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Public Citizen Leads the Fight Against Trump’s Dangerous Deregulation
As President Donald Trump’s 100th day in office approaches, Public Citizen is leading the fight against his administration’s deregulatory efforts in the courtroom, in the media, and on Capitol Hill.
“Make no mistake: Trump’s deregulatory blitz from DOGE’s mass firings to dismantle entire agencies to gutting enforcement against corporate criminals will mean more preventable injuries and illnesses, more needless deaths, more consumer scams and ripoffs, more industrial disasters,” said Robert Weissman, co-president of Public Citizen. “These moves are about as inefficient as you could get. On the other hand, they will help boost CEOs’ compensation packages and further skyrocket corporations’ record profits.”
Here are some of the major ways the Trump administration has waged an assault on regulations – and how Public Citizen is fighting back.
Executive Orders
President Trump’s executive orders on deregulation have made clear his intent: to undertake one of the most radical and extreme attacks on public protections that our country has ever seen, all to the benefit of the wealthiest corporations.
On Day One of his administration, Trump rescinded President Biden’s EO 14094 on “Modernizing Regulatory Review,” which reformed the rulemaking process to work in the public interest instead of for corporate special interests. Trump also issued a one-in-ten-out order on regulation. And most recently, he issued an order that directs agencies to repeal rules that are purportedly out of compliance with various Supreme Court decisions, without using the notice-and-comment rulemaking that is required by law.
Right from the start, Public Citizen opposed Trump’s dangerous deregulatory blitz, calling the one-in-ten-out EO a stupid, corrupt, illegal Big Business giveaway, and blasted the early EO on rolling back regulations. Meanwhile, Public Citizen is leading the pushback against the EO on Supreme Court decisions.
OMB and OIRA Leadership
Trump’s picks to implement his deregulatory agenda are mostly partisan ideologues who will stop at nothing to impose their extreme anti-government agenda, even if it means running roughshod over constitutional limits and checks and balances
Trump nominated Russell Vought, staunch deregulation advocate and one of the architects of Project 2025, to head the Office of Management and Budget and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). Vought’s Project 2025 blueprint included policy recommendations that were so extreme and toxic that even President Trump disavowed them on the campaign trail.
Public Citizen lobbied against and called on the Senate to reject Vought’s nomination. As co-chair of the Coalition for Sensible Safeguards, Public Citizen helped build the case against him. And as a result, no Democrats voted to confirm him.
In addition, Public Citizen spoke out against Trump’s nominee to lead the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), Jeffrey Clark – a central figure in the conspiracy to deny and overturn the 2020 election, which resulted in him being formally disbarred. Public Citizen will monitor and hold OIRA accountable if Clark uses his position to further undermine regulations.
Congressional Review Act
Most everyday Americans have never heard of the Congressional Review Act (CRA). But you can be sure every well-connected corporate lobbyist knows what it is and exactly how it works. That’s because the point of the law is to give Congress a special shortcut to repeal regulations that protect the public, all to benefit specific corporations and industries that are lobbying against the rules.
The CRA allows Congress by a simple majority vote in both chambers with limited debate, no possibility of a filibuster, and the president’s signature to overturn recently issued regulations. The CRA includes a carryover period allowing a new Congress to strike down rules issued in the final months of the previous administration. But now Republicans in Congress have started using the CRA in unprecedented ways, targeting policies that are far beyond the law’s reach.
Public Citizen was the first organization to publicly confirm the August 16, 2024 start date for the CRA’s lookback period and first to project that the CRA’s carryover period would likely end in May. Public Citizen also produced one of the first trackers identifying likely CRA targets in the new Congress shortly after the election.
The Coalition for Sensible Safeguards, co-chaired by Public Citizen, has been spearheading the effort to stop Congress from abusing the CRA to target rules that are beyond its reach. Both the Coalition and Public Citizen are tracking CRA resolutions as they are introduced – helping the public understand the harms of striking down these rules and which industries benefit.
Gutting Enforcement
The Trump administration isn’t just rolling back regulations; in many cases they’ve stopped enforcing the law against corporate wrongdoers. In other words, Trump has given corporate America the green light to break the law with impunity by taking agency cops off the beat. The Trump administration has already halted or moved to dismiss enforcement investigations and cases against more than 100 corporations, with more cases against accused corporate criminals being abandoned every week. Public Citizen’s tracker and reports have documented the massive dropoff in enforcement and connected the dots to which corporations, CEOs, and industries have benefited.
