by Lisa Song

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More than three years ago, ProPublica spotlighted America’s “sacrifice zones,” where communities in the shadow of industrial facilities were being exposed to unacceptable amounts of toxic air pollution. Life in these places was an endless stream of burning eyes and suspicious smells, cancer diagnoses and unanswered pleas for help.

The Biden administration took action in the years that followed, doling out fines, stepping up air monitoring and tightening emissions rules for one of the most extreme carcinogens. Last year, the Environmental Protection Agency requested a significant budget increase in part to issue scores of hazardous air pollution rules and fulfill its obligations under the Clean Air Act. Had the effort been successful, experts said, it could have made a meaningful difference.

President Donald Trump threatens to dismantle the steps his predecessor took to curb pollution. In just over two weeks, the Trump administration has ordered a halt to proposed regulations, fired the EPA’s inspector general, frozen federal funding for community projects and launched a process that could force thousands of EPA employees from their jobs.

So ProPublica set out to understand what modest reforms are now under threat and who will be left to safeguard these communities.

The first Trump administration told EPA staff to defer more to state agencies on environmental enforcement. But ProPublica has documented a long history of state failures to hold polluters accountable — mostly in areas where support for Trump is strong.

“States generally do not have the resources, experience, equipment, nor the political will to quickly and effectively respond” to serious pollution complaints, Scott Throwe, a former senior enforcement official at the EPA, said in an email.

In Pascagoula, Mississippi, complaints from residents rolled in to the state’s environmental agency for years as a nearby oil refinery, a shipbuilding plant and other facilities regularly released carcinogens like benzene and nickel, according to emissions reports the facilities sent to the EPA.

The futility of the complaints became apparent when the nonprofit

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