RegsTalk: The CSS Blog

By Jessica A. Knoblauch, Earthjustice Say goodbye to one of the dreamiest things about childhood. In the Midwest, fireflies are dying off. For many Americans, it’s hard to imagine summer nights without the magical glow of dozens of bioluminescent bodies fluttering above the... Continue Reading

By Alison Kelly and Briana Mordick, Natural Resources Defense Council The millions of acres of public lands that belong to all Americans should be part of the solution to the climate crisis, but mismanagement by the federal government is making them part of the problem. The... Continue Reading

By Katie Tracy, Center for Progressive Reform Asunción Valdivia, a 53-year old father and farmworker at a Giumarra vineyard in California, died after laboring to pick grapes for ten straight hours in 105-degree heat. When he collapsed, his employer told Valdivia’s son, Luis, who... Continue Reading

By Scott Faber, Environmental Working Group Fluorinated chemicals known as PFAS have been linked to serious health problems, including cancer, harm to the reproductive system, and harm to the immune system. So you might be surprised to learn that industrial manufacturers can... Continue Reading

By Shanna Devine, Public Citizen On Tuesday evening in a sweeping 410 – 12 vote, the U.S. House of Representatives passed H.R. 2515, introduced by U.S. Reps. Al Green (D-Texas) and Bill Huizenga (R-Mich.), which protects whistleblowers who report potential violations of federal... Continue Reading

By Juanita Constible, Natural Resources Defense Council The U.S. House Education and Labor Committee is taking critical action today to protect the health of American workers from heat, which is the deadliest form of extreme weather in the United States. The Asuncion Valdivia... Continue Reading

By Jason Mark, Sierra Club President Trump Delivers Remarks on America’s Environmental Leadership. It sounds like an April Fool’s joke or the quip of a lazy headline writer at The Onion. And yet that’s exactly what happened on Monday in the East Room of the White House, as Trump... Continue Reading

By Alexandra Carter, Ryan Richards, and Miriam Goldstein, Center for American Progress Last summer, harmful algal blooms (HABs) off the coast of Florida wreaked havoc on the state, sickening beachgoers, costing businesses more than $8 million, and killing sea turtles, manatees,... Continue Reading

By Elliot Mincberg, People For the American Way In June 2019, Trump judge Gregory Katsas of the D.C. Circuit partly dissented from a 2-1 ruling concluding that under Trump, the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) improperly tried to weaken a rule protecting miners’... Continue Reading

By Better Markets Tomorrow is a huge day for defending stress tests — those vital tools that protect taxpayers and our economy by making sure that banks have enough capital to absorb their own losses without needing bailouts. The Federal Reserve invited academics, regulators,... Continue Reading

By Better Markets U.S. banking regulators have issued another round of dangerous de-regulatory proposals that will increase the likelihood of another financial crisis. These rule proposals would scale back three of the most important banking reforms established in the Dodd-Frank... Continue Reading

By Rebecca Spector, Center for Food Safety The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently announced a link between some grain-free dog food brands and a serious—and sometimes fatal—form of canine heart disease called dilated cardiomyopathy, or DCM. At Center for Food Safety... Continue Reading

By Better Markets It’s hard to believe, but some brokerage firms specialize in hiring recidivist brokers ⁠— those with 3, 4, 5 and even more customer-related disciplinary infractions on their record. These “predator wolf-pack” firms populated with recidivist brokers have a... Continue Reading

By Better Markets Stress tests are critical tools to protect the economy and taxpayers.  Such tests, which regulators conduct on banks to see if they could survive a financial shock without failing, would have been invaluable  before the 2008 crash that cost American families... Continue Reading

By Lauren Urbanek, Natural Resources Defense Council The Department of Energy is continuing its assault on the appliance energy efficiency standards program, with a proposed interpretive rule out this week that could freeze in place the standards for residential furnaces and... Continue Reading

By Melanie Benesh, Environmental Working Group Per-and polyfluorinated substances, known as PFAS, are often characterized as “emerging contaminants.” However, ask the residents living in the communities polluted by decades of unregulated discharges of these chemicals and they’ll... Continue Reading

By Ed Mierzwinski, U.S. PIRG We’ve commented twice (group comment and our own, adding our recent report on Campus Banking Practices to the record) in a CFPB ten-year regulatory review of the Overdraft Rule established by the pre-CFPB regulators in 2010. The overdraft rule... Continue Reading

By Jonna Hamilton, Union of Concerned Scientists The House Energy and Commerce committee held its first oversight hearing on the soon-to-be-rolled-back fuel economy and greenhouse gas standards on Thursday, June 20.   The hearing highlighted how the rollback will be bad for... Continue Reading

