For Trump, People Can Die as Long as Corporations Make Money

A court ruling requiring the EPA to make a decision on banning pesticides that cause brain damage in children ended this week in the worst possible way, as EPA administrator Andrew Wheeler overrode the recommendation of the EPA scientific advisory board and announced that the EPA will not ban chlorpyrifos. The decision represents a big win for the chemical industry, and a major demonstration of how, in the Trump administration, lobbyists beat scientists every time.

As The New York Times reports, this action follows the agency’s recent refusal to ban asbestos, despite the recommendation of the agency’s experts, and despite knowing that the fibrous mineral is the leading cause of mesothelioma. That action led to multiple, still-ongoing lawsuits in an attempt to force the EPA to act.

But the chlorpyrifos decision was actually the end result of a series of lawsuits that were kicked off in 2017. The Obama administration had announced a ban on chlorpyrifos in 2015 after initial reports showed that it causes brain damage in children. But the ban had not gone into effect when Trump took office. Scott Pruitt immediately reversed the announcement when he took control of the EPA in 2017 and decided the agency would simply … not decide. It would allow the pesticides to stay on the market by simply not making a decision.

That generated a series of lawsuits, which eventually resulted in a ruling that the EPA had to make a decision on the child-threatening pesticide. And then, after stretching it out to the last moment, Wheeler did decide—to allow the pesticide to remain on the market. Taken together, the pesticide and asbestos non-actions show that, under Donald Trump and coal lobbyist Wheeler, even the most blatantly obvious cases of public harm aren’t enough to generate any restrictions that might cause corporations to lose money.