The Mad King and his colluding court want to poison us, to keep the American Dream alive. This Nightmare on Pennsylvania Avenue only care about their own selfish interests and the wants of those who bought the White House.

Science is for dummies. Clean air and water are only for those who can afford such luxuries.

Last week the regime announced a tidal wave of regulatory rollbacks, including easing limits on pollution from tailpipes and smokestacks. The Mad King’s orders also reduce waterway protections, such as allowing more construction near and on wetlands, and weaken rules that address climate change.

The science-adverse head of the Environmental Protection Agency, Lee Zeldin, noted the gutting of EPA protections align with the Mad King’s vows to slash regulations to boost industries, including coal and oil production. He has said his agency’s mission is to “lower the cost of buying a car, heating a home, and running a business.” (For the moment at least, the agency website still says the “mission of EPA is to protect human health and the environment.” It doesn’t mention anything about automobile prices.)

Zeldin, forgetting “protection” is the middle word in the agency he leads, has singled out the Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program, whining that the initiative requires some 8,000 facilities and suppliers in the United States to calculate and submit their emissions reporting annually. He claimed the program costs hundreds of millions of dollars that “could be better used to improve and upgrade environmental controls or other items at these facilities.”

“The Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program is another example of a bureaucratic government program that does not improve air quality,” Zelin said in a recent press release touting the regime’s deregulation efforts. “Instead, it costs American businesses and manufacturing millions of dollars, hurting small businesses and the ability to achieve the American Dream.”

Few free market enthusiasts, whether large or small, however, will actually use those alleged cost-savings to invest in environmental controls. History has shown pollution pays. Illegal dumping, burning, and landfilling are more profitable than safeguarding the environment or public health.

The Cuyahoga River in Ohio used to routinely catch fire because of the amount of pollution dumped into it. General Electric poured millions of pounds of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) into the Hudson River in New York. The Hooker Electrochemical Co. used the abandoned Love Canal to dispose about 21,000 tons of hazardous chemicals. The drums were buried in an illegal landfill, which was covered with soil and then leased to the Niagara Falls Board of Education. An elementary school and many homes were built near the toxic landfill. The drums leaked and contaminated soil and groundwater.

Southern New England’s three states cover 17,322 square miles and a significant portion of that space has been adulterated by two-plus centuries of incineration, smelting, metal plating, textile manufacturing, etching, electroplating, and dumping.

Taxpayers have paid, at a minimum, a few hundred million to remediate 76 Superfund sites in southern New England — 13 in Rhode Island, 41 in Massachusetts, and 22 in Connecticut.

This combination of apathy, selfishness, and greed that continues — here and across the country — to place profit over the well-being of both humans and the natural world has led to polluted landscapes typically surrounded by marginalized neighborhoods that predominantly house low-wealth families and people of color.

The remediation of these sites is frequently funded by taxpayers via government grants and/or bond funding, robbing budgets of money that could have been used to educate, house, and care for people. Instead, billions in taxpayer money has been spent to clean up public health and environmental messes created by others for profit.

We don’t learn from history. In fact, I believe the regime is trying to ban its teaching.

In a March 12 online video, Zelin gleefully noted the EPA will “undertake 31 historic actions in the greatest and most consequential day of deregulation in U.S. history, to advance President Trump’s Day One executive orders and Power the Great American Comeback.”

The regime wants us to believe that eliminating regulations that are “throttling the oil and gas industry” and easing mercury and air toxins standards that have “improperly targeted coal-fired power plants” will eliminate “hidden taxes on U.S. families.”

The EPA toadie noted it “will be more affordable to bring manufacturing into local communities while individuals widely benefit from the tangible economic impacts.”

In reality, gutting regulations will increase CEO pay, make shareholders wealthier, and make many of us sicker. The individuals who will “benefit from the tangible economic impacts” don’t live in the communities where more-polluting industry would be allowed. They live in gated communities, sit in boardrooms, and visit the Oval Office.

The Department of Justice is already celebrating the idea of making more people, mostly poor and people of color, sick. It recently dropped a federal lawsuit against a Louisiana petrochemical plant accused of worsening cancer risks for residents in a majority Black community. The DOJ said it was delivering on the Mad King’s promise to dismantle DEI programs and restore integrity to federal enforcement efforts.

