Category: Not Factual

Trump: Vote For an Alleged Sexual Predator Because He’s Tough On Crime

Doug Jones is a career prosecutor, famous for his role in convicting Ku Klux Klan members and terrorists. Roy Moore is a theocratic demagogue, famous for nullifying court orders and (allegedly) sexually harassing and assaulting so many teenage girls, he got himself banned from the Gadsden Mall.

On Tuesday, president Trump suggested that Alabamians should vote for Moore over Jones in the state’s upcoming special Senate election – because the alleged sexual predator’s rival was “soft on crime.”

“He’s terrible on the border, he’s terrible on the military,” Trump said of the Democratic Senate Tuesday. “I can tell you, you don’t need someone who’s soft on crime like Jones.”

Sometimes, it feels like the Trump administration’s overriding ambition is to prove that every liberal “caricature” of the American right was correct. With its health-care and tax plans, the White House confirmed that fiscal conservatism isn’t driven by a desire to reduce the deficit, but by a passion for increasing inequality. Meanwhile, with his vulgarity and (alleged) sexual predation, Trump has validated the notion that (much of) American religious conservatism is less concerned with upholding traditional sexual morality than subjugating women.

And now, with his remarks on the Jones-Moore race, the president has affirmed the left’s decades-old contention that “law-and-order” conservatism isn’t animated by a reverence for the rule of law, so much as reactionary rage at challenges to the social order – which is to say, the social hierarchy, (which is to say, in most cases, white supremacy).

Trump had already lent credence to this argument, when he pardoned Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Arizona, after Maricopa County’s favorite proto-fascist had directly subverted law and order, by refusing to honor a legally-binding court order. But at least in that case, there was a halfway coherent (if completely wrong and racist) argument that the Arpaio’s refusal to abandon racial profiling was motivated by a concern for countering violent crime.

But now, Trump has shed that fig leaf. If the president believes that an alleged, serial sexual abuser of teenage girls (who wants to deport law-abiding undocumented immigrants) is “tougher on crime” than a lifelong prosecutor (who has little interest in deporting law-abiding, undocumented immigrants) than what, do you suppose, he means by crime?

[New York Magazine]

Media

After border agent is killed and partner injured in Texas, Trump renews call for wall

Authorities were searching southwest Texas for suspects or witnesses after a U.S. Border Patrol agent was killed and his partner injured Sunday while on patrol in the state’s Big Bend area, officials said.

Agent Rogelio Martinez and his partner were “responding to activity” near Interstate 10 in Van Horn, Tex., when both were seriously injured, according to a Customs and Border Protection news release.

Martinez’s partner called for help. Other agents arrived, provided medical care and took them to a hospital.

Martinez died of his injuries; his partner, who was not identified, remained in the hospital in serious condition, officials said.

Martinez, a 36-year-old from El Paso, had been a border agent since August 2013.

Jeannette Harper of the FBI’s El Paso field office told the San Antonio Express-News that authorities were still gathering evidence. She said reports that the agents were shot were not true, but that a full account of what happened wouldn’t be released until Monday.

“They were not fired upon,” Harper said.

A Customs and Border Protection spokesman declined to offer any further details about what happened.

But a National Border Patrol Council labor union official said Martinez may have been killed in a rock attack.

Art Del Cueto, the union’s vice president, said he has heard from other Border Patrol agents that Martinez and his partner were believed to be responding to an electronic sensor that had been activated.

Del Cueto said he was told that Martinez and his partner apparently did not sustain bullet or stab wounds — so he suspects the pair may have been attacked with rocks, which are commonly thrown at agents working in that area.

“It’s heartbreaking; it’s truly heartbreaking,” he told The Washington Post on Monday in a phone interview.

President Trump appeared to connect Martinez’s death to border security and plugged his plans for a border wall Sunday night on Twitter.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) said, without explanation, that Martinez and his partner were “attacked” and also linked the incident to security on the border with Mexico.

