Under President Donald Trump, the Environmental Protection Agency initially had recommended labeling Racine County as violating federal air quality standards for ozone in 2017 — a designation that could have required Taiwan-based Foxconn to install expensive state-of-the-art pollution controls at its flat-screen manufacturing plant.
But after appeals by GOP Gov. Scott Walker and at the apparent direction of then-EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, the EPA reversed course in 2018, ruling Racine was in compliance with the ground-level smog standard. The decision followed weeks of objections from EPA career staff, who said they saw no technical basis to justify it, according to correspondence released under a public records request.