OUR DAILY THREAD: RFK Jr's Chemical Bromance
Who's capturing whom?
THE SET-UP: “Corporate capture” is one of RFK Jr.’s favorite phrases. For years, he burnished his credentials as an environmental crusader by fighting the capture of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) by corporate polluters who walked through the EPA’s revolving door and seized control of its regulatory powers.
Since joining forces with Trump, he’s eschewed his long and occasionally fruitful fight against powerful corporations that profit from the EPA’s deferential approach to pesticides, herbicides and a variety of toxic pollutants. Instead, he’s turned his attention to the cynical “capture” of other federal agencies by corporate powers like Big Food and Big Pharma. It’s become something of a rallying cry for the burgeoning Make American Healthy Again (MAHA) movement that overlaps with Trump’s MAGA movement.
Throughout the early months of Trump’s second presidency, MAHA activists and influencers cheered on their champion’s efforts to fight corporate influence in America’s food and health system. At the same time, the man their champion served was loading-up regulatory agencies with industry lobbyists and corporate shills.
It’s been particularly acute at the EPA, where Trump’s choice for EPA Administrator quickly removed the revolving door and replaced it with a conveyor belt between the agency and the corporate oil and chemical interests RFK Jr. once made his name attacking. The New York Times identified Lee Zeldin’s team of corporate capturers just five days after Trump was inaugurated:
Top appointees include David Fotouhi, Mr. Zeldin’s second-in-command, a lawyer who recently challenged a ban on asbestos; Alex Dominguez, a former oil lobbyist who will work on automobile emissions; and Aaron Szabo, a lobbyist for both the oil and chemical industries who is expected to be the top air pollution regulator.
The division of E.P.A. that evaluates the safety of new chemicals now includes Nancy Beck and Lynn Ann Dekleva, both former senior directors at the American Chemistry Council, an industry group that spends millions of dollars on government lobbying. Both are veterans of the first Trump term.
It was an entirely predictable outcome.
During his first stint in the White House, Trump’s EPA was stocked with a rogues gallery of industry hacks who hailed from or previously worked on behalf of … the American Chemistry Council, American Forest & Paper Association, Koch Industries, Exxon, BP, the Hess Corporation, the American Petroleum Institute, the National Association of Chemical Distributors and Transocean Offshore Deepwater Drilling, among others.
Back in 2017, RFK Jr. told CNN he was “surprised” by “how much he turned the nation over to coal and oil interests.” He elaborated:
“I think he’s turning America into a petrostate,” Kennedy said. “He named the most notorious oil man in the country to run the State Department, Rex Tillerson, the head of Exxon.”
Kennedy added that many of Trump’s other Cabinet choices “are so deeply rooted in the ideology of fossil fuels and promoting mercantile interests of those industries ahead of the American people, and it’s hard to see a good end for our country from those kinds of policies.”
He also singled-out Trump for rolling back climate change-related regulations via an Executive Order :
“The abolition or the destruction of the clean power rule is not going to bring back a single coal job in eastern Kentucky or southern West Virginia, it’s just not gonna happen,” he said. “The only people who are going to benefit from that are going to be the billionaires who own the utilities and the big carbon interests.”
As RFK Jr. told STAT in a 2017 interview:
I don’t like President Trump’s environmental policies, and I would not endorse them. I would say that President Trump’s administration is essentially destroying 30 years of my work on environmental issues, and the work of many other people.
Now, though, RFK Jr. has ditched those concerns despite the fact that the second iteration of Trump’s EPA makes the first iteration look like a chapter of the Rachel Carson Fan Club.
However, his apparent capitulation was not a problem for an army of MAHA enthusiasts who’ve been captivated by the once-unthinkable possibility of wringing corporate influence out of the food and drug systems.
That is, it wasn’t a problem … until now.
On Friday, The New York Times reported on a growing call for Lee Zeldin’s resignation by MAHA devotees. It appears they’re not nearly as willing as RFK Jr. to look the other way while the EPA acts as a rubber stamp for the purveyors of pesticides and PFAS “forever chemicals.” Per The Times:
Several prominent activists in the “Make America Healthy Again” movement are urging President Trump to fire Lee Zeldin, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, over his decisions to loosen restrictions on harmful chemicals.
In a petition circulated on social media, the activists wrote that Mr. Zeldin “has prioritized the interests of chemical corporations over the well-being of American families and children.”
The organizers included Vani Hari, a MAHA influencer who is known as the Food Babe to her 2.3 million Instagram followers, and Alex Clark, the host of a health and wellness podcast popular among conservatives.
Now it’s RFK Jr. who is running interference for the corporate capturers:
In an emailed statement, Mr. Kennedy said Mr. Zeldin “has proven himself a steadfast partner in our mission to Make America Healthy Again. Together, we’re driving the MAHA Strategy forward with force — advancing major initiatives on PFAS, microplastics, and water quality to protect the health and future of every American.”
It’s an ironic turn for the “vocal critic of pesticides and other chemicals” who now finds himself defending an EPA “stocked with officials who previously served as lawyers and lobbyists for the chemical industry.”
For now, MAHA’s true believers have their sights trained on Zeldin. But, as Trump found out with his handling of Jeffrey Epstein’s infamous files, it’s only a matter of time until the truest believers he once marshalled to his cause begin to question the contradictions between his rhetoric and reality:
Kelly Ryerson, a MAHA influencer who goes by The Glyphosate Girl on social media, said she was initially optimistic that the Trump administration would crack down on PFAS in drinking water, since Mr. Kennedy had crusaded for clean water as the president of the environmental group Waterkeeper Alliance.
Instead, the E.P.A. has given water utilities an additional two years, until 2031, to comply with a Biden administration rule limiting two types of PFAS present in drinking water systems. The agency also plans to rescind Biden-era limits on four other related chemicals found in tap water.
If RFK Jr. isn’t careful, he might soon find himself denouncing The Glyphosate Girl’s MAHA credentials after she gives a bombshell interview declaring her independence from him. - jp
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