“This is a stark reminder of the ongoing threat that an unsecure border poses to the safety of our communities and those charged with defending them,” Cruz tweeted. “I remain fully committed to working with the Border Patrol to provide them with all the resources they need to safeguard our nation.”

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) offered his condolences to the victims’ families.

“Our prayers are with the families of this Border Patrol Agent who was killed & the other who was injured in this attack in Texas,” he wrote on Twitter. “Our resources must be increased to prevent these attacks in the future.”

The FBI in El Paso is leading an investigation into the incident, along with the Culberson County Sheriff’s Department and Customs and Border Protection’s Office of Professional Responsibility.

The acting secretary of homeland security, Elaine Duke, said in a statement that she learned of Martinez’s death Sunday morning, and offered her agency’s full support to “determine the cause of this tragic event.”

“On behalf of the quarter of a million front line officers and agents of DHS, my thoughts and prayers go out to the family and friends of Agent Martinez and to the agent who is in serious condition,” Duke said.

The area where the agents were injured is a dusty stretch of highway about 100 miles east of El Paso.

It is part of Customs and Border Protection’s vast Big Bend Sector, which covers 135,000 square miles in Texas and Oklahoma and 510 miles of river border. The sector’s Van Horn Station, near where Martinez died, covers 15 miles of the Mexico border.

The Big Bend Sector accounted for 1 percent of the roughly 61,000 apprehensions Border Patrol agents made along Texas’s southwest border between fall 2016 and spring 2017, as the Associated Press reported.

Local media photos from the scene showed Border Patrol trucks and about a dozen other unmarked vehicles parked along the side of the road, and a group of law enforcement agents huddled together.

Thirty-eight Customs and Border Protection agents have died in the line of duty since 2003, according to the agency’s memorial page.

Before Martinez, the only other agent to die in 2017 was Isaac Morales, who was stabbed in a bar parking lot in El Paso. Three agents died in 2016, two of them in car accidents, one of a heart attack while on bike patrol.

[Washington Post]

Reality

Trump had jumped to conclusions without available evidence, fanning the flames of racism by blaming Mexicans when we don’t know what happened yet.

For example, in Culberson County, where the two officers were injured, the local sheriff painted a different picture, suggesting to the Dallas Morning News that investigators are considering the possibility that the agents fell into the culvert in a nighttime accident.

“The evidence is not obvious as to what happened out there,” Sheriff Oscar Carrillo told the paper.

Trump tweets condolences to wrong town after mass shooting

Late Tuesday evening, President Trump tweeted condolences for a mass shooting to the incorrect town.

Tuesday, a gunman with a semi-automatic rifle and two handguns opened fire on four victims at multiple locations in the small Northern California town of Rancho Tehama. The suspect wounded more victims at an elementary school before law enforcement shot and killed him.

Mr. Trump’s Twitter response, which has since been deleted from his account but is timestamped at 11:34 p.m. on November 14, mentioned another mass shooting at First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, which occurred on November 5, killing 26 people and injuring 20 more.

“May God be with the people of Sutherland Springs, Texas. The FBI and Law Enforcement has arrived,” Mr. Trump wrote in the tweet, offering thoughts and prayers to the wrong town.

It appears the response Mr. Trump intended for the victims of the violent incident in California was informed by his initial tweet regarding the Sutherland Springs shooting.

“May God be w/ the people of Sutherland Springs, Texas,” the November 5 tweet reads. “The FBI & law enforcement are on the scene. I am monitoring the situation from Japan.”

[CBS News]

Trump slams former US intel leaders as ‘political hacks’

President Trump on Saturday lashed out at U.S. intelligence leaders for their conclusion that Russia interfered in the 2016 election, calling them “political hacks” and slamming the investigations into Russian interference as a “Democratic hit job.”

Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One, Trump blasted former U.S. intelligence officials by name, including former CIA Director John Brennan, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and former FBI Director James Comey.

