RegsTalk: The CSS Blog

By Jonathan Smith, Earthjustice This holiday season, the Environmental Protection Agency intends to grant the wish of massive polluters to continue to release toxic emissions without reporting them. Defying recent directives from Congress and the second-highest court in the... Continue Reading

By Sarah Reinhardt, Union of Concerned Scientists The Trump administration is now laying the foundation for the next quinquennial (five-year) makeover of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, and the public health community is taking notice. These guidelines are the cornerstone... Continue Reading

By James Goodwin, Center for Progressive Reform Not long after their party regained control of the lower chamber in the midterm elections, House Democratic leaders unveiled their signature legislative action for the next Congress – a package of reform measures aimed at tackling... Continue Reading

By Jessica A. Knoblauch, Earthjustice Ever wonder what “artificial flavor” means when you look at the list of ingredients on a packaged food? In some cases, it means chemicals that are known to cause cancer in animals and could cause cancer in humans. For years, the Food and Drug... Continue Reading

By Natural Resources Defense Council The EPA’s new definition of the Obama-era safeguard would allow polluters to dirty our critically important streams, tributaries, and wetlands—and threaten the water supply of millions of Americans. The Trump administration released its new... Continue Reading

By Tori Slatton, People For the American Way In November, Secretary of Education Betsey DeVos released a highly controversial proposal that would effectively strip student survivors of sexual assault of their basic rights by fundamentally altering Title IX, which was enacted to... Continue Reading

By Shannon Baker-Branstetter, Consumer Reports The analysis underlying the Trump Administration’s plan for rolling back fuel efficiency and greenhouse standards in vehicles is based on “fundamental flaws and inconsistencies, is at odds with basic economic theory and empirical... Continue Reading

By Natural Resources Defense Council Leading conservation groups sued the National Marine Fisheries Service for its issuance of five new seismic blasting permits in an area twice the size of California, arguing that they violate the Marine Mammal Protection Act, the Endangered... Continue Reading

By Gretchen Goldman, Union of Concerned Scientists More than 200 air quality and public health experts have penned a letter expressing concern about the limited scientific input into an air pollutant standard update. The 206 scientists are deeply troubled by recent actions of the... Continue Reading

By Amy K. Matsui, National Women’s Law Center Today is the last day for public comments regarding the Trump administration’s punitive and discriminatory “public charge” rule.  This proposed rule would take the radical and unprecedented step of counting any of the following... Continue Reading

By Jessica Knoblauch, Earthjustice It was a typical summer day in 2015 when Walter Echo-Hawk, a member of the Pawnee Nation of Oklahoma, discovered fracking operations near his home on Pawnee lands about 55 miles west of Tulsa. After stumbling upon a work crew surveying for a... Continue Reading

By Annie Notthoff and Jon Colmenares, Natural Resources Defense Council The new legislative session opened Monday with California State Senate pro Tem Toni Atkins continuing strong environmental leadership by introducing SB 1 – the California Environmental, Public Health,... Continue Reading

By Natural Resources Defense Council As major climate change reports recently warned of the extreme dangers of rising carbon emissions, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced plans to roll back a 2015 federal clean air rule that requires new coal plants to install... Continue Reading

By Lissa Lynch, Natural Resources Defense Council Lately just about every other week there’s both a new scientific report warning about the urgent dangers of climate change and a new proposal from the Trump administration rolling back climate protections. Today, Trump’s Acting... Continue Reading

By Joel Scata, Natural Resources Defense Council President Trump killed the federal flood protection standard, a policy put in place to ensure federally funded infrastructure—the hospitals, schools, and roads paid for by you and me through our tax dollars—was constructed with a... Continue Reading

By Ben Lilliston, Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy In August 2016, the Department of Agriculture’s Farm Service Agency quietly announced a major change regarding its loan program for medium-sized Confined Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs). The agency would no longer... Continue Reading

By the Natural Resources Defense Council U.S. Department of the Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke moved forward today with a sweeping rollback of a conservation plan meant to protect the imperiled greater sage grouse as well as critical wildlife habitat that supports hundreds of... Continue Reading