By Waterkeeper Alliance Conservation groups today filed a formal notice of intent to sue the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for failing to update slaughterhouse wastewater guidelines as required by the Clean Water Act. More than 8 billion chickens, 100 million hogs, and 30... Continue Reading

By Marc Rehmann, Center for American Progress U.S. Secretary of the Interior David Bernhardt is hard to put a finger on. Attempts to understand what he’s doing or who he’s meeting with through Freedom of Information Act requests have yielded surprisingly few documents and sparse... Continue Reading

By Waterkeeper Alliance Community and conservation groups sued the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency today for overstepping its authority in exempting factory farms from pollution-reporting requirements essential to public safety, environmental health and animal welfare. The... Continue Reading

By Derrick Z. Jackson, Union of Concerned Scientists Until recently, carbon dioxide has earned top billing among global warming gases. Emitted when fossil fuels burn, it remains the most prevalent heat-trapping emission driving climate change. Its concentration in the atmosphere... Continue Reading

By Nathan Proctor, U.S. PIRG Tired of getting ripped off by companies overcharging you for repairs and pushing you to upgrade to a new item instead? You’re not alone. Frustration over repair restrictions has helped create a burgeoning Right to Repair campaign. Our campaign... Continue Reading

By Andrew Wetzler, Natural Resources Defense Council I began my career as an environmental advocate 20 years ago working on open space and wildlife preservation in Southern California. Then, as now, one of the most consistent threats to those open spaces, big and small, is... Continue Reading

By Alice Kaswan, Center for Progressive Reform The Affordable Clean Energy (ACE) rule, the Trump administration’s recently released substitute for his predecessor’s Clean Power Plan (CPP), has been widely criticized as an ineffectual mechanism for addressing power... Continue Reading

By Reid Maki, National Consumers League The Child Labor Coalition is a non-partisan group that is concerned with the health and welfare of children in the U.S. and abroad. We were extremely critical of the Obama administration’s decision to withdraw proposed safety protections... Continue Reading

By Taylor Lincoln and Angela Bradbery, Public Citizen Earlier this month, we issued a report disclosing some rather remarkable facts about a program at George Washington University called the Regulatory Studies Center. We reported that the bulk of the center’s work comes from... Continue Reading

By Gary Belan, American Rivers What is a toxic algae outbreak and where do they occur? If your river or lake is choked with green slime, it might be a toxic algae outbreak. These outbreaks are triggered by several factors, including warm temperatures and excess nutrients from... Continue Reading

By M. Isabelle Chaudry, National Women’s Health Network With few exceptions, current federal law does not require cosmetics manufacturers to get approval from the Food and Drug Administration before their products go on the market. In fact, manufacturers aren’t required to... Continue Reading

By American Lung Association Scientists have been working hard to debunk the belief that e-cigarettes are less harmful than traditional cigarettes. A recent study published in the American Thoracic Society’s American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine is... Continue Reading

By Sarah Reinhardt, Union of Concerned Scientists This spring, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) released a groundbreaking new study showing that kids and schools alike have benefited enormously from new school nutrition standards adopted over the course of the last seven... Continue Reading

By Mary Ellen Kustin, Center for American Progress At a time when policymakers, land managers, and the public should weigh and scrutinize any demands on Western water, they are missing critical information to help inform whether, where, and how energy development should take... Continue Reading

By Better Markets Almost everything you buy (gas, cereal, coffee, etc.) is connected to complex financial instruments called “derivatives,” about 90% of which are controlled by the five biggest Wall Street banks.  If those gigantic derivatives-dealing banks are not properly... Continue Reading

By Joe Vukovich, Natural Resources Defense Council The Department of Energy (DOE) today agreed to hold a public webinar to provide more information on its proposed controversial changes to its test procedure waiver process for testing the efficiency of appliances, equipment, and... Continue Reading

By Rob Cowin, Union of Concerned Scientists It’s well past time for a national standard for low-carbon electricity.  In order to avoid the worst impacts of climate change we must rapidly decarbonize our power sector while rapidly electrifying as much of the transportation,... Continue Reading

By Hannah Wiseman, Center for Progressive Reform The EPA released its finalized rule for carbon emissions from existing power plants last week. The agency calls the rule the “Affordable Clean Energy” (ACE) rule, but it would be better named the “Advancing Coal... Continue Reading

By Jenny Rowland-Shea and Sung Chung, Center for American Progress In December 2018, the Trump administration’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) released a draft environmental impact statement (EIS) for oil and gas leasing in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska. The... Continue Reading

