Regs Talk: The CSS Blog

By Derrick Z. Jackson, Union of Concerned Scientists Let the children suffocate. That is the vicious message from President Trump in his proposed budget cuts for the Environmental Protection Agency for fiscal year 2021. As the Union of Concerned Scientists last week issued its... Continue Reading

By Christopher Williams, American Rivers At American Rivers, we go about our work with an optimistic, can-do spirit. Clean water, healthy rivers, and thriving communities are our watchwords. We are happy warriors for rivers and streams, and we celebrate – rightly so – the... Continue Reading

By Karen Perry Stillerman, Union of Concerned Scientists Life comes at you fast, and so does the Trump administration’s ongoing assault on children’s health. Over the last many months, my colleagues in the Union of Concerned Scientists’ Center for Science and Democracy have been... Continue Reading

By Erik D. Olson and Valerie Baron, Natural Resources Defense Council We have learned from the ongoing lead in water crises in Flint, Michigan; Newark, New Jersey; and Washington, DC, for example, that no community and no child is exempt from the threat of lead-tainted water.... Continue Reading

By Julie McNamara, Union of Concerned Scientists First, a fact: People want clean air. And who can blame them—in the United States more than 100,000 people still die from air pollution each year. Notably, the Trump administration is right there with them, repeatedly claiming to... Continue Reading

By Jacob Carter, Union of Concerned Scientists Teens and young adults across the country are dying from vaping. Yet, the Trump administration has chosen not to take the appropriate steps to fix this pandemic. First planning a sweeping ban on all flavored vape products across the... Continue Reading

By Kelly Foster, Waterkeeper Alliance Reversing more than 40 years of progress and settled law, on January 23, 2020, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Army Corps announced a new regulation that removes clean water protections against discharges of pollution into rivers,... Continue Reading

By Michael Halpern, Union of Concerned Scientists A court this week found serious flaws in the EPA’s exclusion from its advisory committees of academic and non-profit scientists holding grants from the agency. After permitting these eminent scientists to serve (for free!) for... Continue Reading

By Anita Desikan, Union of Concerned Scientists One of the longest running epidemics in the history of the US is the poisoning of our children with lead. But, as we discuss in our new report on children’s health, the Trump administration is failing to enact or enforce... Continue Reading

By Anastasia Christman, National Employment Law Project Last fall, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB or “the Board”) published a notice that sounds a lot like a logic test from school: it intended to make a new rule that students on private college or university campus... Continue Reading

By Scott Faber, Environmental Working Group Friday marks one year since the Environmental Protection Agency unveiled its latest plan to address the crisis of the toxic fluorinated chemicals known as PFAS, which have likely contaminated a majority of drinking water supplies... Continue Reading

By Arjun Krishnaswami, Natural Resources Defense Council President Trump has once again proposed to slash the budget for clean energy innovation at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), eliminate several highly successful programs, and cancel funds that Congress gave the agency in... Continue Reading

By Elliott Negin, Union of Concerned Scientists At the March for Life rally in Washington a few weeks ago, President Trump declared that “unborn children have never had a stronger defender in the White House.” Defender? In fact, a number of his administration’s anti-environmental... Continue Reading

By Vijay Limaye, Natural Resources Defense Council The Trump administration continues its assault on clean air this week, by convening a group of handpicked advisers in a sham review process. It’s another sad chapter in this administration’s corrupt partnership with corporate... Continue Reading

By Christopher Williams, American Rivers When Trump administration Interior Secretary David Bernhardt, a former oil and gas industry lobbyist, celebrates a proposed regulation as “really, really big…affect[ing] virtually every single decision by the federal government that... Continue Reading

By Genna Reed, Union of Concerned Scientists The Trump administration has abandoned our nation’s mission of protecting kids based on the best evidence. From unsafe strollers to harmful chemicals, the Union of Concerned Scientists illustrates the harms, figuratively and literally,... Continue Reading

By Rachel Weintraub, Consumer Federation of America A Consumer Federation of America (CFA) analysis of off highway vehicle (OHV) recalls found that over the past 10 years, there have been 110 OHV recalls, and the number of recalls has increased from two recalls in 2010 to 17... Continue Reading

By Derrick Z. Jackson, Union of Concerned Scientists In the United States, gun violence kills nearly 40,000 people a year and has killed nearly 40,000 or so children and teenagers since 1999, and yet the nation is still without serious gun control. Another 40,000 people die each... Continue Reading

By Hallie Templeton, Friends of the Earth For many years, powerful corporations, assisted by the very U.S. agencies tasked with protecting and managing our ocean resources, have collectively been pushing for development of industrialized fish farms off the coasts of our shoreline... Continue Reading

By Lee Goldberg, AFL-CIO There are the things politicians say, and then there are things they do. When Donald Trump was running for office, he promised there would be no cuts to Medicaid. As president, he promised “health care for everyone.” His aides promised “no one will lose... Continue Reading