Attacks on Independent Agencies
Trump has come up with a new way to assault the regulatory system. For the first time in almost a century, the president has fired commissioners at multiple independent agencies, denying them quorums and the ability to perform core agency functions. This breathtaking power grab is a slap in the face to Congress, which deliberately designed these agencies to be independent of the president. Public Citizen is helping the Coalition for Sensible Safeguards track firings and the quorum status at independent agencies, and was part of a coalition letter condemning Trump’s attacks on these agencies. In addition, Public Citizen argued that Trump unlawfully fired the Federal Trade Commission’s two Democratic commissioners.
DOGE Dismantling Federal Agencies
Right-wing ideologues and activists have long dreamed of shutting down government agencies wholesale and firing government employees en masse. But this has always been a pipe dream, since Congress has never had the votes to shut down protective agencies that are popular with the public. Now, with the Trump Administration ignoring checks and balances and constitutional limits left and right, the moment has come.
The Trump administration has gutted essential federal agencies like USAID, the CFPB, the Departments of Education and Energy, and the Environmental Protection Agency in the name of so-called “government efficiency.”
Public Citizen sued to stop the dismantling of both USAID and the CFPB, and called on the Office of Government Ethics to direct Elon Musk and his agents to desist from any activity related to the CFPB because of his spectacular conflicts of interest. Public Citizen also led the call for a congressional investigation into DOGE’s lawless takeover and sued to ensure DOGE complies with the Federal Advisory Committee Act.
More broadly, Public Citizen put forth an alternative vision for what a government committed to “efficiency” would prioritize instead of deregulation, dismantling agencies, and firing regulators en masse. The report examined the broad record of regulation and showed that major regulations generate overwhelmingly positive economic returns – disproving the notion that DOGE can find social savings through regulatory rollbacks.
Anti-Regulatory Legislation
Not to be outdone, Republicans in Congress have joined Trump’s deregulatory push by introducing and advancing a wide range of anti-regulatory bills. Public Citizen, as co-chair of the Coalition for Sensible Safeguards, helped analyze and lobby against these bills, which include the REINS Act, the Midnight Rules Relief Act, the Separation of Powers Restoration Act, the GOOD Act, and the Reorganizing Government Act, among others. Public Citizen remains committed to ensuring these dangerous bills never become law.
Public Citizen is a nonprofit consumer advocacy organization that champions the public interest in the halls of power. We defend democracy, resist corporate power and work to ensure that government works for the people - not for big corporations. Founded in 1971, we now have 500,000 members and supporters throughout the country.
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'They Were All I Had': Lebanese Father Buries Parents, 4 Daughters Killed by Israeli Bombing
One journalist said that "the massacres are multiplying" as IDF bombing kills hundreds of Lebanese and Palestinian civilians, and US-Israeli strikes kill and wound thousands of Iranians.
Mar 13, 2026
A grieving Lebanese father said he buried his parents, four young daughters, and other relatives on Friday after they were killed by an Israeli airstrike—one of many that have wiped out families in Gaza, Lebanon, and Iran.
"I lost four of my children, four daughters, they were all I had," the unidentified man—whose face and head were visibly injured from what he said was the same Israeli strike—told Al Jadeed TV, an independent Lebanese outlet. "Four daughters: Zainab, Zahraa, Maleeka, and Yasmine."
"And my mother and father," he added. "Praise be to God. God's greatness is abundant."
According to Al Jazeera, the man's brother-in-law and nephew were also killed in the strike.
"The Israeli enemy says every day that it is targeting infrastructure," he told the Qatar-based news network. "Is this the infrastructure?"
It was a devastating scene repeated in other parts of Lebanon, including the south, were a distraught mother on Friday reportedly buried five sons killed by Israeli bombing, and in the Ghobeiry neighborhood of central Beirut earlier this week, when an Israeli airstrike destroyed the home of the Hamdan family, reportedly killing father Ahmad Hamdan, his three daughters, and two grandchildren. As of Tuesday, Hamdan's wife was missing beneath the rubble of their bombed-out home.
As in Gaza—where officials say that more than 2,700 families have been erased from the civil registry during Israel's ongoing genocide and around 6,000 other families have only a single surviving member—entire Lebanese families have been wiped out by Israeli strikes since October 2023.
In one such strike on the Maronite Christian village of Aitou in October 2024, members of four generations of one family were killed, with 22 victims ranging in age from a 4-month-old infant to a 95-year-old great-grandmother.