“I mean, give me a break, they are political hacks,” Trump said, according to White House pool reports. He was discussing the U.S. intelligence community’s conclusion that Russia sought to influence the 2016 election in favor of Trump.

“So you look at it, I mean, you have Brennan, you have Clapper and you have Comey,” he continued. “Comey is proven now to be a liar and he is proven now to be a leaker.”

“So you look at that and you have President Putin very strongly, vehemently says he had nothing to do with them,” he continued, referring to Russian president Vladimir Putin.

Trump said that the investigation into Russian interference in the election was a “Democratic-inspired thing” and a “pure hit job.”

Trump went on to say that he wasn’t going to “argue” with Putin about whether Russia interfered in the 2016 election.

“He said he didn’t meddle, he said he didn’t meddle. I asked him again. You can only ask so many times,” Trump said, according to pool reports.

“I can’t stand there and argue with him, I would rather have him get out of Syria, I would rather get to work with him on the Ukraine,” he added.

Multiple U.S. intelligence agencies, including the CIA and FBI, have concluded that Russia did interfere in the 2016 election, and several congressional investigations are currently underway to determine the scale and scope of Russia’s interference.

Special counsel Robert Mueller is also leading an investigation into potential ties between President Trump’s election campaign and Russian officials.

Trump is in the middle of a five-nation, 12-day trip to Asia, and is currently in Vietnam. Trump participated overnight in the 25th Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Danang.

[The Hill]

Trump Tells Democrats He’ll ‘Get Killed’ Financially in GOP Tax Bill

President Donald Trump called 12 Senate Democrats Tuesday, hoping to sway them in favor of the Republican tax cut bill, and told them he would personally “get killed” financially by the GOP bill. He said the wealthy need a repeal of the estate tax, according to multiple people who were present.

“My accountant called me and said ‘you’re going to get killed in this bill,'” the president said during a phone call from his trip in South Korea. He was apparently trying to increase Democratic support by claiming the bill would hurt wealthy taxpayers like himself, making the point that only the repeal of the estate tax would provide him any benefit.

Many of those Democrats are from states Trump won in 2016.

After the call with Trump ended, the meeting, which included his legislative affairs chief Marc Short and economics adviser Gary Cohn, turned into a sparring match between Democrats and White House officials over a politically broken Senate and who is to blame, multiple senators who attended the meeting said.

Short confirmed the president’s remarks and said they were part of a discussion on the elimination of individual deductions in the tax bill. Short said the estate tax was a separate issue.

Trump told the Democrats on the phone that he wanted a repeal of the estate tax in the bill because they had to give something to rich people, people in the room said.

“I think that we’ve been advocating for the elimination of the death tax for a while,” Short told NBC News, using the favored Republican term for the estate tax.

Trump, a billionaire, has not released any tax returns and so it has not been possible for the public to assess how this plan could benefit him personally and his family. Senate Republicans are rushing to release their tax cut bill later this week.

Asked to comment on the president’s remarks to the group, White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said, “The president did call in and urged senators to support the bill.”

Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, said the president told the Democrats “this bill is terrible for rich people, and we (Democrats) don’t really agree.”

An analysis by the Joint Committee on Taxation found that after 2023, people making between $20,000 and $40,000 would see a tax increase. People making $200,000 to $500,000 per year would also see a tax increase after 2023 under the current GOP plan. A repeal of the estate tax would give the wealthy an additional $300 billion dollar tax break.

The House is amending its version of a tax overhaul initially released last week and the Senate is expected to unveil its version of a bill on Thursday. The Senate Finance Committee is expected to move quickly, advancing the measure though the committee process starting Monday, a timeline that Democrats say shuts them out of the process.

Senate Democrats complained about components of the House bill during the meeting, but Short and Cohn told them that the Senate bill will be much different than the House version and that the Senate bill is the one that matters.

