Wednesday, August 19, 2026. Chump and Hegseth continue short changing the US military, Hegseth makes time to go on the campaign trail (and ditch his work as Secretary of Defense), Chump's endorsement doesn't lead to wins on Tuesday night, ICE continues to terrorize, Epstein continues to circle Chump, and much more.
State Representative Angie Nixon, a
progressive firebrand who ran such an underdog campaign that she could
not afford a single television ad, won the Democratic Senate nomination
in Florida on Tuesday in a shocking upset.
With
her defeat of Alex Vindman, a candidate with establishment backing who
raised more than 16 times as much campaign money, Ms. Nixon, a
democratic socialist, continued the left’s winning streak this year in
Democratic primaries.
Florida had
appeared impervious to the prevailing political winds in recent election
cycles, with Republicans doing exceptionally well in the state in 2022,
in what was otherwise a strong year for Democrats. Ms. Nixon’s
breakthrough victory, and losses by Republicans endorsed by President
Trump in several Florida congressional primaries, suggested that maybe
Florida is no longer quite as immune to national trends.
On Monday, the 60-day period
from the June Memorandum of Understanding between the U.S. and Iran
expired, seemingly rendering that agreement even more dead than it
previously appeared.
This leaves the conflict
between the U.S. and Iran in a sort of limbo, as the sides have not been
attacking each other in recent weeks, but have also not made peace.
Iran
and Oman have, for nearly two weeks, been reportedly close to a deal on
control of the Strait of Hormuz, but no agreement has been announced,
and earlier this week, President Donald Trump threatened to bomb the
U.S. ally Oman.
So, what’s next for the Strait of Hormuz and the broader conflict? Trump provided some clues on Tuesday.
On
Truth Social Tuesday, the president declared that “there are no talks
or conversations going on, or scheduled, with the Islamic Republic of
Iran.” In addition, Trump said that “The Naval Blockade remains in full
force and effect. The Hormuz Strait is open and operating. All water
mines have been removed or detonated.”
A few hours earlier, Trump had posted a graphic to Truth Social, proclaiming the Strait of Hormuz a “New U.S. Territory.”
Per CNBC,
no one but Trump seems to agree that the U.S. now controls the Strait,
nor does it appear to be official U.S. policy to treat the Strait of
Hormuz as a U.S. territory.
Traffic through the Strait remains at a standstill.
Marc
Sievers, who served as ambassador to Oman for most of Trump’s first
term, discussed the situation there and expressed doubts that the U.S.
would actually go through with bombing Oman.
“It’s very
hard for me to imagine [U.S. Central Command] planning bombing raids on
Omani targets when we’ve worked very closely with the Omanis and
developed their ports and so forth for access for the U.S. Navy over a
number of years,” Sievers said in a CNBC appearance this week.
The
U.S. Army is considering pulling back troops from the Middle East as
the impact of the Iran war becomes increasingly evident, according to a
new report.
The Washington Post claimed that the Defense Department has already signaled it might not rebuild struck bases as they were before the war began.
The
outlet went on to detail that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has not
ordered a formal review, but the Pentagon's policy office is already
conducting an evaluation. The Joint Staff and the U.S. Central Command
are also considering the possibility.
Brent crude rose above $90 a barrel for the first time since 30 July, and was trading at $91.63 on Tuesday morning.
Angeline
Ong, a senior technical analyst at the investing and trading platform
IG, said: “Trump’s threat to bomb Oman could be the moment the oil
market shifts from pricing a temporary disruption to pricing a prolonged
one.
“If Muscat pulls back from talks with
Tehran, the diplomatic route to restoring normal flows through Hormuz
narrows considerably. That would be a signal to add to energy longs
rather than fade the rally – with roughly a quarter of global seaborne
oil normally passing through the strait, even a small reduction in the
probability of reopening warrants a higher geopolitical premium in
crude.”
At
some point, probably after the Iran War is over, people are going to
examine what took place and they're going to ask -- scholars are going
to ask -- was part of the problem the lack of strong negotiators? Jared
Kushner? Who the hell picked that loser and greedy crook to negotiate
on behalf of the US? Trained negotiators were always an option. As was
a bipartisan panel of former government employees. But Chump kept
insisting upon his son-in-law and his Cabinet.
