RegsTalk: The CSS Blog

By Genna Reed, Union of Concerned Scientists The image accompanying the 2016 New York Times piece, “The Lawyer Who Became DuPont’s Worst Nightmare” has stuck with me since I first read it. The contrast of a man in a dark suit with darkened eyes and a grave face standing on a West... Continue Reading

By Gillian Giannetti, Natural Resources Defense Council It’s been almost two years since the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission announced that it would take a fresh look at its 20-year-old policy that guides its reviews of new gas pipeline projects, and almost 18 month... Continue Reading

By Jacob Carter, Union of Concerned Scientists Today, a new analysis published in Nature Climate Change shows that the US government doesn’t have many plans to conserve hundreds of endangered species that are at-risk of being affected by climate change. The analysis finds that... Continue Reading

By Daniel Rosenberg, Natural Resources Defense Council When the history of the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) is written, November 14, 2019 will be remembered as the date when the anti-science policies the Trump administration wrote after the chemical industry takeover of... Continue Reading

By Anita Desikan, Union of Concerned Scientists Alarmingly, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is attempting to choke off the science that can be considered in the policymaking process in a way that will almost certainly hamper the efforts to monitor and protect people... Continue Reading

By the Teamsters The Teamsters for years have been at the forefront of pushing back on excessive CEO pay. Now the union is glad to see some on Capitol Hill agree. Lawmakers yesterday rolled out the Tax Excessive CEO Pay Act, which would impose tax rate increases on companies with... Continue Reading

By Michael Halpern, Union of Concerned Scientists The House Science Committee yesterday held a hearing on EPA’s horrendous proposal to sideline public health research when it makes decisions. I livetweeted the hearing, as did UCS’s Allison Cain and NRDC’s John Walke. There were... Continue Reading

By Rachel Esster, National Women’s Law Center In May, the Trump-Pence Administration finalized a rule that would allow a provider’s personal beliefs to dictate patient care. This week, Congress is fighting back. Members of Congress are joining together to introduce the Put... Continue Reading

By Joe Vukovich, Natural Resources Defense Council Under the guise of responding to consumer complaints that today’s energy- and water-efficient dishwashers take too long, the Department of Energy has proposed creating a new class of dishwashers that wouldn’t be subject to any... Continue Reading

By Marica Delonge, Union of Concerned Scientists It’s already November, but farmers across the nation are still suffering in the aftermath of a series of extreme weather events that wrought havoc this year. It began with devastating spring flooding and wet weather tha... Continue Reading

By Andrew Rosenberg, Union of Concerned Scientists A leaked draft of the Environmental Protection Agency’s soon-to-be-released supplemental proposal to their so-called Transparency Proposed Rule from last year shows that the administration is making a bad proposal worse. The... Continue Reading

By Amy Souers Kober, American Rivers American Rivers and our partners are challenging in court the Trump administration’s effort to strip away crucial clean water protections from rivers, lakes, streams and other waters that feed drinking-water sources for 200 million Americans.... Continue Reading

By Genna Reed, Union of Concerned Scientists Instead of listening to over a half million comments and abandoning a truly harmful rule, the EPA has forged ahead with its restricted science proposal, according to the New York Times reporting of a supplemental notice that exposes... Continue Reading

By Michael Halpern, Union of Concerned Scientists The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is doubling down on a proposal that would effectively force the agency to ignore thousands of scientific studies when responding to public health threats and setting pollution standards.... Continue Reading

By Alliance for Justice This week, we celebrate Veterans Day and honor those who served in our armed forces. To ensure that our veterans and servicemembers can enjoy the rights and protections they have sacrificed to uphold, Congress has passed a variety of laws to protect them.... Continue Reading

By Dave Cooke, Union of Concerned Scientists Recently General Motors, Fiat-Chrysler, Toyota, and other automakers sided with the Trump administration to fight California’s ability to set strong emissions standards. While this fight tramples all over the Clean Air Act and state... Continue Reading

By Michelle Banker, Lauren Gorodetsky and Sunu P. Chandy, National Women’s Law Center The National Women’s Law Center teamed up with lawyers from Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Democracy Forward Foundation, and the firm Covington & Burling to represent... Continue Reading

