Republicans scramble to shield their states from Trump’s next wave of tariffs By Meredith Lee Hill

 Some GOP lawmakers are already planning to push for exemptions for key industries back home.

 Swaths of Republicans on Capitol Hill are scrambling to shield their states from Donald Trump’s next wave of tariffs, a sign of the private alarm in the president’s party about the impacts of his trade agenda.

Trump has promised his rollout of global tariffs on April 2 will amount to a “Liberation Day” for the American economy. But dozens of GOP lawmakers worry privately that another round of tariffs will raise prices on U.S. consumers, cripple American farmers and rattle the stock market.

 In anticipation, they are coordinating with various industry groups to push the administration for exemptions that protect key local industries from that kind of pain. They’re also trying to effectively void some of the tariffs on key products once they go into effect, lining up to push Trump officials for so-called exclusions.

Their quiet maneuvering signals the heightened anxiety among Republicans about the next phase of his trade wars — and the political pitfalls ahead for the president and his party. Four Republicans with direct knowledge of the strategy, granted anonymity to discuss the private conversations, described the behind-the-scenes planning as concerted and targeted.

Fueling their anxiety: GOP lawmakers don’t yet know the full scope of what Trump has dubbed “reciprocal tariffs” and possibly other duties the White House is preparing to unveil Wednesday. The president and top aides have said they will calculate different tariff rates for the country’s major trading partners, based on the barriers other countries put on U.S. imports. But they have yet to detail any figures or say which countries will be hit — and even many White House aides remain in the dark.

As they attempt to head off the worst of the initial hit from the reciprocal tariffs, some congressional Republicans are coordinating with powerful private sector groups as well as conservative-leaning agriculture lobbyists and other representatives of affected industries. The hope is to pressure administration officials to limit the tariffs’ scope and incorporate key carve-outs ahead of time.

 U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer did provide a general outline of Trump’s goals to GOP members of the House Ways and Means Committee last week, according to two people granted anonymity to discuss the private meeting. Greer also promised Republican senators more “certainty” on trade policy, going forward, during their lunch last Tuesday.

 “Tariffs in Kansas often are very harmful to agricultural producers, farmers and ranchers,” said Sen. Jerry Moran of (R-Kan.). “And we’re often the retaliatory target by those we impose tariffs against.”

Moran said he is planning to push for exclusions to Trump’s tariffs to limit the fallout on his home state, where the agriculture sector is already facing some of the worst economic headwinds in years.

 “In the last Trump administration, we were successful in getting the Department of Commerce the opportunity to have exclusions. And we’ll pursue that again,” said Moran, also noting he chairs the Senate Appropriations subcommittee that oversees the Commerce Department. “Our farmers are stretched. This is one of the worst, certainly maybe the worst time I’ve seen, in agriculture … We need every market.”

Many MAGA-aligned Republicans in Congress are celebrating this next wave of levies. They say the tariffs work as bargaining tools, aiming to lower trade barriers to U.S. goods in the long term by forcing other countries to the negotiating table. But even some Trump administration officials are nervous about the fallout for key industries, especially American farmers whose livelihoods rely on selling their products abroad.

Trump’s own Agriculture Department inquired about securing exemptions for critical agricultural inputs before the White House rolled out 25 percent tariffs on Canada and Mexico earlier this month, according to two people with direct knowledge of the matter who were not authorized to discuss it publicly. The president ultimately changed course just hours later and scaled back the levies on a wider scale.

Administration officials also expect Trump on April 2 to move ahead with tariffs on foreign agriculture products, something the president floated in a Truth Social post earlier this month. That has some Hill Republicans worrying that such a move would only trigger a new wave of retaliatory tariffs on the U.S. farm sector, plus cut American farmers off from critical export markets abroad when there won’t be enough demand in the U.S. to sell all of their goods.

 Beyond Canada and Mexico, Nebraska Republican Rep. Don Bacon said he’s heard from meat processors and popcorn producers in his state who have lost market access in Europe in the last week amid Trump’s trade tumult.

And while Bacon said new reciprocal tariffs may help lower trade barriers to some countries, the immediate result is higher costs for a lot of products: “In the end, consumers pay more. And so it’s going to raise costs.”

Ultimately, Bacon said he views Trump’s reciprocal tariffs as a “negotiating” tactic — “but even then, look at the ruckus all this causes,” he added. “Our stock market doesn’t handle this stuff too well.”

 

From Seattle to Miami, anti-Musk protesters gather at hundreds of Tesla locations by Emma Bowman

 

LOS ANGELES — Tesla facilities worldwide have been the target of protests objecting to Tesla CEO Elon Musk's influential role in the Trump administration. On Saturday, anti-Musk protesters gathered again in what were their most ambitious and widespread rallies yet.

As part of the "Tesla Takedown" campaign, nonviolent demonstrations took place across the U.S. and even abroad on Saturday. Organizers called it a "global day of action" and said protests occurred in at least 253 cities around the world.

For weeks, the movement's organizers have been encouraging people to boycott the EV maker by selling their Tesla cars and stocks. According to Tesla Takedown, thousands of grassroots groups and individuals worldwide are driving the decentralized effort.

 

Musk and the White House did not respond to NPR's request for comment.

Protests erupt nationwide, raising alarms about Musk, democracy and the future of Social Security

At a rally in Los Angeles on Saturday, Phil Ansell, 65, said he felt compelled to join because he believes President Trump and Musk pose a threat to democracy.

 

I want to do everything possible to protect democracy in this country," he said. "Trump and Musk are acting like kings."

Ansell added that he was especially excited to participate, seeing how far and wide the protest movement had spread.

Many people at the Los Angeles rally voiced deep concern over the devastating effect that the Trump administration's cuts and proposed changes could have on Social Security.

Francine Coeytaux, 72, who also attended the LA protest, said she showed up because she has a 37-year-old daughter with special needs who relies on Social Security benefits. 

 

"It's what allows her to live independently and to be able to pay rent and pay [for] food," she said. "She's literally existing and living thanks to Social Security."

Beyond Los Angeles, demonstrations took place across small and major cities, in both red and blue states.

In Dallas, demonstrators held up a banner reading "Store closing. Everything must go!" outside of a Tesla dealership, according to a photo from an attendee posted on Facebook.

