Cancer by Policy: How Deregulation Made People Sick

Trump’s people didn’t just fail patients.

They made choices that added cancer to the ledger.

This New York Times piece lays out how the administration gutted EPA rules, kneecapped the FDA, and froze research while communities drank poisoned water and breathed toxic air. This is policy written in tumors.

Numbers tell the story. Scrapped arsenic protections left millions exposed. Air pollution rollbacks projected tens of thousands of extra cases of lung disease and cancer. Formaldehyde and PFAS sat in limbo while memos in government files screamed danger. The people who paid the price were the poor, Indigenous, and already sick. The profits flowed up. The pain stayed local.

The article names names. Scott Pruitt. Andrew Wheeler. Alex Azar. Each signed off on decisions that made business happy and left patients screwed. They waved the flag of “economic growth” while dismantling the systems meant to keep us alive. Every rollback claimed jobs. The real toll was measured in funerals.

Deregulation is not an abstraction. It is sickness in a body. It is a parent with cancer telling their kid they cannot play outside. This happened because power chose industry over people.

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SOURCE ➡️ https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/14/magazine/trump-administration-cancer.html