Bush Obstructs EPA, OSHA, CDC Regulations

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President Bush has gotten the message that the Democratic Congress isn’t going to stand for further environmental deregulation or politically motivated weird science. Is he negotiating, as he promised to do in his feel-good press conference the day after the election? No, he’s issued an executive order shifting control of such social welfare mainstays as the EPA, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to the White House-controlled Office of Management and Budget.

The executive order requires that “each agency must have a regulatory policy office run by a political appointee.” As the New York Times puts it, “The White House will thus have a gatekeeper in each agency to analyze the costs and the benefits of new rules and to make sure the agencies carry out the president’s priorities.”

The president’s priorities apparently include avoiding regulations that might slow global warming or improve public health. The order requires agencies to prove that the market will not and cannot handle any problems they might try to resolve with legislation. If the order’s deregulatory bias isn’t already evident enough, its implementation will likely fall to Susan Dudley, Administrator of the OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. Dudley is a notorious deregulation zealot. Prior to joining the administration, she led the oil industry-funded Mercatus Center, where she opposed regulations to address such no-brainer problems as smog and arsenic in the water supply.

Just how much damage can Bush do in his remaining 690 days?

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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