 

On a busy street in St. Louis County, Mo., protesters waved signs that read "No one elected Musk" and "Drive Tesla out of Biz" as cars passed by, FOX 2 reported.

And in New York City, near a Tesla showroom, a massive crowd chanted "Elon Musk shame on you. We deserve a future too," according to a video on Facebook.

How the Tesla Takedown movement began

Organizers say the Tesla Takedown movement is fueled by anger over Musk's slashing of the federal government, and that it aims to hit the billionaire where it hurts — the electric vehicle company that's become his main source of wealth.

 Joel Lava, who has been helping lead Tesla Takedown protests in Los Angeles, says Musk's work to dismantle government agencies and workforce through the unofficially named DOGE initiative is the primary motivator for the movement's members.

 

"He's spearheading DOGE, which is spearheading our country's destruction — literally destroying our country's infrastructure," Lava said. "Therefore, we are taking direct aim at his power, which is his wealth, which is Tesla." 

Musk critics point to a litany of other grievances, including his attacks on diversity, a gesture he made on the Inauguration Day stage that was widely interpreted to be a Nazi salute, and his support for far-right parties.

Musk's response to the pushback against Teslas

Since Musk's political turn, Tesla sales have slumped, and investors have grown uneasy. But market analysts question how much the dip in Tesla sales and shares can be pinned on its CEO's actions. Tesla has been losing market share to EV competitors for years. And the stock price has fallen in anticipation of auto tariffs. But the Trump administration's recently announced 25% import tariffs on cars made outside the U.S. could give the stock a welcome boost; auto industry analysts say that among domestic carmakers, Tesla will be the least impacted by the tariffs.

 Some of the anti-Musk backlash has been violent. Tesla vehicles, dealerships and charging stations across the U.S. and in Europe have been the target of arson and vandalism. Some have taken to spray-painting swastikas on Tesla sedans and Cybertrucks.

 

Tesla Takedown organizers say its participants are exercising their right to peacefully protest and that they oppose violence and property destruction.

But Musk did not make that distinction when he went after Valerie Costa, a community activist who has helped organize recent peaceful protests in the Seattle area as part of the Tesla Takedown demonstrations.

Musk, in a post on X earlier this month, accused Costa of "committing crimes," without giving evidence or specific allegations. That was after he claimed that an environmental activist group she cofounded was backed by the ActBlue, a fundraising platform for Democrats.

 

Costa told NPR that the accusations were false, and that Musk supporters subsequently targeted her in direct messages that included threats of physical violence.

"When one of the most powerful, if not the most powerful person in the world is saying you've committed a crime, it doesn't matter what the truth is," Costa said.

 

Tesla Takedown organizers say they want to chip away at Musk's power, and that starts with tarnishing Tesla's brand.

"Trump only likes [Musk] because he's rich," Lava, the LA-based organizer, said. "If suddenly Musk becomes just another boring, low-end billionaire, Trump will dump him too, and that will also show the power we have as people to effect change."

 

Wayne Gretzky was a Canadian hero. His pro-Trump rebrand is a betrayal by Karen Booth

 While Trump muses about annexing the US’s neighbor, the NHL star has remained quiet. My fellow Canadians are furious

 

I remain immensely proud to have lived in Edmonton during the Oilers’ glory years, when Wayne Gretzky was not merely that city’s darling, but also a fresh-faced, flag-waving ambassador for all of Canada.

On ice, he dazzled with his scoring prowess and consistency; off ice, he charmed with his various charitable deeds and aw-shucks humility.

Few could doubt his love for – and mentorship of – the late Joey Moss, the legendary locker-room attendant who was born with Down’s syndrome.

So when it was suggested that the superstar centre and newly minted bridegroom had cried crocodile tears over being traded from Canada’s Oilers to the Los Angeles Kings in 1988, I didn’t hesitate to give him the benefit of the doubt.

 But when No 99 himself began starring in TV commercials endorsing online sports gambling, I started to squirm, if not cringe.

When it became apparent that Gretzky, a dual citizen, was on the same page politically as Donald Trump, even being photographed with a Maga hat, my discomfort rose. Still, I reasoned that in a democracy, everyone has the right to decide where they throw their support.

 

A month before Trump’s second inauguration – which the Gretzkys would go on to attend – the Orange One declared that his pal the Great One was so popular in Canada that he could handily run for political office here. It’s distinctly possible I swore under my breath before chalking it up to Trump’s usual mouthing-off.

By the time the so-called leader of the free world began calling Canada “the 51st state” and dismissing our then prime minister as “Governor Trudeau”, my patience had worn thinner than onion skin.

And it only got worse.

As if he didn’t have enough to concern himself with on the home front, soon Trump was musing about Manifest Destiny 2.0, with an eye to reclaiming the Panama canal, buying Greenland from Denmark, clearing Gaza to build luxury resorts and … the eventual annexation of Canada, after first battering its citizens with crippling tariffs.

Then came last month’s 4 Nations Face-Off hockey final in Boston, with the head-scratching choice of a rather bored-looking and awkward Gretzky as honorary captain for Team Canada.

 

During pre-game ceremonies, Gretzky – wearing not a Canadian jersey, but a navy suit with nary a trace of red and white; not so much as a Maple Leaf lapel pin – entered the ice from the US bench, not the Canadian one. He also gave the thumbs-up to US players while appearing not to acknowledge our side. Then to cap it off – so to speak – he went on to give the victorious Canadian players red hats bearing the words “Be Great”.

That was the final straw for me, and apparently for hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of other Canadians.

Here is a man who could have used his “soft” power to educate Trump on the inviolability of this country’s sovereignty. Instead, he revealed his true colours (yes, with a “u”) are red, white and blue.

Gretzky was widely booed in pubs that night, slammed as a traitor and a sellout. In the flap that ensued, there were calls to remove his statue from outside Rogers Place in Edmonton. A few days ago, the statue was smeared with feces. An online petition demanding that the city of Edmonton rename Wayne Gretzky Drive had garnered more than 13,000 signatures as of Wednesday.

Others have expressed outrage that in 2009, when Gretzky was awarded this country’s highest civilian honour, Companion of the Order of Canada, he didn’t bother to come home to collect it. He still hasn’t.

Over these past few weeks and after Trump’s inflammatory pronouncements, has Gretzky made any effort to explain or clarify himself or his beliefs, or defend his homeland? No, instead he has a) let his buddy Trump, on his social media website Truth Social, offer a tepid defence of Gretzky’s “low-key” support of Canada remaining a separate nation, while b) hiding behind wife Janet’s skirts.