By Elly Pepper, Natural Resources Defense Council Today NRDC and our partners filed suit against the Trump administration for failing to meaningfully respond to our petition asking them to list giraffes as an endangered species. In April 2017, we joined the Center for Biological... Continue Reading

By Rob Cowin, Union of Concerned Scientists There’s a little known independent federal agency whose decisions could have big impacts on states like Kansas and Iowa.  It’s called the Federal Electricity Regulatory Commission (FERC).  FERC makes decisions that affect electric power... Continue Reading

By Vijay Limaye, Natural Resources Defense Council New research shows that, within the next seven years, nearly 2,000 Americans could die annually from oil and gas sector-triggered air pollution if dangerous methane emissions are not controlled. Such a future is, unfortunately, a... Continue Reading

By Jessica Knoblauch, Earthjustice The low, guttural bellows and high-pitched calls of the North Atlantic right whale may soon be drowned out—or altogether silenced—by the continuous blasts of seismic airguns used to identify dirty energy deposits deep within the Atlantic Ocean... Continue Reading

By Rhea Suh, Natural Resources Defense Council The U.S. Department of the Interior touches the lives of every American, in ways large and small, every day. Its leader is the steward of our public lands and waters, guardian of our natural heritage, and keeper of our national... Continue Reading

By Luke Tonachel, Natural Resources Defense Council To avert dangerous climate change, we must act quickly and boldly. When it comes to transportation, now the biggest source of carbon pollution in the U.S., there are lots of options but two basic things must be: making... Continue Reading

By Maggie Caldwell, Earthjustice This week, a famous Yellowstone wolf nicknamed “Spitfire” was shot dead by a trophy hunter outside the park. Though the shooting was legal in Wyoming, the fate of Spitfire (who’s also known as “926”) is a warning of what could happen to wolves in... Continue Reading

By Matt Kent, Public Citizen In mid-October, the Trump administration released its annual report detailing deregulatory actions taken under the ill-conceived 2-for-1 executive order, which requires agencies to eliminate two regulations for any single new regulatory action. Office... Continue Reading

By Sam Gomberg, Union of Concerned Scientists The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee voted Tuesday to approve the appointment of Bernard McNamee to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). The final confirmation vote now moves to the full Senate. McNamee’s... Continue Reading

By Gretchen Goldman, Union of Concerned Scientists On Thursday, November 29, the EPA’s Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee (CASAC) will meet(via phone) for the first time since the recent upheaval in its membership. The agenda? To discuss the Integrated Review Plan for... Continue Reading

By Erik D. Olson and Lena Brook, Natural Resources Defense Council We live in partisan times, as anyone who had to sit through Thanksgiving dinner with distant relatives can probably attest. But even your crazy uncle would agree that the safety of our food shouldn’t be a partisan... Continue Reading

By  Estelle Mitchell and Marium Durrani, National Women’s Law Center Last month, the Trump administration published a proposed rule that would expand the current “public charge” test used when people apply to enter the country or for lawful permanent resident (green card)... Continue Reading

By Barry Zigas, Consumer Federation of America The Community Reinvestment Act has served since 1977 as a critical part of a broad national policy to promote the participation of private capital in serving America’s communities and consumers.  The Act was prompted in large part by... Continue Reading

By Steve Suppan, Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy With Thanksgiving and Christmas comes the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s reminder to cook turkey to 165 degrees to kill salmonella, a harmful bacteria, as in “Why a Salmonella Outbreak Shouldn’t Ruin Yo... Continue Reading

By Ellen Simon, Waterkeeper Alliance The heavy rains and high waters after Hurricane Florence flooded 35 industrial poultry operations in North Carolina housing an estimated 1.8 million birds, according to a new investigation by Waterkeeper Alliance and the Environmental Working... Continue Reading

By Gretchen Goldman, Union of Concerned Scientists Behind the headlines of the Trump administration’s attacks on science is a quiet army of government scientists continuing to do their jobs protecting the nation’s public health, safety, and the environment. This week, we have the... Continue Reading

