Late last night, the nomination of Michael Dourson, toxicologist for hire, to lead EPA’s chemical safety office was withdrawn. This is a major victory in our fight to keep toxic chemicals out of our stuff. Dourson had a track record that made it clear he never cared about people’s health—much less that of more vulnerable children—and he would never have done the job of enforcing the toxic chemical law we worked so hard together to pass.
But this would never have happened without the work of dedicated Moms like you. When Dourson was nominated, Moms Clean Air Force members jumped into action, flooding their elected officials with concerns about his devastating conflicts of interest and even meeting with their Senators in person to relay their concerns.
This victory proves there is so much more that we can do. President Trump and his team are trying to gut the EPA with a devastating 30% funding cut—all while Scott Pruitt, President Trump’s EPA Administrator, works to dismantle the agency from the inside. They want to let industry pollute without consequences, pumping dangerous mercury into our children’s air and putting their tiny developing brains at risk. And they want to strip every climate protection we put into place, endangering the world our children will inherit.
We need to send President Trump and Scott Pruitt a message: EPA was created to protect people, not polluters.
And Moms are the best ones to get that message through: We are a powerful force for our children’s health. In the year ahead, we will use the power of our national collective voice and our local members on the ground to fight for what we hold dear: Clean air, safer products, and a stable climate for healthier families.
We need resources to educate, organize, and vocalize support for a healthier and safer environment—because we’ve seen it work already.
Moms Clean Air Force is a unique and powerful citizens’ voice. We are not lobbyists or Washington professionals. We are moms and dads, daughters and sons, aunts and uncles—and many grandparents, too—working in our homes and communities doing the best we can for our families. We are democracy at work.
Remember that our elected officials are accountable to us. We have power, and we are not afraid to exercise it for the future of our children and all that we love.