“I have never met anyone who is more proud to be a Canadian, and it has broken his heart to read and see the mean comments,” she said in an Instagram post that has since been deleted.

 

Nor did it help Gretzky’s cause that among those rushing to his defence was the Canadian-born former NHL-er and fellow Trump disciple Bobby Orr.

“How fickle can people be, when someone who has given so much time and effort to Canadian hockey is treated in such a way?” Orr wrote in an op-ed for the Toronto Sun. “Listen, we all have our personal beliefs when it comes to things like religion and politics. Wayne respects your right to your beliefs – why can’t you respect his?”

As the Globe and Mail sports columnist Cathal Kelly writes of Gretzky: “He’s a 64-year-old man of the world of now, creased by experience and not much the better for it. He’s an other-direction carpet bagger, a golf world hanger-on and a Mar-a-Lago regular. When you see Mr Gretzky up close now, the first word that leaps to mind is ‘louche’.

“As of about a month ago, he is the polar opposite of what Canada wants in a representative.”

Gretzky is hardly a naif, having stick-handled his way through countless interviews over the past more than 45 years. Widely credited for his vision, his ability to “skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been”, Gretzky had to have anticipated how this would play out with the folks back home.

His silence makes clear to Canadians, if not the entire world, he no longer gives a puck.

The country’s most powerful institutions are bowing to Trump. The Atlantic just backed him into a corner. Irie Sentner

 The president has used a strongman playbook to bring universities, news organizations and law firms to heel. That didn’t work on The Atlantic.

 Over the past two months, President Donald Trump and the people in his orbit have used bullying, misdirection and brute force to bring some of the nation’s oldest and most powerful institutions to heel.

That playbook didn’t work on The Atlantic.

 The magazine, loathed by Trump and his allies, on Wednesday morning published the entire group chat conversation among top administration officials about a military operation in Yemen. In doing so — after press secretary Karoline Leavitt told the magazine “we object to the release” — Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg and national security reporter Shane Harris effectively stood up to an administration that has largely grown used to getting its way — and dared a White House with limited options to make the next move.

 Allies, too, were urging the administration to turn down the temperature.

“I think the important thing is here they made a mistake, they know it,” said Republican Senate Majority Leader John Thune on Wednesday. “They should own it and fix it so it never happens again.”

Aided by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, Trump has moved to gut a federal government he and his allies see as being run by an antagonistic “deep state.” One of the country’s biggest news networks, ABC News, settled with Trump for $15 million, and another, CBS News, appears poised to settle for millions more. The law firm Paul, Weiss, once a champion against the president in his first term, pledged $40 million in pro bono legal services to issues Trump has supported. And Columbia University, an Ivy League institution older than the Republic itself, agreed to nine unprecedented policy changes in an effort to open talks that would unfreeze $400 million in federal funding.

But The Atlantic’s case was different.

When national security adviser Mike Waltz inadvertently added Goldberg to a Signal group chat of other top administration officials, including Vice President JD Vance, as they discussed attack plans against Houthi rebels this month, it was a major, self-inflicted screw-up.

 Against other foes, Trump has largely taken a strongman approach, signing executive actions against them and pulling federal funding. But those options don’t exist in this case, which has forced Trump into his base-level strategy: “Attack, attack, attack.”

Goldberg is a “sleazebag” whose reporting is “bad for the country,” Trump said Tuesday, defending Waltz and bashing The Atlantic, which he called a “failing” magazine (as of March 2024, it was profitable). Steven Cheung, Trump’s communications director, called the story a “hoax” and the resulting outrage “a witch hunt.”

In his first report, Goldberg declined to publish the messages in their entirety, writing that “the information contained in them, if they had been read by an adversary of the United States, could conceivably have been used to harm American military and intelligence personnel.” But on Tuesday, Trump, White House officials, Waltz and other people in the chat emphasized that no part of it was classified — all but daring Goldberg to publish.

He did.

The administration is retaining its same strategy, arguing that “war plans” were not shared at all. “The Atlantic has conceded: these were NOT “war plans,” Leavitt said on X.

 Downplaying the incident appears, for now, to be the administration’s only move — unless, of course, it selects a head to roll. Investigations are likely to follow, and the blunder is so incendiary, even in Trump’s firehose news cycle, that it appears likely to play into the 2026 and 2028 elections.

“Stupid,” said a Trump ally, discussing the White House’s strategy of claiming the Atlantic was lying. The person was granted anonymity to avoid alienating administration officials.

“There is a clear public interest in disclosing the sort of information that Trump advisers included in nonsecure communications channels, especially because senior administration figures are attempting to downplay the significance of the messages that were shared,” the reporters wrote.

It was a remarkable rebuke of Trump, who since Inauguration Day has embarked on a revenge tour, tearing through the federal government, elite universities, news organizations and law firms he sees as enemies. And it left the president, unable to flex his typical levers of power, with limited options — with the most straightforward way out being something he is loath to do: apologize.

“There’s only one response to a mistake of this magnitude: You apologize, you own it and you stop everything until you can figure out what went wrong and how it might not ever happen again,” Connecticut Rep. Jim Himes, the highest-ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said Wednesday during a hearing. “That’s not what happened. The secretary of Defense responded with a brutal attack on the reporter who did not ask to be on the Signal chain.”

Turtle stranded in Wales after Trump aid freeze by George Herd BBC

 

A rare turtle stranded on the Welsh coast faces an unexpected obstacle to getting home - US President Donald Trump.

Rhossi washed up on Anglesey at the end of 2023 and has been slowly nursed back to health.

The Kemp's ridley sea turtle is now fighting fit, and Anglesey Sea Zoo said Rhossi was ready to be released back into the wild off the coast of the US.

However, executive orders signed in the White House means international marine turtle conservation work is on hold for now, leaving Rhossi in limbo.

 Kemp's ridley turtles are critically endangered, with only about 7,000 females thought to exist.

They are native to the Gulf of Mexico, or Gulf of America as it is now known in the US, and must be released back into those waters.

 In January, President Trump pressed pause on all foreign development assistance for at least three months.

In response, the federal conservation body, the US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), froze funding for several organisations, ordering some of the work it oversees to stop.