Zeldin joined the battle cry, saying the EPA wants to end the use of environmental justice as an enforcement tool that too often was used to advance liberal ideological priorities.

Yeah, keeping people from getting cancer is a libtard thing.

Last month the regime’s Forest Service terminated a $75 million grant to the Arbor Day Foundation, which was working to plant trees in neighborhoods that might not otherwise be able to afford them. These neighbors were predominately comprised of people of color, such as New Orleans’ Lower 9th Ward.

The regime has also withdrawn the United States from the U.N. climate damage fund that was established in 2023 to help developing countries most vulnerable to climate change. Since 1850, the United States is responsible for the largest share of historical carbon emissions, with some 20% of the global total. China is second at 11%.

This deregulation orgy and abandonment of responsibility comes shortly after the EPA decided to close its offices that deal with addressing the disproportionate burden of pollution shouldered by marginalized communities. Zeldin has also ordered that $20 billion in grants to help address the climate crisis be halted.

Past presidents, both Republicans and Democrats, supported environmental laws to protect air and water quality and to mitigate the climate crisis. (We haven’t done nearly enough to address these problems, especially the latter. Now, we’re going backwards — in so many ways, in fact.)

Despite the vast volumes and accumulating amount of evidence explaining the devastation being caused and to be caused by greenhouse gas emissions, including trillions of dollars in economic costs, the Mad King has called the climate crisis a “hoax” and dismissed those concerned by its worsening impacts as “climate lunatics.”

The Mad King, perhaps the dullest tool to ever set foot in the White House, knows better than climate scientists and decades of research, because his uncle was an MIT professor. The truth is the Mad King is indebted to the fossil fuel industry and his other corporate/foreign masters.

During the campaign, the Mad King promised to give Big Oil anything it wanted in exchange for campaign donations. They delivered. Now it’s his turn to pay up.

Fossil fuels are causing the climate crisis and diminishing public health, but the regime is more concerned that the industry has been treated unfairly.

In 2023, the global oil and gas industry enjoyed record profits, with the five major oil companies — BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil, Shell, and TotalEnergies — earning $120 billion combined. The industry spent nearly $114 billion on stock buybacks, funneling profits to shareholders and executives while energy prices remained high and the planet warmed.

During the fourth quarter of last year, ExxonMobil made $55,812 per minute in profit, and both Shell and BP made more than $27,000 per minute.

To protect the industry from that unfairness, the United States is withdrawing from the Just Energy Transition Partnership, a collaboration between richer nations to help developing countries transition from coal to cleaner energy.

To protect a donor with deep financial ties to the Mad King, the regime is reportedly fast-tracking a controversial fossil fuel pipeline proposal in Michigan.

The regime has also moved to rewrite rules designed to prevent disasters at thousands of chemical facilities across the country. The National Advisory Committee on Microbiological Criteria for Foods, an advisory committee that was housed within the U.S. Department of Agriculture to provide outside expert advice to advance food safety across different levels of government, has been disbanded.

The Mad King has terminated U.S. funding to the U.N. program that is fighting HIV/AIDS. The regime canceled a meeting of scientific experts called to discuss next winter’s flu shots.

This assault against pollution rules and public safety measures could, if upheld by the courts, reshape the nation’s health in ways not seen since major legislation was passed in the 1970s to end an era of smoggy skies, polluted waterbodies, and contaminated soils. This anti-science/anti-expertise infatuation, combined with a warning planet, also paves the way for more disease.

Pollution from power plants, industry, and the transportation sector causes a range of public health problems, and the greenhouse gases they spew drive up global temperatures and fuel heat waves, flooding, severe weather, and prolonged drought.

Nearly every country on the planet has dirtier air than doctors recommend breathing. The burning of fossil fuels is a major reason why. Only seven countries meet the World Health Organization’s guidelines for tiny toxic particles known as fine particulate matter. The United States isn’t one of them, and, thanks to the Mad King, air pollution is likely to get worse.

The regime’s attack on public and environmental well-being doesn’t stop with coddling polluters. In fact, the colluding court’s experience in health-related matters is appalling, lacking, and downright dangerous. It’s an SNL skit with real-world consequences.

