Op-Eds

CPR Member Scholars and staff are frequent contributors to newspaper opinion pages across the nation. Read what they have to say, below.

Trump's EPA Uses Coronavirus Crisis to Mask Environmental Deregulation and Suspend Enforcement

Writing on ACSBlog, Joel Mintz describes the several ways that the Trump EPA has seized on the coronavirus pandemic as an opportunity to undercut a range of environmental protections.

Type: Op-Eds (April 7, 2020)
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Author(s): Joel Mintz
Incomprehensibility and the Law

Writing for the Regulatory Review, CPR's Wendy Wagner observes that "Meaningful communication is vital to most legal processes. So when sellers withhold key information from customers, such as high service fees on a cell phone contract, or when companies conceal key information about public health or financial risks from regulators, the law is generally swift to sanction them." So, what happens when sellers disclose information, but do it in a way that's incomprehensible to their customers, as in all those online "terms and conditions" we all click through mindlessly? Wagner has a proposal.

Type: Op-Eds (March 30, 2020)
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Author(s): Wendy Wagner
From border security to climate change, national emergency declarations raise hard questions about presidential power

"Presidential emergency powers could provide useful tools for addressing climate change, but taking this route sets an important precedent," Dan Farber writes for The Conversation. "If presidents increasingly make free use of emergency powers to achieve policy goals, this approach could become the new normal – with a serious potential for abuse of power and ill-considered decisions."

Type: Op-Eds (March 10, 2020)
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Author(s): Daniel Farber
EPA Enforcement in Distress — and More Trouble Is Brewing

Writing in The Revelator, CPR's Joel Mintz describes yet another White House effort to weaken environmental safeguards, this time by "quietly and ominously ask[ing] polluters to help identify new opportunities for deregulation."

Type: Op-Eds (Feb. 24, 2020)
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Author(s): Joel Mintz
Argument preview: Justices to consider whether the Appalachian Trail blocks proposed natural gas pipeline

Writing in SCOTUSBlog, CPR's Noah Sachs previews the Supreme Court's upcoming argument in U.S. Forest Service v. Cowpasture River Preservation Association and Atlantic Coast Pipeline LLC v. Cowpasture River Preservation Association. The cases pit a pipeline developer and the U.S. Forest Service against environmentalists fighting to preserve the Appalachian Trail.

Type: Op-Eds (Feb. 18, 2020)
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Author(s): Noah Sachs
Trump Is Trying to Cripple the Environment and Democracy

Writing in The Hill, Robert Glicksman and Alejandro Camacho dissect the Trump administration's latest effort to enfeeble environmental protections, this time by devising new regulations intended to undercut the National Environment Policy Act.

Type: Op-Eds (Jan. 18, 2020)
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Author(s): Robert Glicksman, Alejandro Camacho
President Trump Shouldn't Neuter National Environmental Policy

Writing in the Dallas Morning News, Tom McGarity looks at the Trump push to gut the National Environmental Policy Act

Type: Op-Eds (Jan. 14, 2020)
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Author(s): Thomas McGarity
Trump rollback of two safeguards increases threat of chemical disaster in Virginia

In an op-ed in the Roanoke Times, CPR's David Flores describes the real-world impact of President Trump's push to roll back safeguards against environmental disasters.

Type: Op-Eds (Jan. 1, 2020)
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Author(s): David Flores
Did a Federal Ethics Loophole Worsen the Vaping Crisis

The lax federal ethics policies on the revolving door between government and industry may have contributed to the vaping crisis, Matt Shudtz and Jeff Hauser write in an op-ed in The Regulatory Review.

Type: Op-Eds (Dec. 23, 2019)
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Author(s): Matt Shudtz
The rise and quick fall of the West tragedy's EPA rule

The rise and quick fall of the West tragedy's EPA rule, by Thomas McGarity, December 7, 2019, in The Waco Tribune

Type: Op-Eds (Dec. 7, 2019)
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Author(s): Thomas McGarity

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