By Arjun Krishnaswami, Natural Resources Defense Council The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) repealed the Clean Power Plan (CPP) and replaced it with a do-nothing dirty power plan last week. This blog digs into the analytical tricks the EPA used to confuse the public... Continue Reading

By Julie McNamara, Union of Concerned Scientists The Trump administration’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has released the final versionof its “Affordable Clean Energy” (ACE) rule, a carbon emissions standard for fossil fuel-fired power plants. And it does nothing.... Continue Reading

By Elvondo Cooper, Media Matters for America On June 19, the Trump administration announced that it was officially replacing the Clean Power Plan, the Obama administration’s 2015 policy for curbing carbon pollution from power plants, with a much weaker Affordable Clean... Continue Reading

By Jeff Sovern, St. John’s University School of Law The industry and some others often complain about “regulation by enforcement,” by which I gather is meant that enforcement agencies bring actions against businesses without having previously given extremely... Continue Reading

By Jacob Carter, Union of Concerned Scientists According to a five-member peer-review panel, the administration’s proposal to delist the endangered gray wolf (Canis lupus) from the Endangered Species Act (ESA) is chalk full of scientific errors that misrepresent the scientific... Continue Reading

By Jonathan Hahn, Sierra Club At a raucous political rally in West Virginia last year, just hours after the Environmental Protection Agency announced a proposal to roll back the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan, Donald Trump amused the crowd with talk of blowing up clean... Continue Reading

By Elly Pepper, Natural Resources Defense Council Today is World Giraffe Day, but I’m not sure how happy this day is. Giraffes certainly aren’t happy right now. How could they be? Their habitat is being lost at an alarming rate, not to mention the myriad other threats they deal... Continue Reading

By Tasha Stolber, Environmental Working Group Toxic PFAS chemicals, notorious for contaminating drinking water supplies across the U.S., are harmful to nearly every human organ, and the immune system is particularly vulnerable. PFAS mixtures, which are used in a variety of... Continue Reading

By Byron Chan, Earthjustice A pattern of deception and neglect led SoCalGas to disregard obvious safety measures that could have prevented the largest methane leak in U.S. history. For 111 days in 2015 and 2016, more than 100,000 metric tons of methane – a potent greenhouse gas –... Continue Reading

By Jennifer Sass, Natural Resources Defense Council My colleague, Daniel Rosenberg and I both had the opportunity to present public comments on behalf of NRDC to the EPA Science Advisory Committee on Chemicals (SACC) that is providing peer review  on EPA’s chemical risk... Continue Reading

By Daniel Costa, Economic Policy Institute One clear way to understand the priorities of a government is to look at how it spends money. If it’s true as they say that “budgets are moral documents,” then this Congress and administration does not place much value on worker rights... Continue Reading

By Bret Thompson, Public Citizen Taylor Lincoln’s recent report spotlighting the deep ties between the Koch Brothers and just one of the fifty plus college research centers they help fund is making waves. Inside Higher Ed and The Chronicle of Higher Education both published... Continue Reading

By Sydney Swanson and Dawn Undurraga, Environmental Working Group One in five U.S. adults gets 81 percent of their calories from so-called ultraprocessed foods, industrially processed foods that are hyperpalatable and highly profitable formulations of ingredients and additives... Continue Reading

By the American Lung Association In 2014, Chris Lim, M.S. set out to understand long-term effects of climate change—specifically, temperature variability and air pollution—on health. At the time, short-term effects had been studied extensively, but not much was known about... Continue Reading

By Lissa Lynch, Natural Resources Defense Council The Trump EPA has finally issued its irresponsible rulemaking repealing the Clean Power Plan and replacing it with a do-nothing rule that will produce only minor reductions in power plant carbon pollution, if any at all. With the... Continue Reading

By Ricardo Salvador, Union of Concerned Scientists The pattern is clear: by consistently requesting that Congress cut budgets for science, and by decreeing that all federal executive agencies arbitrarily terminate “at least one third” of their advisory committees, the Trump... Continue Reading

By Sharon Buccino, Natural Resources Defense Council As an environmental lawyer for over 25 years now, I have become intimately familiar with the workings of the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of the Interior. I didn’t have occasion to watch what was happening... Continue Reading

By Michael Halpern, Union of Concerned Scientists Later today, a few dozen advocates will head to the Environmental Protection Agency for a stakeholder meeting on protections for scientific research at the agency in the context of its annual scientific integrity repor... Continue Reading

By Rhea Suh, Natural Resources Defense Council With the perils of unchecked climate change widening by the day, President Trump took another giant step today toward surrendering our future to the fury of rising seas, flooded croplands, raging wildfires and torrential storms. In... Continue Reading

