most people thing to stand out in this business you need to be the first one on top of the story or the person with the loudest voice of the biggest raid in truth to stand out on the news business you just need to ask the right questions and demand the right answer. questions.

well i'm tom hartman in washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture. it's e.p.a. is making it easier for big polluters to poison american families that it will verify food water watch will join us to discuss how he's doing it and what americans might be able to do about it and we're five months into the trump presidency and trump is just as vicious and vulgar as ever and it's politics panel shelby and the guys here who will join me to discuss with trump's temperament makes him one fit to perform his duties as president. pro d.p.a. moved on tuesday to rescind a clean water rule that was designed to limit pollution in about two thirds of all the nation's bodies of water move comes months after trump signed an executive order in february instructing pruitt to start the process of legally rolling back the water rule even though the rule had not yet taken effect as a result of lingering legal questions republican party and trump's base hailed this

move as a big win over so-called job killing regulations that quote would have put backyard ponds potholes and prairie potholes under washington's control and quote but is that really true or is this really just about letting big business push their cleanup costs onto the public in the form of toxic water joining me for more on this story is patty lovera assistant director for food and water watch welcome back hi thanks great having you with us so what is the net. effect of repealing this waters of the united states in the short term and in the long term it's really a long term question i mean there's been legal debate for decades over what the clean water act covers and it's gone to the supreme court i think it was ten years ago or so in that supreme court said that they had to redefine what waters of the united states were of what waters are covered clean water clean water act from what the civil rights in the world for a long time still being what it is you know it's lots of industries don't want to

cover them right and they've spent decades trying to make the legal case that it doesn't and a lot of this is kind of when does some body of water a wetlands something you know there's a lot of fighting in this this issue about whether a stream that dries up part of the year a drainage ditch beside an agricultural field are those under the reach the clean water act and this is years and years and years of legal fighting all the way to the supreme court and the e.p.a. trying to write down a rule to define you know when does the clean water act cover it because it connects to a body of water that's covered and when does it not and there's just tremendous up for much of it manufactured especially in agriculture and among real estate develop it developers who really really really hated this idea does this law or this rule. which is not going to be apparently nuked by scott pruitt and trump and company but . the rationale that i've heard right wing media and from people coming in here

debating me about is it covers polls you know puddles or dogs you know it doesn't cover puddles doesn't know it said it didn't cover so and it said it didn't cover agriculture so it's right in the law the right was not cultures so farmers normal activities are exempted from the clean water act in when they wrote down this new rule which was basically interpretation of the clean water act it said agriculture is not covered and yet some of the biggest opponents of this in scheme of the obama administration's upon the biggest. the entire length of the obama administration was industrialized agriculture you know the farm bureau which kind of puts of family farmer face on what industrial agriculture wants and tremendous uproar a lot of it manufactured you know crazy social media videos of people trying to claim that puddles to be regulated. it does never made a lot of sense when you actually read the rule but this wasn't about reading the world this was about the uproar you know about daring to say that the e.p.a.

had some authority to protect safe water manufactured outrage so who is at risk as a result of scott pruitt and donald trump rolling back this rule as of this is about will be yet will the e.p.a. have the opportunity to protect water which becomes somebodies drinking water eventually you know at the source can we actually have a mindset of preventing pollution and saying the way we use land later impacts somebody is water and that's what this is about this is this this fight about for decades and when you roll this back it sets the opportunity for e.p.a. to do that kind of smarts preventative you know preventing contamination of what's eventually going to be somebody is drinking water right on july seventh the. california reported or not it's that they're going to add life as a glyphosate the active ingredient round up to their list of course senator and some in california they're pretty rigorous about this i mean. i don't know how

widespread that rule is but in california you walk into a restaurant there's a sign that says i'll call may cause cancer you know because it's a carcinogen it's closed on a course of action actually and so they're presumably going to have to start labeling foods that have been you know that are roundup ready foods or something i mean how does this play out and what what does it mean to all of us that california is identifying this as a carcinogen after all the years that monsanto has fought to say it's not it's not just yet this is another kind of fascinating moment in a long running story so around that is the most widely used we kill or in agriculture and it's used you know in people's homes and for years and years monsanto's claimed don't worry it's them it's been nine right it's there's been all kinds of tremendous claims they've made about how safe it is a few years ago the world health organization listed the ad. given greeting glyphosate as a probable human carcinogen and that kicked into gear a process in california that when something makes that list they have to look at it

