The Environmental and Public Health Toll of the Trump Administration

"Beyond the glare of Washington, President Trump's retreat on the environment is unfolding in consequential ways for the health and safety of Americans," according to an interactive feature by a team of investigative New York Times reporters.

Eric Lipton, Steve Eder, John Branch, and Gabriella Demczuk contribute to a series of articles that paint a scary picture, according to the introduction to the series:

In just two years, President Trump has unleashed a regulatory rollback, lobbied for and cheered on by industry, with little parallel in the past half-century. Mr. Trump enthusiastically promotes the changes as creating jobs, freeing business from the shackles of government and helping the economy grow.

The trade-offs, while often out of public view, are real — frighteningly so, for some people — imperiling progress in cleaning up the air we breathe and the water we drink, and in some cases upending the very relationship with the environment around us.

An article by John Branch and Eric Lipton discusses the willingness of the Trump administration to dismiss the advice of experts—at the expense of farm workers in California. Another article by Eric Lipton discusses the EPA's support for the coal industry outside Houston, and the air quality benefits that have been lost as a result. Steve Eder and Eric Lipton detail the rollback of Obama administration-era regulations crafted to protect the Kanawaha River in the "Chemical Valley" section of West Virginia. Finally, Eric Lipton also reports from Fort Berthold, North Dakota, where natural gas flares allowed by the Trump administration.

"Like other communities around the country, Fort Berthold is confronting a tension at the heart of Mr. Trump’s unrelenting push to roll back regulations governing a range of industries: Cutting the costs associated with environmental protection can generate substantial short-term economic gains while producing longer-term and potentially profound health and environmental effects," writes Lipton.