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In 1943, Los Angeles residents awoke to a city so thoroughly pervaded by eye-stinging smog that they thought the city had been the victim of a World War II-related chemical attack. It hadn’t. Rather, a boom in car infrastructure coupled with new and existing industrial pollution caused sulfur dioxide, carbon dioxide, and other particulate matter to dominate the air in the city. At times it was nearly impossible to see more than a few blocks, or to breathe outside of one’s home. 

In response to President Trump’s lawless actions, Executive Director of The Revolving Door Project, Jeff Hauser and Senior Researcher Toni Aguilar Rosenthal released the following statement: 

Trump’s inner circle is stacked with corporate lackeys, far-right influencers, and as Public Citizen described it, “Self-Enriching Grifters.” Many of them, though (somewhat) new to the national political spotlight, are all too familiar to observers of one state: Texas. 

Former Representative Doug Collins is Donald Trump’s pick to head the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), a federal agency that oversees the administration of health care to over 9.1 million veterans. Collins, notably, is a veteran himself, but has seemingly little background on veterans issues. His early pronouncements are superficially bland, promising to “root out corruption, and ensure every veteran receives the benefits they’ve earned,” among other things. 

Donald Trump’s first Department of Justice was a bastion of legal and ethical impropriety led by figures seeking to fundamentally collapse the rule of law. His attorneys general sought to gut civil rights, dehumanize immigrants, further militarize the border, and undermine the basic tenets of American democracy.

With the election just a month away, and a change in administration looming in just three, many are once again asking a crucial question about the basic continuance of governmental function amidst the peaceful transition of power: How does government staffing work?

The Clean Air Act (CAA) has been fiercely opposed by polluters and their allies since its passage in 1970. Industry has never quite stopped fighting to prevent the government from protecting American lives and communities at the expense of even a bit of their profits. But over the past few years, opposition to the law has reached new feverish heights. Multiple cases seeking to gut the CAA have been filed by (or with the support of) oil and gas organizations, their dark-money front groups, and their political allies since 2022. 

If Shondaland is ever looking to do a “How To Get Away With Murder” spin-off, we would humbly propose a remake about the lobbyists pushing to preserve lead pipes and forever chemicals in our water, to keep fracking near homes and schools, to keep power plants burning coal and gas, to keep car tailpipes polluting, and so on.

Donald Trump’s Department of Justice was a nightmare. Jeff Sessions, Trump’s first attorney general, dismantled civil rights and civil liberties protections, instituted heinously cruel border policies, and vociferously attacked the right to vote. William Barr, Sessions’s ignominious successor, then used his time at DOJ’s helm to overtly weaponize the department against voters and Trump’s political opponents.

How Jim Demint’s think-tank network is setting the stage for a second Trump term.

Despite contracting rules in place to give veterans safe and affordable access to dialysis, DaVita and Fresenius are picking up most of the patients.

More than 8 million people die from air pollution and fine particulate matter globally every year, according to the BMJ, a peer reviewed medical journal. Of that number, over 5.13 million people die from ambient air pollution resulting from fossil fuels use. Experts say that deaths from air pollution are also on the rise, and are currently expected to double by 2050. In the U.S. alone “350,000 may die annually from pollution produced by the burning of fossil fuels.” According to the American Lung Association (ALA) more than one-fourth of Americans live with “air pollution that can hurt their health and shorten their lives.” Of course, risk and exposure are themselves not borne equally; cities in the western U.S., along with communities of color, disproportionately bear the brunt of air pollution’s public health harms.