because of a law they passed actually on the ballot in the mid eighty's called prop sixty five in opposition sixty five and he said that they'll be warning labels on chemicals that cause birth defects or they cause cancer and so that listing by the world health organization kicked the california process into gear and what it's likely to do is put warning labels on roundup itself and so that's really stunning when you think about the thirty years of months into claiming there's nothing to see here there's nothing to worry about and this is a process that uses a very strict process of you know what chemicals get what warnings and it's going to come to it what about the food that are grown that is grown using glyphosate that contains glyphosate residues at the time that it's consumed that i don't think proposition sixty five will trigger because it's about the point of sale something that has this and this is the way they wrote that program when they passed it when you get into how much is left on the food you start to get out of the territory of the states and you're back here in d.c. with federal agencies that don't really want to talk about that and yet. there's

there's another another chemical now a choro pierrefonds close the office. this is this stuff is made by da and now numerous reports have come out indicating that scott pruitt actually met with the c.e.o. of dow chemical before approving this chemical what is this chemical what what are the potential effects of it who should be concerned about it and why is scott pruett meeting with the c.e.o. of another long running saga that's taken a twist in this new administration so this is an insecticide very widely used in agriculture in all different settings you know cotton orchards also used in golf courses and it's been controversial for many many years environmental groups have been suing e.p.a. for years saying you have to take a second look at the health effects of this chemical and why. an e.p.a. did under court order when they did review the safety of this particular chemical they said oh we think there's neurological effects there's possible developmental

problems for children that are exposed that may not be reversible released a serious list of health concerns and the exposure route could be because it gets into somebody who can water workers who use it residues on the food kind of every pathway they looked at e.p.a. said we have a problem here and they started the process to to withdraw approval the process was almost finished and at the last minute scott pruitt came in and said no we're going to reverse it for all it's remarkable who is scott pruitt so he's the e.p.a. administrator he was the attorney general of oklahoma you name the issue and you look it up and he was an activist for industry in that role so factory farms oil and gas drilling i mean he has an agenda and that agenda is not to protect the environment is to protect industry and to roll back regulations left and right and is this now he's running the e.p.a. is this mine's echoing all the way down i mean there's a lot of good scientists of the a lot of good. regulators for lack of

a better word what's happening there what's happening to those people what what what kind of damage could be done. you know a guy who's basically a toady for industry running an agency like this you know it's the critical question we're dealing with and you know the union for a lot of u.p.a. officials has been really vocal about let us do our jobs don't change the rules about how we do them but we're worried about he uses science as an excuse and it's industry science and it's like tobacco science essentially they're firing scientists off of their scientific advisory board the president's budget which is a done deal which we can all call congress and fight would drastically cut e.p.a. staffing levels it would cut a whole offices that do things like environmental justice for communities that are disproportionately impacted it would cut grants to the states i mean this budget proposal from the president is horrific congress can stop that from happening so that's one thing people can do is demand that their legislators say no no no you know get to do that to the p. . operates and we just have to watch and we have to encourage anybody has any contact with an e.p.a. employee they have to tell us what's going on you know and whether that there's all

different ways people are doing that i think people are paying attention and it's going to take constant calling out what they're doing in terms of you know whether or not career folks if you can do their job so what can the average citizen do who is concerned about being poisoned by some of these chemicals for example you know we're concerned about the loss of potential loss of clean water clean air. livestock yeah i mean it is it's a tough one right so very very personally the most immediate thing in terms of what you buy you know you can look for products that are food products that are produced without the stuff so you can look for gannett you can look for folks who say i don't use this stuff bigger picture which is what you need to do is well there's an election coming up and we can't keep sending back to congress folks that would support these kind of cuts to the e.p.a. so depending where you live you need to tell them right now don't pass this budget that would cut agencies like e.p.a. the next election make sure you send people back here that support these agencies and then it's also actually just keeping an eye on this and talking about it and

explaining to us to every need to know that these agencies actually do protect our health this is not about shrinking the government and all of the rhetoric we heard in the campaign this is about basic resources and whether they're going to be healthy for us they've come up with a bumper sticker or a me job killing regulations those three word phrase how do you react. where to get you know what we have and that we have a minute so i mean when you talk about that that's nice and it sounds nice and it's kind of red meat to it you know when you're all hyped up on the campaign trail if you are joe yeah but i don't know what kind of jobs you have if you have a city where you can drink the drinking water you know what kind of jobs what kind of economy are you going to have if your health care costs which we're having a debate about right now are even further out of control because children are exposed to developmental neurotoxins before they're born i mean at some point people need to take a breath and understands what we have to. protections for you know and that's we think that's what it boils down to is we talk to people but these are things that protect your health we can get out of that trap. thanks so much.