By Bianca Majumder and Kristina Costa, Center for American Progress Since taking office, President Donald Trump and his administration have threatened to dismantle the federal climate apparatus. Earlier this year, the White House released a budget proposal for fiscal year 2020... Continue Reading

By Dave Cooke, Union of Concerned Scientists On Thursday, two House Energy and Commerce subcommittees are holding a joint hearing examining the Trump administration’s rollback of fuel efficiency and emissions standards for passenger cars and trucks. The witnesses include the... Continue Reading

By Luke Tonachel, Natural Resources Defense Council Leaders in Congress are again raising their concerns about the Trump administration’s plan to rollback common-sense clean car and fuel economy standards. And for good reasons—consumers, workers and all those that depend on clean... Continue Reading

By Kelli Garcia, and Julie Zuckerbrod, National Women’s Law Center The Trump Administration wants to legalize discrimination in health care. Yes, you read that correctly. The Health Care Rights Law, which is part of the Affordable Care Act, is a groundbreaking civil rights... Continue Reading

By Arjun Krishnaswami, Natural Resources Defense Council The Trump Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) today finalized its repeal of the Clean Power Plan (CPP), the key Obama Administration initiative to cut dangerous climate pollution from the electricity sector. The EPA... Continue Reading

By David Doniger, Natural Resources Defense Council The concentration of carbon dioxide in the earth’s atmosphere, driven by burning coal, oil, and gas, hit almost 410 parts per million in 2018 and surged to nearly 415 parts per million this May—the highest levels in 3... Continue Reading

By Sharon Anglin Treat, Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy With 34 chapters, 13 Annex agreements, 14 side letters and nearly 2,000 pages of text, you wouldn’t think there could be a consistent theme across the entirety of the New NAFTA, also known in the U.S. as the... Continue Reading

By Julie McNamara, Union of Concerned Scientists This week, the Trump Administration’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will finalize carbon pollution standards for fossil fuel-fired power plants. Bold federal action on climate change could not come at a more urgent time.... Continue Reading

By the American Lung Association Ten years ago, we won a major victory against Big Tobacco. In 2009, President Obama signed the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act into law, for the first time giving the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) the authority to... Continue Reading

By Genna Reed, Union of Concerned Scientists Since day one, the Trump Administration has been actively ignoring its own scientists, external experts, and seeking advice from the wrong people. Now, President Trump has further waged war on expert advice by ordering the federal... Continue Reading

By The Arc The Arc continues to work to protect the significant achievements of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA), including the nondiscrimination provisions in Section 1557. We are disappointed to see the proposed rule from the Department of Health and Human... Continue Reading

By Barry Zigas, Consumer Federation of America The Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) has provided invaluable information on credit flows in US communities since 1975, and a proposed rulemaking issued by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) would unnecessarily reduce... Continue Reading

By Sally Greenberg, National Consumers League Every day, thousands of consumers in the United States—including those with rare diseases or allergies to commercially available drugs—rely on specially and individually made medicines known as compounded drugs. Compounding is... Continue Reading

By the Teamsters The trucking industry is facing numerous challenges that are jeopardizing the well-being of drivers that must be addressed to ensure highway safety is a top priority for the traveling public, a Teamster official said today. Lamont Byrd, the Teamsters’ Director of... Continue Reading

By Natural Resources Defense Council The U.S. Forest Service today proposed broad revisions to the environmental review process that helps protect forests and their wildlife from activities like logging and overdevelopment. “Once again, the Trump administration is abandoning... Continue Reading

By Better Markets Wall Street banks and corporations and their lobbyists, trade groups and political allies have been trying for years to take away the rights that consumers and investors have to recover money when they are ripped off by those banks and corporations.  They do... Continue Reading

By Natural Resources Defense Council Ten environmental groups, including NRDC, sued the Trump administration today for weakening safety standards on offshore oil rigs that were put in place after the deadly Deepwater Horizon blowout—a disaster that killed 11 rig worker... Continue Reading

By Jared Hayes, Scott Faber, Dave Andrews and Audrey Lothspeich, Environmental Working Group At least 475 industrial facilities across the nation could be discharging the toxic fluorinated compounds known as PFAS into the air and water, according to an EWG analysis of government... Continue Reading

By Joe Vukovich, Natural Resources Defense Council Imagine if everyone got to develop their own method for determining whether they followed the law, like drivers proposing new ways of measuring how fast they’re traveling or taxpayers inventing new methods to calculate what they... Continue Reading

