President Donald Trump vowed that his administration would maintain “the cleanest air and water on the planet.” However, President Trump and his administration’s actions in the first months of his presidency show he is already breaking that promise and is likely to increase pollution-related harm through unprecedented attacks on environmental safeguards. Through executive orders prioritizing fossil fuels; agency actions issuing blanket exemptions and repealing environmental protections; Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) actions withholding funds for pollution reduction programs; and planning to fire federal employees who enforce environmental standards, President Trump and his administration are reshaping how—and whether—companies curtail their pollution. At the same time, congressional Republicans are lining up legislation through the budget reconciliation process that, if passed, would undermine Americans’ health in order to transfer more wealth and power to corporations and polluters. The pending legislation would extend tax breaks that benefit the top 1 percent of earners by 24 times the benefit to low-income Americans;* raise electricity prices by 7 percent to 10 percent; and cripple economic growth through sky-high deficits, all while likely gutting health care through Medicaid cuts and slashing investments in U.S. jobs and infrastructure.
The Trump administration’s actions undermine clean air and water
The Trump administration has utilized executive orders, agency orders, and its newly formed DOGE to block clean energy projects, bolster fossil fuel emissions, and roll back environmental safeguards—all damaging to human and environmental health.
Executive orders. President Trump’s executive orders on “energy dominance” boost fossil fuels and discriminate against domestic renewable energy. The EOs exclude wind and solar energy, even though wind, solar, and storage are the most affordable forms of energy and do not produce harmful emissions like fossil fuels do. President Trump has blocked federal approvals for all wind power projects, effectively halting all permitting for offshore wind and potentially more than half of permitting for onshore wind. On April 8, 2025, President Trump issued an executive order to help coal plants run longer even though they are uneconomic and were associated with nearly 460,000 deaths from 1999 to 2020. Coal plants also result in high health costs and more deadly pollution for neighborhoods surrounding the facilities, which are disproportionately located near low-income communities and communities of color.
Agency actions. The Trump administration’s attacks on clean air and water have been swift: Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lee Zeldin has announced rollbacks of environmental protections, including 12 rollbacks that could lead to 200,000 premature deaths by 2050. Zeldin also invited polluters to ask for exemptions from compliance with the Clean Air Act provisions that protect Americans from breathing in dangerous pollutants such as mercury. So far, at least 66 coal-fired power plants have received an extension, including a facility that emits more harmful soot pollution than any other power plant in the nation.
DOGE actions. In addition to the rollbacks of environmental protections, the Trump administration’s potential cuts of federal workers who enforce the United States’ environmental safeguards and its freezing and cancellation of funds essential to air and water quality programs could significantly affect public health and have left grantees facing uncertainty. Programs including Clean Heavy-Duty Vehicles and Clean Ports reduce pollution tied to transportation corridors and diesel exhaust, which was linked to almost 9,000 deaths in 2023. Air quality monitors are essential to prevent unsafe air, and program funding for communities to monitor unseen air quality problems could help potentially address high rates of asthma. Pollution from power plants and industry still poses a major problem for public health; for this reason, the 117th Congress directed EPA to launch programs such as the Climate Pollution Reduction Grants (CPRG) to help reduce those emissions as well as greenhouse gas emissions. CPRG projects can support the development of up to 19,000 megawatts of solar and wind generation by 2030 and can reduce methane emissions from coal mines and oil and gas production equivalent to 3.7 million metric tons of carbon dioxide by 2030. Despite their benefits, DOGE is already threatening these programs and DOGE cuts may be made permanent if Congress passes a rescissions package.
Conflicting loyalties. President Trump’s clean air and water campaign promises are surpassed by his promises to fossil fuel industry donors. He promised tax cuts for the wealthy and made undisclosed promises to oil and gas industry donors, whom he asked to spend $1 billion on his 2024 presidential campaign, calling it a “deal” for what they would avoid in taxation and regulation. A deal for polluters, perhaps, but not for Americans: Clean air protection and health and economic benefits exceed polluters’ costs by more than 30 to 1.
The Trump budget would transfer more wealth to the rich at working people’s expense
While the Trump administration is slashing clean energy and environmental protections for the benefit of fossil fuel donors, congressional Republicans are planning to extend the Trump tax cuts, which would benefit the top 1 percent of earners by 24 times the benefit to low-income Americans.*
Tax cuts for billionaires. In their attempt to obscure the cost of this wealth transfer that benefits the ultrawealthy and corporations, congressional Republicans are ignoring statutory budget requirements, allowing them to argue that extending the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act are “free” when they actually increase the deficit by around $4 trillion over the next decade. Congressional Republicans know that what they are doing would be very unpopular with average Americans, so they are trying to convince the media to focus on and aggrandize the few scraps going to working people.