The hour-long meeting became increasingly testy when Democrats complained about the process. Republicans have been crafting a bill behind closed doors and have sought no Democratic input.

Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., grew frustrated and got into a heated back and forth with Short.

“Give us your input now,” Short told Tester, according to the Montana senator.

Democrats continued to complain about Republicans locking them out of the process, making the argument that true bipartisan tax overhaul should get the support of 70 senators.

But Short responded to their concerns by blaming Democrats for Senate dysfunction because they have held up Trump’s nominees.

[NBC News]

Reality

Donald Trump stands to save over $1 billion dollars in taxes, with his tax reform.

Donald Trump literally just made the ‘good guy with a gun’ argument

In the wake of the Sandy Hook school shooting in late 2012, a new saying became popular among gun rights advocates: “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.” (The phrase is widely credited to National Rifle Association CEO Wayne LaPierre.)

The logic behind the saying goes like this: In an era of mass shootings, the best (only?) defense is to be armed yourself. Shooting back at a shooter may be your only chance at living through such an incident. We need more good people with guns — not fewer.

Which brings us to Tuesday afternoon in Seoul, South Korea where President Donald Trump was asked by a reporter whether he might support “extreme vetting for people trying to buy a gun” in the wake of the Texas church shooting on Sunday that left 26 people dead.

Here’s how Trump responded:

“You’re bringing up a situation that probably shouldn’t be discussed too much right now. We could let a little time go by. It’s OK if you feel that’s an appropriate question even though we’re in the heart of South Korea. I will certainly answer your question. If you did what you’re suggesting, there would have been no difference three days ago, and you might not have had that very brave person who happened to have a gun or a rifle in his truck go out and shoot him, and hit him and neutralize him. I can only say this: If he didn’t have a gun, instead of having 26 dead, you would have had hundreds more dead. So that’s the way I feel about it. Not going to help.”

This is, quite literally, the “good guy with a gun” argument. And Trump is right that a man living near the church grabbed his gun and fired at the shooter, wounding him in the leg and torso and then chasing him in a car — with another bystander — until the shooter crashed in a ditch.

The problem for Trump’s argument is that, outside of a handful of anecdotes here and there, there is very little empirical evidence that suggests the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.

A study of data on gun violence that was released this summer by Stanford Law professor John Donahue makes this case in stark terms.

“There is not even the slightest hint in the data that (right to carry) laws reduce overall violent crime,” wrote Donohue, concluding that violent crime was somewhere between 13-15% higher in states that have right to carry laws than if that same state had not passed that sort of legislation.

According to the Harvard School of Public Health, “case-control studies, ecological time-series and cross-sectional studies indicate that in homes, cities, states and regions in the US, where there are more guns, both men and women are at a higher risk for homicide, particularly firearm homicide.”

The United States is a clear leader in the number of guns owned by civilians — almost 90 guns per 100 people, according to a 2007 study. (At that time, 270 million of the world’s 875 million known firearms were owned by American civilians.)

There is also lots and lots of evidence that for the large number of guns in the country, very few are actually used in self defense. A 2013 study by the Department of Justice showed that in less than 1% of all victimizations between 2007 and 2011 did the victim use a gun to defend him or herself.

Those numbers run directly counter to the reasons gun owners give for owning a gun, however. Pew Research Center polling on guns and American gun culture conducted over the summer showed that more than two-thirds of gun owners say “protection” is a major reason why they own a weapon.

As the Washington Post’s Chris Ingraham has documented, for every one “justifiable” gun homicide, there are 34 criminal gun homicides, 78 gun suicides and two accidental gun deaths. (Ingraham used data from this 2015 report from the Violence Policy Center.)

That’s a lot of numbers. But the point here is simple. While anecdotes — like the Texas shooting Trump cited — seem to affirm the “good guy with a gun” theory, according to the large majority of the available data, more guns in the hands of civilians lead to more gun deaths, not fewer.