Scholars will examine the poor results and will look to
see how much blame to hand to those who were supposed to be
negotiating.
A U.S. Navy destroyer suffered a total loss of
power while operating in the South China Sea last month, leaving its
crew without drinkable water, hot meals, working toilets or air
conditioning for four days.
The
USS Benfold was sailing with the George Washington carrier strike group
on July 24 when an “engineering casualty involving its generators”
caused a complete loss of power aboard the ship, according to Cmdr.
Matthew Comer, a spokesman for the U.S. 7th Fleet, per The Washington
Post.
As the Benfold was towed to port in the
Philippines, other ships in the carrier strike group — including the
cruiser USS Robert Smalls — helped supply the destroyer’s crew with
meals. Once ashore, sailors were provided with contracted lodging and
meals away from the ship, Comer told the US Naval Institute News, an
independent military publication, in a statement.
MeidasTouch
has obtained exclusive text messages from a military spouse describing
conditions aboard the USS Carl Vinson that paint a troubling picture of
morale inside the U.S. armed forces as the ship prepares to head back
out on deployment.
In a private
conversation shared with MeidasTouch, the wife of a sailor currently
doing a “work up” aboard the Carl Vinson off the coast, the training and
readiness period ships go through before deploying, described
conditions onboard that she called “insane.” According to her texts,
sailors on the carrier do not have access to warm water to shower, and
the water fountains on the ship have been shut off entirely.
“Yep
my husband is doing a work up right now just off the coast on the Carl
Vinson before he goes back on deployment and they don’t have warm water
to shower and the water fountains are all turned off,” she wrote,
adding, “Like wtf is going on.”
The messages
also reveal that the problem isn’t isolated to one ship or one branch.
In the same conversation, the woman’s friend, who says she is close with
an Air Force Major, relayed that his morale is also cratering.
“I
know it’s happening on more than just one ship too,” the friend wrote.
“One of my close friends is a Major in the Air Force and he told me he
hates his job right now. If he wasn’t so close to his 20 years, he
would’ve quit already. Morale is basically in the shitter across the
board it seems.”
So what's going on? And should Hegseth be in Iowa at a time like this?
Pete Hegseth used an anti-trans slur during a campaign visit to Iowa on Monday.
The
Defense Secretary spoke with veterans at the Iowa State Fair and
honored soldiers killed in Kuwait. During the event, Hegseth spoke on
the anti-diversity, equity, and inclusion policies the Trump
administration has made at the Department of Defense.
[. . .]
The
event was originally scheduled for March, with Hegseth as a special
guest, but was postponed following the deaths of two Iowa soldiers in an
Iranian strike on a Kuwait facility on March 1.
Pete
broke the rule that has governed previous persons who were the
Secretary of Defense by going out and doing partisan campaigns.
Previous people in his position had respected the non-political nature
of the job but this is Pete who now briefs just Republicans in
Congress. This is Pete who is a feather weight and a feather brain.
And he knows he's breaking custom as evidenced by a report from John McCormick (WALL STREET JOURNAL):
“According
to the lawyers, I’m only here in a personal capacity today,” Hegseth
said roughly halfway through what was essentially a 19-minute campaign
speech for Nunn, President Trump, military spending, the Iran war—and
perhaps himself, down the road—in a state that starts the GOP
presidential nomination process.
When Nunn
“asked if I’d come on out here, it was an absolute no-brainer,” Hegseth
said. “We need those reinforcements in Washington, D.C. We need him to
continue to be there.”
Hegseth
said he was there in strictly a "personal capacity," yet he traveled to
Iowa in a taxpayer-funded military aircraft. And media figure Paul
Rieckhoff, who served in the U.S. Army during the Iraq War, is calling
out the visit as highly "inappropriate."
In
a Tuesday afternoon post on X, formerly Twitter, Rieckhoff posted,
"Unprecedented and inappropriate. Not acceptable on any level. [Donald]
Rumsfeld, [Dick] Cheney, [Chucl] Hagel. None of them did this. Or would
have."
Rieckhoff, in his tweet, was referring
to two officials who served in the George W. Bush administration during
the 2000s — Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick
Cheney — as well as Chuck Hagel, secretary of defense under former
President Barack Obama. Although Obama led a predominantly Democratic
administration, conservative ex-U.S. Sen. Hagel (R-Nebraska) was a
Republican when he hired him to lead the Pentagon.
