More gifts for polluters and big ag

In the midst of a pandemic, the Trump administration today weakened regulations relating to the release of mercury and other toxic metals from oil and coal-fired power plants.

The new Environmental Protection Agency rule does not eliminate restrictions on the release of mercury, a heavy metal linked to brain damage. Instead, it creates a new method of calculating the costs and benefits of curbing mercury pollution that environmental lawyers said would fundamentally undermine the legal underpinnings of controls on mercury and many other pollutants.By reducing the positive health effects of regulations on paper and raising their economic costs, the new method could be used to justify loosening restrictions on any pollutant that the fossil fuel industry has deemed too costly to control.

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White House wants to screw farmworkers to help big ag.