Free Republic

President Trump's administration, on orders to kill two regulations for every new one, ripped up the playbook during its first six months, eliminating 16 old rules for every new one, according to top officials. "It's really the beginning of a kind of fundamental regulatory reform and a reorientation of where we're going with regulation," said Neomi Rao, the newly installed administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in the Office of Management and Budget. In a briefing with a handful of reporters, Rao laid out the administration's regulation agenda, declaring, "It's a beginning ... you're going to see...

With President Donald Trump’s nominees on their way to the Senate, labor and employment attorneys say the National Labor Relations Board is poised to roll back regulations with its first Republican majority in nearly a decade. Management-side attorneys and anti-union advocates are hopeful Obama-era regulations will be scuttled in favor of business-friendly practices.

Blue flames are products of extreme heat but “green” flames are products of extreme environmentalism, as we saw last week when fire engulfed London’s Grenfell Tower. From London to California’s Sun Valley, so-called green policies that disregard basic principles of fire safety are sparking deadly infernos. This issue deserves our immediate attention far more than Russian hacking myths and fairytales.The odor of burning plastic filled the air as 250 firefighters rushed to the scene of Grenfell Tower on June 14. But the flames spread too quickly and intensely for even this army of professional flame-stoppers. At least 30 people died,...

From different directions, conservatives have begun to aim their guns at our “administrative state.” Most of the rules we live by aren’t laws passed by Congress or court decisions. Instead, they’re to be found in the thousands of pages in the Code of Federal Regulations or in the interpretative advice found in agency opinion letters and policy statements. The agencies generally exercise their power in secret, and they’re barely accountable to anyone. With formal regulations there’s at least a requirement that public notice be given and comments welcomed before new rules are promulgated. But agencies often provide far more detailed...

The Trump administration announced on Thursday it would be eliminating an obscure rule requiring federal agencies to provide updates on how they will prepare for a bug that infected computers in 2000. In addition to eliminating the Y2K bug rule, agencies will also be eradicating dozens of other paperwork requirements. For example, the Pentagon will not have to file a report each time a small business vendor is paid, which consumes approximately 1,200 man hours, according to Bloomberg. "We're looking for stuff everyone agrees is a complete waste of time," Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney told reporters...

While the Democrats and their media allies attempt to bring down the Trump presidency with a determination reminiscent of Wile E. Coyote’s pursuit of the Road Runner, the president’s efforts to shrink the size and scope of government are producing some very positive economic results. President Trump’s focus on reining in the administrative state has significantly reduced both the number of existing regulations and the output of new regulations, driving business optimism. Unlike policies that increase the oppressiveness of government, policies that incentivize business growth (like deregulation) produce jobs, opportunity and prosperity. It takes real determination to ignore the numbers....

Eleven states, led by California and New York, have sued the Trump administration for failing to finalize energy-efficiency regulations for portable air conditioners, walk-in coolers and other products. The lawsuit, filed on Tuesday, represents the latest front in an escalating legal battle over the remaining pieces of Obama’s climate change legacy — led by a coalition of blue states, which are also fighting attempts to roll back Obama’s Clean Power Plan. The current lawsuit involves the final five in a large batch of rules issued by the Obama administration’s Energy Department, which were left in a curious state of limbo...

Wonder why your flight is late? Why planes keep circling? Why even after you've landed, you sometimes can't deplane? Bad weather plays a role, but flying is also nastier because American airports use 50-year-old technology. This shouldn't surprise us. Government bureaucracies are always slow. That's as true on the tarmac as everywhere else. It's not Federal Aviation Administration workers' fault. They're just following the government rulebook that says you must not change something without getting permission first. You must not buy anything without going through cumbersome acquisitions regulations. The FAA's new NextGen system was designed to make the system more...

Worldwide coal production fell by a record amount in 2016, energy industry analysts reported on Tuesday. According to an annual report from BP, global coal production fell by 6.2 percent in 2016, the largest decline since BP began reporting the total in 1950. The decline was driven by shrinking coal production in the U.S., down 19 percent, and China, down 7.9 percent.

Least terns. A federal lawsuit. Greenpeace. Vandals. Industrious beavers. Angry homeowners. Bureaucratic delays. These were among the obstacles and setbacks that had to be overcome before the Creek Turnpike was built. At one point, the chairman of the Oklahoma Turnpike Authority declared it a “total disaster” and exclaimed: “The Creek Turnpike in Tulsa, God only knows when that’ll be completed,” John Kilpatrick said, as reported by the Tulsa World’s Wayne Greene on Oct. 19, 1990. “If we had it to do all over again, we wouldn’t do that project,” the exasperated Kilpatrick said after federal bureaucrats held up construction of...

