Democrats are trashing President Donald Trump for trying to bring back deadly asbestos, a carcinogenic fiber used in insulation in older buildings.
The Trump administration is considering green-lighting the use of the fiber despite its known toxicity, according to a Monday court filing, per The New York Times. Asbestos is banned in more than 50 countries and is linked to an estimated 40,000 deaths annually.
Former President Joe Biden fully banned its use after a decades-long partial ban, which forbade new uses of asbestos in products introduced after August 1989. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) finalized a ban on asbestos under the Toxic Substances Control Act.
But Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency has now asked to roll back the Biden-era ban while it is reconsidered. The move would be a major blow to a longstanding effort to protect civilians from asbestos’ health risks, a safeguard that exists in many other countries around the world.
Democrats rushed to express their outrage online.
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was one of the first to express shock. “What is this—Make Asbestos Great Again?" she asked.
Representative Teresa Leger Fernández, a Democrat from New Mexico, also went off on the MAGA administration.
“The Trump administration isn’t just going after ‘regulations,’ they’re going after your health,“ Fernández said. ”Who benefits from bringing back cancer-causing asbestos? Russia.”
She linked to an article from Ars Technica reporting that Trump’s support for asbestos has been welcomed by Russians with open arms, since the country is a primary asbestos supplier to the U.S. In 2018, a Russian asbestos company started marketing asbestos with Trump’s face on it and a label reading, “Approved by Donald Trump, 45th President of the United States.”
A wave of Democrats poked fun at the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement by posting Trump lookalike merch with the phrase “Make Asbestos Great Again.”
John Jackson, a veteran and former Republican, called the move “f---ing psychotic.”
“Asbestos killed millions of people and the cancer it causes is the most lethal known to man,” he wrote. “The litigation surrounding it was an absolute clusterf--- that took decades to resolve and involved some of the largest bankruptcies in history.”
Musician Bill Madden also expressed fury, saying, “The fascist authoritarian Trump regime is planning to repeal a ban on the highly toxic, cancer causing material asbestos. Leave it to the dumbest, most incompetent US president in history to Make Cancer Great Again.”
Carolina Forward, a human rights think tank in North Carolina, simply posted, “Wait...what?”
Comedian Hoodlum posted a meme of the president and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. hugging. The caption said: “‘We’re removing additives from food and replacing them with asbestos.’ #MAHA.”
The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House for comment.
