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US President Donald Trump joked about escaped migrants getting eaten by Florida wildlife as he headed Tuesday to the official opening of a detention center dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz.”Critics of Trump’s harsh immigration crackdown have called the site in a reptile-filled Everglades swap inhumane, while environmental protesters oppose its construction in a national park.But Trump, who has launched a tough crackdown on undocumented migrants since returning to power, doubled down on the idea as he left the White House.”I guess that’s the concept,” Trump told reporters when asked if the idea behind the detention center was that people who escaped from it would get eaten by alligators or snakes.”This is not a nice business. Snakes are fast, but alligators… we’re going to teach them how to run away from an alligator, okay?”If they escape prison, how to run away. Don’t run in a straight line. Run like this. And you know what? Your chances go up about one percent.”Florida, the southeastern state governed by conservative Republican Ron DeSantis, announced last week that it was constructing the site at an estimated cost of $450 million.It sits on an abandoned airfield in the heart of a sprawling network of mangrove forests, imposing marshes and “rivers of grass” that form the Everglades conservation area.Both the White House and Florida officials have dubbed it “Alligator Alcatraz” — a reference to the former island prison in San Francisco that Trump has said he wants to reopen.”There is only one road leading in, and the only way out is a one-way flight. It is isolated and surrounded by dangerous wildlife and unforgiving terrain,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Monday.Asked if the scaly-skinned predators were a “design feature,” Leavitt replied: “When you have illegal murderers and rapists and heinous criminals in a detention facility surrounded by alligators, yes I do think that’s a deterrent for them to try to escape.”While Trump administration officials routinely highlight the targeting of violent criminals, many migrants without any charges against them have also been swept up in the crackdown.- ‘Alligators and pythons’ -The Everglades National Park is particularly known as a major habitat for alligators, with an estimated population of around 200,000. They can reach up to 15 feet in length when fully grown.Attacks by alligators on humans are relatively rare in Florida.Across the entire state there were 453 “unprovoked bite incidents” between 1948 and 2022, 26 of which resulted in human fatalities, according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.But authorities have played up the risk.”If people get out, there’s not much waiting for them, other than alligators and pythons,” Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier said recently as he described the detention camp.He also described the site as a “low-cost opportunity to build a temporary detention facility, because you don’t need to invest that much in the perimeter.”The White House’s Leavitt said it would be a 5,000-bed facility, but Florida authorities have said it would house about 1,000 “criminal aliens.”Trump’s administration is playing up “Alligator Alcatraz” as it drums up support for a huge tax and spending bill that the president is trying to push through Congress this week.The “One Big Beautiful Bill” contains funding for Trump’s immigration crackdown including an increase in places in detention centers.The deportation drive is part of a broader campaign of harsh optics on migration, including raids in Los Angeles that sparked protests against the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency.

Republican senators struggled Tuesday for a second day to pass President Donald Trump’s flagship spending bill, which would slash welfare programs for the poor while adding an eye-watering $3 trillion to the national debt.The president wants his “One Big Beautiful Bill” — which polls show is wildly unpopular among Americans — to extend his expiring first-term tax cuts at a cost of $4.5 trillion.Spending will be ramped up for the military and Trump’s project for mass deportations of undocumented migrants and border security.To pay for that, Republican senators are seeking to force through draconian cuts to the social safety net and gutting of clean energy and electric vehicle subsidies — a factor triggering a bitter public feud between Trump and Tesla founder and mega-donor Elon Musk.Around $1 trillion in subsidized health care would be stripped from millions of the poorest Americans. And even with the spending cuts, the bill would still add more than $3.3 trillion to the nation’s already yawning budget deficits over a decade.Trump wants the package on his desk by Independence Day on Friday.Its journey through the Republican-controlled Senate has been at a glacial pace, however, as senators held a so-called “vote-a-rama” — a session allowing members to offer unlimited amendments before a bill can move to final passage.That began Monday, and was still grinding on Tuesday morning.”It’s tough,” Trump told reporters at the White House before leaving to visit a migrant detention center in Florida. “We’re going to get there.”Even if the bill squeaks through the Senate, it still needs a vote in the House of Representatives, where Democrats are again uniformly opposed and several rebels in the slim Republican majority threaten to oppose.