Rieckhoff,
who served as a U.S. Army first lieutenant, said of Hegseth's Iowa
visit, "These are lines that have never been crossed. With good reason.
It's bad for our troops, bad for our politics, and bad for our
democracy. Yet they continue to politicize our military like never
before."
Some have taken his Iowa visit to mean he's planning to run for president in 2028.
Former
Fox News personality and all-round macho-man Pete Hegseth wants to be
your next president, according to officials familiar with the
self-proclaimed Secretary of War’s thinking.
Those sources, who spoke anonymously in order to be frank about the Trump Cabinet member’s ambitions, told the Washington Post
that Hegseth’s trip to Iowa on Monday suggests he may very well have
his sights set on the White House. The Defense Secretary, 46, headed out
to stump for GOP Rep. Zach Nunn in the battleground state, where
presidential hopefuls have historically tested their mettle.
He also stumped for Sen. Darline Graham in the early presidential primary state of South Carolina last week.
He
also showed up for congressional candidate Ed Gallrein in his
successful primary run against incumbent Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie
earlier in May. CBS notes that it’s rare for any sitting defense secretary to head out campaigning for candidates.
And
it's rare for someone with as many ongoing scandals as Hegseth to be
traveling around the country campaigning for candidates . . . while the
department he heads is failing troops.
In
a pointed letter obtained exclusively by MeidasTouch, Illinois Governor
JB Pritzker excoriated Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth over
deteriorating conditions and a near-total lack of transparency
surrounding the USS Abraham Lincoln’s marathon deployment, demanding
written answers within days.
The
letter, dated August 18 and addressed directly to Hegseth at the
Pentagon, lays out in stark terms what Pritzker calls a “profound and
serious threat to the health and safety” of the roughly 5,000 sailors
and Marines aboard the carrier, which has now been at sea for more than
200 days without a single port call since December.
Again,
is this really time for Hegseth to be prancing around the country?
Seems like he should be hunkering down and fixing these problems.
Minnesota's
attorney general sued the governor of Texas on Tuesday, seeking to
compel the extradition of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent
charged with wounding a man and then lying to justify the shooting
during the agency's crackdown in Minneapolis.
Attorney
General Keith Ellison is asking a federal judge to bar the sheriff in
Cameron County, Texas, from releasing ICE agent Christian Castro, and to
order Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to sign his extradition warrant so that
Minnesota officers can take custody.
Castro was arrested in Texas in May on Minnesota charges of assault
and falsely reporting a crime in the Jan. 14 wounding of Julio Cesar
Sosa-Celis. Castro, 52, is accused of firing a gun through the front
door of a Minneapolis home, striking Sosa-Celis in the leg with a bullet
that lodged in a child’s bedroom wall. Prosecutors say Castro then
falsely accused Sosa-Celis and another man of attacking an ICE officer
with a broom handle and a snow shovel.
Former
acting ICE Director Todd Lyons previously said Castro and another ICE
agent lied when they claimed Sosa-Celis had attacked them with a shovel
and broom.
It’s the latest
legal fallout from Operation Metro Surge, the White House’s December and
January push to swell federal authorities to Minneapolis in an attempt
to crack down on illegal immigration and crime. Two Americans, Renee
Good and Alex Pretti, were killed by federal agents as protests ripped
through the state. Minnesota officials have spent months pushing for
more visibility into the violent incidents.
Castro
was arrested in Texas in May. But he has still not been extradited to
Minnesota to face charges, Ellison said Tuesday, despite repeated
attempts from state officials to compel Abbott to greenlight his
extradition.
“Instead of promptly fulfilling
his legal, ministerial duty to execute the governor’s rendition warrant
for Castro, however, Governor Abbot has withheld the warrant and held up
Castro’s extradition for nearly three months,” Ellison told reporters
in a press conference.
Mr.
Ellison and Mary Moriarty, the elected county attorney in Minneapolis,
said that officials in Mr. Abbott’s office told them this week that the
governor did not intend to act on the request to send Mr. Castro to
Minnesota.
Ms. Moriarty’s office believes Mr.
Castro could flee to Mexico if he is released, she said. She cited
unspecified links she said the agent had to that country.
“We do believe he is a flight risk,” she said during a news conference.
