Regs Talk: The CSS Blog
Blogs are authored by CSS members and policy experts, and have been reprinted with permission.
Four Ways for Democrats to Root Out Republican Corruption
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 actions. They should start with the Department of Interior and its […]
For Parents of Rape Survivors, OIRA’s ‘Open Door’ to Nowhere
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 weeks. As usual, they are graced by high-priced corporate lobbyists and attorneys from white-shoe law […]
NRDC to EPA: Scrap the Dirty Power Plan, Strengthen the CPP
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 more power plant carbon pollution, harming public health and the planet. We contend Trump should drop […]
PFAS Contamination on Military Bases Is a Scary Reality—And For Me, It’s Personal
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 military family. PFAS, or poly- and perfluorinated alkyl […]
General Motors’ EV Plan May Sound Good, But It’s Bad News for Cars and Drivers. Here’s Why.
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 innovative idea, it could dramatically undercut existing programs in states […]
Keeping Your Family’s Food Safe, Bite by Bite
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 and the environment, the story is much the same. For these reasons, […]
Why I Won’t Be a “Mad Scientist” This Halloween
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 nearly everything I studied made me mad: tropical rainforests […]
Pollution Politics – Trump Voters More Affected by President’s Environmental Rollbacks
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 University of Virginia professor, and her study team analyzed the difference in […]
EPA Clouds Transparency for Environmental Impact Statements
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 the quality of the analysis and the actual level of environmental impact. This change will dim the […]
Trump’s Reckless Delays Will Drive Up Climate Damages
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 pollution that is driving the world toward catastrophic warming. In so doing, […]
The Lessons We Didn’t Learn from the Largest Gas Leak in U.S. History
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 nearby Aliso Canyon underground gas storage facility. From October 2015 until February 2016, the […]
New Scientific Paper Supports Chlorpyrifos Ban
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 included—found that prenatal exposure to organophosphate pesticides like chlorpyrifos, even at low levels previously considered safe, can lead to […]
The Trump Administration Is Failing Our Children
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 largely abandoned children’s park in Shippingport, Pennsylvania. Since two […]
Study Shows Stunning Neglect of Public Will on Net Neutrality
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 fakes, researcher Ryan Singel revealed that a whopping 99.7 percent of unique comments submitted to […]
These Conservative State Officials’ Lawsuits Attacking Federal Protections Harm Their Fellow Residents
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 officials, the administration has often sided with them in litigation or used its executive authority to help advance […]
OSHA’s Fall Regulatory Agenda: Worker Protections Not a Priority
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, which has consistently neglected to take up worker protections, instead focusing the Occupational Safety […]
EPA’s Proposal to Restrict Science Will Be Delayed: Score One for Science.
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 administration is delaying by a year its timeline for finalizing the agency’s terrible proposal to restrict the science […]
Andrew Wheeler’s First 100 Days at the EPA, by the Numbers
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 start. During his first week in office, Wheeler rolled back protections […]
Impact of the Public Charge Rule Change on People with Disabilities
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 depend on government benefits to meet […]
The Hazardous Chemicals Lurking in Black Hair Care Products
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 standards. In 2018, many black models and actresses have sported elegant, protective […]