- ‘Money to be saved’ -Trump’s insistence on the bill has put the more vulnerable Republicans in a difficult position.Polls show the bill is among the most unpopular ever considered across multiple demographic, age and income groups. Democrats expect to leverage public anger — particularly over the health care cuts — in 2026 midterm elections when they hope to retake the House.Studies show the bill would ultimately pave the way for a historic redistribution of wealth from the poorest 10 percent of Americans to the richest.Cuts to the Medicaid program — which helps low-income Americans get coverage — as well as the Affordable Care Act would see nearly 12 million more uninsured people by 2034 in a country with notoriously expensive health care, independent analysis shows.Senate Democrats have focused their amendments on highlighting the threats to health care, as well as cuts to federal food aid programs and clean energy tax credits.Many Republicans have shown discomfort. Fiscal hawks believe that spending cuts should go even deeper, while moderates are alarmed at the impacts in their own states.Republican Senate Majority Leader John Thune can only lose one more vote to get a win, with conservative Rand Paul and moderate Thom Tillis already on the record as Republican rebels.The bill has also reignited the feud between Trump and his former adviser-turned-critic Musk, the world’s richest person.Musk — who already had an acrimonious public falling out with the president this month over the bill — has repeatedly slammed its cost, and Monday renewed his calls for the formation of a new political party as voting got underway.Trump, in turn, threatened the government subsidies to Musk’s cutting-edge companies SpaceX and Tesla.”Elon may get more subsidy than any human being in history, by far, and without subsidies, Elon would probably have to close up shop and head back home to South Africa,” he posted on Truth Social early Tuesday.”No more Rocket launches, Satellites, or Electric Car Production, and our Country would save a FORTUNE,” he threatened. “BIG MONEY TO BE SAVED!!!”

More than 14 million of the world’s most vulnerable people, a third of them small children, could die by 2030 because of the Trump administration’s dismantling of US foreign aid, research projected on Tuesday.The study in the prestigious Lancet journal was published as world and business leaders gather for a United Nations conference in Spain this week hoping to bolster the reeling aid sector.The US Agency for International Development (USAID) had provided over 40 percent of global humanitarian funding until Donald Trump returned to the White House in January. Two weeks later, Trump’s then-close advisor — and world’s richest man — Elon Musk boasted of having put the agency “through the woodchipper”.The funding cuts “risk abruptly halting — and even reversing — two decades of progress in health among vulnerable populations”, warned study co-author Davide Rasella, a researcher at the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal).”For many low- and middle-income countries, the resulting shock would be comparable in scale to a global pandemic or a major armed conflict,” he said in a statement.Looking back over data from 133 nations, the international team of researchers estimated that USAID funding had prevented 91.8 million deaths in developing countries between 2001 and 2021. That is more than the estimated number of deaths during World War II, history’s deadliest conflict.- HIV, malaria to rise -The researchers also used modelling to project how funding being slashed by 83 percent — the figure announced by the US government earlier this year — could affect death rates.The cuts could lead to more than 14 million avoidable deaths by 2030, the projections found.That number included over 4.5 million children under the age of five — or around 700,000 child deaths a year.For comparison, around 10 million soldiers are estimated to have been killed during World War I. Programmes supported by USAID were linked to a 15-percent decrease in deaths from all causes, the researchers determined. For children under five, the drop in deaths was twice as steep, at 32 percent.USAID funding was found to be particularly effective at staving off preventable deaths from disease. There were 65 percent fewer deaths from HIV/AIDS in countries receiving a high level of support compared to those with little or no USAID funding, the study found. Deaths from malaria and neglected tropical diseases were similarly cut in half. Study co-author Francisco Saute of Mozambique’s Manhica Health Research Centre said he had seen on the ground how USAID helped fight diseases such as HIV, malaria and tuberculosis. “Cutting this funding now not only puts lives at risk — it also undermines critical infrastructure that has taken decades to build,” he stressed.A recently updated tracker run by disease modeller Brooke Nichols at Boston University estimates that nearly 108,000 adults and more than 224,000 children have already died as a result of the US aid cuts. That works out to 88 deaths every hour, according to the tracker.- ‘Time to scale up’ -After USAID was gutted, several other major donors, including France, Germany and the UK, followed suit in announcing plans to slash their foreign aid budgets. These aid reductions, particularly in the European Union, could lead to “even more additional deaths in the coming years,” study co-author Caterina Monti of ISGlobal said.But the grim projections are based on the current amount of pledged aid, so could rapidly come down if the situation changes, the researchers emphasised.Dozens of world leaders are meeting in the Spanish city of Seville this week for the biggest aid conference in a decade. The United States, however, will not attend.”Now is the time to scale up, not scale back,” Rasella said.Before its funding was slashed, USAID represented 0.3 percent of all US federal spending.”US citizens contribute about 17 cents per day to USAID, around $64 per year,” said study co-author James Macinko of the University of California, Los Angeles.”I think most people would support continued USAID funding if they knew just how effective such a small contribution can be to saving millions of lives.”

