Regs Talk: The CSS Blog

By Genna Reed, Union of Concerned Scientists Last week, the Trump administration finalized its rollback of the expanded definition of the waters of the United States. Now fewer water bodies, including wetlands and ephemeral streams, will be protected under the Clean Water Act.... Continue Reading

By Larissa Liebmann, Waterkeeper Alliance Since 1970 the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) has been a vital tool for the public to ensure that decisions made by federal agencies that impact the environment are made in a transparent, well-informed manner. NEPA requires... Continue Reading

By Sarah Reinhardt, Union of Concerned Scientists Last week in Houston, a federal advisory committee convened for the fourth time to deliberate the science that will shape the 2020-2025 Dietary Guidelines for Americans. Revised every five years to reflect current science, these... Continue Reading

By Jeff Sovern, St. John’s University School of Law On Friday, the CFPB issued a Policy Statement on Abusive Acts or Practices. The Policy Statement is disappointing in several respects. First, it is intended to address a problem that has never been shown to exist. The... Continue Reading

By James Goodwin, Center for Progressive Reform When the Trump administration released its recent proposal to gut the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), it trumpeted the action as a long-overdue step to “modernize” the law’s implementation by... Continue Reading

By Richard Rothstein, Economic Policy Institute In “The Neighborhoods We Will Not Share,” an article published online at The New York Times, I describe how the Trump administration has proposed a rule that will make it virtually impossible to challenge many policies that... Continue Reading

By Derrick Z. Jackson, Union of Concerned Scientists With the Environmental Protection Agency’s own data showing that nearly half of our rivers and streams and a third of our wetlands are in “poor biological condition,” and with millions of Americans exposed ... Continue Reading

By Luke Tonachel, Natural Resources Defense Council When the Trump administration proposed its ridiculous rollback of clean car standards in 2018, it pretended that the increased costs for drivers at the pump, the loss of jobs and devastating pollution impacts were worth it... Continue Reading

By Dave Cooke, Union of Concerned Scientists A little over a year ago, EPA and NHTSA proposed rolling back fuel economy and vehicle emissions standards based on deeply flawed analysis. Earlier this month, EPA and NHTSA finally got around to “fixing” the plethora of errors and... Continue Reading

By Luke Tonachel, Natural Resources Defense Council Several of the biggest names in automobiles are siding with the Trump administration in efforts to roll back clean car standards and strip states of their authority to set standards needed to protect public health. NRDC’s... Continue Reading

By Karen Perry Stillerman, Union of Concerned Scientists In the latest assault on science and the nation’s health and safety, the Trump administration recently proposed a rule that would upend the way federal agencies work to assess and minimize the harm their actions can do to... Continue Reading

By Paul Rauber, Sierra Club You always suspected it was true, but here comes the Center for Western Priorities with the receipts. Its analysts looked at proposed rule changes by the Interior Department since 2017 that garnered more than 500 comments and found 10—all rollbacks of... Continue Reading

By Jon Devine, Natural Resources Defense Council The Trump administration’s plan to radically restrict which water bodies are protected by the Clean Water Act is “simplistic.” It “neglects established science,” introduces “substantial new risks to human and environmental health,”... Continue Reading

By Sarah Reinhardt, Union of Concerned Scientists Next week, a committee of top health, medical, and nutrition experts will gather in Houston, Texas to answer an age-old question: What should we eat? This is the fourth of five public meetings the committee will hold as it... Continue Reading

By Lauren Urbanek, Natural Resources Defense Council The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) just announced it has finalized changes to its energy efficiency standards process that will slow down—if not halt altogether—future efforts to make America’s appliances and equipment more... Continue Reading

By Genna Reed, Union of Concerned Scientists This morning, I found myself back at EPA headquarters in downtown Washington, DC, asking EPA a second time to do something that should be obvious: listen to its own scientists and use the best available science to protect communities... Continue Reading

By Jennifer Sass, Natural Resources Defense Council The Trump EPA is trying to get some cover by holding a comment period and a few public hearings—listening sessions, where members of the public can register for up to five minutes of time to share an opinion or information with... Continue Reading

By Christy Goldfuss, Claire Moser and Sally Hardin, Center for American Progress Last week, the Trump administration released a draft of its proposed changes to the regulations that implement the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA)—the most important law that requires the... Continue Reading

By Becky Hammer, Natural Resources Defense Council Today, 48 craft breweries around the country submitted a letter to the Environmental Protection Agency opposing the agency’s proposal to weaken water pollution safeguards for coal-burning power plants. Power plant... Continue Reading