coming up is trump's latest tweet storm proof that he'll never have a temper meant to perform the duties of president i'll be discussing that more with shelby emmett and isaiah pool in tonight's politics. the future we don't know. every the world is your theory of. the world. according to just.

come along for the raw. data. about your sudden passing i phone lee just learned you were a south and taken your last to turn. to you as we all knew it would i tell you i'm sorry i could so i write these last words in hopes to put to rest these things that i never got off my chest. i remember when we first met my life turned on each other. but then my feelings started to change you talked about more like it was again still some more fun to feel those that didn't like to question our arc and i secretly promised to never be like it said one does not leave a funeral in the same as one enters the mind it's consumed with death this one different i speak to you now because there are no other takers. to claim that

mainstream media has met its maker i. think the average viewer just after watching a couple of segments understands that we're telling stories that our critics can't tell and you know why because their advertisers won't let them. in order to create change you have to be honest you have to tell the truth artie's able to do that every story is built on going after the back story to what's really happening out there to the american what's happening when a corporation makes a pharmaceutical that chills people when a company in the environmental business ends up polluting a river that causes cancer and other illnesses they put all the health risk all the dangers out to the american public those are stories that we tell every week and

you know what they're working. congress scrambles to rewrite the g.o.p.'s so-called health care bill donald trump dominated headlines today with a typical the graphic and trumpy and tweet storm this time directed at morning joe's make a persian ski into tweets trump opined that her poor were rated morning joes speaks badly of me i don't watch any more than you how come low i.q. crazy make along was psycho joe came to morrow three nights in a row around new year's eve and insisted on joining me she was bleeding badly from a facelift i said no in the face of nationally pressuring issues domestic and abroad and then just downright humiliating to our entire country that our commander in chief is picking vulgar fights with morning talk show hosts from are at war on

this let's turn things over to tonight's politics. when they felt that i had politics panel or shall be an attorney and member of the national advisory council of project twenty one and i was a pole communications director peoples action thank you both for being with us tonight great having you both here so in the last week alone donald trump has found unique ways to objectify to female reporters first he creepily comment of an irish reporter katrina perry's beautiful smile and her face on a call ireland's newly elected prime minister and then the smarting he gave a graphic description of mika believing badly from a facelift just because she quote speaks badly about trump this isn't the first time a trump is accused of female reporter bleeding in his presence remember this from nearly two years ago during the g.o.p. primary where she gets out and she starts to just give me all sorts of ridiculous

questions and you know you could see there was blood coming out of our eyes blood coming out of her wherever. this is the guy who calls up do terror to the president of philippines who is has paid a hit squad has killed thousands of people literally paying people two hundred dollars a hit to walk up to drug users and shoot him in the head with a gun calls him up and says you've got a great job with the drug war it's. from from the punching down to people who are lower than him i mean in this case to to these weird is weird obsession with women and blood and pretty faces and all. what the what does this actually like to go back to the days when the low bar was was bill clinton playing saxophone. i think in our city a whole show. and that was the thing that was so i was

secretly having sex in the white house you know it's like i didn't need to know about that he wasn't tweeting he wasn't videotaping it he wasn't bragging about it to billy bush. as the woman on the panel looked like number one i think women have got a lot more important things that worry about than the dumb things men say on a daily basis after this i'll be meeting a girlfriend for drinks and i promise you it will be the exact same stuff i agree with you is that i think pretty childish pretty sad yes but i also think everyone is feeding into this i think a lot of the reason trump won this election was because the media gave this man free airtime and he was able to say what he wanted with free press coverage every day and the media m.s.m. b c specifically i think they love it when he does this because now they can talk about stuff and now we can keep talking about it trump can keep tweeting it and the funny thing is i think so many people the left keep thinking people that voted for