By Christina Theodoridi, Natural Resources Defense Council Phasing down hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) will cost consumers little and, in some cases, will save them money on energy bills. That’s the conclusion of a new report by the Alliance for Responsible Atmospheric Policy, a... Continue Reading

By Ed Mierzwinski, U.S. PIRG Today, 7 member groups of the European Consumer Organization (BEUC) asked each of their national Data Protection Authorities (DPAs) to investigate Google Android’s pervasive smartphone locational data collection practices followin... Continue Reading

By Sabrina Joy Stevens, National Women’s Law Center As you’ve almost certainly heard by now, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos recently released draft Title IX rules about sexual harassment (which includes assault) that are nothing short of appalling. IF implemented in their... Continue Reading

By Elizabeth Tang, National Women’s Law Center Betsy DeVos is at it again. On August 29, 2018, the New York Times published a leaked draftof the Department of Education’s proposed Title IX regulations on sexual harassment and violence. Remarkably, DeVos’s draft regulations... Continue Reading

By Emilie Karrick Surrusco, Earthjustice For many people in America, Thanksgiving is a time to give thanks for the blessings of life — and to stuff ourselves silly with plate after plate of comfort food. This Thanksgiving, as the luckiest among us sit down to a bountiful feast,... Continue Reading

By Kenneth Quinnell, AFL-CIO Workplace violence is a serious and growing problem for health care and social service workers. Nurses, emergency room doctors, social workers, psychiatric facility aides, and other health care and social service workers frequently face violence that... Continue Reading

By the Natural Resources Defense Council The House of Representatives took yet another swipe at the Endangered Species Act(ESA) on Friday when it voted to strip the gray wolf of protections across the continental United States—and prohibit lawsuits challenging those delisting... Continue Reading

By the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy Understanding the regulatory practices and cooperation provisions of New NAFTA and what they could mean for food safety, worker and environmental protections in Canada and the United States. Several chapters in the USMCA (United... Continue Reading

By the National Women’s Health Network At the National Women’s Health Network, we are deeply concerned about the state of science under the Trump-Pence administration. Respect for science and scientists at federal agencies has dangerously eroded over the last 21 months. By... Continue Reading

By Dawn Undurraga and Sydney Swanson, Environmental Working Group With Thanksgiving less than a week away, news of a salmonella outbreak in turkey is a serious concern. The turkeys in question are contaminated with a hard-to-treat strain of salmonella bacteria that can trigger... Continue Reading

By Anna Reade, Natural Resources Defense Council The EPA has released draft toxicity assessments for GenX chemicals and PFBS, both members of a larger group of chemicals known as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). GenX and PFBS are being used as replacement chemicals for... Continue Reading

By Melanie Benesh, Environmental Working Group Today, 51 environmental and public health groups, including EWG, called on Amazon and eBay to remove illegal skin care products containing dangerous levels of mercury. The products, purchased and tested by the Mercury Policy Project,... Continue Reading

By Michael Halpern, Union of Concerned Scientists The midterms brought checks and balances to Washington, complete with new opportunities for accountability and oversight, and some members of Congress have already signaled that science will be on the agenda. Today, a diverse set... Continue Reading

By Sabrina Joy Stevens, National Women’s Law Center Nearly two years into the Trump era, it’s no secret that members of the Trump administration use a variety of tactics to try to suppress unfavorable news coverage and activism in opposition to their seemingly endless... Continue Reading

By Karen Perry Stillerman, Union of Concerned Scientists Back in early August (or roughly two Trump years ago), I wrote about the president’s nomination of Scott Hutchins to head up science at the US Department of Agriculture. In that post, I argued that Hutchins, an entomologist... Continue Reading

By Scott Sleginger, Natural Resources Defense Council The Senate passed the Coast Guard authorization bill that included a title amending the law dealing with ballast water regulations. House passage is expected quickly. The shipping industry has tried for many years to gut... Continue Reading