By Andrew Rosenberg, Union of Concerned Scientists Earlier this month, Interior Secretary David Bernhardt extended William Pendley’s appointment  as the Acting Director of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) for another three months. The BLM has not had a Senate-confirmed... Continue Reading

By Erik D. Olson and Katie Hobbs, Natural Resources Defense Council Congress has made good on a promise to return to the work they started in last year’s National Defense Authorization Act: tackling the PFAS crisis. On Friday, the House of Representatives voted to pass the PFAS... Continue Reading

By David S. Hilzenrath, Project on Government Oversight When the board that regulates corporate auditors announced the appointment of a top official in 2018, it said her experience made her “an excellent fit for the role.” The role—“chief auditor”—involves setting and... Continue Reading

By Earthjustice THE EXPLOSION RISK of transporting volatile liquefied natural gas in vulnerable tank cars through major population centers is off the charts. Yet the Trump administration is proposing a rule that would allow trains to travel the country filled with an... Continue Reading

By Ketura Persellin, Environmental Working Group Exposure through the skin to the toxic fluorinated chemical once used to make Teflon could pose the same health hazards as ingesting the compound in water or food, according to a new animal study from the National Institute for... Continue Reading

By Ed Mierzwinski, U.S. PIRG Last week, CFPB Director Kathy Kraninger appointed four lawyers and professors to a “Taskforce on Federal Consumer Law.” To my knowledge, none have worked for consumer protection organizations yet all have worked as industry lawyers or... Continue Reading

By Lauren Urbanek, Natural Resources Defense Council What does it take to get the Trump administration to support the fastest, cheapest way to cut energy use? Two court rulings! Four long-delayed energy efficiency standards are finally ensconced in law thanks to a 2018 district... Continue Reading

By Kathleen Rest, Union of Concerned Scientists Last month, inspired by John F. Kennedy’s 1956 classic Profiles in Courage, I kicked off a series of blog posts profiling the lack of courage we are too often witnessing in our elected leaders, their appointees, and other important... Continue Reading

Sharon Buccino, Natural Resources Defense Council A half a century ago, members of Congress from both parties and all corners of our nation came together to pass a landmark law that gave citizens a guaranteed say in the projects that will define our nation. More than an... Continue Reading

By Remington A. Gregg, Public Citizen Today, U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Ill.) introduced the Safety Hazard and Recall Efficiency (SHARE) Information Act. This legislation would repeal a dangerous provision of Section 6(b) of the Consumer Product Safety Act, which gives product... Continue Reading

By Tom Conway, United Steelworkers Within two months of starting work at an Amazon warehouse in Eastvale, Calif., Candice Dixon ruined her back. Dixon had to bend, lift and strain at a feverish pace to meet Amazon’s demand that she scan and stow one item every 11 seconds. If she... Continue Reading

By Scott Faber, Environmental Working Group The Environmental Protection Agency has a long history of failing to act to protect Americans from the toxic fluorinated chemicals known as PFAS, which are linked to an increased risk of cancer and other diseases. In 1998, EPA officials... Continue Reading

By Becky Hammer, Natural Resources Defense Council Yesterday, I testified at an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) hearing on its latest proposal to weaken safety standards for facilities where toxic coal ash is stored. But I couldn’t see the EPA officials to whom I was... Continue Reading

By Dave Cooke, Union of Concerned Scientists Today, EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler announced an advanced notice of proposed rulemaking (ANPRM) to set more stringent pollution standards on heavy-duty trucks. This follows up on the 2018 announcement of the administration... Continue Reading

By Kathleen Rest, Union of Concerned Scientists Last month, having re-read Profiles in Courage by John Fitzgerald Kennedy, I found myself ruminating on the astounding lack of courage demonstrated by many of our elected leaders, their appointees, and other important stakeholders.... Continue Reading

By Grace Brombach, U.S. PIRG Parents don’t usually expect the toys they buy to threaten their kid’s health — especially when that toy is a smiling train from a popular kids show. But in 2007, nearly 1.5 million Thomas and Friends trains were recalled from store shelves and... Continue Reading

By Michael Halpern, Union of Concerned Scientists The EPA’s own Science Advisory Board (SAB)—two-thirds of which was appointed by the Trump administration—is the latest group of scientists to come out swinging against a proposal to restrict the use of science in agency decisions.... Continue Reading

By James Goodwin, Center for Progressive Reform As I noted in my last post, 2019 brought a number of worrisome developments in regulatory policy. There were a few bright spots – most notably the positive attention public servants received for holding the Trump administration... Continue Reading