As measles cases surge, the regime’s secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert Kennedy Jr., took time last week to say this about the vaccine for what is considered the most contagious childhood disease: “There are adverse events from the vaccine. It does cause deaths every year. It causes all the illnesses that measles itself cause.”

Typical MAGA lying and fear-mongering. Take a sliver of truth and spin it until we all vomit. While vaccine-associated measles can occur in immune compromised individuals, it rarely happens. The measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine has never been found to cause a death in an immunocompetent individual.

Before the vaccine was available in 1963, nearly every child got measles by age 15. The disease sickened 3 million to 4 million people and led to about 500 deaths and 48,000 hospitalizations annually. There is no evidence it causes autism.

Instead of recommending a proven vaccine to combat a growing measles outbreak, Kennedy pushes “good nutrition,” vitamins, and cod liver oil. Nothing wrong with those things (well, maybe the latter is a bit disgusting, as I recall from childhood), but there is no scientific evidence they will prevent measles.

Kennedy also rails against most other vaccines, cites fringe health theories, and opposes fluoride in water, perhaps because it gives you brain worms. He has proposed stripping public participation from much of the business his agency conducts. He enjoys driving mutilated mammals, both marine and terrestrial, around.

Kennedy recently appeared with Sean Hannity, Fox’s kung fu panda, at a Steak ‘n Shake — it looked like an infomercial for the Indiana-based subsidiary of Biglari Holdings — to endorse the decision of the burger/milkshake chain to cook its fries in beef tallow. Kennedy is against seed oils and ultra-processed food. He says Americans don’t eat healthy.

Did Kennedy even read the Steak ‘n Shake menu before he filmed the commercial? Triple and double burgers, cheese fries, and candy-flavored milkshakes. I’m intrigued by the Steak Frank, though. (Full disclosure: I once ate at a Steak ‘n Shake, in Indianapolis, many years ago. I was drunk.)

The regime’s ban of scary words has seeped into the National Cancer Institute. The institute recently released new guidelines for “controversial, high-profile or sensitive” keywords that require “review prior to publication.”

Among the words and phrases that must be vetted, unlike cabinet appointments, are vaccines, fluoride, autism, measles, abortion, obesity, peanut allergies, bird flu, and marijuana. The list touches on the personal priorities of the beef-tallow-loving, false-claims-spewing Kennedy.

The National Institutes of Health has urged scientists to remove all references to mRNA vaccine technology from grant applications. The technology is under study for the prevention and treatment of infectious diseases, including the flu and AIDS, and cancer. It was deployed in the development of COVID-19 vaccines.

The regime’s concern for the well-being of others is Bond villain-like. They’re ghouls. Last week a U.S. citizen child recovering from brain cancer was deported to Mexico with her immigrant parents. Her parents hope their 10-year-old can return to the United States, where she was born, to continue her cancer treatments.

The Mad King has terminated $800 million in grants to Johns Hopkins University, spurring the nation’s top spender on research and development to plan layoffs and cancel health projects.

Alzheimer’s disease research centers face a $65 million funding gap amid a regime-imposed delay. In fact, funding delays have impacted nearly every research field, from pediatric cancer to dementia.

Research is for dummies. Also, no mask wearing, unless you are a marching Nazi.

When it comes to growing concerns about the bird flu, the regime’s secretary of agriculture, Brooke Rollins, complained that the previous administration depopulated about 150 million egg-laying hens last year.

The former ethics advisor for former Texas Gov. Rick Perry has noted the current regime has rolled out a five-point plan to address the matter. It includes, of course, deregulation.

Tax breaks for the superwealthy, industry deregulation, cod liver oil, rendered animal fat, and welcoming back measles is the regime recipe for rebuilding the American Dream.

I hope we’re all just collectively fever dreaming.

Note: Earlier this month the MAGA-controlled U.S. Supreme Court significantly weakened federal limitations on raw sewage discharge into waterbodies. The 5-4 decision will reportedly free municipalities to dump substantially more sewage into rivers, lakes, bays, oceans, degrading water quality standards around the country. The court’s majority achieved the goal by rewriting a key provision of the Clean Water Act.

Frank Carini can be reached at [email protected]. His opinions don’t reflect those of ecoRI News.