[CNN]

Reality

Actually Trump is echoing the NRA’s own argument that if guns are not allowed near schools and government buildings then shootings cannot be stopped by a “good guy with a gun.” However the empirical evidence is not on Trump’s side.

In 2014 the FBI released a reported titled “A Study of Active Shooter Incidents in the United States Between 2000 and 2013” which looked over 13 years of data and a of total of 160 incidents, and concluded the concept of a good guy with a gun was unequivocally proven to be a myth. The number of times a shooting ended after armed citizens exchanged gunfire with the shooters only amounted to 5 times (3.1%). In contrast the number of times unarmed citizens safely and successfully disrupted the shootings was 21 times (13.1%).

Trump distances himself from Ed Gillespie after Virginia election loss

President Trump tried to distance himself from Republican gubernatorial candidate Ed Gillespie on Twitter late Tuesday, after Democratic candidate and Virginia Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam won the state’s highly contested governor’s race.

Both parties poured money and staff into the Virginia election, which was seen as a potential bellwether for Trump’s impact on mid-term elections across the country next year.

“Ed Gillespie worked hard but did not embrace me or what I stand for,” Trump tweeted after the election. “Don’t forget, Republicans won 4 out of 4 House seats, and with the economy doing record numbers, we will continue to win, even bigger than before!”

Trump, who is traveling in South Korea, had been a vocal supporter of Gillespie but had never hit the campaign trial for the former Republican National Committee chairman.

Earlier Tuesday, Trump tweeted, “.@EdWGillespie will totally turn around the high crime and poor economic performance of VA.” Last month, Trump first came out to support Gillespie on Twitter by bashing Northam.

[USA Today]

Trump reverts to campaign-trail name-calling in Twitter rant calling for probe of DNC

President Trump issued a flurry of tweets over a five-hour span Friday urging the Justice Department to investigate Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee over a joint fundraising agreement they signed in August 2015.

Trump’s accusations follow publication by Politico of an excerpt from former acting DNC Chair Donna Brazile’s upcoming book. Brazile alleges she found “proof” that the 2016 Democratic primary was rigged in Clinton’s favor.

Previous presidents have avoided even seeming to direct the Justice Department on whom to investigate — but not Trump.

Trump reverted to his campaign-trail name-calling of Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), again referring to her as “Pocahontas.”

He also in one post called Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) “Crazy Bernie.” Trump has described this kind of rhetoric as “modern day presidential.”

Trump’s epic Twitter rant took place in the hours and minutes before he was set to depart the South Lawn via Marine One for his Air Force One flight to Hawaii to kick off his 12-day swing through Asia.

Implicit in the messages was more criticism of Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions, though Trump did not mention the nation’s top prosecutor by name.

Asked later Friday if he would fire the attorney general if he doesn’t investigate Trump’s Democratic political rivals, the president said, “I don’t know.”

Two White House officials quickly cautioned against reading too much into Trump’s comments, reiterating that he has no plans to fire Sessions. And although the White House maintains that Trump’s tweets are “official record,” it says Trump has not ordered Sessions or the FBI to do anything related to Democrats.

The aides said the tweets were a media savvy way to deflect attention from the investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller into Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

This week, former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and his business associate Rick Gates, who also had a role in the campaign, were indicted on 12 counts, and former Trump campaign advisor George Papadopoulos pleaded guilty to lying about his dealings with Russians who were offering “dirt” on Clinton.

[Los Angeles Times]

Hours after Trump calls US justice system ‘a laughingstock,’ White House denies he ever did

The White House on Wednesday flatly denied that President Donald Trump had ever called the American criminal justice system “a joke and a laughingstock,” just hours after Trump said precisely that during a televised Cabinet meeting.

“We need quick justice and we need strong justice — much quicker and much stronger than we have right now — because what we have right now is a joke, and it’s a laughingstock,” Trump said at the meeting.