By David Rosen, Public Citizen 2019 has been a rough year for regulation, in no small part because of the escalating war on regulation led by President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans at the behest of private industry. We’ve put together a list of some of the worst... Continue Reading

By James Goodwin, Center for Progressive Reform For many of us, the best way to characterize the past year in three words would be “too much news.” That sentiment certainly applies to the wonky backwater of the regulatory policy world. Today, that world looks much different than... Continue Reading

By Better Markets Hard to believe, but the SEC recently proposed a rule to gag independent proxy firms from providing their unbiased opinion to investors who hire them. In fact, the SEC is proposing that proxy firms provide their opinions on corporations to the management of... Continue Reading

By Better Markets The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) exists to protect bank depositors and taxpayers, but – shockingly – the new Chairwoman ranks this priority as a “third goal” behind helping finance “innovate” and a new-found “balanced” interpretation of th... Continue Reading

By Better Markets Ignoring the laws that are supposed to mandate its actions, the SEC has perverted its mission from protecting investors to protecting Corporate America, incumbent management and financial giants. The latest is the attack on ESG (environmental, social and... Continue Reading

By Jacob Carter, Union of Concerned Scientists The Trump administration is no stranger to attacking protections for endangered species, the implementation of the process by which endangered species are afforded protections by the federal government, the science underpinning that... Continue Reading

By Susan Grant, Consumer Federation of America One of the arguments that some people make about privacy legislation is that individuals’ personal information should be treated as their property. At first blush, this may seem like an appealing idea. Why shouldn’t we be paid when... Continue Reading

By Dave Cooke, Union of Concerned Scientists No, that’s not an Onion headline—a new report from the EPA Office of the Inspector General (OIG) finds that Administrator Scott Pruitt tried to rush through a regulation which would allow the new sale of trucks that lack modern... Continue Reading

By Lynn Rhinehart and Celine McNicholas, Economic Policy Institute Yesterday marked the end of Democratic National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) Member Lauren McFerran’s term. McFerran ended her term offering the lone dissenting voice in the Trump board’s efforts to slow down... Continue Reading

By Mike Jacobs, Union of Concerned Scientists The FERC  (Federal Energy Regulatory Commission) decision expected Thursday will allow PJM to counteract the intended effects of state energy policies supporting nuclear and renewable energy.  But the decision is expected to allow PJM... Continue Reading

By James Goodwin, Center for Progressive Reform Last week, my CPR colleagues and I were honored to be joined by dozens of fellow advocates and member of the press for a webinar that explored the recent CPR report, Regulation as Social Justice: A Crowdsourced Blueprint for... Continue Reading

By Larissa Liebmann,  Waterkeeper Alliance In 2019 we saw monumental attacks on federal clean water protections. The Trump administration is advancing plans to eliminate Clean Water Act protections from waterways across the nation, trying to carve out a massive loophole for... Continue Reading

By Better Markets The Brookings Institution hosted a lively and enlightening discussion on December 11, 2019 focusing on “Brokered Deposits in the Fintech Age.”  That sounds boring, but it’s really important to everyone with a debit card, prepaid card, HSA, etc., or who cares... Continue Reading

By David Rosen, Public Citizen The possibility of another Trump Shutdown is growing, and it’s proof that some people never learn from their mistakes – even extremely painful ones. Government shutdowns happen when Congress and the White House are unable to reach agreement on a set... Continue Reading

By Genna Reed, Union of Concerned Scientists This year’s National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) has turned out to be a missed opportunity for a full-on government effort to do its job of protecting us. While we had high hopes for a strong compromise based on draft language... Continue Reading

By Sharon Anglin Treat, Institute for Agriculture & Trade Policy In the absence of federal action, state governments are struggling to address widespread Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances (PFAS) contamination of water, soils and food. PFAS are a group of man-made chemicals... Continue Reading

By Sally Hardin and Claire Moser, Center for American Progress In the coming weeks, the Trump administration is poised to make some major changes to how much—or more likely, how little—environmental review and public input is required for federal projects, including for roads and... Continue Reading

By Alliance for Justice Retail and service jobs can be brutal on the best days, and the holidays exacerbate the mistreatment of working people. For many people who are just trying to get by, the only options for work are service-based jobs that pay federal minimum wage during the... Continue Reading

By Erik D. Olson and Katie Hobbs, Natural Resources Defense Council Congress has reached an agreement on the National Defense Authorization Act for FY 2020 (NDAA), after a tense year of negotiation. The final bill will, we believe, deliver substantial public health benefits. It... Continue Reading

