In this longest January ever, the nation has seen a deluge of executive orders, so many of which are reckless and harmful, especially the ones gutting Moms Clean Air Force’s work to cut air and climate pollution.
At Moms, we’re bearing witness and working to explain what’s going on. We’re also fighting back. We will not be silenced by the force of the firehose or distracted from what really counts.
“Are we making a difference? I believe the answer is yes,” Moms’ Co-Founder and Director Dominique Browning wrote in a message to the team earlier this week. “Maybe I have to believe that. But I do. Is our difference ‘quantifiable’? No. But that poses the wrong question. We simply cannot know what the future will reveal, what will turn out to have mattered. We don’t traffic in quants. We work in hearts and minds. We have to lay foundations for the future we want for our children.”
Tell Congress: Freezing Federal Funding Hurts Children
Here are some of our responses to the recent spree of attempts at tyranny. We speak truth to power every day on Instagram, Facebook, X, Threads, and Bluesky. Join us.
On efforts to freeze federal grant funding
“The White House Office of Management and Budget’s decision to freeze congressionally approved funding is dangerous and puts children’s health and welfare in jeopardy.
“Americans’ elected representatives in Congress voted for this funding, and it was signed into law. The freeze includes essential disaster aid, SNAP benefits, and the Head Start program, which supports children’s learning, development, health, and well-being.
“Adding to the pain families will endure from this action, this decision comes when states from Florida, Georgia, and North Carolina to California are dealing with fallout from unprecedented extreme weather disasters supercharged by global heating—where homes and lives have been destroyed—and are counting on federal support to survive.”
—Moms Clean Air Force
On the decision to pause federal health communication
“Trump’s directive to pause communications from federal health agencies is deeply concerning.
“Public health officials, health care providers, and families around the country rely on these critical communications to tell us about food recalls, infectious disease outbreaks, and other urgent public health trends. With cases of bird flu on the rise in the U.S., this pause is particularly alarming.
“As the mother of a child with an autoimmune condition that can be triggered by infectious diseases, I depend on timely, accurate public health information to keep my family safe. We hope these communications will be restored with integrity and haste.”
—Elizabeth Bechard, Moms’ Public Health Manager
On Trump’s reckless and dangerous cabinet
“Lee Zeldin, confirmed as EPA chief, thinks he’s got a mandate to pollute and expose children and families to carcinogens. He is entrusting chemical company lobbyists and fossil fuel executives with running EPA—the agency that was created to protect human health from hazardous air pollution, chemical disasters, asbestos, and other dangers.
“By putting people like American Chemistry Council’s Nancy Beck, DuPont’s Lynn Ann Dekleva, PFAS and PCBs defense lawyer David Fotouhi, American Petroleum Institute lobbyist Aaron Szabo, and Marathon Petroleum Corporation and American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers lobbyist Abigale Tardif in key leadership roles, EPA can no longer honor the ‘protection’ in its name. Moms proposes a clarifying rebrand, perhaps the Extreme Pollution Agency, so everyone knows whose interests they now serve.”
—Cynthia Palmer, Moms’ Senior Analyst for Petrochemicals
“Right out of the parking lot, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has put all of America on a U-turn back to dangerous tailpipe pollution. Make no mistake: he doesn’t care about the toxic brew coming out of cars and trucks, contributing to heart and lung and brain disease. And he sure doesn’t care about global warming. He has made a wrong turn.”
—Dominique Browning , Co-Founder and Director
Read more about our opposition to Trump’s cabinet picks, including Russel Vought, Chris Wright, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
On the decision to decimate all federal programs that address systemic racism
“What the federal government leaders under Trump are signaling by wholesale divesting of programs meant to address systemic racism is that they don’t care about the human impacts of pollution, dirty air, and global warming that disproportionately and inequitably harm the health of low-income populations and communities of color. At Moms Clean Air Force, we won’t stop fighting for Justice in Every Breath.”
—Almeta Cooper, National Manager for Health Justice
On efforts to stop EPA from regulating climate pollution
“EPA’s ability to protect us from runaway climate emissions is in danger.
“A Trump executive order gives EPA 30 days to rule on the endangerment findings and recommend that they go away. These findings, which were settled law for many years, give EPA the authority to cut methane, carbon dioxide, and other heat-trapping pollutants from vehicles, power plants, and other sources.
“This is straight out of the Project 2025 wish list. It is Trump’s gift to the oil and gas industry—already making record profits at the expense of our children’s health and the stability of our world.
“There is no small irony that this executive order is part of Trump’s National Energy Emergency, while his administration is trying to keep all non-fossil fuel sources, like wind and solar, out of our energy mix. The only emergency is one being created by a lack of action on climate emissions.”
—Dominique Browning , Co-Founder and Director
Read more about the Endangerment Finding.
On the decision to gut EPA’s science advisory boards
“Trump’s EPA is gutting the science advisory boards that inform the decisions EPA must make to protect the environment and human health, its core mission. By definition, scientists do not get hired because they conform their research to a predetermined outcome—but that’s the kind of junk science and head-in-the-sand denial of reality (and legality) that this administration wants and is looking for in every cabinet position so far. EPA is already signaling its intention to abandon integrity and sound science.”
—Dominique Browning , Co-Founder and Director
On cruel and unconstitutional immigration policies
“Protecting the health and well-being of children and babies is at the heart of Moms Clean Air Force and EcoMadres’ mission. This is why we fight against the toxic chemicals in our products and dangerous and damaging air and climate pollution.
“This is also why our hearts break as we witness—and experience—the terror of immigrant children across the country, fearing to leave their homes, to go to school or church, bracing for the trauma of being separated from parents, watching classmates, friends, neighbors disappear.
“To make matters even worse, as the destructive, life-altering impacts of global warming grow ever more severe, the pressure at the borders of the United States, and across the world, will increase. We insist on humane immigration policies that are durable, sustainable, and effective; no administration has achieved that yet.
“We are also witnessing a raid on our Constitution. The 14th Amendment, enshrining the right to citizenship for those born in the USA, is under threat.
“We recognize that there are no simplistic answers to any of our complex problems. No simplistic answer to the toll immigration takes on individuals, on families, and on countries. But there are simple values, they anchor civilized society, and they determine ways to proceed with humanity and compassion. We must find those ways. We urge Congress and the President, Governors and Mayors, mothers and fathers across the country, to reject recklessness and cruelty.”
—Dominique Browning, Co-Founder and Director, and Isabel González Whitaker, Director, EcoMadres