More than 800,000 Lebanese have also been forcibly displaced by Israel's assault and attendant evacuation orders. On Friday, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), or Doctors Without Borders in English, issued a statement highlighting the war's impact on families.
“We are seeing a similarity to what we saw in the past two and a half years in Gaza: broad evacuation orders, constant displacement of thousands of families, and systematic bombing on densely populated areas,” said MSF Lebanon coordinator Lou Cormack. “After 15 months of a fragile ceasefire that failed to stop the violence in Lebanon, families are once again trapped between fleeing or facing bombs.”
Israel says it is attacking Lebanon to stop Hezbollah rocket and other attacks, which have killed dozens of Israeli civilians and wounded even more.
Journalist Lylla Younes told Democracy Now! on Friday that "the massacres are multiplying" in Lebanon, pointing to an Israeli airstrike on a Sidon home that reportedly killed at least 8 people and wounded at least 9 others.
"We saw Syrian refugees, displaced, already killed; 7 killed in a massacre in Tamnin in the Beqaa Valley; a massive massacre in Nabi Chit, also in the Beqaa Valley, when the Israelis tried to do a nighttime incursion by helicopter," Younes said.
Lebanon's Health Ministry said Friday that an Israeli strike on a health center in Bourj Qalawayh, southern Lebanon killed 12 medics.
Lebanese officials said Friday that 773 people—including 103 children—have been killed by Israeli forces since March 2. This, in addition to Israel’s 2023-25 attacks on Lebanon that killed more than 4,000 people, including nearly 800 women and over 300 children.
In Iran, authorities said more than 1,300 civilians have been killed and over 10,000 others injured by US and Israeli bombing since February 28. More than 200 women and over 200 children have reportedly been killed.
Most of the 175 or more Iranians killed in a February 28 cruise missile strike on a girls' school in Minab—an attack that was almost certainly carried out by the United States—were children, according to Iranian government and medical officials and international investigations.
Israeli attacks on Iran during last year’s 12-Day War also killed more than 1,000 Iranians, including 436 civilians, while Iranian counterstrikes killed 28 people in Israel.
In Gaza, 28 months of Israel's assault—for which the country is facing a genocide case at the International Court of Justice and its prime minister is wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged crimes against humanity—have left more than 250,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing and around 2 million others forcibly displaced, starved, or sickened.
US-led wars in the Middle East, South Asia, and Africa have resulted in the deaths of more than 900,000 people—including over 400,000 civilians—since 2001, according to the Costs of War Project at Brown University's Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs.
Stories from families devastated by Israel's war on Lebanon are as common as they are heartbreaking.
"I was sleeping when the Israeli jet bombed the area," one Lebanese teenager told the independent outlet [comra]. "My father, my mother, my sister-in-law, and her children were killed."
"I saw my father torn to pieces," he added. "I wish I had died instead of seeing my father like that."
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Warren Slams Trump for Iran War Costing 'American Taxpayers $11,500 Per Second'
According to more recent Pentagon figures, it's actually even worse.
Mar 13, 2026
Sen. Elizabeth Warren took President Donald Trump to task on Friday for making life "more expensive" with his war in Iran.
"It's costing American taxpayers $1 billion a day to fund this war," the Massachusetts Democrat said in a video posted to her social media accounts. "That is $11,500 every single second."
This is, of course, not an exact amount. The figure is based on a preliminary estimate provided by Pentagon officials to Congress last week, estimating that the war would cost about $1 billion per day.
And so far, the war has actually been even more expensive than Warren initially claimed.
On Tuesday, according to the New York Times, the Pentagon gave a more comprehensive briefing, telling Congress that just the first six days of the war had exceeded $11.3 billion in cost, which puts the price tag at about $1.88 billion per day. That's nearly $21,800 per second.
The Times noted that this was a low-end estimate and that the pricetag did not include many other costs, including those associated with the buildup of military hardware in the region before the war.
Using just these conservative estimates, a live ticker shows that as of Friday afternoon, the estimated cost of the war that began on February 28 is already fast approaching $19 billion, less than two weeks later.
"If we took the money that Donald Trump is demanding to fund the war with Iran and used that money here at home, instead, we could help cover healthcare costs for millions more Americans all across this country," Warren said.
Indeed, an analysis published last week by the Institute for Policy Studies' National Priorities Project (NPP), based on the $1 billion-per-day figure, found that on an annual basis, the cost of the war is “higher than the appropriated budget of any federal agency except the Pentagon itself."