By Michael Halpern, Union of Concerned Scientists Today kicks off the National Call Out to Protect Scientific Integrity. And UCS is making it easier than ever for you to stand up for science and help restore science to its rightful place in public health and environmental... Continue Reading

By Andrea Peterson, Project on Government Oversight After high-tech phone network outages hit major U.S. cities in 1991, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chartered an advisory group to help the agency troubleshoot emerging technology issues. Yet a recent Project On... Continue Reading

By Gillian Giannetti, Natural Resources Defense Council The DC Circuit fired a warning shot this week at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and its analysis of the greenhouse gas emissions associated with gas pipeline projects. The court rejected the core legal arguments... Continue Reading

By Rebecca Boehm, Union of Concerned Scientists In a recent interview by the North Carolina News and Observer, USDA Secretary Sonny Perdue discussed the current proposal to relocate the Economic Research Service (ERS) and the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA)... Continue Reading

By Genna Reed, Union of Concerned Scientists I told E&E News before this week’s Science Advisory Board (SAB) meeting that my concern was that Administrator Wheeler was using the board “as a box he needs to check off” on his path to deregulation. He called out my quote in his... Continue Reading

By Iris Myers and Sarah Graddy, Environmental Working Group Toxic algae blooms are a growing epidemic, polluting lakes and other waterways across the U.S., as a 2018 EWG report revealed. They can occur any time, but they thrive when water is warmer, usually from May through... Continue Reading

By Sarah Reinhardt, Union of Concerned Scientists Sixty percent of adults the United States are now living with one or more chronic diseases, including cancer, cardiovascular disease, and type 2 diabetes. That’s 150 million people—not counting millions of children and young... Continue Reading

By Michael Halperin, Union of Concerned Scientists Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar has announced new restrictions on the use of fetal tissue in research. Fetal tissue research has led to profound progress in understanding and treating countless diseases and public... Continue Reading

By Gretchen Goldman, Union of Concerned Scientists Yesterday at the EPA’s Science Advisory Board meeting, EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler made comments on the agency’s proposed Restricting Science Rule that raised eyebrows for anyone who understands the basics of health studies.... Continue Reading

By Karen Perry Stillerman, Union of Concerned Scientists The maker of Snickers, M&Ms, and Skittles has built a global conglomerate on sugar. The privately held Mars Incorporated let it be known earlier this year that it hopes to double its $35 billion annual revenue over the... Continue Reading

By Rachel Licker, Union of Concerned Scientists The World Health Organization estimates that an alarming 7 million people die prematurely each year as a result of air pollution. To help tackle this issue, this year’s World Environment Day (June 5) is shining a spotlight on this... Continue Reading

By Alexandra Adams, Natural Resources Defense Council Is Your Member of Congress Doing Enough to Oppose Trump’s Reckless Effort? If you are planning a beach vacation in the U.S. this summer, you probably aren’t envisioning that beautiful ocean horizon dotted with massive... Continue Reading

By Paul Rauber, Sierra Club The vultures circling overhead signaled that something was amiss on Limantour beach at Northern California’s Point Reyes National Seashore. First we saw a hunk of baleen the size of an ice chest. Further up the beach, the carrion eaters scattered as we... Continue Reading

By Genna Reed, Union of Concerned Scientists The EPA’s key scientific sounding board, the Science Advisory Board (SAB), will be holding its first full public meeting of 2019 this week. And as Administrator Wheeler’s EPA continues to roll back policies that were informed by... Continue Reading

By Colin O’Neil and David Andrews, Environmental Working Group A recent investigation by the Food and Drug Administration found toxic per- and poly- fluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, in food, including meat, seafood and dairy products; sweet potatoes; pineapples; leafy greens, and... Continue Reading

By James Goodwin, Center for Progressive Reform Next Wednesday, June 5, CPR is hosting a first-of-its-kind conference on Regulation as Social Justice: Empowering People Through Public Protections, which will bring together a diverse group of several dozen advocates working to... Continue Reading

By Tori Slatton, People For the American Way Related PFAW Joins Coalition of Activists on Capitol Hill to Rally Against the Transgender Military Ban Since the 2016 election, President Trump and his administration have systematically targeted our most vulnerable populations to... Continue Reading

By American Lung Association Today—World No Tobacco Day on May 31—is an annual reminder about the dangers of tobacco, the world’s leading cause of preventable death and disease. Cigarette smoking harms nearly every organ of the body, and smokers are at greater risk for lung... Continue Reading

By Rafter Ferguson, Union of Concerned Scientists The last Friday in May is National Heat Awareness Day. For those of us in parts of the country where summer has already arrived like a sack of bricks, you might be thinking “Don’t remind me!” I know that here in DC, my short...