US senators were in a marathon session of amendment votes Tuesday as Republicans sought to pass Donald Trump’s flagship spending bill, an unpopular package set to slash social welfare programs and add an eye-watering $3 trillion to the national debt.The president wants his “One Big Beautiful Bill” to extend his expiring first-term tax cuts at a cost of $4.5 trillion, boost military spending and fund his plans for unprecedented mass deportations and border security.But senators eyeing 2026 midterm congressional elections are divided over provisions that would strip around $1 trillion in subsidized health care from millions of the poorest Americans and add more than $3.3 trillion to the nation’s already yawning budget deficits over a decade.Trump wants to have the package on his desk by the time Independence Day festivities begin on Friday.Progress in the Senate slowed to a glacial pace Monday, however, with no end in sight as the so-called “vote-a-rama” — a session allowing members to offer unlimited amendments before a bill can move to final passage — went into a 17th hour.Trump defended the bill in a series of Truth Social posts overnight Tuesday, as “perhaps the greatest and most important of its kind in history” and said failure to pass would mean a “whopping 68 percent tax increase, the largest in history.”With little sign of the pace picking up ahead of a final floor vote that could be delayed until well into the early hours of Tuesday, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt called for Republicans to “stay tough and unified.”Vote-a-ramas have been concluded in as little nine or 10 hours in the recent past and Democrats accused Republicans of deliberately slow-walking the process. “They’ve got a lot of members who were promised things that they may not be able to deliver on. And so they’re just stalling,” Senate Democratic Minority Leader Chuck Schumer told reporters.”But we’re just pushing forward amendment after amendment. They don’t like these amendments. The public is on our side in almost every amendment we do.”Given Trump’s iron grip on the party, he is expected to eventually get what he wants in the Senate, where Republicans hold a razor-thin majority and can overcome what is expected to be unified Democratic opposition.That would be a huge win for the Republican leader — who has been criticized for imposing many of his priorities through executive orders that sidestep the scrutiny of Congress.But approval by the Senate is only half the battle, as the 940-page bill next heads to a separate vote in the House of Representatives, where several rebels in the slim Republican majority are threatening to oppose it. – ‘Debt slavery’ -Trump’s heavy pressure to declare victory has put more vulnerable Republicans in a difficult position.Nonpartisan studies have concluded that the bill would ultimately pave the way for a historic redistribution of wealth from the poorest 10 percent of Americans to the richest.And cuts to the Medicaid program — which helps low-income Americans get coverage in a country with notoriously expensive medical insurance — and cuts to the Affordable Care Act would result in nearly 12 million more uninsured people by 2034, independent analysis shows.Polls show the bill is among the most unpopular ever considered across multiple demographic, age and income groups.Senate Democrats have been focusing their amendments on highlighting the threats to health care, as well as cuts to federal food aid programs and clean energy tax credits.Republican Majority Leader John Thune can only lose one more vote, with conservative Rand Paul and moderate Thom Tillis already on the record as Republican rebels.A House vote on the Senate bill could come as early as Wednesday. However, ultra-conservative fiscal hawks in the lower chamber have complained that the bill would not cut enough spending and moderates are worried at the defunding of Medicaid.Trump’s former close aide Elon Musk — who had an acrimonious public falling out with the president earlier this month over the bill — reprised his sharp criticisms and renewed his calls for the formation of a new political party as voting got underway.The tech billionaire, who headed Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency before stepping down at the end of May, accused Republicans of supporting “debt slavery.” He vowed to launch a new political party to challenge lawmakers who campaigned on reduced federal spending only to vote for the bill.