 

Rhossi is the second Kemp's ridley sea turtle Anglesey Sea Zoo has rescued, successfully repatriating one called Tally to Texas before it was released back into the wild in 2023.

"It is a huge problem - it's very frustrating," said Frankie Hobro, the owner and director of Anglesey Sea Zoo.

"Animal species don't understand politics, they don't understand boundaries and borders.

"We'd started to get a really successful repatriation regime in place.

"We thought we had things so they were running quite smoothly. We were going to fine-tune the process for future turtles.

"It's very, very frustrating that's been put on hold now really because of politics and this kind of sweeping decision and the far reaching affect it is having way beyond the states."

 

The former director of USFWS said the impact on conservation projects was "heartbreaking".

"I didn't expect this administration to necessarily be friendly towards conservation. I have been surprised at the speed and the degree to which they have undermined decades of goodwill and work in the conservation sphere," said Martha Williams.

She was the political pick to run the agency for four years under President Joe Biden, stepping down when Trump started his second term in the White House.

"International work involved so little money, you know in the big scheme of things, small grants with enormous impact - enormous impact to communities."

She described the cuts to promised funding for projects such as marine turtle conservation as "cruel".

But where does all this leave Rhossi?

Ms Williams said the message was "don't give up".

"Speak out - tell the stories, explain why this work is so important, and that it does impact people in a positive way," she said.

 

Ms Hobro said she believed the zoo would find a way to get the turtle back home.

But as yet, they do not know when.

"We do have other options. We have the option possibly of working through Mexico, which is something we could do in the future and for future turtles," she said.

"But that would be a shame because we've got these great relationships with these wonderful whole conservation programmes for the species in Texas and the people we've been working with.

"It's a matter of finding out how long it's going to be on hold for and making a decision as to whether we can still push that through or whether we have to restart from a different angle."

The US Fish and Wildlife Service has been approached for comment.

It included the work of the Marine Turtle Conservation Fund, which along with the wildlife service and other agencies, had been the key contacts for getting Rhossi home and then released into the Gulf of Mexico.

Then in February, more than 400 employees at the USFWS lost their jobs as part of President Trump's efforts to shrink the size of the federal government's workforce.

Polling suggests cutting government spending has widespread support in the US.

 

Trump intentionally hired amateurs for top jobs. This is their most dramatic blunder by Zachary B. Wolf, CNN

 

was already writing an edition of the “What Matters” newsletter Monday about how President Donald Trump’s choice of businessmen and political allies to shake up and downsize government work has also created an amateur-hour atmosphere.

But all the examples I’d gathered pale in comparison to the revelations in a new story published Monday by The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg with the headline, “The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Its War Plans.”

More specifically, the official doing the texting of the war plans to a journalist appears to be Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, who was confirmed by the Senate despite serious questions about his lack of official experience – Hegseth’s most recent job before taking charge of the US military was as a Fox News host. 

 

The story features all of the bold-faced names in charge of national security for Trump.

Somehow, Goldberg appears to have been added by national security adviser Mike Waltz to a group chat on the private, encrypted messaging platform Signal.

The group included profiles that seemed to be associated with Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Hegseth, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, White House adviser Stephen Miller, CIA Director John Ratcliffe and others.

A spokesman for the National Security Council later confirmed that the message chain appeared to be real and said they were investigating how Goldberg’s number was added. 

 

The discussions included a moment where Vance expressed opposition to a potential strike against Houthi rebels in Yemen to clear up shipping routes through the Suez Canal because, as Vance notes, Europe, whose trade is more reliant on the Suez Canal than the US, would benefit more than the US.

One US company that did feel the sting of the attacks on shipping routes is Tesla, led by chief US government cost-cutter Elon Musk. Tesla was forced to shut down production at its Berlin Gigafactory for a time in January because the attacks caused supply-chain problems.

Vance also wondered whether President Donald Trump understood how a strike to ease global trade would contradict his America First policies, urging the other top officials to hold off on the strikes

Goldberg, doubtful that top US officials would accidentally add him to a chat discussing sensitive and classified data about a forthcoming military attack, thought the messages might be an elaborate troll until Hegseth transmitted the detailed war plans and said the strike was imminent.

A few hours later, Goldberg searched on X and learned the strikes were occurring. The national security principals responded to news of the strikes’ success with emojis and congratulations. Goldberg subsequently removed himself from the chat.

There are so many questions here.

Why were these officials utilizing a messaging app known for its disappearing messages and run by a private nonprofit?

It could run afoul of both laws that require the retention of records and, more importantly, laws related to classified information. There are clearly stated protocols for discussing classified information.

Why is Hegseth so comfortable transmitting war plans in an unclassified setting?

We don’t know the exact nature of what Hegseth sent; Goldberg did not print it. His article does say it included “information about targets, weapons the U.S. would be deploying, and attack sequencing.”

Will there be consequences for this apparent breach?

This is the type of breach that might normally lead to firings or jail time. Normally, Congress, which is supposed to provide checks and balances on the executive branch, would quickly launch an investigation of what seems to be such a drastic security breach. It’s not clear that will happen now, when Republicans hold a slim majority in the House and Senate.

What about the obvious irony here?

When Trump was initially asked about The Atlantic’s report at the White House, he criticized the magazine but said he was not familiar with the report. Trump should be familiar with how things are supposed to work when it comes to sensitive material, since he was charged with mishandling classified data after he left the White House in 2021 and before he won the 2024 election. The case was dismissed by a judge he appointed.

Plus, Trump repeatedly attacked Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server during the Obama administration, particularly she was criticized for discussion of classified material in email. Now, the leaders of his entire national security team appear to have been on an unclassified system discussing very sensitive material.

What other examples are there?

There are many examples of a lack of experience by an official or doing things in nontraditional ways leading to problems.

• Trump’s top official negotiating peace efforts for the Middle East and Ukraine, Steve Witkoff, is not a diplomat but a real estate developer. That could help explain how Witkoff all but repeated Russian talking points in an interview with Tucker Carlson.
• The Social Security numbers of former government officials were released in a dump of previously classified data that was released in a rush. The first names of recently hired CIA agents were included in an unclassified email sent to the White House.
• Anti-diversity initiatives at the Pentagon scrubbed, for a time, webpages that mentioned the military career of Jackie Robinson, who broke the color barrier in professional baseball.
• There were reports last week that Musk, who has major business interests in China, could get a Pentagon briefing with information on China. Trump quickly clarified that Musk would get no such briefing, but the Pentagon launched a leak investigation that will apparently include polygraph tests.

