In mid-February, Trump administration leaders received a desperate warning from their diplomats posted in Vietnam, one of the most important American partners in Asia. Workers were in the middle of cleaning up the site of an enormous chemical spill, the Bien Hoa air base, when Secretary of State Marco Rubio abruptly halted all foreign aid funding. The shutdown left exposed open pits of soil contaminated with dioxin, the deadly byproduct of Agent Orange, which the American military sprayed across large swaths of the country during the Vietnam War. After Rubio's orders to stop work, the cleanup crews were forced to abandon the site, and, for weeks, all that was covering the contaminated dirt were tarps, which at one point blew off in the wind.

New from PP: The Trump admin abandoned cleanup of an Agent Orange site in Vietnam. A place we poisoned. Trump admin won't pay the bills . "Halting a project like that in the middle of the work, that's an environmental crime," said one expert. www.propublica.org/article/trum ...

[image or embed]

-- Eric Umansky (@ericumansky.bsky.social) March 17, 2025 at 7:59 AM