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The Hidden Risks of Trump's EPA Cuts: Birth Defects, Bad Air

Fifty former federal and state environmental officials detail what the president’s budget could do to the agency and to human health.
A rally outside the Environmental Protection Agency by the American Federation of Government Employees and environmental groups, in Washington, D.C., on March 15.
Photographer: Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post/The Washington Post/Getty Images
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President Donald Trump pledged during the 2016 campaign that he would only "leave a little bit" of federal rules that protect human health and the environment. Now about 50 former officials of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency are firing back in a lengthy analysis that details, program by program, what amounts to a starvation diet for the EPA. 

Calling themselves the Environmental Protection Network, they worked through both Republican and Democratic administrations. The group's members are putting aside their differences over policies and programs to stop what they say "appears to be nothing less than a full-throttle attack on the principle underlying all U.S. environmental laws—that protecting the health and environment of all Americans is a national priority."