By Rafter Ferguson, Union of Concerned Scientists In a new report released this week, we show that climate change poses dire threats to farmworkers. While conversations around agriculture and climate change have increasingly focused on the devastating impacts of extreme weather,... Continue Reading

By Gretchen Goldman, Union of Concerned Scientists This week I’m at the EPA Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee (CASAC) meeting in North Carolina and an expected but disappointing outcome has just occurred: The committee has failed to reach consensus recommendations for the... Continue Reading

By Anita Desikan, Union of Concerned Scientists If chemical facilities are regularly catching on fire or exploding in your neighborhood – like the recent TPC Group plant chemical fire near Houston that dangerously blazed during the Thanksgiving holiday – you would want the... Continue Reading

By Brian Young, National Consumers League If you’re like most Americans ,you have probably had a bad experience with an automatic renewal or—as they are sometimes referred to—a negative option clause. Regardless of the name they go by, these clauses cause... Continue Reading

By Michael Halpern, Union of Concerned Scientists UCS’s lawsuit challenging the EPA’s policy banning anyone who has received agency funding from sitting on advisory committees got a hearing today in the First Circuit Court of Appeals in Massachusetts. UCS and co-plaintiff Dr.... Continue Reading

By Dave Cooke, Union of Concerned Scientists The Los Angeles Auto Show is just wrapping up, but while my colleague Dave Reichmuth was there getting a sneak peek at what the next couple years have in store, California’s emissions regulators were absent for the first time in 50... Continue Reading

By Larissa Liebmann, Waterkeeper Alliance For decades, coal-fired power plants have profited from being allowed to dump unlimited amounts of toxic coal ash pollutants into our waterways, pushing the cost of their dirty industry on communities and the waterways they use. In 2015,... Continue Reading

By Daniel Rosenberg, Natural Resources Defense Council The Trump EPA has again shown it intends to do nothing meaningful to protect the public from the whole class of Teflon “forever” chemicals known as PFAS. The chemicals are associated with a wide range of health effects... Continue Reading

By Sarah Reinhardt, Union of Concerned Scientists As the weather turns colder, many of us are pulling out our bulkiest sweaters and diving headlong into hygge. But as we reach for all of our coziest creature comforts to stay warm this winter, there’s one thing that no one should... Continue Reading

By Alejandro Dávila Fragoso, Earthjustice One morning many years ago, my best friend and I put cameras and microphones in the back of my jeep and drove to the nearest farm field. Our mission was simple yet daunting: document farm work, officially become filmmakers and show our... Continue Reading

By Dave Cooke, Union of Concerned Scientists The Trump administration is looking to finalize its rollback of vehicle efficiency and emission standards by the end of the year. The exact level of the standard is expected to be somewhere between “complete and total abdication of... Continue Reading

By Paul Cort, Earthjustice The future of the nation’s clean car protections is on the table, and Andrew Wheeler, head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, is moving forward with a plan that will unleash tailpipe pollution across the country. On Nov. 22, Earthjustice and... Continue Reading

By James Goodwin, Center for Progressive Reform The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) appears poised to take the next step in advancing its dangerous “censored science” rulemaking with the pending release of a supplemental proposal. The EPA presumably intends for this action... Continue Reading

By Tom Conway, United Steelworkers The March 2005 fire and explosions at BP’s Texas City, Texas, oil refinery killed 15 contractors and injured 180 other workers in ways that will haunt them forever. Some lost limbs. Others suffered horrific burns, head injuries or wounds that... Continue Reading

By Natural Resources Defense Council Striking back against the Trump administration’s attack on clean cars, NRDC and a coalition of environmental groups sued the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency today for blocking California and other states from enforcing their own stronger... Continue Reading

By Ken Kimmell, Union of Concerned Scientists On September 27, the Trump administration issued a new rule that purports to take away the right of California and thirteen other states to cut carbon dioxide emissions from cars and light duty trucks and require increasing... Continue Reading

By Better Markets On Monday, Better Markets filed a comment letter on the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s (CFTC) proposed exemption from certain U.S. regulations for certain derivatives clearinghouses organized outside of the United States.  Despite the CFTC’s naming... Continue Reading

By Better Markets Making crooks and lawbreakers give up their ill-gotten gains is critical to making sure “crime does not pay,” which is key to deterring future crimes.  After all, if you get to keep what you illegally took, that wasn’t yours, then you are... Continue Reading

By Better Markets The SEC just submitted its 2019 Annual Report on its Whistleblower Program to Congress, which proves – again – that whistleblowers perform a vital public service by revealing fraudulent and illegal conduct.  The SEC’s Whistleblower Program was created in the... Continue Reading

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