This op-ed originally ran in The Hill.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions has wasted little time portraying himself as the prosecutor-in-chief of street — as opposed to white collar — crime, rejecting this month even a broadly bipartisan effort to reduce sentences for nonviolent crime supported by a coalition that spans the Koch brothers and the NAACP.
Civil enforcement has also fallen off, as documented in investigative reporting by The New York Times and others. Both trends will almost certainly continue given the more subtle sabotage of corporate enforcement implemented in a series of largely overlooked policy changes announced by memoranda and speech.
The campaign began last June, when Sessions wrote a memorandum to U.S. attorneys and DOJ senior managers instructing them not to enter into any settlements that provide for a "payment or loan to any non-governmental entity." His targets were the nonprofit groups enlisted to provide counseling of consumers in foreclosure under multi-billion dollar civil settlements with the nation's biggest banks. A small portion of the huge sums collected by these consent decrees was devoted to this grassroots work by legal aid attorneys and homeowner counseling groups.
Bank executives didn't articulate objections to this funding. But retiring House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) claims that such payments amount to a "slush fund" accumulated by the Obama administration to pay off its cronies on the left. The House has fretted over legislation to address the issue and passed the "Stop Settlement Slush Funds Act."
Also implicated in the Sessions policy change were the supplemental environmental projects embraced by successive, bipartisan generations of EPA and DOJ attorneys in settlements with polluting companies. Such agreements fund work to mitigate the harm to the environment and public health inflicted by the violations. As just one recent example, an Obama-era settlement with Harley-Davidson would have committed $3 million to a program run by the American Lung Association to pay for the change-out of dirty wood stoves in the Northeast with much cleaner models. The settlement was withdrawn because of the Sessions policy.
Read the full op-ed in The Hill.
Top image by Wikipedia user Coolcaesar, used under Creative Commons license CC BY-SA 3.0.
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Rena Steinzor | February 22, 2018
This op-ed originally ran in The Hill. Attorney General Jeff Sessions has wasted little time portraying himself as the prosecutor-in-chief of street — as opposed to white collar — crime, rejecting this month even a broadly bipartisan effort to reduce sentences for nonviolent crime supported by a coalition that spans the Koch brothers and the NAACP. […]
Dave Owen | February 15, 2018
Originally published on Environmental Law Prof Blog. Last week, the Ninth Circuit decided Hawai’i Wildlife Fund v. County of Maui, a case involving Maui County’s practice of pumping wastewater into wells, from which the wastewater flowed through a subsurface aquifer and into the Pacific Ocean. The county, according to the court, needed a National Pollutant […]
Evan Isaacson | February 15, 2018
This year more than most, it bears repeating that a budget is a moral document, or at least that it has moral implications. It's particularly important to remember not just because President Trump's budget is so appallingly skewed in favor of military spending – this looks to be one pricey parade – but also because […]
Matt Shudtz | February 14, 2018
It was an early holiday present to the nation’s biggest polluters. EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt announced in early December that he was drastically changing the way EPA reviews polluters’ compliance – or lack thereof – with the Clean Air Act. Today on Capitol Hill, CPR Member Scholar Emily Hammond will explain that this dramatic shift […]
Laurie Ristino | February 8, 2018
This blog post is part of a series on the 2018 Farm Bill. Since the 1930s, Congress has tried to formulate an effective farm “safety net,” oscillating among different schemes in order to protect farmers from the severe economic impacts of the Depression and the Dust Bowl. What started as a New Deal emergency intervention has become […]
Alyson Flournoy | February 6, 2018
On January 4, the Department of the Interior (DOI) released its draft proposed program for oil and gas leasing on the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS). The proposed plan would end a broad ban on drilling imposed by President Obama and allow leasing and drilling on over 98 percent of the OCS, including the waters off […]
Katie Tracy | February 5, 2018
Today, six CPR Member Scholars and staff members sent a letter to the Department of Labor’s (DOL) Wage and Hour Division, calling on the agency to withdraw its proposal to repeal an Obama-era rule aimed at preventing employers from taking workers’ hard-earned tips. Last week, Bloomberg Law uncovered a deliberate effort by the DOL to […]
Katie Tracy | February 1, 2018
On the morning of January 26, 2016, Seattle police were called to a construction site where a worker, Harold Felton, was trapped in a collapsed trench. By the time officers arrived, the rescue operation had turned into a recovery; Felton, 36, had died at the scene. Felton was working as part of a two-man team […]
James Goodwin | January 31, 2018
President Trump’s first State of the Union address contained numerous outrageous claims and statements, rendering a full dissection and critique practically impossible. Many have already singled out one line of the speech as worthy of particular condemnation, so I’ll add mine. Early on, Trump made this statement to the rapturous applause of his conservative allies […]