By Derrick Jackson, Union of Concerned Scientists In its latest scheme to undermine science, the Trump administration is brazenly trying to—pun intended—farm out to the hinterlands the most important research arms of the Department of Agriculture. When Secretary Sonny Perdue... Continue Reading

By Ed Mierzwinski, U.S. PIRG Next year, a highly-anticipated privacy and data protection rights battle will occur in Congress. Powerful special interests from Google to Facebook are responding to the new European General Data Privacy Regulation (GDPR) by hiring a massive phalanx... Continue Reading

By Dave Cooke, Union of Concerned Scientists Since word first leaked that the Administration was planning to freeze fuel economy and global warming emissions standards for passenger cars and trucks, automakers and their trade associations have been adamant about “not wanting a... Continue Reading

By Angela Benander, Sierra Club Secretary Ryan Zinke’s Department of the Interior continues to shut out the public in a reckless rush to sell off America’s public lands to the highest bidder. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) recently hosted a handful of meetings for the public... Continue Reading

By Elliott Negin, Union of Concerned Scientists The steady parade of unqualified, ideologically driven appointees for key Trump administration positions has resumed now that things in Washington have settled down after the mid-term elections. Last week, Trump tapped Matthew G.... Continue Reading

By Victor Flatt, Center for Progressive Reform Late last week, a federal district court in Montana blocked construction on the Keystone XL pipeline. The decision in Indigenous Environmental Network, et al. v. U.S. Department of State is a significant victory for the environment... Continue Reading

By Joshua Axelrod, Natural Resources Defense Council Within hours of the close of the State Department’s public comment period on their rushed Draft Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (DSEIS) for the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, a federal court in Montana handed... Continue Reading

By Matt Schudtz, Center for Progressive Reform For two years, President Trump has attempted to steer federal policy in ways that undercut core American values. His vision of government – to the extent one can divine a coherent vision – lacks compassion, fairness, a commitment to... Continue Reading

By Sarah Reinhardt, Union of Concerned Scientists From an ill-conceived campaign promise to build a border wall to the recent deployment of thousands of US troops to confront a non-existent “invasion,” to radical immigration policy has been a hallmark of the Trump presidency. The... Continue Reading

By Ada Statler and John Moore, Natural Resources Defense Council NRDC and a coalition of clean energy and consumer advocates just joined stakeholders in the country’s largest electricity market, PJM, in submitting comments in a proceeding that will determine the future of... Continue Reading

By Gretchen Goldman, Union of Concerned Scientists This week, the EPA announced that its Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee (CASAC) alonewould be reviewing upcoming ozone and particulate matter reviews. On October 10, the EPA nixedits ozone and particulate matter review... Continue Reading

By Nicole Ghio, Friends of the Earth The blue wave that crashed onto the Republican Party tonight now gives us the power to resist the corruption of the Trump administration. Democrats in the House must hold administration officials accountable for their unethical and illegal... Continue Reading

By James Goodwin, Center for Progressive Reform The meeting logs for the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) – the small but powerful bureau that oversees federal rulemaking efforts on behalf of the president – have looked a little different in recent... Continue Reading

By Lissa Lynch, Natural Resources Defense Council NRDC submitted extensive public comments yesterday strongly opposing the Trump EPA’s irresponsible proposal to cancel the groundbreaking Clean Power Plan and replace it with a deeply flawed dirty power plan that will result in... Continue Reading

By Charise Johnson, Union of Concerned Scientists Across the country, families are exposed to dangerous chemicals in their water—and the families most at risk are those living on or near military bases. This threat concerns me not just as a researcher, but as the child of a... Continue Reading

By David Reichmuth, Union of Concerned Scientists General Motors has proposed what it’s calling a “National Zero Emission Vehicle (NZEV) program” that would require automakers to sell a minimum volume of plug-in or fuel cell vehicles in the US. While this may sound like an... Continue Reading

By George Kimbrell and Ryan Talbott, Center for Food Safety Especially these days, it can feel like nobody in government is looking out for the public’s welfare, which is supposed to be its main job. And when it comes to food and agriculture’s effects on public health... Continue Reading

