U.S. Rep. Steve Scalise in 2019. @NOLA.com

I have a question for Louisiana Republicans who chose Donald Trump and a GOP congressman in the recent election.

Would you have voted for someone who promised to put more poison in your children’s air and water? Or decided their cancer risk should be increased so a company could make more money? Or someone who supported repealing regulations that might prevent your flood insurance from skyrocketing or your city from sinking below the Gulf of Mexico?

Well, you just did.

And if you said as a Republican you had no choice, you’re wrong — and you have to do something about it for the good of your family and your state.

No president has done more to harm America’s environmental health or the effort to provide Louisiana with a sustainable coastal future than Trump. In less than four years he has tried to overturn or weaken more than 125 environmental safeguards, in the process allowing more lead in your air, putting more mercury in your water and removing protections from shrinking wetlands.

He did this by claiming rules protecting humans hurt businesses and jobs at a time when the economy was roaring and unemployment was at historic lows.

He also claimed there were too many “unnecessary” regulations. But regulations can only be put in place after an agency shows there is a serious need to protect human health and the rules can be imposed at a cost industry can absorb. So even when his Environmental Protection Agency staff produced studies showing his business-friendly changes would increase disease and deaths, he tried to change the formulas used to calculate the results.

What Louisiana GOP voters need to know is that their congressional delegation either cheered every one of these moves or remained silent.

Read the rest of the article at The Times-Picayune.