By Dr. Steve Suppan, Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy If the financial markets were a global plumbing system, inaccurate or incomplete financial reporting would be leaks in the system. A leak here or there wouldn’t disrupt the public’s understanding of the financial... Continue Reading

By Tom Conway, United Steelworkers Google’s computers are spying on its workers. Anytime a Google employee uses an online calendar to schedule a meeting involving more than 100 co-workers, management gets an alert—a great way for the anti-union corporation to sniff out union... Continue Reading

By American Rivers Today the Supreme Court heard arguments in the case of County of Maui v. Hawai’i Wildlife Fund, a case that could fundamentally change how the Clean Water Act (CWA) has been implemented for decades.  At issue is whether the CWA has jurisdiction over pollution... Continue Reading

By Emily Peterson-Cassin and David Rosen, Public Citizen New digital privacy legislation is expected to be introduced in Congress in the next few weeks, and there’s every chance the legislation will be the result of a con job. With California’s digital privacy law taking effect... Continue Reading

By Bartlett Naylor and Rachel Curley, Public Citizen There’s an iconic New Yorker cartoon that pictures a CEO at his annual shareholder meeting, and he’s listening to an apparently unhappy, bepearled, matronly investor. At the dais, one senior executive mutters to another: “This... Continue Reading

By Andrew Rosenberg, Union of Concerned Scientists It’s tough reading or listening to the news these days, from impeachment to racial attacks to sidelining science. But what is that? I think I see one! A ray of hope in all of the storm clouds: a growing appreciation for the role... Continue Reading

By Craig Sandler, Public Citizen A decade ago, Apple Inc. and three large power utility companies famously ended their membership with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce over its policy of obstructing any and all meaningful climate action. This may have stung for the Chamber, but not... Continue Reading

By Jessica A. Knoblauch, Earthjustice One out of thousands. That’s the chance of having your legal case picked to be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court. The odds are so long you’re more likely to be struck by lightning. Oddly enough, Earthjustice attorney David Henkin has... Continue Reading

By Brandon Rees, AFL-CIO In a partisan 3-2 vote, the Trump administration’s Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) proposed to curtail the rights of investors to file proposals for a vote at company annual meetings. If adopted, these changes will hinder shareholder proposals by... Continue Reading

By Joe Vukovich, Natural Resources Defense Council NRDC and our allies are suing the Department of Energy (DOE) to stop a harmful and unlawful attack on light bulb efficiency standards for many of the most commonly used bulbs in America. On September 5th, DOE finalized the... Continue Reading

By Rachel Curley, Public Citizen “We should consider giving investors much more transparency into how public companies spend their money on politics,” declared Robert Jackson of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in front of the House Financial Services in September.... Continue Reading

By Ann Alexander, Natural Resources Defense Council If you had to pick the worst possible environmental disaster that could befall the Great Lakes, a major oil pipeline spill would have to be near the top of the list. And if a spill does happen to our inland waters, it’s... Continue Reading

By Luke Tonchel, Natural Resources Defense Council No big change in Trump-ville when it comes to increasing pollution and making us all pay more for gas at the pump. Recent reports of some tweaks to Trump’s rollback of clean car standards show that this administration is still on... Continue Reading

By Mary Anne Hitt, Sierra Club For years the coal industry has been claiming, without evidence, that the large-scale retirement of coal plants would leave us freezing in the dark, putting the electricity grid at risk. Coal executives and coal-based utilities have repeatedly used... Continue Reading

By Better Markets The five US banking regulators have proposed to eliminate initial margin requirements on interaffiliate derivatives.  This is a deregulatory gift worth more than $40 billion to Wall Street’s five largest banks who have been lobbying for this because they are... Continue Reading

By Ken Cook, Environmental Working Group Top officials at the Environmental Protection Agency had a bold idea: Require water companies to run the nation’s most polluted tap water through the treatment plant equivalent of a Brita water pitcher.   It was 1975. A few years... Continue Reading