Jose
Mejia Hernandez, a man allegedly beaten by ICE agents so brutally that
he suffered a brain bleed, is demanding a probe into what happened to
him, MeidasTouch News reported.
Mejia
Hernandez, a Mexican immigrant, claims that while on his way to work in
Virginia on Aug. 11, he was abruptly chased by two ICE agents and when
they apprehended him, they viciously attacked him and hit him on the
head with either a Taser or stun gun. What ensued was a series of
several confusing, painful days, Mejia Hernandez alleges, where he was
hospitalized, monitored by ICE agents, denied private time with doctors
and kept out of the loop about the severity of his condition. Mejia
Hernandez alleges no one at ICE, nor the hospital where he stayed,
attempted to notify his family that he had been hurt or detained.
A brain bleed? ICE continues to roam the country without any oversight and without any consequences. Li Zhou (HUFFINGTON POST) notes an attempt at oversight on the part of Democrats:
During
a field hearing in Maine on Monday, Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-Maine)
pressed for answers regarding the fatal shooting of 25-year-old Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer this past July.
Pingree
revealed during the hearing that the intended target of the immigration
enforcement operation was allegedly Durán Guerrero’s roommate, who did
not have a final order of removal and was the owner of the vehicle.
Previously, the Department of Homeland Security had claimed that agents
were surveilling the “last known address of an illegal alien with a
final order of removal” ahead of officers’ attempts to stop the vehicle.
The ICE officers targeted Durán Guerrero, who also did not have a final
order of removal, after he left the residence they were surveilling,
DHS claimed.
“This shocking revelation and clear
contradiction to what ICE and DHS have been saying about the operation
raises fundamental questions,” Pingree said.
“How is ICE deciding who to target and detain in Maine? What
information are its agents relying on? And is anyone checking whether
that information is complete, or even correct, before armed officers are
sent into our communities?”
For decades, Chump was best pals with pedophile and sex
trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. In fact, had Jeffrey not passed away in
2019, they'd probably still be hanging out since we now know that they
were in contact after the 2016 election. (We also now know that Chump
never kicked Epstein out of Mar-a-Lago.) Chump is thought by many to
have been so agreeable to starting the Iran War in the hopes that it
would distract from his Epstein scandal. If so, that really hasn't
worked out for him -- or for his enabler Todd Blanche. Hafiz Rashid (THE NEW REPUBLIC) notes:
Virginia Giuffre’s 2015 civil lawsuit against Ghislaine Maxwell is going to be unsealed.
A federal court in Manhattan last week ordered
the public release of the files from Giuffre’s defamation lawsuit
against the accomplice and partner of convicted sex offender Jeffrey
Epstein following eight years of litigation from the Miami Herald,
reported Julie Brown, the investigative journalist for the newspaper
best known for covering Epstein’s crimes.
Maxwell
had been fighting to keep the lawsuit details under wraps, but her
arguments were not enough to convince U.S. District Judge Loretta
Preska, who ruled that the Epstein Files Transparency Act supersedes the
grand jury arguments Maxwell cited to keep the records sealed.
Giuffre
brought the lawsuit more than a decade ago after Maxwell accused her of
lying about being abused by Epstein, Maxwell, Prince Andrew, Alan
Dershowitz, and other powerful figures. The lawsuit’s discovery process
yielded thousands of pages of documents, including depositions of
Maxwell, Giuffre, and many others, and Brown was told that it contains
more evidence against Epstein, Maxwell, and their accomplices.
Miami
Herald reporter Julie K. Brown, whose reportage is credited with
catalyzing the disgraced financier’s downfall, wrote on her Substack
Tuesday about Manhattan Federal Court Judge Loretta Preska’s decision to
unseal the “voluminous” documents.
[. . .]
Brown
wrote she and The Herald fought a nearly decade-long court battle to
have the documents released, arguing that they weren’t properly sealed.
The case was settled in 2017.
“Judicial
records by law are supposed to be open to the public. In this case, the
former judge (Robert Sweet, now deceased) issued a blanket sealing on
all the documents because they contained “sensitive” and “private”
information,” Brown wrote.
“Sweet placed a
protective order on massive amounts of material, including hearings and
judicial decisions made in the case — and voluminous evidence that
Virginia presented to show that Epstein and Maxwell were operating an
underage sex trafficking operation,” she continued.