Harms to working people. Deficit-financed tax cuts for the wealthy hurt the American economy because inflating the deficit leads to higher interest rates and slows down growth. According to a recent Congressional Budget Office analysis, permanently extending the Trump tax cuts without paying for them would harm economic growth and balloon the national debt to 214 percent of GDP in 2054, 47 percent higher than if the tax cuts weren’t extended. Congressional Republicans’ “war on math” through current baseline gimmickry doesn’t change the hard facts nor the real economic harm to the U.S. economy.
Their math does not solve the underlying problem that the House’s $4.5 trillion tax cuts or the Senate’s $5.3 trillion tax cuts, disproportionately for the rich, are not free. Despite Elon Musk’s unsuccessful attempts to significantly cut federal spending, basic budget math means that significant cuts to non-defense spending would require deep cuts to programs on which millions of Americans rely. President Trump’s DOGE and congressional Republicans have also targeted Americans’ health, with congressional Republicans aiming to cut Medicaid funding and DOGE threatening to cut breakthrough research funding from the National Institutes of Health and public health protections at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration. A congressional rescissions package aimed to cure the possible illegality of DOGE’s cuts would more permanently damage programs that reduce pollution from transportation, power plants, and industry and that clean Americans’ drinking water. The combined attacks on environmental and health programs will lead to disaster for American lives.
The combined attacks on environmental and health programs will lead to disaster for American lives.
Raising costs for Americans. In addition to cutting health care, food assistance, public health, and programs protecting clean air and water, congressional Republicans are contemplating repealing clean energy incentives such as the tech neutral investment and production tax credits, which would result in lost jobs, decreased domestic manufacturing, and higher electricity costs for households and businesses, leading to a 7 percent and 10 percent increase in electricity prices, respectively. Also under threat are:
- Electric vehicle tax credits that help cut the cost of purchasing an EV, which costs half as much to fuel and maintain as a gasoline-powered car.
- Tax credits that can lower the cost of upgrading homes to be more energy efficient. For example, households that use the energy efficiency home improvement tax credit to install electric heat pumps to replace gas furnaces can save an average of $370 per year. Congress also directed the Department of the Treasury to provide the residential clean energy credit that can help households upgrade to renewable energy for their home, such as rooftop solar. A household that installs an electric heat pump to replace the furnace, installs a heat pump for water heating, and converts to an electric vehicle and rooftop solar will save $1,800 per year on energy bills.
Americans need and deserve a budget that builds wealth and health for the working class. Whether it’s DOGE cuts to programs and staffing, crippling deficits and program cuts in reconciliation, essential program cuts in appropriations, or other actions related to spending or removing money from the federal Treasury, the Trump administration and congressional Republicans are playing with hard-earned tax dollars from and meant for the American people. The federal budget should be spent wisely on programs and services that improve Americans’ quality of life, save lives, boost the economy, improve mobility, and save Americans money. The budget should not be used to allow corporations and the ultrawealthy to skip paying their fair share. Ensuring Americans have healthy environments and access to high-quality health care go hand in hand, and Congress should not accept a budget that makes Americans sicker and compounds their health problems by cutting health programs that identify, prevent, and treat the very health conditions that pollution can create.
Conclusion
Without strong environmental protections and infrastructure investments, many communities, particularly working-class communities, will experience heightened air and water pollution, exposure to hazardous facilities, and more extreme weather caused by climate change while being deprived of funding to reduce pollution and to build their own resilient and clean energy futures. EPA’s funding for 2024 was $23 billion, only 0.4 percent of the federal non-interest budget, and the pollution reduction and safe drinking water programs save lives and reduce health care visits and costs. In contrast, President Trump and congressional Republicans plan to give more than $4.5 trillion in tax cuts over the coming decade disproportionately for the rich.
The harms from the cuts to environmental programs and the Trump budget are not inevitable. The American people must use their power to reach out to their representatives to ensure they represent the interests of American people.
*Author’s note: Using Table 2 from the report “The Cost and Distribution of Extending Expiring Provisions of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017” to compare the percentage distribution to the top 1 percent of earners with the bottom 20 percent of earners.
The authors would like to thank Leo Banks, Jasia Smith, Akshay Thyagarajan, Jamie Friedman, Jill Rosenthal, Bobby Kogan, Mariam Rashid, Jessica Ordonez-Lancet, Cathleen Kelly, Frances Colon, Audrey Juarez, and Cindy Murphy-Tofig of the Center for American Progress for their contributions to this article.