By Better Markets This is a perfect illustration of why people look at Washington as a rigged system greased by the revolving door and cash that benefit Wall Street’s biggest banks and insiders and hurt hardworking Main Street Americans. Eugene Scalia, on behalf of his financial... Continue Reading

By Consumer Reports This week, several major automakers revealed where they really stand when it comes to protecting consumers. General Motors, Toyota, and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, among other automakers who are members of Global Automakers (with the notable exception of... Continue Reading

By Better Markets The Consolidated Audit Trail (CAT) promises to be a revolutionary game-changer for the SEC in detecting, deterring, and punishing market manipulation and predatory behavior.  Done right, its importance for investor protection, market stability and capital... Continue Reading

By Sean Moulton, Project on Government Oversight The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) published a new final rule in late June updating its regulations implementing the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The agency had issued no prior notice that it was working on the rule;... Continue Reading

By Katie Tracy, Center for Progressive Reform On Halloween, nothing seems spookier than a chance encounter with a ghost or goblin, except maybe a zombie. But there is something much more haunting that happens every day. Across the United States, an average of 137 people die daily... Continue Reading

By Bartlett Naylor, Public Citizen Given that Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has recently proposed to reduce the disclosures that companies must provide to investors– even though those same investors are clamoring for additional information about companies– we took it... Continue Reading

By Maggie Caldwell, Earthjustice In late 2014, residents of the small town of Belton in Anderson County, South Carolina, noticed something amiss as they readied for the holidays. The plants along a rural stretch of road were unexpectedly dying. On Christmas Eve, someone walking... Continue Reading

By Elizabeth Skerry, National Women’s Law Center October is National Domestic Violence Awareness Month. Unfortunately, Trump’s Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has proposed a rule, entitled, “HUD’s Implementation of the Fair Housing Act’s Disparate Impact... Continue Reading

By Karen Perry Stillerman, Union of Concerned Scientists It’s fun when little kids put on costumes and pretend to be things they’re not. It’s less fun when high-ranking government officials disguise their true identities and intentions. The Trump administration is rife with... Continue Reading

By Sylvia Fallon, Natural Resources Defense Council Each year, the Endangered Species Coalition highlights ten species that are facing a particular kind of threat. This year that threat is pesticides. From frogs to owls to whales to bats, pesticides endanger species across the... Continue Reading

By Jacob Carter, Union of Concerned Scientists On October 30th, the United for Climate and Environmental Justice Task Force and House Natural Resources Chairman Raúl Grijalva (D-AZ-3) will host a briefing that will lift the voices of underserved communities who have long been... Continue Reading

By Anita Desikan, Union of Concerned Scientists As a public health researcher and a woman of color, I am acutely aware that in the United States some people live in communities which are afforded more science-based protections, allowing them to breath cleaner air, drink cleaner... Continue Reading

By Genna Reed, Union of Concerned Scientists We have a big national PFAS contamination problem. PFAS—per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances—are a class of man-made chemicals that are used in a variety of products to repel water and grease, including firefighting foam, nonstick... Continue Reading

By Barbara Roper, Consumer Federation of America On October 29, 1929, the U.S. stock market capped a week of jitters by plunging another 12 percent in market value, panicking investors and ushering in a period of economic devastation unmatched in the United States before or... Continue Reading

By Rebecca Stoner, Sierra Club Trump’s EPA is trying to sneak through a rollback of popular, commonsense controls on methane pollution. (And we do mean popular: Even many oil and gas companies support them). They held just one public hearing on October 17 in Dallas, Texas. But... Continue Reading

By Natural Resources Defense Council NRDC and partners took legal action to overturn the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s decision to allow the harmful chemical perchlorate to be used in food packaging. “Perchlorate harms kids, and it’s all over our food supply,” says Erik D.... Continue Reading

By Robyn Winz, Earthjustice Emphysema is commonly known as a “smoker’s disease.” Yet a recent study shows that merely living in a smoggy place puts you at higher risk for this lung condition. Instead of working to protect millions of people from the harms of dirty air, the... Continue Reading