There were plenty more examples from earlier in Trump’s administration, such as when Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency pushed for the firing of nuclear safety officials and then the Department of Energy had to call them back to duty. Part of this is what Trump’s supporters wanted, perhaps, when they voted for a candidate who promised to “drain the swamp.” Nobody voted for Goldberg to be texted war plans.

Trump administration seeks to starve libraries and museums of funding by shuttering this little-known agency by Devon Akmon

 

On March 14, 2025, the Trump administration issued an executive order that called for the dismantling of seven federal agencies “to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law.” They ranged from the United States Agency for Global Media, which oversees Voice of America, to the Minority Business Development Agency.

The Institute of Museum and Library Services was also on the list. Congress created the IMLS in 1996 through the Museum and Library Services Act. The law merged the Institute of Museum Services, which was established in 1976, with the Library Programs Office of the Department of Education.

By combining these two departments, Congress sought to create an overarching agency that could more cohesively and strategically support American museums and libraries. The agency’s mission, programs and funding have been reaffirmed through subsequent legislation, such as the Museum and Library Services Act of 2003.

The Conversation U.S. interviewed Devon Akmon, who is the director of the MSU Museum at Michigan State University. He explained how the agency supports the nation’s cultural institutions and local communities – and what could be lost if the agency were dissolved.

What does the Institute of Museum and Library Services do?

The agency provides financial support to a wide array of cultural and educational institutions, including art, science and history museums, zoos, aquariums, botanical gardens and historic sites. Libraries of all types – public, academic, school and research – also benefit from the agency’s funding.

Through grants, research and policy initiatives, the IMLS helps these institutions better serve their communities. 

 

n the 2019 fiscal year, for example, the IMLS awarded funds to libraries in Nebraska to support economic development in 30 rural communities. The project created rotating “innovation studios” in local libraries and provided residents with tools, instructional materials and programming to foster entrepreneurship and creativity. More recently, IMLS awarded a grant to the Hands On Children’s Museum to develop a toolkit that museums across the country can use to support families with relatives who are in prison.

For libraries, the IMLS might fund technology upgrades, such as virtual reality learning stations, AI-assisted research aids or digitization of rare books. The agency also pays for community programs that take place in libraries, from early childhood reading initiatives to workshops that help people land jobs.

How has the Institute of Museum and Library Services supported your work at the MSU Museum?

IMLS grants have played a vital role in enabling the MSU Museum to preserve, enhance and expand access to its collections.

For example, we’ve used IMLS grants to develop high-quality audio aids for museum visitors who are blind or have poor vision. Recent funding has supported the digitization of over 2,000 vertebrate specimens, including rare and endangered species.

 

Beyond financial support, the MSU Museum benefits from IMLS policy papers, professional training opportunities and resources developed through the National Leadership Grants for Museums program. Our staff members also contribute to national campaigns spearheaded by the IMLS, such as its Strategies for Countering Antisemitism & Hate initiative.

Through these efforts, the IMLS, alongside the American Alliance of Museums, operate as cornerstones of learning and innovation within the museum field.

Looking beyond Michigan State, what might be lost with its shuttering?

The IMLS is more than a grantmaking entity – it is the only federal agency dedicated to sustaining the entire museum and library ecosystem in the United States.

Its funding has sustained museums, advanced digital preservation, expanded accessibility for low-income communities and fueled innovation in educational programming. In 2024 alone, the agency distributed US$266.7 million through grants, research initiatives and policy development. For example, ExplorationWorks, a children’s museum in Helena, Montana, received $151,946 in 2024 from the IMLS to expand its early childhood programs that serve low-income and rural families.

Without this support, many institutions will struggle to hire and retain qualified staff, leading to fewer exhibitions, stalled research and reduced educational outreach.

The consequences would be particularly severe for small museums and rural museums, which lack the fundraising capacity of larger urban institutions. They’re often the only sources of cultural and historical education in their regions, and their loss would create cultural voids that cannot easily be filled.

Trump’s executive order dictated that the Institute of Museum and Library Services and other agencies be eliminated “to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law.” What is the applicable law in this case?

I’m not a lawyer. But my understanding is that the “applicable law” in this case primarily refers to the Museum and Library Services Act, which, as I noted earlier, was created in 1996 and has been reauthorized multiple times since then.

Since the IMLS was created through this congressional legislation, it cannot simply be eliminated by an executive order. Congress would need to pass a law to repeal or defund it.

 

Additionally, the Antideficiency Act prohibits federal agencies from operating without appropriated funding. If Congress were to defund the IMLS rather than repeal its authorizing statute, the agency would be forced to cease operations due to a lack of money, even if the legal framework for its existence remained intact.

Is there anything else you’d like to add?

Museums are among the most trusted institutions in the country. They are rare bipartisan beacons of credibility in an era of deep division.

A 2021 American Alliance of Museums report found that 97% of Americans view museums as valuable educational assets, while 89% consider them trustworthy sources of information. A 2022 American Library Association survey revealed that 89% of voters and 92% of parents believe local public libraries have an important role to play in communities.

More than just cultural repositories, museums and libraries bring together citizens and offer learning opportunities for everyday people. By presenting science and history through engaging, evidence-based storytelling, museums help bridge ideological divides and encourage informed discourse. People of all political stripes rely on libraries for free internet access, job searches and literacy programs.

The Institute of Museum and Library Services is central to this work. The agency provides leadership, while funding programs and research that help museums and libraries expand their offerings to reach all Americans.

Stripping this support would threaten the sustainability of these institutions and weaken their ability to serve as pillars of education, civic engagement and truth. I see it as a disinvestment in an informed, connected and resilient society.

• Museums
• Zoos
• Funding
• Libraries

A brief history of Medicaid and America’s long struggle to establish a health care safety net byBen Zdencanovic

 

The Medicaid system has emerged as an early target of the Trump administration’s campaign to slash federal spending. A joint federal and state program, Medicaid provides health insurance coverage for more than 72 million people, including low-income Americans and their children and people with disabilities. It also helps foot the bill for long-term care for older people.