US President Donald Trump once again targeted former aide Elon Musk on Tuesday, attacking the amount of government subsidies the entrepreneur is receiving, after the tech billionaire renewed criticism of the president’s flagship spending bill.”Elon may get more subsidy than any human being in history, by far,” Trump said on social media.”And without subsidies, Elon would probably have to close up shop and head back home to South Africa.”Musk — who had an acrimonious public falling out with the president this month over the bill — reprised his sharp criticisms and renewed his calls for the formation of a new political party as voting got underway.Trump responded by suggesting his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)– which Musk headed before stepping down late May — train its sights on the SpaceX founder’s business interests.”No more Rocket launches, Satellites, or Electric Car Production, and our Country would save a FORTUNE,” the president said. “Perhaps we should have DOGE take a good, hard, look at this? BIG MONEY TO BE SAVED!!!”Trump is hoping to seal his legacy with the “One Big Beautiful Bill,” which would extend his expiring first-term tax cuts at a cost of $4.5 trillion and beef up border security.But Republicans eyeing 2026 midterm congressional elections are divided over the package, which would strip health care from millions of the poorest Americans and add more than $3 trillion to the country’s debt.As lawmakers began voting on the bill on Monday, Musk — the world’s richest person — accused Republicans of supporting “debt slavery”.”All I’m asking is that we don’t bankrupt America,” he said on social media Tuesday. “What’s the point of a debt ceiling if we keep raising it?”Musk has vowed to launch a new political party to challenge lawmakers who campaigned on reduced federal spending only to vote for the bill.”VOX POPULI VOX DEI 80% voted for a new party,” he said.

US President Donald Trump will attend Tuesday’s official opening of a migrant detention center dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz” that has been built in a reptile-filled Florida swamp.Critics of Trump’s harsh immigration crackdown have called the idea inhumane, while environmental protesters oppose its construction in a national park.But the White House has openly embraced the nickname comparing it to the notorious former Alcatraz prison on an island in San Francisco Bay — which Trump incidentally also wants to reopen.”There is only one road leading in, and the only way out is a one-way flight. It is isolated and surrounded by dangerous wildlife and unforgiving terrain,” Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Monday.Asked if the scaly-skinned predators were a “design feature,” Leavitt replied: “When you have illegal murderers and rapists and heinous criminals in a detention facility surrounded by alligators, yes I do think that’s a deterrent for them to try to escape.”While Trump administration officials routinely highlight the targeting of violent criminals, many migrants without any charges have also been swept up in the crackdown.Florida, the southeastern state governed by conservative Republican Ron DeSantis, announced last week that it was constructing the site at an estimated cost of $450 million dollars.It sits on an abandoned airfield in the heart of a sprawling network of mangrove forests, imposing marshes and “rivers of grass” that form the Everglades conservation area.The Everglades National Park is particularly known as a major habitat for alligators, with an estimated population of around 200,000. They can reach up to 15 feet in length when fully grown.- ‘Alligators and pythons’ -Attacks by alligators on humans are relatively rare in Florida.Across the entire state there were 453 “unprovoked bite incidents” between 1948 and 2022, 26 of which resulted in human fatalities, according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.But authorities have played up the risk.”If people get out, there’s not much waiting for them, other than alligators and pythons,” Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier said recently as he described the detention camp.He also described the site as a “low-cost opportunity to build a temporary detention facility, because you don’t need to invest that much in the perimeter.”The White House’s Leavitt said it would be a 5,000-bed facility, but Florida authorities have said it would house about 1,000 “criminal aliens.”Trump’s administration is playing up “Alligator Alcatraz” as it drums up support for a huge tax and spending bill that the president is trying to push through Congress this week.The “One Big Beautiful Bill” contains funding for Trump’s immigration crackdown including an increase in places in detention centers.”I can’t wait for it to open,” Trump’s immigration czar Tom Homan told reporters on Monday when asked about “Alligator Alcatraz. “We’ve got to get the Big Beautiful Bill passed — the more beds we have, the more bad guys we arrest.”The deportation drive is part of a broader campaign of harsh optics on migration, including raids in Los Angeles that sparked protests against the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency.

