August 9, 2016

These Former GOP Officials Really Don’t Like Donald Trump

“He hasn’t a clue.”

<a href="http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-353116961/stock-photo-las-vegas-nevada-december-14-2015-republican-presidential-candidate-donald-trump-speaks-at-campaign-event-at-westgate-las-vegas-resort-and-casino-the-day-before-the-cnn-republican-preside.html?src=YQkk3Y-IgMR16kfvHc7rUA-1-0">Joseph Sohm</a>/Shutterstock


This story was originally published by the Huffington Post and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Two Republican former administrators of the US Environmental Protection Agency are endorsing Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton on Tuesday and condemning GOP nominee Donald Trump as ignorant and dangerous when it comes to the environment.

“Donald Trump has shown a profound ignorance of science and of the public health issues embodied in our environmental laws.”

“Donald Trump has shown a profound ignorance of science and of the public health issues embodied in our environmental laws,” William Ruckelshaus, who served as the EPA administrator under presidents Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, and William Reilly, who served under President George H. W. Bush, said in a joint statement. “He hasn’t a clue about Republicans’ historic contributions to science-driven environmental policy.”

Ruckelshaus and Reilly noted that past Republican presidents made major advancements in environmental protection. But Trump “threatens to destroy that legacy,” they wrote.

Nixon created the EPA and signed the 1970 Clean Air Act into law. Reagan ratified the Montreal Protocol, which began phasing out chemicals that deplete the ozone layer. And George H. W. Bush signed the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990, addressing acid rain. 

Ruckelshaus and Reilly also criticized Trump’s dismissal of climate change as a “hoax” created by the Chinese government, and his pledge to pull the United States out of the the international agreement on climate change reached in Paris last year. Withdrawing from the climate agreement, they said, “would set the world back decades.” 

Ruckelshaus and Reilly are throwing their endorsement solidly behind Clinton.

“For us, there is simply no choice in this election,” they said. “We Republicans should be shocked, outraged even, at the prospect that all this progress, this legacy will be repudiated and rolled back by Donald Trump.”

More Mother Jones reporting on Climate Desk

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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