By Emily Fieberling, Environment America For Halloween I was planning on dressing up as myself — a “Mad Scientist.” That’s meant to be read literally: a scientist that is mad, or angry. I recently graduated from UCLA with a degree in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, and... Continue Reading

By Mary Anne Hitt, Sierra Club As a critical election season swings into full gear, a new report reveals some fascinating disconnects between how people vote and the safety of the air they breathe. Using Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) data, Dr. Vivian Thomson, a retired... Continue Reading

By Scott Slesinger, Natural Resources Defense Council The Environmental Protection Agency has decided to stop the combination of letter and numeral grades for evaluating Environmental Impact Statements prepared by the federal agencies. The two-factor grading system graded both... Continue Reading

By Ben Longstreth, Natural Resources Defense Council The need to take swift and decisive action to combat dangerous climate change has never been more compelling. Yet the Trump administration is embarking on a series of actions that would accelerate emissions of the carbon... Continue Reading

By Byron Chan, Earthjustice Almost 15,000 residents of Los Angeles’ Porter Ranch neighborhood evacuated their homes in the fall of 2015, many of them suffering from headaches, breathing problems, and nosebleeds. The culprit: a massive leak of carcinogenic chemicals at SoCalGas’s... Continue Reading

By Jennifer Sass, Natural Resources Defense Council A new scientific article published today in PLOS Medicine from leading environmental health experts reviews the most recent science on the risks of low-level organophosphate pesticide exposure for children. The authors—myself... Continue Reading

By Rhea Suh, Natural Resources Defense Council On the surface, it may seem like the Trump administration cares about our kids and their health, but its actions—and inactions—reveal the opposite. Coal smoke and steam vapor pour out of the Bruce Mansfield Power Plant across from a... Continue Reading

By Free Press Last week, nearly one year after the FCC’s unpopular vote to take Net Neutrality protections off the books, a Stanford University researcher announced a game-changing discovery: After sifting through 22 million public comments and filtering out all duplicates and... Continue Reading

By Sam Berger, Center for American Progress During the Obama administration, conservative state officials frequently used litigation to attack progressive policies they opposed. Now, they have found a willing partner in the Trump administration. When sued by these state... Continue Reading

By Katie Tracy, Center for Progressive Reform The Trump administration has few plans to protect workers from emerging workplace health and safety hazards, according to the regulatory agenda released by the White House on October 16. This is nothing new for this administration,... Continue Reading

By Andrew Rosenberg, Union of Concerned Scientists The Environmental Protection Agency released its updated regulatory agenda this week. That document lays out the timeline for regulatory actions the agency is working on over the next two years. One item of note: the... Continue Reading

By Matthew Gravatt, Sierra Club In his first 100 days in office, former coal lobbyist and Acting Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Andrew Wheeler has spared no time in gutting bedrock clean air, clean water, and public health safeguards. He got off to a terrible... Continue Reading

By The Arc What is the Public Charge rule? On October 10, the Department of Homeland Security announced the “public charge” rule. This rule allows the U.S. to keep out people who may become a “public charge.” Someone is called a “public charge” if the government thinks you might... Continue Reading

By Alison Cagle, Sierra Club Black hair care is a journey. And increasingly, black women are choosing to embrace the aesthetic of our naturally textured hair, rather than choosing to chemically straighten, relax, or otherwise alter our hair to conform to Eurocentric beauty... Continue Reading

By Stacy Woods, Natural Resources Defense Council Hurricane Michael, the strongest hurricane to ever strike Florida’s Panhandle, brought catastrophic winds, rain, and storm surge to the coastal and inland communities along Florida’s Gulf of Mexico. The powerful storm is also... Continue Reading

By Emily Peterson-Cassin, Public Citizen Last week, the U.S. Department of the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) published a report that once again criticized the Internal Revenue Service for failing to adequately enforce the rules on nonprofit political... Continue Reading

By Joel Mintz, Center for Progressive Reform To serve the cause of justice, law enforcement must be prompt, even-handed, and appropriate to the circumstances of individual cases. In their handling of an important recent pollution case, however, the enforcement activities of the... Continue Reading