In late February 2025, House Republicans advanced a budget proposal that would potentially cut US$880 billion from Medicaid over 10 years. President Donald Trump has backed that House budget despite repeatedly vowing on the campaign trail and during his team’s transition that Medicaid cuts were off the table.

Medicaid covers one-fifth of all Americans at an annual cost that coincidentally also totals about $880 billion, $600 billion of which is funded by the federal government. Economists and public health experts have argued that big Medicaid cuts would lead to fewer Americans getting the health care they need and further strain the low-income families’ finances.

As a historian of social policy, I recently led a team that produced the first comprehensive historical overview of Medi-Cal, California’s statewide Medicaid system. Like the broader Medicaid program, Medi-Cal emerged as a compromise after Democrats failed to achieve their goal of establishing universal health care in the 1930s and 1940s.

Instead, the United States developed its current fragmented health care system, with employer-provided health insurance covering most working-age adults, Medicare covering older Americans, and Medicaid as a safety net for at least some of those left out.

Health care reformers vs. the AMA

Medicaid’s history officially began in 1965, when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the system into law, along with Medicare. But the seeds for this program were planted in the 1930s and 1940s. When President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration was implementing its New Deal agenda in the 1930s, many of his advisers hoped to include a national health insurance system as part of the planned Social Security program.

Those efforts failed after a heated debate. The 1935 Social Security Act created the old-age and unemployment insurance systems we have today, with no provisions for health care coverage.

Nevertheless, during and after World War II, liberals and labor unions backed a bill that would have added a health insurance program into Social Security.

Harry Truman assumed the presidency after Roosevelt’s death in 1945. He enthusiastically embraced that legislation, which evolved into the “Truman Plan.” The American Medical Association, a trade group representing most of the nation’s doctors, feared heightened regulation and government control over the medical profession. It lobbied against any form of public health insurance. 

 

During the late 1940s, the AMA poured millions of dollars into a political advertising campaign to defeat Truman’s plan. Instead of mandatory government health insurance, the AMA supported voluntary, private health insurance plans. Private plans such as those offered by Kaiser Permanente had become increasingly popular in the 1940s in the absence of a universal system. Labor unions began to demand them in collective bargaining agreements.

The AMA insisted that these private, employer-provided plans were the “American way,” as opposed to the “compulsion” of a health insurance system operated by the federal government. They referred to universal health care as “socialized medicine” in widely distributed radio commercials and print ads.

In the anticommunist climate of the late 1940s, these tactics proved highly successful at eroding public support for government-provided health care. Efforts to create a system that would have provided everyone with health insurance were soundly defeated by 1950.

JFK and LBJ

Private health insurance plans grew more common throughout the 1950s.

Federal tax incentives, as well as a desire to maintain the loyalty of their professional and blue-collar workers alike, spurred companies and other employers to offer private health insurance as a standard benefit. Healthy, working-age, employed adults – most of whom were white men – increasingly gained private coverage. So did their families, in many cases.

Everyone else – people with low incomes, those who weren’t working and people over 65 – had few options for health care coverage. Then, as now, Americans without private health insurance tended to have more health problems than those who had it, meaning that they also needed more of the health care they struggled to afford.

But this also made them risky and unprofitable for private insurance companies, which typically charged them high premiums or more often declined to cover them at all.

Health care activists saw an opportunity. Veteran health care reformers such as Wilbur Cohen of the Social Security Administration, having lost the battle for universal coverage, envisioned a narrower program of government-funded health care for people over 65 and those with low incomes. Cohen and other reformers reasoned that if these populations could get coverage in a government-provided health insurance program, it might serve as a step toward an eventual universal health care system.

While President John F. Kennedy endorsed these plans, they would not be enacted until Johnson was sworn in following JFK’s assassination. In 1965, Johnson signed a landmark health care bill into law under the umbrella of his “Great Society” agenda, which also included antipoverty programs and civil rights legislation.

That law created Medicare and Medicaid.

From Reagan to Trump

As Medicaid enrollment grew throughout the 1970s and 1980s, conservatives increasingly conflated the program with the stigma of what they dismissed as unearned “welfare.” In the 1970s, California Gov. Ronald Reagan developed his national reputation as a leading figure in the conservative movement in part through his high-profile attempts to cut and privatize Medicaid services in his state.

Upon assuming the presidency in the early 1980s, Reagan slashed federal funding for Medicaid by 18%. The cuts resulted in some 600,000 people who depended on Medicaid suddenly losing their coverage, often with dire consequences.

Medicaid spending has since grown, but the program has been a source of partisan debate ever since.

In the 1990s and 2000s, Republicans attempted to change how Medicaid was funded. Instead of having the federal government match what states were spending at different levels that were based on what the states needed, they proposed a block grant system. That is, the federal government would have contributed a fixed amount to a state’s Medicaid budget, making it easier to constrain the program’s costs and potentially limiting how much health care it could fund.

These efforts failed, but Trump reintroduced that idea during his first term. And block grants are among the ideas House Republicans have floated since Trump’s second term began to achieve the spending cuts they seek.

 

The ACA’s expansion

The 2010 Affordable Care Act greatly expanded the Medicaid program by extending its coverage to adults with incomes at or below 138% of the federal poverty line. All but 10 states have joined the Medicaid expansion, which a U.S. Supreme Court ruling made optional.

As of 2023, Medicaid was the country’s largest source of public health insurance, making up 18% of health care expenditures and over half of all spending on long-term care. Medicaid covers nearly 4 in 10 children and 80% of children who live in poverty. Medicaid is a particularly crucial source of coverage for people of color and pregnant women. It also helps pay for low-income people who need skilled nursing and round-the-clock care to live in nursing homes.

In the absence of a universal health care system, Medicaid fills many of the gaps left by private insurance policies for millions of Americans. From Medi-Cal in California to Husky Health in Connecticut, Medicaid is a crucial pillar of the health care system. This makes the proposed House cuts easier said than done.

Can books beat Trump? By Imaan Irfan

 

Idie publisher Melville House is racing to preserve history, before the US government buries the evidence 

 

In 2014, on a Friday night just before Christmas, the US government released a heavily redacted, non-searchable, virtually unreadable document–likely hoping that it would go unnoticed in a wash of liquor and festive parties.

The staff at Melville House Publishing took just 19 days to transform that Senate report on the CIA’s rendition and torture programme and publish it, both electronically and in print. In a freezing warehouse, where the heating was turned off at 6pm, they worked around the clock; locals started sending them food, and volunteers from other publishing houses trickled in when they heard about the project. They “crashed” the holiday with the report.