House Republicans voted Thursday to replace the 2010 Dodd-Frank law with their own sweeping financial regulatory measure, the Financial Choice Act.The bill passed 233-186, with no Democratic support. One Republican, Walter Jones of North Carolina, voted no.Authored by Rep. Jeb Hensarling of Texas, the conservative chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, the bill is perhaps second only to the healthcare legislation Republicans passed last month in its scope and significance. Like the healthcare bill, it would undo one of Obama's top legislative achievements, the new rules imposed on the financial sector in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis....

While President Donald Trump’s beliefs about global warming remain something of a mystery, his actions make one thing clear: He doesn’t consider it a problem for the federal government to solve. Trump’s recent decision to pull out of the Paris climate deal was just his latest rapid-fire move to weaken or dismantle federal initiatives to reduce carbon emissions, which scientists say are heating the planet to levels that could have disastrous consequences. Trump is waging war against efforts to curb U.S. dependence on fossil fuels. He’s done that through executive orders targeting climate change programs and regulations, massive proposed spending...

President Donald Trump on Friday delivered an infrastructure speech in which he displayed what he said was a $29 million, 70-pound environmental report that state officials paid for to get an 18-mile roadway approved, highlighting the hurdles and paperwork that builders face to start major projects. Trump spoke at the Department of Transportation to conclude a weeklong promotion for his $1 trillion infrastructure plan. The president argued that Americans face bureaucratic challenges and burdensome regulations to get projects approved, arguing for a simpler, streamlined process. To illustrate his point, Trump said he met with state officials responsible for managing infrastructure...

RUSH: Donald Trump is doing good things that nobody knows about. They don’t get reported on. One of the things that Trump’s keeping a promise on is reducing regulations. Washington Examiner. Have you noticed that the economy and the stock market have markedly improved since Trump’s election? Now, there are reasons for this. If the markets were monitored and worried about what’s going on with who’s testifying to what, then the markets would be in a tailspin, but the markets are not looking things like that. “President Trump is winning on one key campaign promise, cutting regulations and virtually eliminating...

Summary My interview with one of the top US telecom legal experts discussing the impact of 2017 FCC regulatory changes in the area of Business Data Services (BDS), or telecom services mostly for businesses or inter-carrier traffic. I recently interview Andrew Lipman, Senior Partner and head of the telecom and media group at Morgan Lewis, an international law firm of 2,000 lawyers and about 30 offices across the US, Europe, and Asia. Andy has been practicing telecom law for over 35 years and his telecom practice, which is global in nature, is one of the largest telecom legal practices in...

Politico reports Sunday: “The push to block, rewrite and delay scores of Obama-era rules may be the [Trump] administration’s biggest untold success.” That declaration comes just one month after Politico mocked President Donald Trump’s efforts to use the Congressional Review Act (CRA) to reverse his predecessor’s rules: none of it, Politco declared, “evoke[d] the drain-the-swamp anti-establishment populism that Trump rode to the presidency.” “Trump’s ardent supporters and detractors alike tend to exaggerate the impact of the 13 rules he’s rescinding, out of more than 20,000 approved under President Obama,” Politico’s Michael Grunwald wrote on April 10, adding: “For the most...

The clock has run out on special rules that allowed Republicans to repeal more than a dozen Obama-era regulations. The GOP-led House and Senate, along with President Donald Trump, wiped 13 regulations off the books, and a 14th is about to be signed into law, using the Congressional Review Act.

In another move to free up domestic energy supplies, President Donald Trump signed an executive order Friday aimed at lifting the Obama administration’s offshore drilling restrictions.For decades, bad policies have blocked access to America’s abundance of domestic resources, yet America has still managed to be a global energy leader. Trump’s executive order, “Implementing an America-First Offshore Energy Strategy,” could unleash further success in the energy sector.The economic potential sitting just off America’s coasts is enormous. The Outer Continental Shelf is awash with natural resources, containing an estimated 86 billion barrels of oil and 420 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.Realizing...

With the overwhelmingly negative media coverage of President Trump, it’s easy to miss all that has already been accomplished by this administration. This first 100 days has been dedicated to quietly but diligently rolling back the tremendous regulatory burdens that was heaped on businesses during the Obama administration, and restoring the rule of law. These accomplishments will soon begin paying dividends for the American people with more and better job opportunities and a growing economy. Just as the previous administration used executive orders to empower the administrative bureaucracies to create policy and heavily regulate the economy, President Trump is using...

It should be the obligation of older citizens to try to improve the prospects for their successors. But, here in California, as seen in a new report issued by the Chapman Center for Demographics and Policy, we seem to have adopted an agenda designed to make things tougher for them.Millennials everywhere face many challenges. The U.S. Census Bureau estimates that, even when working full-time, they earn $2,000 less than the same age group made in 1980. Nationwide, a millennial with a college degree and college debt, according to a recent analysis of Federal Reserve data, earns about the same as...