North America’s largest coke plant hugs the west bank of Pennsylvania’s Monongahela River, belching out emissions from turning superheated coal into a carbon-rich fuel.. This story also ran on CBS News. It can be republished for free.. Researchers say the children at Clairton Elementary School about a mile away pay the price. They discovered the students there and at other elementary schools near major pollution sites in Pennsylvania had higher asthma rates than other children in the state.. Residents and environmental advocates saw reason for hope and relief in the form of a Biden administration rule designed to tamp down on coke oven plant pollution. But even before it took effect, President Donald Trump granted all 11 coke plants in the U.S. — including the one in Clairton — a two-year exemption from the standards.. Trump and Republicans have sought to align themselves with the Make America Healthy Again movement’s populist ideals, such as improving Americans’ food choices and reducing corporate harm to the environment. But the administration is ratcheting up its attacks on the very environmental protections that MAHA followers hold dear.. Taken together, these anti-environmental initiatives will lead to more pollution-related illnesses and higher health care spending, health researchers say. They could also have political ramifications, eroding MAHA’s support for GOP candidates in the November midterm elections if followers believe the party is more beholden to industry than to the movement’s agenda.. Only 1 in 5 American adults, including about a quarter of Republicans, support rolling back environmental regulations, according to a poll by the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago and The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.. Some MAHA supporters believe voters will support Republicans because the Trump administration is delivering on other goals important to the movement.. “MAHA has a pretty diverse set of policy goals, ranging from medical freedom to food and the environment,” said David Mansdoerfer, who served in Health and Human Services leadership during Trump’s first term. “In totality, the Trump administration has strongly delivered on much of the MAHA agenda.”. While MAHA voters have been upset at some of the administration’s actions that promote industry, it’s hard to know how that may play out in the midterms, said Christopher Bosso, a professor of public policy and politics at Northeastern University. Many were disillusioned by a Trump executive order they viewed as promoting glyphosate, which HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has called poison.. “The glyphosate thing really ticks off a lot of them; they’re really upset,” Bosso said. “Kennedy said it was poison. If it is a poison, why aren’t we regulating it? That’s where the tension plays out.”. The situation with the Clairton coke plant and the others granted exemptions from regulations underscores
