During Earth Week, the White House Praises Science While Silencing It
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On Earth Day, the White House declared that America finally has “a president who follows science.” Behind this carefully constructed message lies a disquieting reality: the administration is rapidly dismantling the very scientific and legal foundations of environmental protection. It is a textbook case of Orwellian doublespeak, language deliberately crafted to obscure or alter meaning in order to serve an ulterior motive. It is language that inverts truth and cloaks harmful actions in reassuring rhetoric, designed to suppress public understanding and distort the reality of what is at stake.
The public rhetoric is one of renewal. The actual policy? A sweeping plan to roll back 31 bedrock clean air and water protections. Our network of hundreds of former EPA staff knows the difference between talk and action. Let us be clear: this is not simply about environmental regulations. It is about whether we as a nation will allow any political regime to reframe science as subversion, lawlessness as liberty, and polluted air and water as pristine.
Those who will suffer the most — children, the elderly, and low-income populations — are conspicuously absent from the administration’s celebratory Earth Day prose. According to our analysis of EPA’s own data, pulling back these regulations would cause over 200,000 preventable deaths and more than 100 million additional asthma attacks over the next 25 years. Communities will breathe more pollution, drink dirtier water, and face higher risks of cancer, heart disease, and developmental disorders.
Though these rollbacks will take time to implement and will likely be challenged in court, the dismantling has already begun. EPA’s enforcement of these life-saving regulations is being gutted. EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin has ordered a halt to any enforcement that interferes with energy production, effectively prioritizing industry interests over public health and environmental protection. He also extended a lifeline to America’s biggest toxic polluters: an invitation to bypass rules designed to limit toxic emissions by simply sending an email. This backchannel has opened the door to what amounts to a secretive process to seek out a new form of presidential pardon — in other words, a shadow pardon. The chemical industry’s lobbying arm has already requested a blanket exemption for more than 500 facilities in 45 states.
This is not lawful discretion. It is the suspension of environmental law under a false banner of liberty.
As Orwell warned, political language is designed to make lies sound truthful. Today, we see that dynamic in full. Words like “freedom,” “efficiency,” and “reform” are used to rationalize pollution, deregulation, and the erosion of statutory authority. The phrase “following science” becomes a rhetorical shield for policies that silence it.
The antidote to this corrosion of truth is the contagion of courage. Across the country, people are rising. From Michigan to North Carolina, concerned citizens are taking to the streets to defend people’s health, democratic values, and scientific integrity. Every institutional leader, lawmaker, regulator, or citizen who stands up and speaks out becomes a spark, igniting others to do the same.
Environmental protection has always required courage. The courage to listen to scientists when the data is inconvenient. The courage to enforce laws even when industry objects. And now, the courage to call out doublespeak when it is deployed to obscure damage, deny accountability, and dismantle decades of environmental progress.
Without mass submission, a tyrant is powerless. But, without mass courage, the truth becomes indistinguishable from propaganda.
We choose truth over rhetoric, enforcement over appeasement, and the contagion of courage over the comfort of silence. The public trust and the future of our planet demand nothing less.
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