The president’s remark followed a terror attack in New York City on Tuesday that killed eight people. The suspect, Sayfullo Saipov, was shot on the scene and quickly taken into custody. Authorities later found items that indicate the attack was inspired by ISIS.

A few hours after Trump’s Cabinet meeting, CNN’s Jim Acosta asked White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, “Why did the president call the U.S. justice system a joke and a laughingstock?”

“That’s not what he said,” Sanders replied. “He said that process has people calling us a joke and a laughingstock.”

Sanders went on to say that the president was frustrated by how long and costly it is to prosecute individuals accused of terror-related crimes under U.S. law.

“Particularly for someone to be a known terrorist, that process should move faster. That’s the point [Trump] is making. That’s the frustration he has,” she said.

To be sure, Trump did express his frustration at the slow pace of the justice system during his Cabinet meeting, saying the nation needed “to come up with a punishment that’s far quicker and far greater than the punishment these animals are getting right now.” But he never said there were “people calling us a joke.”

Wednesday’s press briefing left reporters stunned, as they compared Sanders’ denial with the official transcript of Trump’s remarks in the Cabinet meeting.

CNBC asked the White House to clarify how Sanders could have claimed “that’s not what [the president] said” when that was, in fact, precisely what the president said. The White House did not immediately respond.

[CNBC]

Media

Trump calls US justice system ‘a laughing stock,’ White House denies it from CNBC.

Scott Pruitt Declares War on Air Pollution Science

The Trump administration’s environmental denialism runs much deeper than global warming. That became clear just one month into the presidency, at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, where panelist Steve Milloy—formerly a paid flack for the tobacco and fossil fuel industries and member of the president’s Environmental Protection Agency transition team—argued that the mainstream science on the health risks of air pollution was wrong. Contra the Centers for Disease Control, the World Health Organization, the National Institutes of Health and most publishing epidemiologists, Milloy insisted that excessive particulate matter is not linked to premature death—and that scientists who advise the EPA made up evidence to support the Obama administration’s regulatory priorities. “These people validate and rubber-stamp the EPA’s conclusion that air pollution kills people,” he said. His co-panelists nodded in agreement.

Milloy called for EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt to overhaul the agency’s scientific advisory boards, the bodies that ensure public health regulations are based on sound, peer-reviewed science. Milloy said scientists who receive EPA grants are biased toward regulation, and thus Pruitt should ban them from serving on the boards. He and his co-panelists also argued for more representation from polluting industries, which clearly do have a bias against regulation.

Milloy and others on the anti-environmental fringe are getting their wish. On Tuesday, Pruitt announced massive changes to the EPA’s Scientific Advisory Board and Clean Air Scientific Advisory Council, both of which advise EPA on the science behind proposed regulations. Pruitt announced that EPA will no longer appoint scientists who have received grants from the agency to these boards. “From this day forward, EPA advisory committee members will be financially independent from the agency,” he said. Pruitt is also expected to replace every single member whose term is expiring instead of renewing some for a second term, as is common practice. Terry Yosie, former director of the Science Advisory Board during the Reagan administration, told me, “It’s fair to say that this has never happened to this sweeping degree before of existing board members whose terms are expiring this year.”

These changes have been expected for several weeks, but it’s all the more concerning when we look at who these new advisors are. A list of expected appointees to the EPA’s Science Advisory Board, obtained by the Post, E&E News, and The New Republic, shows that Pruitt is expected to appoint multiple people who have downplayed the impact of air pollution on public health. These deniers will have the influence to contort EPA science, leading to the weakening or even repeal of clean-air regulations that protected Americans for decades.

Of the 17 new members expected to be appointed to the EPA’s Scientific Advisory Board (SAB), three hail from large fossil-fuel companies: Southern Company, Phillips 66, and Total. Three are from red-state governments; one is from a chemical industry trade association; the rest are from various universities and consulting groups. Five of the 17 hold views on air pollution that are outside of the scientific mainstream. Of the three new members expected to be appointed to the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Council (CASAC), one is an air pollution skeptic.