By Luke Tonachel, Natural Resources Defense Council It’s refreshing to hear leaders in Congress talk of big plans to cut pollution from transportation. When that plan is supported from auto industry workers, environmentalists, and car manufacturers, I’m hopeful that new federal... Continue Reading

By Rachel Easter and Michelle Banker, National Women’s Law Center On Friday, NWLC was back in court challenging another Trump Administration rule meant to make it harder for people to get reproductive health care. This time we’re part of a legal team challenging a rule that... Continue Reading

By Genna Reed, Union of Concerned Scientists Today, EPA announced that as a result of the President’s short-sighted and misguided executive order issued by President Trump in June, it was cutting two committees: the Environmental Laboratory Advisory Board (ELAB) and the National... Continue Reading

By Lora Engdahl, Economic Policy Institute Donald Trump ran for president promising to uplift workers. But his actions have done the exact opposite. According to a new EPI report, Trump appointees on the board of a small, independent agency called the National Labor Relations... Continue Reading

By Melanie Benesh, Environmental Working Group October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month – as you may have noticed from the annual explosion of pink products claiming to fund breast cancer research. However, as the group Breast Cancer Action points out, companies that make... Continue Reading

By John Breyault, National Consumers League October is National Cybersecurity Awareness Month! Since the first observation of this month 15 years ago, the world has gone from about 800 million Internet users to approximately 4.5 billion. Over that same period of time, there has... Continue Reading

By Andrew Rosenberg, Union of Concerned Scientists President Trump issued another set of Executive Orders this month claiming to make the regulatory process more transparent and “fairer” to Americans. It does neither. In fact, the whole narrative that federal agencies ha... Continue Reading

By Margaret Cooney and Mary Ellen Kustin, Center for American Progress In 2018, the Trump administration put forward a highly controversial plan to expand offshore drilling off the U.S. Pacific and Atlantic coasts, the west coast of Florida in the Gulf of Mexico, and Alaska.... Continue Reading

By Waterkeeper Alliance Forty-seven years ago on October 18, 1972, the Clean Water Act was signed into law, providing critical federal protections for waters across the United States. But today, the Clean Water Act is under attack. The Environmental Protection Agency is trying to... Continue Reading

By Ken Kimmell, Union of Concerned Scientists In the span of four years, there’s been a flurry of litigation aimed at holding the oil and gas industry accountable for its role in spreading climate change disinformation and making the climate crisis worse. Nearly four years ago,... Continue Reading

By John Breyault, National Consumers League Last month, I had the pleasure of testifying before the House Aviation Subcommittee on the implementation of the Federal Aviation Administration’s 2018 reauthorization bill. My testimony touched on many of the pressing consumer... Continue Reading

By Caroline Reiser, Natural Resources Defense Council After months of suspense, Energy Secretary Rick Perry finally confirmed he will resign, boasting in a farewell tweet that under his leadership the Department of Energy “made environmental progress unseen for decades cleaning... Continue Reading

By Gretchen Goldman, Union of Concerned Scientists The Independent Particulate Matter Review Panel has released their consensus recommendations to the EPA administrator on the National Ambient Air Quality Standards for Particulate Matter. The group of 20 independent experts, that... Continue Reading

By Corinne Bell, Natural Resources Defense Council There’s low. And then there’s rock bottom. The Trump Administration’s EPA takeover, with its race to the bottom rollbacks of the environmental and public health protections that Americans have relied upon for decades, is low; so... Continue Reading

By James Goodwin, Center for Progressive Reform Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland was different from most other lawmakers we see today. He embodied a moral authority that others try to project but that for him was unquestionably authentic. When he spoke of working on behalf of... Continue Reading

By David Reichmuth, Union of Concerned Scientists Air pollution has significant impacts to public health and the cars, trucks, and buses on America’s roads contribute to this problem. While we are all exposed to this pollution, there are significant differences in the average... Continue Reading

By Rebecca Bowe, Earthjustice Everyone and everything needs clean water. Without clean drinking water, humans get sick. Plants, animals, aquatic life, and the entire food web need clean water to survive. That’s why the Trump administration’s efforts to gut federal clean water... Continue Reading