“This
is not the way sealing is supposed to happen, however. Each document
that the lawyers want sealed has to be examined, and those requesting it
be sealed must provide legal justification to the judge for doing so.
This wasn’t done in this case.”
In
a wide-ranging interview with NewsNation, former Playboy Playmate Audra
Christiansen detailed the alleged sexual abuse and sex trafficking she
says she endured from disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein in 2004.
Christiansen said she was contacted by Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s co-conspirator,
who is currently serving a 20-year federal prison sentence for the
trafficking of minor females. Maxwell said that the then-24-year-old
model should meet with Epstein, who had ties to Victoria’s Secret and
could offer her opportunities in the fashion and entertainment industry.
“Basically,
it was like she was pretending to be like an agent or like a manager
that she could introduce me to all of these people. And I kind of
ignored it, because as a model, you get that a lot. You get a lot of
people who contact you and say they can make you a star; that's the big
thing in Hollywood, and I found out that my information had been sold to
her," Christiansen said.
[. . .]
Christiansen
said it was her lifelong dream to be a model and actress, so she
decided to meet with Epstein at a hotel in Los Angeles, which she said
was not unusual in Hollywood.
“I tried
everything I could to protect myself. And he made me feel very
comfortable in that setting. We talked for like an hour, and everything
seemed to be going really smoothly and really great. And I was excited
about the possibilities of what he had to offer,” Christiansen said.
The model explained that Epstein then briefly left the room.
“Then that's when he excused himself to go to the bathroom and came back with a robe, and my life changed,” Christiansen stated.
Christiansen told NewsNation that when Epstein returned, he sexually assaulted her.
“I
think that every woman, we all play through the scenario of 'What ifs?'
in our head, and I had played the 'What if?' so many times in my head,
and I thought I'm a fighter. I'm vocal. I'm a fighter. I'm not somebody
that usually just gives up and submits. And it was really frustrating to
have my brain telling me what to do and to run and to fight back. And
my body just would not move,” Christiansen said.
“It
was like there was a total disconnect from my brain to my body. And that
is the hardest part. And I think it's the hardest part for a survivor
that's gone through that is that we knew we should run. We knew that we
should do stuff, stuff to make it stop. But when you're in that
situation, it's just you freeze,” she described.
After
Epstein allegedly sexually assaulted her, Christiansen said she called
Maxwell to report the abuse. She says Maxwell then threatened her.
“I
called Ghislaine, and I was crying. I was sobbing. That's when she was
the one who was threatening … they get to you. They talk to you. They
find out what your weaknesses are. My weakness was my family, my
parents. My parents meant the world to me,” she said.
Let's wind down with this from Senator Patty Murray's office:
Washington, D.C. — U.S. Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), Vice Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, joined 25 of her Democratic colleagues in demanding the
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) withdraw its proposal to roll
back drinking water protections—which, if finalized, would remove
federal public health limits on the amount of certain PFAS compounds in
our drinking water.
The Senators emphasize in a new letter to the EPA that removing these
health limits will expose Americans to unsafe levels of chemicals that
have been linked to kidney and testicular cancer, immune suppression
problems, developmental harm, thyroid disease, pregnancy complications,
and liver damage.
“Safe drinking water is not a partisan issue. Families across
the country expect that when they turn on the tap, their water is safe
to drink. Congress enacted the Safe Drinking Water Act to ensure EPA
relies on the best available science to protect public health—not to
weaken existing protections once the science has been established,” the Senators wrote.
Despite the administration touting their ‘Make America Healthy Again’
(MAHA) agenda, if enacted, EPA’s proposal would rescind the 2024
National Primary Drinking Water Regulations for PFAS and delay
compliance for the PFOA and PFOS standards until 2031 – putting the
health of millions of Americans at risk.
“As far back as the 1950s, scientists observed that PFAS
compounds could accumulate in human bloodstreams. It took decades of
advocacy and heroic scientific research to reach the historic moment in
2024 when EPA finally promulgated the very first national drinking water
standards for PFAS compounds. We cannot afford to go backwards and make
Americans’ health worse,” the Senators concluded.