Later, the American Civil Liberties Union, Human Rights Watch and even Daniel Jones, who had authored the document (later portrayed by Adam Driver in The Report), would all give their thanks for Melville House’s efforts retyping the document, allowing it to be searched electronically.

Today, Melville House is in a better warehouse (they have heating now), and they’ve just released two new reports in the US, with both following in the UK in the next few weeks: a print and eBook edition of the Jack Smith report—the summation of an investigation of Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election—and the Tulsa report, concerning the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921.

The Department of Justice (DoJ) report reveals that the massacre—in which up to 300 black residents of Tulsa, Oklahoma, were killed and 10,000 were made homeless, was not mob violence or a riot (as the government had claimed at the time)—but a systematic and coordinated military-style attack by whites on Tulsa’s “Black Wall Street”.

In January, days after the report was released by the Civil Rights Division (a branch of the DoJ), Trump effectively closed down the division by ordering it to halt a majority of its functions. Dennis Johnson, who founded Melville House with his wife Valerie Merians, suspects that the Tulsa report won’t be available on the department’s official website for much longer.

 

When I spoke to him last Friday, Johnson said the report was “the only official book about this horrific event... and it’s also a document of the government criticising itself, which I think is unprecedented. The government did do a Tulsa report back when the event happened, and it was a whitewash, a literal whitewash, and this now sets the record straight.”

Melville House have published Supreme Court decisions and government investigations throughout multiple administrations. Now, Johnson is hoping that the Jack Smith report “will remind people who the president is. He’s a felon.

“I lived through the decades of the intensity of the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s into the 1970s… and [Trump’s election] is such a setback.”

The president recently threatened a $10bn lawsuit against Penguin Random House for allegedly publishing defamatory books about him. Johnson thinks the major publishing houses are “nervous about upsetting Trump”. Melville House, as an independent publisher, doesn’t face all of the same constraints. “We’re not a big international conglomeration whose prime mission is to make more money every quarter.”

Even so, Johnson and Merians are still feeling vulnerable. “We’ve had presidents with shit lists, and we’re worried about being on one.”

Johnson wants to have a “more permanent version of these documents out there”, in libraries, houses and schools. He recalls hearing a talk by the head of the Library of Congress, who said that “the basement of the Library of Congress was littered with lost culture”, meaning obsolete forms of digitisation—reel-to-reel tapes, Betamax, cassette tapes, 8-tracks

 

For the first time, the reports will be in print, hopefully attracting a wider readership. “It’s good these things exist on the internet. But I don’t know how many people really are going to look up a government website and then do the deep dive to find the documents there.

“Whereas you can still read the very first books printed by Gutenberg, they still exist and they still convey the information within. I saw the second Gutenberg Bible, and it still is completely functional. The spine still works. [The] pages are still legible…”

Determined not to let this stage of American history become “lost culture”, the publishers believe that old-fashioned print is still the best way to preserve for the future. Censorship is only going to get tougher, Johnson thinks, but it doesn’t seem like these reports will be the last to be printed by Melville House.

“We stand,” he says, “at the ready.”

Why CEOs are calm about tariffs in public — but 'very discouraged' in private Maria Aspan

 

Wall Street is panic-selling over President Trump's chaotic new tariffs. Business executives are reportedly making frantic calls to the White House. And on Tuesday, the country's top CEOs crowded into a closed-door meeting with Trump — setting a record for attendance.

Yet in public, corporate America's leaders are remaining calm — and even upbeat.

"The business community understands what the president is trying to do with tariffs," Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon told Fox Business Network on Wednesday.

Solomon acknowledged that companies "always" want lower tariffs. But he was also careful to start his comments by praising Trump for being "engaged with the business community" — unlike, he added, the Biden administration.

 

The Goldman Sachs CEO was speaking a day after Trump met with him and other members of the Business Roundtable, an influential CEO group. The meeting followed two days of sharp losses in the U.S. stock market, in a $4 trillion (and ongoing) selloff, largely kindled by Trump's words and actions: Since early March, Trump has implemented a flurry of steep new tariffs, reversed some of them, and shrugged off concerns over their economic impact.

When asked about the possibility of a recession, Trump demurred — in a reply that sparked this week's market turmoil.

"There is a period of transition, because what we're doing is very big. We're bringing wealth back to America," the president told Fox News in an interview that aired Sunday.

By mid-week, a handful of the most powerful CEOs had started to express concern — but even then, only in very mild terms.

"Uncertainty is not a good thing," JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, who runs the country's largest bank, said Wednesday at a conference hosted by the publication Semafor.

And Larry Fink, who runs investment giant BlackRock, told CNN that "the economy is weakening as we speak."

Yet Fink was also quick to add that the Trump administration's policies "can be very productive for the United States" in the long run.

 

A White House spokesperson on Thursday reiterated his statement to NPR from earlier this week.

"President Trump delivered historic job, wage, and investment growth in his first term, and is set to do so again in his second term," White House spokesperson Kush Desai said by email.

Why America's business leaders engage in delicate diplomacy

Corporate America's careful rhetoric — even as many big companies brace for the impact of the market volatility and the tariffs — illustrates the delicate diplomacy that business leaders are trying to engage in. They largely welcome Trump's other economic promises — including lower taxes and fewer regulations.

Business leaders also see limited benefits to criticizing the president in public, experts say. That's a marked contrast from Trump's first term, when some CEOs publicly resigned from White House advisory councils to protest the president's handling of racist violence in Charlottesville, Va.

But eight years later, corporate America is much less willing to wade into public conversations about politics — or "social" issues that companies don't see as directly related to their bottom lines.

Today, they're more focused on the potential financial upsides of Trump's new term. The president actively courted business interests during his campaign — and at first, corporate America seemed thrilled with the results of the election. CEO confidence soared to a three-year high last month, according to the Conference Board's quarterly survey of the CEOs of the largest companies.

Now Trump's stop-and-start tariff policies seem to be complicating many companies' economic outlook. But business leaders are trying to avoid adding to investors' financial panic, according to Anna Tavis, who chairs New York University's department of human-capital management and talks to executives across corporate America.

She points out that part of a CEO's job is to project confidence — in their own companies, in the markets and in the broader economy.