trump are upset about this and how think people care i personally think a lot of this is ridiculous but i think pretty much most things that are happening in the in our government are ridiculous all this just the. intensifies the circus that has become our government but after a poll of that i mean you know you talk about trump voters trump ran on a can trump campaign both in the primary and in the general election basically to the left of hillary clinton he said he was going to blow up all the trade deals hillary clinton is supporting those who are going to end nafta day one. he said he was going to bring back the jobs he said he was going to he said in fact the verbatim quote was every republican on the stage wants to cut your social security medicare medicaid i will do the only man here will do none of that. every single one of these things he has gone back on he's i can't think of any campaign promises that he made that he's actually keeping doesn't that make conservatives crazy i mean you're getting what you want is the you know i get it i find this so interesting because i don't think trump is a republican nor is he i mean he donated most of the time to hillary's to chuck

schumer's all these throughout his entire career and then all of a sudden he's a republican well i'll add power so i think a lot of the earth is trump doesn't represent any of the old school guard of the republican or the democrat i think he represents a frustration of so many people for many different reasons for a lot of things and part of this is so many people's frustrations with the media and i think this back and forth with twitter on twitter using that as his own platform is ironic and funny in the fact that so much of this is because of the now do i think the behavior is appalling i wish he would stay off twitter yes but i think this is exactly what so many of his supporters like to see so well but you know donald trump is not in the white house to give thirty percent of the american public quote unquote what they want to see he is in there to be to president of the united states to provide leadership and what the reason why

this is such a serious thing is precisely because right now for example we're having this debate about health care. and going about and as we're talking about this and one of the reasons by the way that we're talking about this is that donald trump has proven themselves incapable of talking about health care in a way this coherent to even the left or the right i mean he made these promises on the campaign trail but now that we have legislation in the senate going through the senate right now he can even speak or humanly to it senators who are walking out of a meeting with the president scratching their heads well believe me i used to work up there a lot of them walk out every day scratching their heads wonder what's going on because they're never really told things things get done at the last minute behind closed doors we remember famously saying we have the past the bell to find out what was then it i think everyone now wants to act like things are so chaotic and crazy and this is just typical d.c. politics only trumpets actually putting it right there on this play instead of this

you know one of the things i know what was in the bill i mean he did that will any of them know what's in this no i mean i mean i mean even the overall agenda right now that you've got have a lot of what we're past that this is not democracy you're supposed to work talk to all of it i agree with you when you i worked up there when these people have five hundred page bills that they did in the dark of night two minutes before they give you a one pager of the summary of it all believe me nobody knows what's in this nobody knows what's in any of this stuff you ask most members of congress how many more programs that have. none of us know we know when no one knows what's going on and this is i think trump is just putting all of this chaos it's finally in everyone's face but i think most people already know what's happening and everyone's are frustrated about but should he stay off twitter yes and i think most people that are working there that are professional that are trying to do the right thing that we're asked to serve and will serve regardless if it was obama trump romney or ted cruz asking you want to serve your country i feel bad for those people there are some very good people up there regardless of our politics that just love their

country and want to do good things and when this is the display it makes everything harder to do it's like yes and that's why i think what we should for. well said the cvo score for the republican tax cut bill came out showing the this is the so-called health care bill that the senate bill would quote save one hundred eighty eight billion dollars in deficit spending which basically gives mcconnell one hundred eighty billion dollars to bribe holdout republican politicians to vote for this tax bill masquerading as a health care bill for instance mcconnell could a lot billions towards combating the opioid crisis and red leaning states like ohio and west virginia potentially sweetening the deal for current holdouts like rob portman and shelley moore capito so is one hundred eighty eight billion dollars enough from a column to buy the votes of these holdout republicans i hope not. because this is a good this is an example of how things get done that are not holistic solutions for health care do other problems that we face around the country this is not like

this is not like trading baseball cards we're talking about one sixth of the economy we're talking about millions of people who right now can even say you know i'm a big defender of obamacare. and yet we know that obamacare did not solve all of the problems all of the issues. i personally think that we need to be moving toward a single payer system you probably think something else we should be having that debate instead of doing these backroom deals i completely one hundred percent agree what i will say though is the fact that there is anybody out there in this country now that is freaking out wondering what's going to happen to them tomorrow in their health care because of this government should be exactly why we don't want government control of health care because we'll be in this position everything all four years or every two years whenever there's a switch in the balance this is the whole point we've all are sitting here on the

