The Clean Air Act is one of the most consequential environmental laws in American history, credited by public health researchers with preventing thousands of premature deaths. In March 2025, the Trump administration gave coal-fired power plants, chemical manufacturers, and other industrial facilities a streamlined way to request exemptions from it. The application? A single email, sent by the end of that month. InvestigateTV+ explored the story in an episode titled “Permission to Poison?”
For Suncoast residents, the stakes feel personal. Our beaches, our boating, our morning walks, and our snowbird season all depend on air and water quality that stays within healthy limits. From red tide watches to hurricane season prep, we already pay close attention to environmental conditions. This is one more piece of that picture, and it deserves the same scrutiny.
The same InvestigateTV+ episode also highlighted a Jackson County, Missouri, database helping Black Americans trace enslaved ancestors, a New Orleans teenager who converted a used bus into a mobile boutique called Transit, and Minnesota’s only all-deaf high school cheer team competing in its first hearing competition this January. Big questions and bright stories, side by side.
What do you think: should exemption requests like these be publicly posted for everyone to see? Let us know in the comments.