By Ellen Simon, Waterkeeper Alliance The Trump administration’s new unscientific, illegal, narrowed definition of waterways protected by the Clean Water Act is a threat to waterways throughout the United States. The definition excludes ephemeral streams, which flow only briefly... Continue Reading

By the Natural Resources Defense Council In another grotesque attack against our public lands, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) today finalized plans to allow drilling and other extractive activities in previously protected areas of Utah’s Bears Ears and Grand... Continue Reading

By Anita Desikan, Union of Concerned Scientists Imagine you live next to a coal-fired power plant. Near the power plant, you may have seen heavy machinery dumping loads of greyish substance into an open pit or a pond. You learn that the greyish stuff is called coal ash, a... Continue Reading

By Kim Knowlton and Vijay Limaye, Natural Resources Defense Council Inhaling polluted air causes physical and mental harms. We all know that air pollution hurts our lungs, but a new review of the science highlights evidence of more far reaching effects—including on our mental... Continue Reading

By Emilie Karrick Surrusco, Earthjustice When coal is burned to produce electricity, a toxic waste known as coal ash is left behind.  Filled with chemicals such as arsenic, radium, and other carcinogens, coal ash poisons our water, sickens our bodies, and kills fish and wildlife.... Continue Reading

By David Rosen and Matt Kent, Public Citizen With President Donald Trump’s war on regulation kicking into high gear, corrupt administration officials, anti-regulatory ideologues and industry lobbyists are eager to hide what they’re up to and how it will harm the public. Often,... Continue Reading

By Gina McCarthy, Natural Resources Defense Council Today I’m testifying in front of the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis to make clear that the biggest public health threat we face today is climate change. And here’s what I plan to make clear: The longer we wait to... Continue Reading

By James Goodwin, Center for Progressive Reform On Thursday, the House Oversight and Reform Committee’s Environment Subcommittee will hold a hearing to examine the harm to children posed by the Trump administration’s attack on one of the most wildly successful clean... Continue Reading

By Derrick Z. Jackson, Union of Concerned Scientists The evidence is already spewing in about how foul our water will be under the Trump administration’s new water rules. In late January, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Andrew Wheeler officially removed protection... Continue Reading

By Vince Bielski, Sierra Club William Perry Pendley, the self-proclaimed “Sagebrush Rebel” from Wyoming who’s shaking up the Bureau of Land Management, may be headed for reappointment without any public scrutiny. The dustup over Pendley began in July, 2019, when he became acting... Continue Reading

By Gretchen Goldman, Union of Concerned Scientists Late Friday, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) released a batch of emails between high-level agency officials around Sharpiegate; BuzzFeed broke the news. Most of the emails are further verification of... Continue Reading

By Lucas Rhoads, Natural Resources Defense Council After a lengthy and long-delayed review of neonicotinoid insecticides, or neonics, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency released its findings this week, acknowledging that it had previously underestimated the serious risks... Continue Reading

By Nicole Pinko, Union of Concerned Scientists Every February through May, I sequester myself away to read company reports from major fossil fuel companies. It usually gets off to an exciting start in early February when ExxonMobil and Chevron relea... Continue Reading

By Katie Umekubo, Natural Resources Defense Council The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to propose a rule embracing Trump administration rollbacks of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act’s essential protections for birds. Flock of American Coot/U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service The Trump... Continue Reading

By Better Markets Cost-benefit analysis (CBA) sounds good and neutral.  After all, who could oppose only doing something when the benefits outweigh the costs?  The fatal flaws in a cost-benefit framework only appear when the assumptions underlying the analysis are identified: ... Continue Reading

By Dorianne Mason, National Women’s Law Center A new Trump Administration plan to convert Medicaid funding into limited block grants threatens the health of millions of Medicaid recipients. Medicaid is a vital source of health coverage for millions of low-incom... Continue Reading

By Better Markets The Federal Reserve failed miserably in the years before the 2008 crash.  The facts are pretty clear that the crash could have been largely avoided, or at least substantially reduced in severity, if the Fed had even done a modest job in monetary policy,... Continue Reading

By Jonathan Hahn, Sierra Club In 2017, in the kind of ruling that may not happen in the future, the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia found that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) had improperly downplayed the enormous climate impacts of the $3.5... Continue Reading

By Better Markets Goldman Sachs is holding its very first investor meeting in New York today where it is expected to disclose its business plans for targeting Main Street consumers and investors in the coming years.  We thought this was an appropriate time to detail Goldman’s... Continue Reading

By Sharon Anglin Treat, Institute for Agriculture & Trade Policy I suppose you have to give the junk food industry credit for persistence. The industry’s proposed junk food provisions in the New NAFTA, known in the United States as the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, went down... Continue Reading

By Better Markets One of the most basic principles of law is that – not matter what else –– a crook should and must give up the money he or she took from the unsuspecting victims, often called “ill-gotten gains.”  That is the legal concept of “disgorgement” and it is...