"They have no control over what the government is going to do, regardless of how they feel," says Tavis.

And, she adds: "Obviously, they want to be on the winning side of whatever happens."

80% of CEOs are "apologizing to our international partners"

Behind the scenes, the conversation is more candid. CEOs "are very discouraged," says Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, an associate dean at the Yale School of Management, who hosted a gathering of CEOs on Tuesday.

80% of those CEOs say "that they find themselves apologizing to our international partners for Trump's capriciousness," Sonnenfeld told NPR's Morning Edition on Thursday.

And, he added, "roughly 70% said the Trump administration is going to be bad for the economy."

 

Those numbers are a sharp contrast to the Conference Board's rosier findings last month. It regularly polls the heads of the largest U.S. companies, and it finished its latest survey on February 10 — after Trump had first announced, then first delayed, his new 25% tariffs against Mexico and Canada.

"I know people were surprised that we saw this increase in CEO confidence at the time that tariffs may [start to] have a negative impact on the economy," Stephanie Guichard, senior economist at the Conference Board, told NPR last week.

Many of the CEOs surveyed in late January and early February did tell the Conference Board that they're worried about tariffs, she added. But at the time, business leaders said they were more focused on Trump's other, business-friendlier promises, including deregulation and lower taxes.

Still, Guichard is curious to see what CEOs tell the Conference Board in two months, when it next polls America's business leaders.

"A lot can happen between now and May," she says.

 

America’s clean air rules boost health and the economy − here’s what EPA’s new deregulation plans ignore Richard E. Peltier

 

The Trump administration announced on March 12, 2025, that it is “reconsidering” more than 30 air pollution regulations in a series of moves that could impact air quality across the United States.

“Reconsideration” is a term used to review or modify a government regulation. While Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin provided few details, the breadth of the regulations being reconsidered affects all Americans. They include rules that set limits for pollutants that can harm human health, such as ozone, particulate matter and volatile organic carbon.

Zeldin wrote that his deregulation moves would “roll back trillions in regulatory costs and hidden ‘taxes’ on U.S. families.” But that’s only part of the story.

What Zeldin didn’t say is that the economic and health benefits from decades of federal clean air regulations have far outweighed their costs. Some estimates suggest every $1 spent meeting clean air rules has returned $10 in health and economic benefits.

How far America has come, because of regulations

In the early 1970s, thick smog blanketed American cities and acid rain stripped forests bare from the Northeast to the Midwest.

Air pollution wasn’t just a nuisance – it was a public health emergency. But in the decades since, the United States has engineered one of the most successful environmental turnarounds in history. 

 

Thanks to stronger air quality regulations, pollution levels have plummeted, preventing hundreds of thousands of deaths annually. And despite early predictions that these regulations would cripple the economy, the opposite has proven true: The U.S. economy more than doubled in size while pollution fell, showing that clean air and economic growth can – and do – go hand in hand.

The numbers are eye-popping.

An Environmental Protection Agency analysis of the first 20 years of the Clean Air Act, from 1970 to 1990, found the economic benefits of the regulations were about 42 times greater than the costs.

The EPA later estimated that the cost of air quality regulations in the U.S. would be about US$65 billion in 2020, and the benefits, primarily in improved health and increased worker productivity, would be around $2 trillion. Other studies have found similar benefits.

That’s a return of more than 30 to 1, making clean air one of the best investments the country has ever made.

Science-based regulations even the playing field

The turning point came with the passage of the Clean Air Act of 1970, which put in place strict rules on pollutants from industry, vehicles and power plants.

These rules targeted key culprits: lead, ozone, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and particulate matter – substances that contribute to asthma, heart disease and premature deaths. An example was the removal of lead, which can harm the brain and other organs, from gasoline. That single change resulted in far lower levels of lead in people’s blood, including a 70% drop in U.S. children’s blood-lead levels.

The results have been extraordinary. Since 1980, emissions of six major air pollutants have dropped by 78%, even as the U.S. economy has more than doubled in size. Cities that were once notorious for their thick, choking smog – such as Los Angeles, Houston and Pittsburgh – now see far cleaner air, while lakes and forests devastated by acid rain in the Northeast have rebounded.

 

And most importantly, lives have been saved. The Clean Air Act requires the EPA to periodically estimate the costs and benefits of air quality regulations. In the most recent estimate, released in 2011, the EPA projected that air quality improvements would prevent over 230,000 premature deaths in 2020. That means fewer heart attacks, fewer emergency room visits for asthma, and more years of healthy life for millions of Americans.

The economic payoff

Critics of air quality regulations have long argued that the regulations are too expensive for businesses and consumers. But the data tells a very different story.

EPA studies have confirmed that clean air regulations improve air quality over time. Other studies have shown that the health benefits greatly outweigh the costs. That pays off for the economy. Fewer illnesses mean lower health care costs, and healthier workers mean higher productivity and fewer missed workdays.

The EPA estimated that for every $1 spent on meeting air quality regulations, the United States received $9 in benefits. A separate study by the non-partisan National Bureau of Economic Research in 2024 estimated that each $1 spent on air pollution regulation brought the U.S. economy at least $10 in benefits. And when considering the long-term impact on human health and climate stability, the return is even greater. 

 

The next chapter in clean air

The air Americans breathe today is cleaner, much healthier and safer than it was just a few decades ago.

Yet, despite this remarkable progress, air pollution remains a challenge in some parts of the country. Some urban neighborhoods remain stubbornly polluted because of vehicle emissions and industrial pollution. While urban pollution has declined, wildfire smoke has become a larger influence on poor air quality across the nation.

That means the EPA still has work to do.

If the agency works with environmental scientists, public health experts and industry, and fosters honest scientific consensus, it can continue to protect public health while supporting economic growth. At the same time, it can ensure that future generations enjoy the same clean air and prosperity that regulations have made possible.

By instead considering retracting clean air rules, the EPA is calling into question the expertise of countless scientists who have provided their objective advice over decades to set standards designed to protect human lives. In many cases, industries won’t want to go back to past polluting ways, but lifting clean air rules means future investment might not be as protective. And it increases future regulatory uncertainty for industries.

The past offers a clear lesson: Investing in clean air is not just good for public health – it’s good for the economy. With a track record of saving lives and delivering trillion-dollar benefits, air quality regulations remain one of the greatest policy success stories in American history.