A man charged with the murder of four students in the northwestern US state of Idaho is set to plead guilty this week to avoid the death penalty, a victim’s family told AFP.Bryan Kohberger, a 30-year-old former criminology student, was facing trial in August for the November 2022 stabbing deaths that rocked the small town of Moscow and made national headlines.He is accused of slipping into the victims’ home undetected at around 4:00 am and stabbing four University of Idaho students to death while they slept. The bodies of 21-year-olds Kaylee Goncalves and Madison Mogen, and 20-year-olds Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin, were found hours later.Kohberger’s guilty plea is expected to be formalized during a hearing Wednesday, and is intended to spare him from facing the death penalty, the Goncalves family said in a statement shared by their lawyer Shanon Gray.”After more than two years, this is how it concludes with a secretive deal and a hurried effort to close the case without any input from the victims’ families on the plea’s details,” the family wrote.The Goncalves family had demanded the death penalty, and successfully advocated for the passage of a new law in Idaho which allows death row inmates to be executed by firing squad.On a Facebook page, the Goncalves family expressed bitter heartbreak, calling the prosecution’s pending plea deal “shocking and cruel” after years of waiting for the trial to begin.”Bryan Kohberger facing life in prison means he would still get to speak, form relationships, and engage with the world. Meanwhile, our loved ones have been silenced forever. That reality stings more deeply when it feels like the system is protecting his future more than honoring the victims’ pasts,” the family said on social media.Two and a half years since the murders, prosecutors have still yet to present any motive for the killings, while Kohberger has consistently remained silent throughout proceedings.Kohberger was arrested and charged after investigators found his DNA on a knife sheath recovered at the crime scene.A video shows a car similar to Kohberger’s driving in the victims’ neighborhood around the time of the murders.Kohberger was studying for his PhD in criminology at Washington State University, about nine miles (15 kilometers) away from Moscow, across the state border.

President Donald Trump on Monday formally dismantled US sanctions against Syria, hoping to reintegrate the war-battered country into the global economy as Israel eyes ties with its new leadership.Trump lifted most sanctions against Syria in May, responding to appeals from Saudi Arabia and Turkey after former Islamist guerrilla Ahmed al-Sharaa ended a half-century of rule by the Assad family.In an executive order, Trump terminated the “national emergency” in place since 2004 that imposed far-reaching sanctions on Syria, affecting most state-run institutions including the central bank.”These actions reflect the president’s vision of fostering a new relationship between the United States and a Syria that is stable, unified and at peace with itself and its neighbors,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement.Rubio said he would start the potentially lengthy process of examining whether to delist Syria as a state sponsor of terrorism, a designation dating from 1979 that has severely discouraged investment.He also said he would look at removing the terrorist classification of Sharaa and his movement Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which was once linked to Al-Qaeda. The United States already removed a bounty on Sharaa’s head after he came to power.Brad Smith, the Treasury Department official in charge of sanctions, said the new actions “will end the country’s isolation from the international financial system.”Syria recently carried out its first electronic transfer through the international banking system since around the time it descended into a brutal civil war in 2011.The orders still maintain sanctions on elements of the former government, including Bashar al-Assad, who fled to Russia late last year.Syrian Foreign Minister Assaad al-Shibani hailed the US move as a “major turning point.””With the lifting of this major obstacle to economic recovery, the long-awaited doors are opening for reconstruction and development” as are the conditions “for the dignified return of displaced Syrians to their homeland,” he wrote on X.- Israel sees opportunity -Israel kept pounding military sites in its historic adversary after the fall of Assad and initially voiced skepticism over the trajectory of its neighbor under Sharaa, who has swapped jihadist attire for a business suit.But Israel said earlier Monday that it was interested in normalizing ties with Syria as well as Lebanon in an expansion of the so-called “Abraham Accords,” in what would mark a major transformation of the Middle East.Iran’s clerical state’s once-strong influence in Syria and Lebanon has declined sharply under pressure from Israeli military strikes since the October 7, 2023 attacks by Hamas.Trump administration officials argued that lifting the sanctions on Syria would better integrate the country into the region and incentivize it to open up to Israel.Israel’s intensive attacks on Iran in June opened a “window that has never existed,” said Tom Barrack, the US ambassador to Turkey who serves as Trump’s pointman on Syria.”It’s an opportunity that we have never, ever seen, and this president’s put together a team that can actually get it done,” Barrack told reporters.Despite his upbeat picture of the new Syrian leader, the country has seen a series of major attacks against minorities since the fall of Assad, a largely secular leader from the Alawite minority sect.At least 25 people were killed and dozens more wounded in a suspected Islamist attack against a Greek Orthodox church in Damascus on June 22.Until Trump’s surprise announcement of sanctions relief during a trip to Saudi Arabia, the United States had insisted on progress first in key areas including protection of minorities.