By Michael Halperin, Union of Concerned Scientists Today, the remarkable happened: the Scientific Integrity Act passed the House Science Committee with support from both Republicans and Democrats. Six Republicans joined all 19 Democrats in attendance to vote the Scientific... Continue Reading

By Natural Resources Defense Council Today the U.S. Forest Service announced it will be seeking public comment on a draft environmental impact statement (expected later this week) for its plan to open up protected areas of Alaska’s old-growth Tongass rainforest to logging and... Continue Reading

By Michael Halpern, Union of Concerned Scientists The House Science Committee just announced that it will amend and vote on the Scientific Integrity Act on Thursday at 10 am. This is the first time this kind of bill, which would protect the independence of science and scientists... Continue Reading

By Melanie Benesh and Jared Hayes, Environmental Working Group Designating the toxic fluorinated chemicals known as PFAS as “hazardous substances” is critical to cleaning up legacy contamination of a chemical linked to cancer. But some PFAS polluters – and their supporters in... Continue Reading

By Jacob Carter, Union of Concerned Scientists People suppress the collection of information and data when they are afraid of the results. The Trump administration is no stranger to using this strategy, as we’ve documented time and time again. So, it’s not a surprise that the... Continue Reading

By Noah Horowitz, Natural Resources Defense Council As part of its relentless assault on energy efficiency, the Trump administration’s Department of Energy (DOE) has proposed NOT to update the minimum efficiency standards for the most common light bulbs in our homes and is... Continue Reading

By James Goodwin, Center for Progressive Reform Last week, President Trump unleashed the latest volley in his administration’s efforts to bring about the “deconstruction of the administrative state” with the signing of two new executive orders relating to agency... Continue Reading

By James Goodwin, Center for Progressive Reform Just when it seemed that President Donald Trump was completely immune to accountability for his various abuses of power, impeachment proceedings against him have quickly picked up steam over the last couple weeks. Laying aside what... Continue Reading

By Ed Mierzwinski, U.S. PIRG CFPB Director Kathy Kraninger will deliver the statutory “Semi-Annual Report of the CFPB” to the House Financial Services (10/16) and Senate Banking (10/17) Committees next week. On the House FSC website the hearing is labeled “Who Is Standing Up for... Continue Reading

By Erik D. Olson, Natural Resources Defense Council It is expected that EPA will soon be proposing changes to its obsolete Lead and Copper Rule or LCR. This is the agency’s regulation for how to control lead levels in drinking water. The LCR, issued in 1991, is a highly complex... Continue Reading

By Courtney Bourgoin and Heather Moyer, Sierra Club Katmai National Park in Alaska has made news in the past week over its annual “Fat Bear Bracket Challenge”, where followers on their social media outlets vote on which of the park’s brown bears have fattened up the most since... Continue Reading

By Lauren Urbanek, Natural Resources Defense Council Forcing the hand of a recalcitrant Trump administration, a federal appeals court today ordered the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to implement four energy efficiency standards it has illegally delayed for close to three years.... Continue Reading

By Ken Kimmell, Union of Concerned Scientists The current administration’s attacks on both scientists and science are unprecedented, reaching a new low a few weeks ago when the White House Chief of Staff and the Secretary of Commerce attempted to stifle NOAA employees from giving... Continue Reading

By Caroline Reiser, Natural Resources Defense Council This year we’re seeing yet another attempt from Congress to address the fifty-year problem of what to do with the 80,000 tons of nuclear waste sitting across the country, with approximately 2,000 more tons produced every year... Continue Reading

By Doug Obegi, Natural Resources Defense Council In addition to Trumpian arguments about “new” science (See part one of this blog), agribusinesses and water agencies that would benefit from increased water diversions from California’s Bay-Delta also argue that existing... Continue Reading

By Doug Obegi, Natural Resources Defense Council In recent weeks, agribusinesses and water districts that support the Trump Administration’s efforts to gut protections for salmon and other endangered species in California’s Bay-Delta have ramped up their claims that “new” science... Continue Reading

