Trump Watch

A Dow Chemicals facility that exploded in a ball of fire in Plaquemines, Louisiana in 2023, releasing tens of thousands of pounds of carcinogens. A leaky medical sterilization plant in a Los Angeles County neighborhood being sued by local residents suffering from breast, blood, and stomach cancers. A coal-fired power plant in Colorado whose emissions have been tied to dozens of premature deaths a year. What do all of these facilities have in common? They’re among the approximately one hundred facilities with cancer-causing emissions that President Trump has exempted from hazardous air pollution limits.

Abundance supporters were big backers of Trump appointees including Chris Wright, Doug Burgum and Jay Bhattacharya. Now that the Trump administration has (predictably) engaged in blatantly destructive actions, they’re hoping you’ll forget their earlier support of these Trump toadies.

On Tuesday, as New Yorkers headed to the polls for the primaries—hours before Zohran Mamdani’s joyous triumph over Andrew Cuomo would be apparent—it was 100°F, the outdoor public pools were closed to the public, and my neighbors were barefoot in the spray of a fire hydrant. “Opening fire hydrants without spray caps is illegal, wasteful, and dangerous,” read the 12:34 pm email I received from the city. Also wasteful and dangerous was failing to open the city’s public pools in time for a record-breaking heat dome. 

After live-tweeting his fallout with the world’s richest man, the president has been soothing himself with the pageantry of control. Miles of tanks have rolled into D.C. in preparation for Trump’s military parade. ICE agents have raided workplaces and seized thousands of people across the country. Police have targeted journalists, medics, and protestors in Los Angeles with rubber bullets, tear gas, and smoke grenades. Now the latest escalation: the president has deployed Marines to Los Angeles, threatening martial law. 

DOGE isn’t going anywhere, according to the Trump administration’s own officials. Russell Vought seems to be the new boss in town, but he and Musk’s visions have been aligned from the start.