A federal judge in New York ordered Argentina on Monday to sell its majority stake in oil firm YPF, the latest blow to Buenos Aires in a decade-long international legal saga.Argentine President Javier Milei, who is on a campaign to stabilize his country’s struggling economy, promptly vowed to appeal.The case revolves around the 2012 renationalization of YPF from the control of Spanish giant Repsol.Two minority shareholders, Petersen Energia and Eton Park Capital, filed suit in 2015 seeking damages for allegedly not receiving proper compensation in the sale.US District Judge Loretta Preska ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, and in September 2023 ordered Argentina to pay over $16 billion to the firms.To partially satisfy the outstanding sum, Preska on Monday ordered Argentina to transfer its 51 percent stake of YPF to an intermediary, with instructions that the shares then be handed over to the plaintiffs.”We will appeal this decision in all appropriate courts to defend national interests,” Milei posted on X shortly after the judgment was published.He pointed the finger at Axel Kicillof, who was the South American country’s economy minister in 2012 under then-president Cristina Kirchner and considered a potential 2027 presidential candidate.YPF, a century-old and iconic Argentine company with more than 22,000 employees, was privatized in the 1990s and gradually came under the control of Repsol.It was renationalized in 2012 under Kirchner, which at the time raised questions about the security of investments in South America’s third-largest economy.In 2014, after months of dispute, Repsol reached an agreement with Argentina for compensation of around $5 billion.The Petersen Group and Eton Park Capital — which together held 25.4 percent of YPF’s capital — filed suit in 2015, alleging that the country had not submitted a takeover bid as provided by law.Preska has ordered Argentina to pay $7.5 billion in damages and $6.85 billion in interest to Petersen Energia.She also ordered Argentina to pay about $1.7 billion, between damages and interest, to Eton Park Capital.

US President Donald Trump’s administration is “ignoring the scientific consensus to benefit polluters,” hundreds of Environmental Protection Agency employees said in a letter of dissent Monday, accusing the government of undermining the EPA’s core mission.The scathing letter, signed by more than 200 current and former officials and their supporters, accused EPA chief Lee Zeldin of enacting policies dangerous to both humans and the environment.”The decisions of the current administration frequently contradict the peer-reviewed research and recommendations of Agency experts,” said the letter.”Make no mistake: your actions endanger public health and erode scientific progress — not only in America — but around the world.”Under Zeldin, the EPA has worked to deliver Trump’s campaign promises of lifting environmental regulations, boosting fossil fuel production and cutting clean energy spending.The letter identifies five main areas of concern, including the increasing politicization of the agency, the reversing of programs aimed at marginalized communities and the “dismantling” of the agency’s Office of Research and Development.It described the agency’s communications under Zeldin as being used “to promote misinformation and overtly partisan rhetoric.””This politicized messaging distracts from EPA’s core responsibility: to protect human health and the environment through objective, science-based policy.”As an example, the letter cited official communications that likened “climate science to a religion.”Zeldin has repeatedly stated that he sees the EPA’s role as supporting US economic growth, and under his guidance the agency has set in motion a full-scale reversal of several environmental standards and greenhouse gas regulations.Unveiling a set of policy initiatives in March, Zeldin hailed the move as “the greatest day of deregulation our nation has seen.””We are driving a dagger straight into the heart of the climate change religion to drive down cost of living for American families, unleash American energy, bring auto jobs back to the US and more,” said the administrator of the federal agency charged with protecting the environment.The letter came weeks after the publication of a similar text signed by dozens of employees of the National Institutes of Health over the Trump administration’s “harmful” policies.The EPA letter had more than 170 “anonymous signers,” with the text stating the administration had promoted “a culture of fear” at the agency.