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The head of the Environmental Protection Agency came under bipartisan criticism Wednesday over his agency’s actions to cancel billions of dollars in congressionally approved spending to address chronic pollution in minority communities and jump-start clean energy programs across the country. Nearly 800 grants were awarded by former President Joe Bidens administration under the 2022 climate law, which directed the EPA to spend $3 billion on grants to help low-income and minority communities improve their air and water and protect against climate change. The law allocated another $20 billion under a so-called green bank program to finance clean energy and climate-friendly projects nationwide. Funding for both programs was abruptly terminated by the Trump administration in actions that Democrats have denounced as illegal and unconstitutional. Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley, a Democrat, said EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin has illegally withheld, or impounded, climate-law funding despite a decades-old law that explicitly prohibits such actions by the executive branch. Repeated court rulings, including by the Supreme Court, support the power of Congress to set federal spending levels. Zeldin’s budget maneuvers endanger communities by making it harder to address pollution and climate chaos, Merkley said at a hearing Wednesday. Varied approaches to questioning the EPA chief Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, chair of a Senate Appropriations subcommittee on the environment, also criticized Zeldin, saying funding freezes approved by his agencyincluding to grants intended for rural communities in Alaskawere somewhat indiscriminate. Murkowski questioned whether severe budget cuts proposed by President Donald Trump were serious. Many of the proposals, such as an 88% cut to a state revolving fund for clean water, are likely to be reversed by Congress, she said. The EPA’s approach under Zeldin is problematic, Murkowski added. EPA has not adhered to our guidelines and has been largely unresponsive to questions,” she said. Zeldin told Murkowski she has a special phone number for his office and can call him any time. His exchanges with Democrats were less friendly. So you understand that when you impound funds, youre violating the law?” Merkley asked Zeldin, a former New York congressman who took over at EPA in January. No, Senator, we are going to follow all statutory obligations,” Zeldin replied. We absolutely disagree with you very strongly.” Asked under what authority the money was being withheld, Zeldin cited policy priorities under Trump that differ from Biden-era views. But it wasnt the Biden administration that passed this law. It was Congress,” Merkley shot back. And so, this is in the law as written, and its signed by the president, and yet youre defying it.” Zeldin said he rejected Merkley’s premise, adding, “We couldnt possibly disagree more strongly with what youre saying.” If he can’t follow his oath of office, Zeldin should resign, Merkley said, a suggestion Zeldin immediately rejected. Accused of trying to burn it down Democratic Sen. Patty Murray of Washington state said Zeldin and Trump shared an approach when it comes to EPA: “Burn it down.” Money being withheld by EPA would pay for things like heat pumps to reduce energy costs and pollution, wildfire preparedness and infrastructure upgrades to protect drinking water from floods and earthquakes, Murray said. “Blocking this funding is hurting communities everywhere,” she said. Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff asked Zeldin why he had canceled a $19.8 million grant to Thomasville, Georgia, to replace a wastewater collection system and build a community health clinic. Is a new health clinic for Thomasville woke? Ossoff asked, noting that the grant was approved under an environmental justice program the EPA has terminated. Zeldin again cited policy priorities before Ossoff, a Democrat, cut him off. “You hurt my constituents,” he said. Zeldin later said grants to Thomasville and towns in Alaska and Washington state may be restored if language about environmental justice and diversity is removed, in accordance with an executive order by Trump. Zeldin declined to provide specific goals for EPA staffing under his tenure, but appeared to acknowledge claims by Merkley and Murray that staff totals could return to a level last seen under former President Ronald Reagan. The EPA had fewer than 11,000 employees in 1983, compared to more than 15,100 in 2024. The agency has laid off hundreds of employees and offered voluntary retirement or deferred resignations to thousands more as part of a broader effort by Trump and adviser Elon Musk to downsize the federal workforce. Matthew Daly, Associated Press
Category:
E-Commerce
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), under acting director Russell Vought, canceled proposed new rules this week that would have protected Americans sensitive private dataincluding financial data, credit history, and Social Security numbersfrom being collected by data brokers without consent and sold to advertisers and other third parties. The proposed rules, which were crafted in December by the Biden administrations CFPB director, Rohit Chopra, were aimed at protecting consumers from commercial surveillance practices that threaten our personal safety and undermine Americas national security. (Wired, for example, reported in February that U.S. data brokers were using Google’s ad-tech tools to sell access to information about devices linked to military service members and national security decision-makers.) Proposed rules clarified that many data brokers are in fact consumer reporting agencies, like the credit bureaus, which already must comply with the privacy and accuracy rules in the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA). For example, under those requirements, data brokers would have to get explicit consent from consumers before collecting and selling their data. But on Tuesday, the Vought-led CFPB quietly announced in the Federal Register that it was withdrawing the proposed rules, stating that they are not necessary or appropriate at this time. The CFPBs argument against the proposed rules revolved around a single comment left during the public comment period about the proposed rules propriety under the plain text of the FCRA. Data privacy advocates have been fighting for years to make data brokers subject to the FCRAs privacy rules. The withdrawal of the proposal is a victory for large data brokers such as Acxiom and Epsilon, for the consumer websites that sell data, and for the vast digital advertising ecosystem that uses the data to target ads. While many consumers are unaware of the vast personal data marketplace centered around data brokers, privacy advocates immediately saw the death of the proposed rules as a major setback. The data broker industry is out of controldata brokers threaten our privacy, national security, physical safety, and economic security every day, said Electronic Privacy Information Center law fellow Caroline Kraczon in a statement Tuesday. The CFPBs withdrawal of the proposed rules is another attack in the administrations war against consumers on behalf of corporate interests. At the state level, California, New Jersey, and Vermont have passed legislation giving consumers the right to demand that data brokers delete sensitive personal information about them.
