With moves in Alaska and California, the department has stepped up interventions in the midterm elections as the president’s instrument of unmediated executive power.
The 44th president appeared in Ohio on Saturday, kicking off a two-state swing with a rebuke of President Trump and Vivek Ramaswamy, the Republican nominee for governor.
The fallout from Vivek Ramaswamy’s brutal spot targeting his Democratic rival in the Ohio governor’s race showed that even in the Trump era, a political attack can be seen as going too far.
Democrats are increasingly optimistic about the midterms. But they are being outspent by Republicans. And they are trying to compete in states that favored President Trump by large margins.
The president temporarily waived clean-air rules for industrial facilities that spew cancer-causing gases. Then his appointees worked to gut the regulations altogether.
Chemical plants and other industrial facilities had been required to curb their toxic emissions. A New York Times investigation shows how they got out of it.
In states like Florida, officers who hand out fishing citations and inspect produce have been deputized by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, expanding the reach of President Trump’s deportation campaign.