Regs Talk: The CSS Blog
Blogs are authored by CSS members and policy experts, and have been reprinted with permission.
EPA Opens Window to Air Conditioning’s Next Generation
By Alex Hillbrand, Natural Resources Defense Council Good news came out of EPA last week in the effort to replace climate-polluting hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) with safer alternatives. In the refrigerant business, there’s life before and after “SNAP approval,” when EPA deems better replacement chemicals safe and ready to sell. EPA proposed a handful of them last week, including […]
Lawsuit Launched Targeting Trump Administration’s Suspension of Pollution Monitoring
By Waterkeeper Alliance Conservation groups today filed a notice of intent to sue the Trump administration over the Environmental Protection Agency’s suspension of monitoring and reporting requirements for major pollution during the COVID-19 pandemic. This follows confirmation from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries Service that the EPA failed to contact the wildlife […]
It’s Hurricane Season. Will State and Federal Agencies Act to Reduce Public Health Hazards From Toxic Flooding?
By Darya Minovi, Center for Progressive Reform June 1 marked the start of hurricane season for the Atlantic Basin. While not welcome, tropical storms, strong winds, and storm surges are an inevitable fact of life for many residents of the Eastern Seaboard and the Gulf Coast. As a new paper from the Center for Progressive Reform explains, […]
COVID-19 Spreading to Food Processing Facilities Across the U.S.
By Jared Hayes and Braelyn Parkman, Environmental Working Group Although not yet as pervasive as outbreaks at meatpacking facilities, COVID-19 is on the rise at America’s food processing facilities. EWG’s search of news stories published from March 14 to June 8 found that almost 1,200 food processing workers at 60 plants have been infected by the […]
Amid Pandemic, EPA Proposal Distorts the Benefits of Reducing Air Pollution
By Natural Resources Defense Council The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency proposed a new, dishonest way of weighing the costs and benefits of the Clean Air Act—a move intended to hamstring the agency’s ability to pass effective clean air protections in the future. “For the EPA to try to undermine the benefits of clean air amid our national […]
With New Manipulation of Benefit-Cost Analysis, the Trump EPA Attempts to Hide Bodies in the Fine Print
By Julie McNamara, Union of Concerned Scientists Nobody reads the fine print. Or that’s the apparent thesis of the Trump administration’s EPA, anyway, in its newly proposed spin on benefit-cost analysis. Here, now, the agency with its mission to protect human health and the environment is attempting to shovel tens of thousands of pollution-caused deaths […]
Trump Takes Moment of National Crisis to Give Polluters an Unprecedented Pass
By Natural Resources Defense Council Declaring an “economic emergency,” President Trump signed an unprecedented executive order today that allows industry to skirt foundational environmental laws, such as the National Environmental Policy Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Endangered Species Act, in order to rubber-stamp polluting projects. “Americans are crying out for leadership to confront racist violence […]
On World Environment Day, the Government Slashes Environmental Protections
By Earthjustice June 5 is World Environment Day. This year, the Trump administration is “celebrating” by assaulting environmental protections while other crises divert the nation’s attention. Today—instead of taking action to address police brutality, systemic racism, or the coronavirus pandemic— President Trump issued a proclamation that will allow harmful commercial fishing in the Northeast Canyons and Seamount […]
Federal District Court Rebuffs Trump Labor Board for Shirking Rulemaking Requirements
By Michael C. Duff, Center for Progressive Reform For decades, commentators have complained about how long it can take for workers attempting to unionize to simply get an election in which workers make an up-or-down decision on whether to form a union. For many years, employers were able to raise hyper-formalistic legal arguments that took so long to resolve […]
Clean Water Webinar Spotlight: Lessons Learned from the Supreme Court’s Maui Decision
By Katlyn Schmitt, Center for Progressive Reform In April, the U.S. Supreme Court finally weighed in with an answer to a longstanding question about what kinds of pollution discharges rise to the level of a “point source” and require a permit under the Clean Water Act. The Court dipped its toes into some muddied waters, as this question […]
CFPB’s Effort to Redo All of Consumer Finance Law Is a “Task Farce”
By Bartlett Naylor, Public Citizen On June 1, the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) completed a 60-day comment period for public input to help its newly empaneled task force that Director Kathleen Kraninger directed to re-envision all of consumer financial protection law. Ed Mierzwinski, senior director at US PIRG and dean of consumer finance […]
I’m Reading the CFPB’s Mail About the Pandemic’s Effect on Family Finances
By Ed Mierzwinski, U.S. PIRG I’ve been reading the CFPB’s mail. It’s okay, you can too. It’s public. Not surprisingly, the latest CFPB consumer complaints paint a grim picture of the pandemic’s effect on family finances. I ask: Why isn’t the CFPB doing more to help the struggling consumers it was designed to help? The […]
New Data: Consumers Are Already Struggling With COVID-19-Related Mortgage Servicing Problems
By Gideon Weissman, Frontier Group Mortgage servicers failed Americans during the last recession. And if early data from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is any indication, history may well be on its way to repeating. Last week, I published a blog post describing the challenges homeowners could face with mortgage servicers amid the disruption caused by COVID. Then, on […]
The Trump Administration’s Hazy Plans to Weaken Car Pollution Standards Won’t Work. Here’s Why.
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. The Trump administration would rather force everyone to breathe the same higher levels of pollution. […]
The Whittling Away of State Clean Water Act Authority
By Katlyn Schmitt and Dave Owen, Center for Progressive Reform Sometime soon, EPA is expected to release its final rule limiting state and tribal authority to conduct water quality certifications under section 401 of the Clean Water Act. A water quality certification is the most important tool states have to ensure that any federally permitted […]
Investing in Dietary Guidelines Will Leave Us Better Prepared for the Next Pandemic
By Sarah Reinhardt, Union of Concerned Scientists As US cases of COVID-19 near 1.7 million, we continue to learn more about the nature of the disease, including the factors that influence susceptibility to COVID-19 and the severity of symptoms. Some of these risk factors, like age and certain health conditions, are beyond our ability to control. Others, we […]
EPA Adopts Trump’s Reckless Twitter Style
By Adrian Shelley, Public Citizen President Trump is most in his element when on the defensive. Attacking his critics allows Trump’s insults, rants, and meandering interpretations of reality to flow more easily. This has come to typify Trump’s tweetstorms: long strings of tweets that are defensive, insulting, reactionary, and factually weak. Early in his presidency, social media analysts used trends in Trump’s twitter feed to identify when he […]
New Trump Executive Order Sells Off the Ocean and Fails Coastal Communities
By Miriam Goldstein and Alexandra Carter, Center for American Progress The United States is in the midst of a health and economic crisis. Yet instead of taking critical action to help the millions of suffering Americans, the Trump administration continues to push forward its anti-environmental agenda. Among its many harmful actions, the administration has relaxed enforcement of regulations for polluting facilities, replaced clean […]
The Pentagon Should Address All Types of PFAS on Military Bases
By Melanie Benesh, Environmental Working Group The toxic fluorinated compounds known as PFAS belong to a family with hundreds of different members. They are linked to an array of health risks, including cancer, thyroid disruption, reproductive and developmental harms, reduced effectiveness of vaccines and high cholesterol. But in its efforts to address the widespread PFAS […]
A Snapshot of Clean Air Advocacy in America
By American Lung Association During the industrial revolution, air pollution from booming industrial manufacturers and a growing network of train lines first became a significant public health issue. People in urban areas became used to the sight of large plumes of smoke bellowing from smokestacks with many seeing them as a sign of prosperity and economic […]