Regs Talk: The CSS Blog
Blogs are authored by CSS members and policy experts, and have been reprinted with permission.
Victory! Trump Administration Must Publish Delayed Energy Efficiency Standards
By Lauren Urbanek, Natural Resources Defense Council Forcing the hand of a recalcitrant Trump administration, a federal appeals court today ordered the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to implement four energy efficiency standards it has illegally delayed for close to three years. Taken together, the standards, originally initiated under the Obama administration, will save nearly 100 million […]
Bringing Science Back to the EPA — Whether EPA Wants It or Not
By Ken Kimmell, Union of Concerned Scientists The current administration’s attacks on both scientists and science are unprecedented, reaching a new low a few weeks ago when the White House Chief of Staff and the Secretary of Commerce attempted to stifle NOAA employees from giving the public accurate information about the path of Hurricane Dorian. […]
It’s Time to Bury These Nuclear Waste Talking Points
By Caroline Reiser, Natural Resources Defense Council This year we’re seeing yet another attempt from Congress to address the fifty-year problem of what to do with the 80,000 tons of nuclear waste sitting across the country, with approximately 2,000 more tons produced every year by the 96 operating U.S. nuclear reactors. Unfortunately, the multiple nuclear […]
Beware Trumpian Claims That Fish Don’t Need Water (Part 2)
By Doug Obegi, Natural Resources Defense Council In addition to Trumpian arguments about “new” science (See part one of this blog), agribusinesses and water agencies that would benefit from increased water diversions from California’s Bay-Delta also argue that existing protections for salmon and other endangered species are not needed. But due to litigation and relentless […]
Beware Trumpian Claims That Fish Don’t Need Water (Part 1)
By Doug Obegi, Natural Resources Defense Council In recent weeks, agribusinesses and water districts that support the Trump Administration’s efforts to gut protections for salmon and other endangered species in California’s Bay-Delta have ramped up their claims that “new” science shows that the Trump Administration is right to weaken protections for endangered species, which would […]
Late USDA Data, No Data, No Problem?
By Steve Suppan, Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy President Trump has signed a Continuing Resolution to keep the government operating through November 21. That budgetary lifeline will enable mostly delayed and truncated publication of 38 U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) reports, some of them required by law. USDA Secretary Sonny Perdue’s decision to relocate most of […]
Stop EPA’s Latest Assault on Our Health and Our Planet: Oppose Weakening of EPA’s Methane Rule
By Kate Hudson, Waterkeeper Alliance Responding to pressure from the White House and the fossil fuel industry, EPA is putting protection of our health and our planet on the chopping block once again. EPA’s latest regulatory rollback proposal would eliminate current Clean Air Act requirements to control methane emissions from new wells, pipelines, and other […]
Score One for Worker Safety: Trump Administration Drops Proposed Beryllium Rollback
By Kathleen Rest, Union of Concerned Scientists HUZZAH! Score one for workers. It appears that the Trump administration has come to its senses and reconsidered its dangerous plan to roll back safety protections for construction and shipyard workers exposed to beryllium. As reported by Reuters and in a bulletin issued last week by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration […]
The 100 U.S. Military Sites With the Worst PFAS Contamination
By Jared Hayes and David Andrews, Environmental Working Group Many of the nation’s highest levels of groundwater contamination with PFAS – highly toxic fluorinated chemicals linked to increased risk of cancer and other diseases – have been found at military sites, according to federal data obtained and analyzed by EWG. Of the PFAS-contaminated military sites […]
Trump’s Interior Leaves Threatened Species Unprotected
By Lucas Rhoads, Natural Resources Defense Council The Fish and Wildlife Service, the agency charged with protecting the nation’s most vulnerable wildlife, recently stripped automatic protections for species listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). This reversal of longstanding policy—part of a package of three rules designed to weaken the ESA—simultaneously makes it […]
The Indelible Ink of SharpieGate Spreads to NOAA Fisheries
By Andrew Rosenberg, Union of Concerned Scientists The health of our oceans is profoundly impacted by global warming. Yet you wouldn’t know it from current NOAA Fisheries Director Chris Oliver. At a Senate hearing last week, he “could not say whether climate change is endangering the nation’s fisheries and declined to ‘speculate’ on whether warming […]
Science Workshop on PFAS Highlights the Need for Government Action
By Genna Reed, Union of Concerned Scientists I spent Thursday and Friday of last week at the National Academies of Science Environmental Health Matters Initiatives (EHMI) workshop, “Identifying Opportunities to Understand, Control, and Prevent Exposure to PFAS” which brought together scientists, community members, NGOs, regulators, and industry representatives to think about some of the challenges and potential […]
Bureau of Land Management Headquarters to Move in with Chevron. Will They Share a Bed?
By Joel Clement, Union of Concerned Scientists Congress has been severely vexed by Interior Secretary David Bernhardt’s rush to dismantle and relocate the Bureau of Land Management headquarters to his home state, and he has refused to provide details about cost and rationale. With suspicion swirling that it is simply a power grab to get […]
New Trump Overtime Rules Will Cost Workers $1.4 Billion in First Year Alone
By Kelly Ross, AFL-CIO The Trump administration’s Labor Department issued new overtime rules this week that take away $1.4 billion of workers’ pay every year compared to the Obama administration rules they replace. The amount of this pay cut for working people will increase enormously over time. Although the economic recovery that started in 2009 […]
The EPA Cut Science Out of Air Pollution Standard-Setting. We’re Putting It Back.
By Gretchen Goldman, Union of Concerned Scientists EPA leaders have now irreparably damaged the agency’s process for setting health-based air pollution standards. That’s why scientists are taking matters into their own hands. To ensure that independent science informs the particulate matter standards and beyond, the very particulate matter review panel that EPA Administrator Wheeler disbanded last year […]
Critical Habitat: The Next Endangered Species?
By Zack Strong, Natural Resources Defense Council The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (“FWS”) has made a host of changes to the rules implementing the Endangered Species Act (“ESA”). These changes will negatively impact imperiled wildlife across the country—and even across the planet—by, for example, making it more difficult to list species, removing automatic protections for threatened species, […]
FINRA Must Live-Up to Its Mandate of Investor Protection and Market Integrity by Expelling Wolf-Pack Brokers
By Better Markets As the front-line regulator of the broker-dealer profession, FINRA must do more to live-up to its mandate of investor protection and market integrity by expelling brokerage firms that specialize in harming investors. These are “predator wolf-pack” firms populated with recidivist brokers whose business model appears to be maximizing profits by targeting and […]
New Report: How to Build a Regulatory System for a More Just and Equitable America
By James Goodwin, Center for Progressive Reform Last week’s televised climate town hall saw several Democratic presidential candidates outline an impressive array of policies that, if implemented effectively, offer some measure of hope for averting the worst consequences of the climate crisis for us and future generations. The operative concept there – lurking in the background and too […]
More Than Eight Million Workers Will Be Left Behind by the Trump Overtime Rule
By Heidi Shierholz, Economic Policy Institute Yesterday, the U.S. Department of Labor announced its final overtime rule, which will set the salary threshold under which salaried workers are automatically entitled to overtime pay to $35,568 a year. The rule leaves behind millions of workers who would have received overtime protections under the much stronger rule, published […]
History Repeats: Congress Takes on Tobacco Industry Again
By Matt Wellington, U.S. PIRG Nicotine use was a big part of American culture until the past few decades, when society started holding tobacco companies accountable for the deadly addiction they promoted. But nicotine is back in a big way as the drug of choice for a new generation using a new delivery method — […]