By the National Employment Law Project NELP recently submitted a comment to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) urging the agency to impose tougher penalties on companies that collude to suppress wages. We filed the comment in response to a proposed settlement in a case where the... Continue Reading

By Jacob Carter, Union of Concerned Scientists “That week, her mother chose groceries over her daughter’s asthma inhaler. Food for your children over medicine for your children; for a parent, there is not a more tortuous game of Russian Roulette than this. That week, this... Continue Reading

By Gretchen Goldman, Union of Concerned Scientists In the latest of several moves targeting EPA air pollution protections, the Trump administration appears to have cut scientists out of a process for reviewing particulate pollution standards.  The move breaks with a longstanding... Continue Reading

By Alex Formuzis and Robert Coleman, Environmental Working Group Under President Trump, the Environmental Protection Agency has repeatedly betrayed its responsibility to safeguard the health of children. But in recent weeks, the hostile actions of the president and Andrew... Continue Reading

By Kelly Kramer, Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy In June of this year, 24-year-old Mexican-born Miguel Angel Guzman Chavez started a new job picking tomatoes in Georgia. Five days later, soaring temperatures led him to collapse in the field, sending him into cardiac... Continue Reading

By Sam Gomberg, Union of Concerned Scientists President Trump’s nomination of Bernard McNamee to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) may not grab a lot of headlines but make no mistake – it’s a blatant (and oft repeated) move by the Trump administration to pollute an... Continue Reading

By Matt Kent, Public Citizen Deregulation and rigorous cost-benefit analysis are core values for the Trump administration, except when it comes to denying immigrants the right to live and work in the U.S. According to the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) own conservative... Continue Reading

By Joseph Tomain, Center for Progressive Reform Industry Trends In short, energy projections demonstrate a clear trend for clean energy and away from fossil fuels. These trends, directly and negatively, affect traditional electric utilities. About the time that rooftop solar... Continue Reading

By Better Markets In May, President Trump signed a law deregulating 26 of the largest 40 banks in the country.  Many were the same banks that received massive bailouts just ten years ago when Wall Street’s biggest banks caused the worst financial collapse since the Great Crash of... Continue Reading

By Carrie Apfel, Earthjutice Food manufacturers can no longer use seven synthetic flavors that have been shown to cause cancer in animals, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration ruled on Oct. 5. The chemicals, which may also cause cancer in humans, add flavors such as mint,... Continue Reading

By Joseph Tomain, Center for Progressive Reform On August 21, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed the Affordable Clean Energy (ACE) rule as a substitute for the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan (CPP). The CPP had been stayed from going into effect by... Continue Reading

By Dennis Kelleher and Jack Reidhill, Better Markets As the country’s financial system spiraled out of control, ten years ago today President George W. Bush signed into law the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 creating the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program... Continue Reading

By Kim Smaczniak, Earthjustice Most Americans probably don’t know that an independent—and up to now nonpartisan—government agency has played a key role in our nation’s transition to cleaner energy technologies. Under the radar and hidden beneath a layer of technical jargon, the... Continue Reading

By the Natural Resources Defense Council After weeks of high-profile questioning before the Senate Judiciary Committee, intense public backlash, a last-minute FBI investigation into allegations of sexual assault, and a shockingly blatant display of partisanship by the Supreme... Continue Reading

By Kathleen Rest, Union of Concerned Scientists October 1 marked the beginning of Children’s Health Month, the month when health organizations, health professionals, government agencies, and others work to raise public awareness of children’s unique vulnerabilities and highlight... Continue Reading

By Shanna Devine, Public Citizen Last week, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced that it will issue waivers that allow poultry slaughterhouses to increase their line speeds from the already dangerous 140 birds per minute (BPM) to 175 BPM. Increased line... Continue Reading

By the Natural Resources Defense Council In response to a lawsuit brought by NRDC and a coalition of health, consumer, and environmental groups, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration today banned seven cancer-causing chemicals found in artificial flavoring used for various food... Continue Reading