Regulatory Policy

Corporate capture of regulatory agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency has long been a barrier to promulgation and enforcement of effective safeguards. But under the Trump administration, it has progressed to a dizzying degree of brazenness, helping to power the president’s dangerous assault on public safeguards. In Deregulation on Demand, CPR's James Goodwin, working with researchers from the Environmental Law Clinic at the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law, documents the extent to which corporate capture by polluters played a role in the dismantling of the Clean Power Plan.

In the first few months of the Trump administration, Congress invoked a rarely used, little-known law called the Congressional Review Act to repeal a host of health, safety, and environmental regulations adopted during the Obama administration after years of consideration and public input. CPR tracked the congressional assault on our safeguards. See our chart from May 2017 detailing the damage.

In Earmarking Away the Public Interest: How Congressional Republicans Use Antiregulatory Appropriations Riders to Benefit Powerful Polluting Industries, CPR's Thomas McGarity, Richard Murphy and James Goodwin explore the ways Republicans in Congress have worked to undercut regulatory safeguards for health, safety and the environment with budget riders.

In September 2019, CPR released Regulation as Social Justice: A Crowdsourced Blueprint for Building a Progressive Regulatory System, a report that synthesizes recommendations from more than 60 progressive advocates into a comprehensive, action-oriented agenda for rebuilding the regulatory system. To increase the usefulness of the report, CPR has created this web-based library of materials developed by CPR Member Scholars and staff along with our progressive allies that provides more details on the reforms included the report. We will continuously update this library as additional materials become available.

In her compelling 2007 book, Mother Earth and Uncle Sam: How Pollution and Hollow Government Hurt Our Kids, published by the University of Texas Press, Professor Rena Steinzor highlights the ways in which the United States government has failed to protect children from harm caused by toxic chemicals. She believes these failures – driven by willful under-funding, excessive and misguided use of cost/benefit analysis, distortion of science, and devolution of regulatory authority – have produced a situation in which serious harms that could be readily reduced or eliminated are instead allowed to persist.