Public health and environmental officials around the nation reacted with horror last week, as the Trump Administration’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced it would effectively suspend enforcement of the nation’s pollution control laws for an indefinite period. While people are dying of a fatal respiratory disease, Trump is giving polluters free reign to make the problem worse.

Cynthia Giles, head of the EPA enforcement division during the Obama Administration, said: “This is essentially a nationwide waiver of environmental rules. It is so far beyond any reasonable response I am just stunned.”

“In the middle of an unprecedented global pandemic, Trump’s EPA has abdicated its responsibility to protect our health and is instead turning a blind eye to industries potentially spewing more toxic pollution into our air and water, putting our families at further risk. This clear giveaway to corporate polluters for an indefinite period of time will only make public health worse, especially for the low income communities and communities of color suffering the most from toxic pollution and the COVID-19 pandemic,” declared League of Conservation Voters Legislative Director and former EPA Health Scientist Matthew H. Davis. “While most peoples’ focus is on the crisis and their lives are upended, the Trump administration’s favor factory is running overtime, putting polluters over people with breathtaking frequency, breadth, and speed.”

Former EPA head Gina McCarthy, now president of the Natural Resources Defense Council, called the EPA’s announcement “an open license to pollute.” McCarthy added, “We can all appreciate the need for additional caution and flexibility in a time of crisis, but this brazen directive is an abdication of the EPA’s responsibility to protect our health.”

As the Trump Administration lurches from one pro-pollution decision to the next, it has become increasingly obvious the only path out of the deepening pollution hole lies at the ballot box this November.