Most toxicologists and epidemiologists accept that air pollution can harm humans, and that excessive air pollution can lead to death in vulnerable populations (like children and the elderly). That’s why the government regulates it—principally under the Clean Air Act, a widely popular law passed in 1963 and amended multiple times with unanimous or overwhelming support in the Senate. Through that law, we have various regulations on specific air pollutants, including National Ambient Air Quality Standards for particulate matter and ground-level ozone.

Several expected SAB appointees will likely argue that these regulations should be weakened. Michael Honeycutt, the director of toxicology at the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ), has been aggressively seeking a spot on one of the scientific advisory boards since last year. He is “one of the top ozone science doubters in the state,” according to a 2016 profile in the Houston Press:

Honeycutt is the guy who has been leading the charge against making any changes to air quality standards in Texas. He and a bunch of TCEQ scientists have followed in the footsteps of Republicans in Texas and across the country in vowing to oppose EPA air quality changes until the end of time, more or less. He’s stated in the past he’s against any measures to reduce air pollution mainly because he feels they would be too expensive. Aside from that, Honeycutt reasons that ozone levels aren’t an issue at all because  “most people spend more than 90 percent of their time indoors” so they’re rarely exposed to significant layers of ozone.

The EPA considers ozone a harmful air pollutant. “Reducing ozone pollution makes breathing easier,” the agency’s website reads. “Breathing ozone can trigger a variety of health problems, particularly for children, the elderly, and people of all ages who have lung diseases such as asthma.” Honeycutt, who’s been trying to undercut the scientific basis for smog regulations since 2010, argues that people aren’t outside long enough for high levels of ozone exposure to make a difference.

Robert Phalen, who directs the Air Pollution Health Effects Laboratory at the University of California Irvine, is not an obvious ideologue like Honeycutt, but his research findings would support a deregulatory agenda for air pollution. “The relative risks associated with modern [particulate matter] are very small and confounded by many factors,” he wrote in a 2004 study. “Neither toxicology studies nor human clinical investigations have identified the components and/or characteristics of [particulate matter] that might be causing the health-effect associations.” Phalen has argued that the air is currently too clean, because children’s lungs need to breathe irritants in order to learn how to fight them. “Modern air,” he said in 2012, “is a little too clean for optimum health.”

Anne Smith, an analyst at NERA Economic Consulting, has argued against President Barack Obama’s signature climate change regulation, the Clean Power Plan. Specifically, she took issue with how his administration classified the health risks of particulate matter. She contends that one can’t know for certain whether a death during, for instance, a smog event was directly caused by air pollution. Mainstream scientists acknowledge as much, but say the strong statistical correlation between death rates and pollution rates are enough to prove the risks. Smith disagrees.

The rest of the expected nominees are similarly skeptical. The University of North Carolina’s Richard Smith is the author of a recent peer-reviewed study that found “No association of acute deaths with levels of PM2.5 or ozone.” Stanley Young, a listed expert at the climate-denying Heartland Institute, has written that there is “empirical evidence and a logical case that air pollution is (most likely) not causally related to acute deaths.” And Tony Cox—the one expected to be appointed to the clean air board—has long argued that the public health benefits of reducing ozone pollution are “unwarranted and exaggerated.”

Unlike with climate change, which scientists overwhelmingly agree is driven by humans, some peer-reviewed studies cast doubt on air pollution’s health impacts. But other peer-reviewed studies say air pollution’s health risks are even greater than we currently assume. And the majority of scientists agree that air pollution poses a threat to public health, and can trigger death in vulnerable populations. The disproportionate number of doubters on Pruitt’s science advisory team doesn’t reflect that robust debate happening within the scientific community. Instead, it drastically tips the scales in favor of Pruitt’s deregulatory policy agenda. Or as Milloy, the EPA transition team member and CPAC panelist put it on Tuesday afternoon, “More winning!”

[New Republic]

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