By Steve Suppan, Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy President Trump has signed a Continuing Resolution to keep the government operating through November 21. That budgetary lifeline will enable mostly delayed and truncated publication of 38 U.S. Department of Agriculture... Continue Reading

By Kate Hudson, Waterkeeper Alliance Responding to pressure from the White House and the fossil fuel industry, EPA is putting protection of our health and our planet on the chopping block once again. EPA’s latest regulatory rollback proposal would eliminate current Clean Air Act... Continue Reading

By Kathleen Rest, Union of Concerned Scientists HUZZAH! Score one for workers. It appears that the Trump administration has come to its senses and reconsidered its dangerous plan to roll back safety protections for construction and shipyard workers exposed to beryllium. As... Continue Reading

By Jared Hayes and David Andrews, Environmental Working Group Many of the nation’s highest levels of groundwater contamination with PFAS – highly toxic fluorinated chemicals linked to increased risk of cancer and other diseases – have been found at military sites, according to... Continue Reading

By Lucas Rhoads, Natural Resources Defense Council The Fish and Wildlife Service, the agency charged with protecting the nation’s most vulnerable wildlife, recently stripped automatic protections for species listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). This... Continue Reading

By Andrew Rosenberg, Union of Concerned Scientists The health of our oceans is profoundly impacted by global warming. Yet you wouldn’t know it from current NOAA Fisheries Director Chris Oliver. At a Senate hearing last week, he “could not say whether climate change is endangering... Continue Reading

By Genna Reed, Union of Concerned Scientists I spent Thursday and Friday of last week at the National Academies of Science Environmental Health Matters Initiatives (EHMI) workshop, “Identifying Opportunities to Understand, Control, and Prevent Exposure to PFAS” which brought... Continue Reading

By Joel Clement, Union of Concerned Scientists Congress has been severely vexed by Interior Secretary David Bernhardt’s rush to dismantle and relocate the Bureau of Land Management headquarters to his home state, and he has refused to provide details about cost and rationale.... Continue Reading

By Kelly Ross, AFL-CIO The Trump administration’s Labor Department issued new overtime rules this week that take away $1.4 billion of workers’ pay every year compared to the Obama administration rules they replace. The amount of this pay cut for working people will increase... Continue Reading

By Gretchen Goldman, Union of Concerned Scientists EPA leaders have now irreparably damaged the agency’s process for setting health-based air pollution standards. That’s why scientists are taking matters into their own hands. To ensure that independent science informs the... Continue Reading

By Zack Strong, Natural Resources Defense Council The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (“FWS”) has made a host of changes to the rules implementing the Endangered Species Act (“ESA”). These changes will negatively impact imperiled wildlife across the country—and even across the... Continue Reading

By Better Markets As the front-line regulator of the broker-dealer profession, FINRA must do more to live-up to its mandate of investor protection and market integrity by expelling brokerage firms that specialize in harming investors.  These are “predator wolf-pack” firms... Continue Reading

By James Goodwin, Center for Progressive Reform Last week’s televised climate town hall saw several Democratic presidential candidates outline an impressive array of policies that, if implemented effectively, offer some measure of hope for averting the worst consequences of... Continue Reading

By Heidi Shierholz, Economic Policy Institute Yesterday, the U.S. Department of Labor announced its final overtime rule, which will set the salary threshold under which salaried workers are automatically entitled to overtime pay to $35,568 a year. The rule leaves behind millions... Continue Reading

By Matt Wellington, U.S. PIRG Nicotine use was a big part of American culture until the past few decades, when society started holding tobacco companies accountable for the deadly addiction they promoted. But nicotine is back in a big way as the drug of choice for a new... Continue Reading

By Nicole Pinko, Union of Concerned Scientists The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently announced proposed changes to the New, Reconstructed, and Modified Source Performance Standards for the Oil and Gas Sector. Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, the Trump... Continue Reading

By Ed Mierzwinski, U.S. PIRG Recently, the CEOs who make up the Business Roundtable renewed their demand that Congress pass a federal privacy “standard” that preempts stronger state laws. Los Angeles Times columnist David Lazarus helpfully provides context: “Translation: We want... Continue Reading