100 Days of Destruction

The Trump administration has spent its first 100 days waging the worst White House assault ever on the environment and public health—a reckless campaign to shred essential protections, hobble enforcement, and abandon hundreds of millions of acres of public lands and federal ocean waters to corporate polluters.

The administration has averaged at least one destructive action or proposal every single day of its first three months. We know that because we’ve already documented more than 100 here at the new White House Watch page we’re officially unveiling today.

This is a real-time inventory of the orders, proposals, and actions from this administration that threaten the environment and public health. White House Watch provides a searchable way to quickly see what the measures are and what their impact would be. Our staff will be staying on the case, updating this tool daily for as long as is needed.

Taken together, these measures are meant to weaken, if not destroy altogether, the entire edifice of responsible environmental oversight built through decades of diligent statecraft by leaders from both parties.

It could take a generation or more to repair the damage this administration has done, or proposed to do, in just its first 100 days. 

From day one, this administration has set out to:

• Eviscerate the rules we all depend on to protect clean air and water, defend wildlife, and safeguard human health
• Gut the agencies that stand sentry against toxic pollution and defend our families, communities, and farms from industrial ruin and climate catastrophe
• Sell off and expose to corporate use hundreds of millions of acres of public lands and federal ocean waters—the natural inheritance of every American

The administration lacks the authority to do much of what it has proposed.

An executive order earlier this month, for example, attempts to simply erase hundreds of existing rules that protect the environment and public health. This so-called sunset order is illegal. The rules were put in place to carry out laws duly passed by Congress. There’s no magic wand the administration might have to magically sweep those rules away. Any changes the administration might propose must be justified, rule by rule, with facts, evidence, and analysis specific to that rule. It cannot be done by fiat.

Similarly, a January executive order that would rescind protections for hundreds of millions of acres of federal ocean waters is also illegal. NRDC has joined other groups to challenge parts of this order in federal court.

To the extent that the administration succeeds in its assault on the environment, we’ll all pay the price, tallied in more pollution in our air and water; more emergency room visits, lost workdays, and premature death; more wildlife gone and habitat destroyed; and more runaway climate disasters in communities across the country.

This dangerous rampage has a single objective: to take the nation’s environmental guardian off the beat.

The winners would be oil and gas companies and other corporate polluters. They would have further latitude to despoil our rivers, lakes, and streams; contaminate our air; exploit our natural resources; and threaten our health—with minimal public oversight or risk of penalty.

In some ways, the situation is even worse than that:

• Instead of building on the environmental progress we’ve made since 1970, this administration is working to turn us back half a century or more.
• Instead of making U.S. workers and businesses the winners in a global clean energy market worth a record $2.1 trillion last year alone, this administration is trying to resurrect a coal industry that’s cut production in half over just the past decade.
• Instead of leading in the global climate fight we can’t afford to lose, this administration is sidelining the United States in the climate diplomacy that’s shaping the global rules of the road. Not even the oil and gas industry supports that move.

This administration talks about putting America first. Many of its policies and proposals, though, could leave this country lagging behind other nations that are powering ahead with wind and solar energy, electric vehicles, advanced batteries, and modern power grids.

The United States has been making progress of its own, getting about 16 percent of its electricity from the wind and sun, three times as much as just a decade ago.

Since 2022, corporations have announced more than $133 billion in new factories to build solar panels, electric vehicles, advanced batteries, and the like, creating at least 122,000 good jobs in red states and blue. 

Those totals would be even greater, though, if companies hadn’t canceled plans to build another $8 billion worth of factories and other clean energy projects in the first three months of this year, amid heightened economic uncertainty.

No nation ever prospered by throwing progress into reverse.

The rules, capacity, and stewardship we’ve put in place over the past half century have driven unprecedented gains in the quality of our lives, the productivity of our workers, and the strength of our economy.

They’ve transformed industrial hellscapes into modern oases teeming with life. They’ve helped to improve—beyond measure—the health of our people, the fertility of our farms, and the productivity of our workers.

This has all happened as the country has become more energy secure and the economy has grown nearly 300 percent, after adjusting for inflation. It demonstrates—proves—beyond all doubt, that a stable foundation of predictable environmental oversight goes hand in hand with national prosperity.

That’s not something to squander.

It’s a national asset. It’s a national strength. It’s time to stand up and protect it.