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E-Commerce
Republicans in Congress have been making behind-the-scenes efforts to pass major domestic legislation via the federal budget process. They include potential cuts to Medicaid and extending the 2017 Trump tax cuts. But even though its Congress job to pass a budget and set tax policy, most media outlets have been content to frame key elements of the legislation as being driven not by Congress but by the president. So the news media say that the purpose of the bill is to deliver Trumps agenda or to pass the Trump tax cuts. Many have even adopted President Donald Trumps trademark name for the legislation: his big, beautiful bill. Along with Casey Burgat and SoRelle Wyckoff Gaynor, I am co-author of a textbook titled Congress Explained: Representation and Lawmaking in the First Branch. In that book, it was important to us to highlight Congress clear role as the preeminent lawmaking body in the federal government. But since Trumps inauguration, Congress has ceded huge swaths of its policymaking responsibility to the president. That makes the medias focus on Trump unsurprising. And theres no denying that Trump has had enormous impact during his first 100 days in office. During that time, Congress has been unwilling to assert itself as an equal branch of government. Beyond policymaking, Congress has been content to hand over many of its core constitutional powers to the executive branch. As a Congress expert who loves the institution and profoundly respects its constitutionally mandated role, this renunciation of responsibility has been difficult to watch. And yet, Congress path to irrelevance as a body of government did not begin in January 2025. It is the result of decades of erosion that created a political culture in which Congress, the first branch of government listed in the Constitution, is relegated to second-class status. The Constitution puts Congress first The 18th-century framers of the Constitution viewed Congress as the foundation of republican governance, deliberately placing it first in Article 1 to underscore its primacy. Congress was assigned the pivotal tasks of lawmaking and budgeting because controlling government finances was seen as essential to limiting executive power and preventing abuses that the framers associated with monarchy. Alternatively, a weak legislature and an imperial executive were precisely what many of the founders feared. With legislative authority in the hands of Congress, power would at least be decentralized among a wide variety of elected leaders from different parts of the country, each of whom would jealously guard their own local interests. But Trumps first 100 days turned the founders original vision on its head, leaving the first branch to play second fiddle. Like most recent presidents, Trump came in with his party in control of the presidency, the House and the Senate. Yet despite the lawmaking power that this governing trifecta can bring, the Republican majorities in Congress have mostly been irrelevant to Trumps agenda. Instead, Congress has relied on Trump and the executive branch to make changes to federal policy and in many cases to reshape the federal government completely. Trump has signed more than 140 executive orders, a pace faster than any president since Franklin D. Roosevelt. The Republican Congress has shown little interest in pushing back on any of them. Trump has also aggressively reorganized, defunded or simply deleted entire agencies, such as the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. These actions have been carried out even though Congress has a clear constitutional authority over the executive branchs budget. Again, Congress has shown little to no interest in reasserting its power, even during recent budget talks. Many causes, no easy solutions Even so, Congress weakening did not begin with Trump. Theres no one culprit but instead a collection of factors that have provided the ineffectual Congress of today. One overriding factor is a process that has unfolded over the past 50 or more years called political nationalization. American politics have become increasingly centered on national issues, parties and figures rather than more local concerns or individuals. This shift has elevated the importance of the president as the symbolic and practical leader of a national party agenda. Simultaneously, it weakens the role of individual members of Congress, who are now more likely to toe the party line than represent local interests. As a result, voters focus more on presidential elections and less on congressional ones, granting the president greater influence and diminishing Congress independent authority. The more Congress polarizes among its members on a party-line basis, the less the public is likely to trust the legitimacy of their opposition to a president. Instead, congressional pushback sometimes as extreme as impeachment can thus be written off not as principled or substantive but as partisan or politicaly motivated to a greater extent than ever before. Congress has also been complicit in giving away its own power. Especially when dealing with a polarized Congress, presidents increasingly steer the ship in budget negotiations, which can lead to more local priorities the ones Congress is supposed to represent being ignored. But rather than Congress staking out positions for itself, as it often did through the turn of the 21st century, political science research has shown that presidential positions on domestic policy increasingly dictate and polarize Congress own positions on policy that hasnt traditionally been divisive, such as funding support for NASA. Congress positions on procedural issues, such as raising the debt ceiling or eliminating the filibuster, also increasingly depend not on bedrock principles but on who occupies the White House. In the realm of foreign policy, Congress has all but abandoned its constitutional power to declare war, settling instead for authorizations of military force that the president wants to assert. These give the commander-in-chief wide latitude over war powers, and both Democratic and Republican presidents have been happy to retain that power. They have used these congressional approvals to engage in extended conflicts such as the Gulf War in the early 1990s and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan a decade later. Whats lost with a weak Congress Americans lose a lot when Congress hands over such drastic power to the executive branch. When individual members of Congress from across the country take a back seat, their districts distinctly local problems are less likely to be addressed with the power and resources that Congress can bring to an issue. Important local perspectives on national issues fail to be represented in Congress. Even members of the same political party represent districts with vastly different economies, demographics and geography. Members are supposed to keep this in mind when legislating on these issues, but presidential control over the process makes that difficult or even impossible. Maybe more importantly, a weak Congress paired with what historian Arthur Schlesinger called the Imperial Presidency is a recipe for an unaccountable president, running wild without the constitutionally provided oversight and checks on power that the founders provided to the people through their representation by the first branch of government. Charlie Hunt is an assistant professor of political science at Boise State University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Category:
E-Commerce
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