Regs Talk: The CSS Blog
Blogs are authored by CSS members and policy experts, and have been reprinted with permission.
Any Excuse to Deregulate: Pandemic Edition
By Matt Kent, Public Citizen In 2007, author Naomi Klein coined the term “shock doctrine” to describe the process through which corporate interests use major crises to further their objectives and shore up their profits. The COVID-19 pandemic has illustrated once again how corporate-captured government authorities never fail to exploit a crisis to weaken key […]
Nancy Beck Has Some Explaining to Do
By Daniel Rosenberg, Natural Resources Defense Council Nancy Beck’s strategy for getting confirmed to chair the Consumer Product Safety Commission has been to duck and cover. During her recent hearing, she did everything she could to pretend that she does not have a lengthy record of opposing and weakening protections from toxic chemicals. Beck’s written testimony and hearing were her opportunity […]
Beware Toxic Algae Over the Fourth of July
By Anne Schechinger, Environmental Working Group Over the Fourth of July holiday, don’t act like the crowds recreating in Grand Lake St. Marys, Ohio. With area pools closed due to the pandemic, people are flocking to the lake to cool off, despite the state’s guidelines on social distancing and large gatherings. But there’s another reason to be […]
New Federal Monopoly Standards Do Not Pass Go
By Alex Harman, Public Citizen At the beginning of this year, the Department of Justice Antitrust Division and the Federal Trade Commission issued Draft Vertical Merger Guidelines. While this might seem like a hyper-technical endeavor, it became the latest battlefield in the effort to reinvigorate antitrust enforcement in a highly concentrated corporate economy. Why should you care about […]
Seila Law v. CFPB: What’s Unconstitutional for One May Not Be Unconstitutional for All
By Rebecca Jones, Project on Government Oversight This week, the Supreme Court issued a decision that could help clear the way for Congress to pass crucial protections for inspectors general. While the case at hand, Seila Law LLC v. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, does not directly address these federal watchdogs, the court’s reasoning in reaching its […]
Trump’s EPA Must Protect and Secure Clean Air For All
By Vijay Limaye, John Walke and Emily Davis, Natural Resources Defense Council Air pollution is deadly. It’s a global menace that contributes to millions of early deaths each year from heart disease, lung ailments, and cancer. In the U.S., millions of people are breathing in polluted air day after day and it’s imposing huge costs on our society in […]
Congress Must Act Now to Protect Workers From Heat Stroke and Death
By Juley Fulcher, Public Citizen Asunción Valdivia came to America on July 24, 2004, to join his family. The family reunion was abruptly cut short five days later, when Asunción died. After a 10-hour workday picking grapes in the 105 degree sun, he collapsed in a field from heatstroke. Instead of calling an ambulance, the […]
The Scientific Basis for Managing PFAS as a Chemical Class
By Anna Reade, Natural Resources Defense Council Today, 16 experts on PFAS (including yours truly) published an article in Environmental Science & Technology Letters, providing a scientific explanation for why a class-based approach to the nearly 8,000 separate but related PFAS chemicals is appropriate and necessary. It includes recommendations for how governments and industry can address PFAS as […]
Let’s Protect Millions of Kids From Lead-Tainted Water!
By Erik D. Olsen, Natural Resources Defense Council Most of us remember the disastrous lead contamination of the tap water in Flint, Michigan, but few people realize that lead-contaminated drinking water is a widespread problem across the country. Action on this problem is long overdue, and the House of Representatives now has a chance to […]
Trump Justices Cast Deciding Votes to Eliminate CFPB Independence
By Elliot Mincberg, People For the American Way Trump Supreme Court Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch cast deciding votes to eliminate the independence established by Congress for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), ruling 5-4 that the president must be allowed to fire the CFPB director at will. This was despite the explicit provision […]
USDA Must Protect Communities From Mass Animal Killings
By Valerie Baron, Natural Resources Defense Council Shutdowns at industrial slaughterhouses due to the COVID-19 crisis have caused backlogs of animals throughout the U.S. that cannot be slaughtered for food because there simply isn’t capacity to process them. As of June 26, 2020 there were COVID-19 outbreaks at more than 250 meatpacking plants, and more than 28,000 meatpacking […]
Summer Is Here and It Brings More Health Risks for Workers
By Allison Behrens, Public Citizen As we face the first weeks of summer, many of our country’s residents have already experienced an unusually warm May. This is in no small part due to human-induced climate change. Since 1960, every decade has been warmer than the last and 2019 was the second hottest year on record. Meteorologists say this year […]
States, NGOs Ask Court to Restore State Clean Car Standards
By David Doniger, Natural Resources Defense Council A coalition of states and public health and environmental groups attacked the Trump administration’s efforts to block standards set by California and other leading states to curb climate-warming pollution from new cars and trucks, in a joint brief filed today in the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington. Last fall […]
CFPB Directors Now Under President’s Thumb
By Scott Nelson, Public Citizen The Supreme Court issued its ruling in Seila Law v. CFPB today, holding by a 5-4 vote that the Congress violated the principle of separation of powers by placing the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau under a single director removable by the president only for cause. Chief Justice Roberts wrote the majority opinion, […]
Scientists Prevail in Lawsuit Against EPA Science Advice Ban
By Michael Halpern, Union of Concerned Scientists In a win for independent science, the EPA said yesterday that it will rescind a policy banning many of the nation’s top environmental scientists from serving on the agency’s science advisory committees. The agency was under court order to remove it. The directive was designed to justify kicking […]
Public Citizen Fights for Worker Heat Protections
By Juley Fulcher, Public Citizen Asunción Valdivia came to America on July 24, 2004, to join his family. The family reunion was abruptly cut short five days later, when Asunción died. After a 10-hour workday picking grapes in the 105 degree sun, he collapsed in a field from heatstroke. The crew’s boss told Luis to […]
The Violence of Pollution: The Injustice of Rolling Back Clean Air Protections
By Paola Massoli, Union of Concerned Scientists Network It is mid-June 2020 and another day of unrest in America. As I scan the news, I learn that the environment has been under attack. Again. President Trump recently signed an executive order to dismantle the process requiring environmental reviews of large infrastructure projects, including oil and […]
Supreme Court Ruling in Liu v. SEC a Victory for Agency, Investors
By Better Markets The Supreme Court issued a ruling this week upholding the SEC’s right to obtain disgorgement from those who violate the securities laws and defraud investors. This is a major win for the SEC and investors everywhere, says Steve Hall, legal director and securities specialist. “The ability to recover money stolen by scam artists has […]
In Final Decision, EPA Fails to Protect Public From Toxic ‘Forever Chemicals’ in Consumer Products
By Melanie Benesh, Environmental Working Group This week the Environmental Protection Agency finalized a rule regulating the toxic fluorinated chemicals known as PFAS in consumer products. True to form for the Trump administration, the rule significantly weakens a public health protection proposed under the Obama administration. In 2015, Obama’s EPA proposed a Significant New Use […]
CFPB Task Force: Help Consumers, Not Financial Industry
By Better Markets Better Markets has called on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s task force to help consumers and not cater to the financial industry. “Millions of Americans who rely on credit cards, auto loans and mortgages need protection from predatory behavior in these markets,” says Steve Hall, legal director and securities specialist. “But time and […]