**The first comprehensive account of the Trump administration's efforts
to destroy our government institutions, by the man Ralph Nader says
"writes authoritatively and with revealing detail about important topics
that few others cover"
**
"Tom McGarity writes authoritatively and with revealing detail about
important topics that few others cover." --Ralph Nader
Koch Industries spent $3.1 million in the first three months of the
Trump administration, largely to ensure confirmation of Scott Pruitt as
head of the EPA. By July 2018, more than sixteen federal inquiries were
pending into Pruitt's mismanagement and corruption. But Pruitt was just
the first in a long line of industry-friendly, incompetent, and
destructive agency heads put in place by the Trump administration in its
effort to dismantle the federal government's protective edifice.
Remember Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke, who, before he faced
eighteen separate federal inquiries and was fired, made a deal with
Halliburton to build a brewery on land that Zinke owned in Montana? Or
how about Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, who rescinded
requirements that high-hazard trains install special braking systems,
weakened standards for storing natural gas, and lengthened the hours
that truck drivers could be on the road without a break, even as she
failed for two years to divest her interest in a road materials
manufacturer? And then there were Rick Perry, Betsy DeVos, Sonny Perdue,
Andrew Puzder . . . the list goes on.
In an original and compelling argument, Thomas McGarity shows how adding
populists to the Republican's traditional base of free market ideologues
and establishment Republicans allowed Trump to come dangerously close to
achieving his goal of demolishing the programs that Congress put in
place over the course of many decades to protect consumers, workers,
communities, children, and the environment. Finally, McGarity offers a
blueprint for rebuilding the protective edifice and restoring the power
of the American government to offer all Americans better lives.
