This post was originally released as a press statement on December 14 in response to President Donald Trump's speech on deregulation and his administration's Fall 2017 Unified Agenda.
Starting on Day One, the Trump administration has perpetrated an all-out assault on essential public safeguards for health, safety, the environment, and American families' financial security, and today, the president took the time to revel in all the damage he has overseen. The administration's anti-safeguard agenda for the coming year promises more of the same.
For the president, this is about helping big-monied interests make more money. For everyday Americans, it's about making sure our kids can breathe clean air and drink clean water, saving for retirement, keeping workplaces safe, protecting our natural treasures, and warding off the worst effects of climate change.
In his remarks today, President Trump included a lot of numbers. Here are some numbers he conveniently left out. Twenty-five percent. That's the increased likelihood of birth defects for babies born near fracking sites, as revealed in research published just yesterday. Or how about 20? That was the number of children shot to death at Sandy Hook Elementary School on this day five years ago. Included among the Trump administration's assault on our safeguards were the elimination of common-sense measures to address just these kinds of threats of harm to public health, safety, environmental protection, and individual financial security.
Make no mistake, the Trump administration's anti-safeguards agenda rests on the same "Reverse Robin Hood" logic at the heart of the conservatives' disastrous tax reform plan. CEOs have already made it abundantly clear that any money being put back into their pockets – whether from historic tax cuts or from avoiding the minor inconvenience of running their businesses without unduly harming the public interest – will not be invested in new job creation or innovation. And as with tax reform, the administration is ramming through these policy changes with scant regard for due process in open defiance of the public will. The public is rightly rejecting the conservative tax plan, and they should be equally outraged by this attack on their well-being to benefit politically powerful industries.
The greatest damage from the Trump administration's assault on our safeguards will be the hardest to quantify. Concrete efforts to roll back existing regulations – such as the Clean Power Plan – are likely to fail. But where the administration is likely to have its biggest effect is what it doesn't do. It's hard to put this damage in numbers, but four years of zero progress on protecting the public interest will be costly. And the damage that results – children suffering from permanent health problems due to birth defects or another catastrophic mass shooting that could have been prevented but wasn't – will not be undone.
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James Goodwin | December 15, 2017
This post was originally released as a press statement on December 14 in response to President Donald Trump’s speech on deregulation and his administration’s Fall 2017 Unified Agenda. Starting on Day One, the Trump administration has perpetrated an all-out assault on essential public safeguards for health, safety, the environment, and American families’ financial security, and […]
Rena Steinzor | December 14, 2017
This op-ed originally ran in the Bay Journal. Reprinted with permission. Despite research demonstrating that climate change is adding millions of pounds of nutrient pollution to the Chesapeake Bay, Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan and his Bay states colleagues appear to be taking a page from the Trump playbook: Ignore this inconvenient truth. Doubts about whether climate […]
Dan Rohlf | December 12, 2017
This op-ed originally ran in the Reno Gazette-Journal. During the holiday season, many people put significant effort into plans for getting along with one another at family gatherings. Seating plans are carefully strategized and touchy subjects avoided. We’ve learned that enjoying our shared holiday demands that we all compromise a little. Plans for cooperation in […]
Daniel Farber | December 11, 2017
Lucas v. South Carolina Coastal Commission was the high-water mark of the Supreme Court’s expansion of the takings clause, which makes it unconstitutional for the government to take private property without compensation. Lucas epitomized the late Justice Scalia’s crusade to limit government regulation of property. The decision left environmentalists and regulators quaking in their boots, […]
| November 29, 2017
The field of environmental law often involves tangential explorations of scientific concepts. Lately, one scientific term – hydrologic connectivity – seems to keep finding its way into much of my work. As for many others, this principle of hydrology became familiar to me thanks to its place at the center of one of the biggest […]
Nina Mendelson | November 28, 2017
Originally posted at Notice & Comment, a blog of the Yale Journal on Regulation and the American Bar Association Section of Administrative Law & Regulatory Practice. Reprinted with permission. On Friday, November 24, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director Richard Cordray named Leandra English, the longtime CFPB Chief of Staff, to the post of Deputy Director. Based […]
Matthew Freeman | November 28, 2017
If there’s a defining value to the tax bill now working its way through Congress, it’s greed. How else to account for a bill that wipes out tax deductions for health care expenses, double-taxes the money you pay in state and local income taxes, eliminates the deduction for interest on student loans, and at the […]
Joel A. Mintz | November 27, 2017
The Trump EPA’s shrinking commitment to enforcement of the nation’s environmental laws has focused new attention on state-level enforcement and the extent to which it does or does not address problems of environmental pollution and threats to public health. One recent – and ongoing – controversy, involving toxic chemical contamination of a river in North […]
Katie Tracy | November 20, 2017
On Thanksgiving Day, families across the country will sit down for huge feasts, filling their bellies with turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, and lots of gravy. My mouth is watering just writing about it. In many households, it’s tradition for each person at the table to say what they’re thankful for and express their appreciation for […]