The president's environmental actions will significantly increase the cost of living for millions of people and bring about hundreds of thousands of premature deaths.
The Trump administration's slash-and-burn approach to federal programs has delivered a considerable hit to the nation's environment, but experts say its plans to repeal hard-won protections for clean air and water will also directly jeopardize Americans' health — and their wallets. Two new reports from environmental watchdog groups outline how the administration's recent regulatory rollbacks, cuts to climate programs and promotion of fossil fuel production will significantly increase the cost of living for millions of people and bring about hundreds of thousands of premature deaths. That's in contradiction to the claims made by Trump and his allies — including Elon Musk and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin — that they are gutting the nation's climate programs in an effort to ease regulatory costs, lower taxes and "power the great American comeback." Instead, the rollback of some of the nation's key environmental safeguards could lead to nearly 200,000 additional premature deaths in the next 25 years; cause more than 10,000 extra asthma attacks each day; and cost the public six dollars for every dollar supposedly saved by regulated industries, according to a recent analysis from the Environmental Protection Network, a D.C.-based group composed of more than 600 former EPA workers. Advertisement "We've never seen anything like the scale of the attack that we're seeing on public health and at EPA in particular," said Jeremy Symons, a senior advisor with the EPN. "It's alarming to me that these rollbacks that will so profoundly impact the air we breathe and the water we drink might get lost in all the other noise and chaos of what's coming from Washington. It's beyond troubling — it's infuriating." Indeed, the nation's top environmental agency has been mired in a flurry of activity in recent weeks as the administration delivers blow after blow to its programs: canceling grant funds , shuttering offices, laying off workers and targeting…