In addition to Senator Murray, the letter is signed by U.S. Senators
Adam Schiff (D-CA), Ranking Member of the Senate Environment and Public
Works (EPW) Fisheries, Water, and Wildlife Subcommittee, Sheldon
Whitehouse (D-RI), Ranking Member of the EPW Committee, Tammy Baldwin
(D-WI), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), Mark Kelly (D-AZ), Chris Van Hollen
(D-MD), Andy Kim (D-NJ), Edward Markey (D-MA), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA),
Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Gary Peters (D-MI), Tammy Duckworth (D-IL),
Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Jack Reed (D-RI), Raphael Warnock (D-GA), Michael
Bennet (D-CO), Martin Heinrich (D-NM), Dick Durbin (D-IL), Ben Ray Luján
(D-NM), Ron Wyden (D-OR), Angela Alsobrooks (D-MD), Elissa Slotkin
(D-MI), Alex Padilla (D-CA), Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Cory Booker
(D-NJ).
Full text of the letter is available HERE and below:
Dear Administrator Zeldin:
We write in strong opposition to EPA’s proposal to rescind the 2024
National Primary Drinking Water Regulations for PFHxS, PFNA, GenX, and
the Hazard Index mixtures, while also delaying compliance for the PFOA
and PFOS standards until 2031. These actions would reverse the
first-ever national drinking water protections for six of the most
dangerous and well-studied PFAS chemicals, despite overwhelming
scientific evidence demonstrating that there is no safe level of
exposure to many of these chemicals. Furthermore, there is a strong
case to be made that this proposal contravenes the Safe Drinking Water
Act’s anti-backsliding provision.
The agency’s proposal is inconsistent with both the scientific record
and EPA’s own prior findings. The 2024 drinking water standards
followed years of scientific review, public input, and economic
analysis. EPA concluded that the standards would protect up to 105
million people from exposure to toxic PFAS in drinking water, prevent
thousands of premature deaths, reduce tens of thousands of serious
illnesses, and generate billions of dollars in public health benefits.
PFAS contamination is one of the most widespread public health
concerns facing our nation. Nearly every American has PFAS in their
blood, and millions of people continue to rely on drinking water
contaminated with these persistent chemicals. Exposure to PFAS has been
linked to kidney and testicular cancer, immune suppression,
developmental harm, thyroid disease, pregnancy complications, and liver
damage.
EPA has repeatedly stated that protecting Americans from PFAS is a
top priority. Yet these proposed rollbacks move in the opposite
direction. In addressing revisions to drinking water regulations, the
Safe Drinking Water Act itself states that “each revision shall
maintain, or provide for greater, protection of the health of persons.”
Rather than strengthening protections, the
proposal eliminates enforceable standards for four PFAS entirely and
delays protections for the two most prevalent PFAS. Communities living
with contamination should not be forced to wait additional years for
clean drinking water while polluters and regulated entities receive
regulatory relief.
Your agency has suggested that regulating only PFOA and PFOS is
sufficient because these chemicals are often found alongside other PFAS.
However, EPA’s own scientific record demonstrates otherwise. Other PFAS
occur independently, contribute to cumulative health risks,
and warrant their own enforceable protections. Removing standards for
these contaminants will leave significant gaps in public health
protections and create unnecessary uncertainty for water systems and
states that have already begun compliance planning.
Moreover, many utilities and states have already invested substantial
resources to comply with the 2024 standards using Bipartisan
Infrastructure Law funding and other federal assistance. Weakening the
standards now undermines those investments, creates regulatory
uncertainty, and penalizes communities that have acted responsibly to
protect public health.
Safe drinking water is not a partisan issue. Families across the
country expect that when they turn on the tap, their water is safe to
drink. Congress enacted the Safe Drinking Water Act to ensure EPA relies
on the best available science to protect public health—not to weaken
existing protections once the science has been established.
We therefore urge EPA to withdraw its proposal to rescind the 2024
drinking water standards for PFHxS, PFNA, GenX, and the Hazard Index
mixtures, reject the proposed delay for the PFOA and PFOS standards, and
fully implement the 2024 National Primary Drinking Water Regulations as
finalized.
As far back as the 1950s, scientists observed that PFAS compounds
could accumulate in human bloodstreams. It took decades of advocacy and
heroic scientific research to reach the historic moment in 2024 when EPA
finally promulgated the very first national drinking water standards
for PFAS compounds. We cannot afford to go backwards and make Americans’
health worse. Thank you for your consideration.
