
The administration turning its back on the “sh** hole” countries will come back and bite America in the ass, with innocents suffering the most.
The administration has directed these closings of international programs overwhelmingly against Black and brown people who, according to the president, live in “sh** hole” countries. This is his program of “America First,” where “those” people don’t matter—where their children don’t matter.
Moral judgement aside, helping those suffering in other countries is actually in our best interest. Not only would this show some badly needed humanity and compassion, it is also the best public health approach to protect all of us from contagious diseases.
But too many in the United States live in a right-wing news bubble where they aren’t aware of the suffering in the “sh** hole” countries or simply don’t care. And so many don’t realize that the diseases that foreign aid was working to control (AIDS, tuberculosis, polio, Ebola, and vaccine-preventable diseases) endanger us all. They are not just “their problem,” they are also “our problem.” As these diseases spread and multiply in other countries, the nature of the US economy and international trade will bring them here. The administration turning its back on the “sh** hole” countries will come back and bite America in the ass, with innocents suffering the most. Outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases are not “the cost of doing business,” as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Deputy Director, Ralph Abraham, MD, callously stated. The US has managed to “do business” while controlling vaccine-preventable disease for decades.
But the administration’s war on children does not stop with the “sh** hole” countries. Here in the US, the “Big Beautiful Bill” made draconian funding cuts to safety-net programs. This intentionally endangers children in millions of US families because it ends access to healthcare and adequate nutrition.
Even that was not enough. Robert F Kennedy Jr., secretary of Health and Human Services, has promoted an anti-science, anti-vaccine agenda by weaponizing the CDC to reduce the availability of vaccines in the US and to keep up a constant drumbeat of anti-vaccine disinformation. The CDC is no longer a trusted source of science-based public health information; it is now a clearinghouse for Kennedy’s anti-science, anti-vaccine misinformation, conspiracies, and lies. Many parents are rightfully confused by the barrage of anti-vaccine propaganda coming from Kennedy; vaccine hesitance is rising, resulting in soaring cases of measles, whooping cough, influenza and tetanus among children. And more will come as Kennedy’s flood of misinformation and fear-mongering about vaccines continues, supported by the highest levels of the administration.
Among this group dangerous beliefs are developing, exemplified by the comments of the Kennedy-appointed Chair of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, Kirk Milhoan. He recently voiced the belief that the individual freedom to refuse vaccines is greater than the freedom to choose not to be infected by contagious diseases. He questions requirements for childhood vaccines, and believes that declining vaccination rates are an opportunity to see what happens when vaccine-preventable diseases run rampant, rather than the tragedy that it is. This is not a sane or ethical experiment; history tells us the answer: The viruses and bacteria will win, and children will suffer.
Kennedy and the administration recently began this unethical experiment when they cut the number of vaccines in the childhood vaccine schedule, guaranteed to reduce vaccine use. Kennedy removed recommendations for rotavirus, Covid-19, influenza, RSV, hepatitis A, hepatitis B, and meningococcal vaccines. These are serious diseases that cause children to suffer and die.
They claim that the new recommendations allow parents the “freedom of choice” about these vaccines, after “shared decision-making,” but this has always been the case for childhood vaccines. What they say is freedom has a tragic cost, and this version of freedom effectively declares that the death of children by vaccine-preventable diseases is an acceptable cost, the cost of doing business, with that cost paid in kids’ lives.
Some may call this freedom. We call it a war on children.
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A Young Child Could Die Every 40 Seconds by 2030 Due to 'Cruel and Illegal' Trump Aid Cuts
"We are seeing years of progress unravel, and more children suffer and die preventable deaths because of these cuts."
Jan 15, 2026
President Donald Trump's shuttering of USAID last year will have a long-term negative impact on children throughout the world, according to a report released on Thursday by Oxfam.
In its analysis, Oxfam estimates that a child under the age of five could die every 40 seconds by 2030 thanks to the Trump administration's dismantling of American foreign aid programs.
Oxfam says it's basing its projections on "calculations in [the] Lancet’s impact evaluation and forecasting analysis from last July, which projected "4,537,157 child deaths by 2030."
The report also pointed to estimates from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) and Gates Foundation, which calculates "an additional 200,000 child deaths" for children under five last year. This lines up with data published by the Boston University School of Public Health last year estimating over 250,000 child deaths caused by the drastic slashing of foreign aid funding under the Trump administration.
Abby Maxman, president and CEO of Oxfam America, said that "we have run out of words to describe the depths of suffering" caused by Trump's destruction of "the entire global aid system."
"We are seeing years of progress unravel, and more children suffer and die preventable deaths because of these cuts," Maxman added.
The report also highlighted the specific impacts cuts have had in Sudan, the Philippines, and Syria.
Mayfourth Luneta, deputy executive director of the Center for Disaster Preparedness Foundation, an Oxfam partner in the Philippines, said that due to the Trump aid cuts, her organization had to cancel programs across eight communities that were impacted by floods and earthquakes last year.
"The Philippines was hit with the most powerful storms on Earth recorded last year," Luneta said. "Communities were devastated, families were left with nothing."
Shabnam Baloch, country director for Oxfam in South Sudan, described the impact that aid cuts have had on a country that is undergoing a horrific civil war.
"Water borne illnesses are spreading rapidly, starvation is imminent for many, and while needs are rising, lifesaving organizations are working with a fraction of the resources we had in previous years," said Baloch. "Oxfam, along with many other vital organizations, will be forced to scale down our programs without immediate intervention."
Sara Savva, deputy director-general the alliance of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch and All the East and the Department of Ecumenical Relations and Development (GOPA-DERD), an Oxfam partner in Syria, said her organization had "to drastically reduce the scale and scope of our programs for Syrian families and Iraqi refugees residing in Syria" in the wake of the Trump administration's cuts.
"We were notified we will no longer receive funding from the US government, and thousands of people are left without crucial services necessary to rebuild their lives after a catastrophic civil war," Savva said.
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