Trump Is Determined to Poison His Own Voters

Recent moves on pesticides and mercury pollution will disproportionately endanger people in red counties.

As Trump moves to undo decades of work—begun by Republican President Richard Nixon—to protect people and nature from toxic chemicals, two recent pro-polluter policies are especially likely to harm his own voters.

Last week, Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency—when will they rename it?—rolled back Biden-era limits on the amount of mercury pollution that coal plants can emit. Mercury can cause serious neurological damage to kids, especially babies (including unborn babies, another group this president has at times professed to care about). Other health problems associated with exposure to even small amounts of mercury include kidney and nervous system damage. For all these reasons, the World Health Organization recommends not using coal at all.

The majority of babies endangered by the rollback on mercury live in red states. The states with the largest number of coal plants—Texas, Indiana, Kentucky, and West Virginia, according to January 2026 data from Global Energy Monitor—voted overwhelmingly for Trump in both 2016 and 2024.

Indeed, Trump’s supporters could be pardoned for thinking the president has it out for them, as the coal rollback wasn’t the president’s only act of chilling disregard for their well-being. The same day as the EPA loosened mercury restrictions, Trump signed an executive order prioritizing the production of glyphosate, a toxic herbicide, nonsensically calling it essential to national security, and offering its manufacturer a degree of “immunity” from........

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