When Robert F. Kennedy Jr. endorsed Donald Trump, he suggested that Trump’s health policy could include revising standards for chemicals and pesticides — part of Kennedy’s “Make America Healthy Again” agenda.
But two former and two current employees of the Environmental Protection Agency told NBC News that this position stands in stark contrast to how the agency has operated under Trump. During the Trump administration, they said, the EPA — the government’s lead regulator of toxic substances — has been eager to approve new chemicals and remove regulations on existing ones despite evidence of potential harms.
“There was a tremendous amount of pressure to approve chemicals, despite the risks clearly associated with the chemicals,” said Maria Doa, who ran the EPA’s Chemical Control Division in the first year of the Trump administration and is now director general of chemicals policy. At the Environmental Defense Fund, an organization that advocates limiting toxic chemicals.
Such accounts correspond to three reports released last week by the EPA’s Office of Inspector General found that some EPA scientists were retaliated against for expressing “dissenting scientific opinions” during the Trump administration. Inspector General Sean O’Donnell was appointed by Trump.
Three EPA reporters told ProPublica on Thursday that their complaints were the subject of reports (which redacted the names of the employees). They claim they received negative performance reviews and were reassigned to new roles after resisting pressure to withhold evidence of the harms of certain chemicals.
EPA spokesman Remmington Belford, who was hired last year, said the Trump administration is “putting strong pressure on both career managers and scientists in EPA’s new chemicals program to review and approve new chemicals more quickly.”
In one of the inspector general’s reports, an EPA official described the pressure to speed up investigations as “pushing us around like animals on a farm.”
The moves are “definitely at odds” with RFK Jr.’s call for more controls, Doa added, adding that the Trump administration is “trying to limit any regulatory action on some extremely toxic chemicals.”
For example, before Trump left office, the EPA withdrew a proposed ban on methylene chloride used in paint strippers. It was chemical Associated with 85 deaths in the United States from 1980 to 2018many due to asphyxiation or heart attack among workers who inhaled.
Kennedy’s representatives are now part of it A team preparing for Trump’s possible presidential transition – did not respond to requests for comment.
one An on-stage discussion with Tucker Carlson In Milwaukee last week, Kennedy said Trump’s presidency has been “surrounded by bureaucrats and know-it-alls” that have “led us into some policies that I think are really bad for our country.” He added that Trump “will not do it again.”
Carolyn Leavitt, the Trump campaign’s national press secretary, said in a statement that Trump is committed to “making America healthy again by providing families with safe food and ending the chronic disease epidemic that plagues our children.” will work together with passionate voices like
Kennedy spent much of his career pushing for tighter regulations on chemicals — a staple of his campaign. Although supported by some statements regarding the relationship between chemicals and disease scientific researchhe also repeated baseless ideas and conspiracy theories. Kennedy falsely suggested that vaccines contain harmful chemicals and are one of a nebulous group of so-called environmental toxins that cause chronic disease in children.
Kennedy wrote after endorsing Trump A publication of the Wall Street Journal If Trump wins, the U.S. “may revise standards for pesticide and other chemical use.” pointed out 2019 study A list of 72 pesticides approved in the United States has been banned or is being phased out in the European Union.
But ProPublica reporter Sharon Lerner found that under the Trump administration, the EPA has pressured its own scientists to approve potentially dangerous chemicals and change scientific results to make them appear safer. Lerner first published his findings while working for The Intercept, revealing that EPA employees Information about potential hazards was removed from agency assessments. At the time, the EPA said it would investigate any alleged violations of scientific integrity and take appropriate action.
Michal Freedhoff, assistant administrator for the EPA’s Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention, said part of the pressure felt under the Trump administration is due to a 2016 amendment to the Toxic Substances Control Act that requires the EPA to evaluate all new chemicals before they are introduced. they reached the market and set deadlines for these evaluations. Before that, the EPA only formally reviewed the safety of about 20% of new chemicals. Freedhoff said they have been unable to seek additional funding for the EPA’s increased workload under Trump.
“It was a perfect storm of a brand new law that no one knew how to enforce yet, not asking Congress for more money to enforce the new law and making sure the chemical companies got what they wanted,” said Freedhoff, who was appointed by President Biden.
He added that the culture at EPA has changed and that the agency is working to restore scientific integrity.
Karen McCormack, a retired EPA official, said the agency had a decades-long culture of punishing employees who disagreed about the harms of certain chemicals. But that culture has gotten worse under the Trump presidency, he said.
“The EPA has been paralyzed under the Trump administration,” he said.
McCormack worked at the EPA for more than 40 years, including as a scientist and communications officer, before retiring in 2017, Trump’s first year in office. That year, he said, EPA employees who wanted to publish information about certain chemicals in the Federal Register — the government’s center for regulations, proposals and public notices — had to fill out a form describing how the information would affect chemical companies and how the chemicals would affect the chemicals themselves. . companies agreed to this.
“We’ve been told to be careful all the time — with this administration, some things probably won’t go through,” McCormack said.
Freedhoff said he inherited more than 200 unpublished Federal Register notices after taking office in 2021, though he wasn’t sure why each one was unpublished.
Kennedy has been a vocal critic of “regulatory capture”—the idea that regulatory agencies often act in corporate interests. He told Tucker Carlson last week that Trump had asked him to “take over agencies with corrupt influences.”
But under the Trump administration, “the EPA has been doing the bidding of the agencies it’s charged with regulating,” said Eve Gartner, director of toxic strategies at the environmental law group Earthjustice.
Trump has not announced a policy platform on chemical regulation. The 2025 draft, a set of proposals assembled in part by former Trump administration staffers, calls for rapid evaluation of new chemicals and a review of the designation of PFAS, a known carcinogen, as a hazardous substance.
“Everything is just trying to dilute the science so you don’t have solid rules,” Doa said.
Danielle Alvarez, senior adviser to Trump’s campaign, said that “Project 2025” does not represent Trump’s policy plans.
It is not yet known what Kennedy’s role might be in a potential Trump administration or what decisions he would help make as part of the transition team. In his conversation with Carlson, Kennedy said he expected to be “deeply involved” in selecting the heads of the Food and Drug Administration, the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. His team did not respond to questions about whether he would have a role in appointing EPA officials.
Steven Cheung, communications director for the Trump campaign, said formal discussions about who might serve in the administration are premature.
Even with Kennedy’s ties to Trump, Gartner said he expects the EPA to act similarly to the first under the second Trump administration.
“Anybody who thinks it’s going to be different, I think, is delusional,” he said.