whim of our feet are there waiting for five people in black robes that tell us what is allowed to happen or oh my gosh is mcconnell going to make backroom deals is trying going to do this will obama do this will pull us into this this is not what this is supposed to be and i think that should was what should bring us all together here is that we should not be dependent on these people all of them in the one elk i were a part of the big and the big daddy that's out of the big money is strong one of the of that's the best money the big money is my is my issue because i don't want to be dependent on on corporate executives in a high rise in new york city or any kinetic or wherever you know making decisions about my health care i'd rather have people who are accountable to me and to the american public making those decisions lightly yes finally here just five months after announcing the the the. p the end of the transatlantic trade and investment partnership this is sort of like the the transpacific partnership and this is with europe you know and. just

a few months after this was announced treasury trumps commerce secretary wilbur ross announced that the u.s. is ready to restart negotiations on this trade deal. it's not a campaign promise that's broken i mean trump said he was going to block these trade deals as a corporate trade deal the benefits big. national international corporations and basically you know screw the united states and now the trumpet ministration is doing what we do well there's policies on the one that are scaring the united states and politicians are making promises they're not keeping he's pretty much in good company with most other politicians in this country which is again why everybody in this country is frustrated why there was a big switch each time the last few elections because everyone's frustrated with people making promises and not keeping them and then the american people are the ones that get the short end i think they can serve their billionaire donors they are making promises i mean well yes and it is almost the size was that while we were having a big fight with the obama administration over. the. t.t.p.

i was marching on the streets against the t.t.p. . so this is the problem we've got a bunch of billionaire corporate donors who are trying to control the process and workers are be the people who represent the workers consumers other folks are not at the table oh very true and a lot of this too comes down to us as individuals having to more empower ourselves to be educated on the issue and i think if you ask if we've done national polls on this that you five ten percent of the american people even understand what these things are and that is i think the ultimate problem is i'm ocracy only works if we're educated in the hour and that's a that's an indictment of our media as much as anything else shall be. both with us and i thank you so much and that's the way it is tonight and don't forget democracy is not a spectator sport get out there get active tag your. your

launching on our team america special report. this stuff was about me as well. basically everything that you think you know about civil society has broken down. there's always going to be somebody else one step ahead of the game. we should not be in this normalizing mind. we don't need people with things like this on our planet. this is an incredibly tense situation. our culture is awash in lives dominated by streams of never ending electronic hallucinations that. until they are indistinguishable we have become the most. society on politics as a species of. political politicians and celebrities.

ruling parties are in reality one party corporate and those who attempt. to. breathless universal to make news just to push through the cruelty and exploitation of the neo liberal who are pushed so far to the margins of society including by a public broadcasting system that has sold its soul for corporate money that we might as well. squeaking against an avalanche. we must. think this is this you need to be the first one on top of the story or the person with the loudest voice of the biggest. truth to stand to lose you just the right questions to the right answer. the.

question. and tonight a third video by james o'keefe project vera tosh featuring c.n.n. president jeff zucker himself and the president goes on a tear on twitter this time targeting the old stuff and that's in d.c. this morning joe and mosul is on the verge of liberation by the u.s. led coalition after months of fighting but at what cost to the city military and thinking for ed schultz tonight reporting from washington d.c. you're watching r t america. good evening we begin tonight with yet another of those so-called c.n.n. tapes for three straight days now conservative activist james o'keefe has been a thorn in c.n.n. side on tuesday a video showed a producer from c.n.n.

dismissing the coverage of russia on the network as nothing but a push for ratings and then on wednesday a second video showed c.n.n. host van jones referring to the very same coverage as a nothing burger now a third video showing c.n.n. president jeff zucker himself fleeing from o'keefe who is seen asking about the coverage of russia artie's on your part until has the latest if took a break from releasing any particularly explosive or revelatory reports today and attempted to secure comment from c.n.n. c.e.o. jeff zucker in light of his latest undercover series american proverb to c.n.n. take a look at how zucker avoided o'keefe questioning whether this is mr sluggers russians thirty to sixty fourth street in new york city losing are you doing moments that are about to rush a story. or good those pretty cowardly.