If all that money were spent domestically, it found, it would be enough to cover the daily costs of federal nutrition assistance for more than 40 million Americans, as well as daily Medicaid costs for the roughly 16 million people expected to lose health coverage due to the Republican budget package that Trump signed into law last year.
As Warren pointed out, calculations of military spending do not even take into account the sharp hikes in gas prices Americans are facing as a result of the war, which has led Iran to retaliate by closing one of the world's largest oil shipment routes, the Strait of Hormuz.
According to the American Automobile Association's (AAA) gas price tracker, US gas prices have leaped to $3.63 per gallon on average as of Friday, up from $2.94 a month ago.
"We haven't seen gas prices jump this much since Russia invaded Ukraine," Warren said. "Some cities in Indiana and Ohio have already seen a jump of over 50 cents a gallon. In Texas and Virginia, prices are up by more than 65 cents."
Citing an image of a Chevron station in Los Angeles posted by a user on TikTok, Warren said: "California is seeing gas prices above $8." According to AAA, the average cost of gas in the state is $5.42.
Despite rising anger from voters—more than 7 in 10 of whom said in a recent Quinnipiac poll that they fear higher oil and gas costs as a result of the war—Trump has said carrying out his objectives in Iran "is far more important than having gasoline prices go up a little bit."
In a post to Truth Social on Thursday, the president framed higher prices as a positive: "The United States is the largest Oil Producer in the World, by far, so when oil prices go up, we make a lot of money," he wrote.
While this may be true for Americans who own oil and gas companies, most do not. For the average American, higher gas prices can raise the cost of transportation sometimes by thousands of dollars per year, cutting into spending on food, rent, medicine, and other essentials.
"For someone who campaigned on lowering costs on day one, Donald Trump is constantly raising the bar for how expensive he can make it to live in this country," Warren said.
Referencing Republican opposition to extending Affordable Care Act subsidies that lowered healthcare premiums for more than 20 million Americans, Warren implored viewers to "never forget that Donald Trump said we just can't afford to lower health care costs this year."
"These are about choices," she said, "and Donald Trump is making the wrong ones."
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Trump EPA Risks Health of Millions With Giveaway to Corporate Polluters That Use Cancer-Causing Gas
"Walking back key regulations for ethylene oxide sterilizer facilities is essentially giving a highly polluting industry a get-out-of-jail-free card," said one campaigner.
Mar 13, 2026
While US Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin on Friday presented a proposed policy change as a demonstration of the Trump administration's commitment to "ensuring lifesaving medical devices remain available," public health advocates warned that relaxing rules on emissions of the cancer-causing gas ethylene oxide puts millions of Americans at risk.
As The New York Times explained: "The move revived a long-running debate about the paradoxical effects of ethylene oxide on public health. While it plays a crucial role in sterilizing lifesaving medical devices like pacemakers and syringes, long-term exposure can cause leukemia and other types of cancer among people who work in or live near medical sterilization facilities."
The EPA proposal would amend the Biden administration's 2024 National Emissions Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants for facilities that use ethylene oxide, which the agency estimated would have eliminated over 90% of dangerous pollution from the gas. The previous policy was cheered by organizations including Earthjustice, which sounded the alarm on Friday.
"The 2024 standards would have delivered enormous public health benefits. EPA knows that ethylene oxide is carcinogenic and determined that sterilizers can install effective and affordable pollution controls," said Earthjustice senior attorney Deena Tumeh. "EPA has no basis to repeal this well-supported rule. By rolling back the rule, the Trump EPA is bending the knee to the sterilizer industry at the expense of millions of people's health."
Darya Minovi, a senior analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists' (UCS) Center for Science and Democracy, similarly stressed that "this dangerous decision puts people across the United States and in Puerto Rico at a higher risk of breathing dangerous fumes known to cause respiratory irritation, nausea, blurred vision, headaches, and various cancers. Children are especially vulnerable to the cancer-causing harms of ethylene oxide exposure."
As Minovi detailed:
According to UCS analysis, nearly 14 million people in the United States live within five miles of at least one commercial sterilization facility, and more than 10,000 schools and childcare facilities fall within those areas. These communities are disproportionately made up of people of color or those who do not speak English as a first language...
This decision is a reckless and self-serving handout to big industry, which asked for this rule to be rolled back. This process sidestepped community input from the start and is an affront to communities that have unknowingly lived with ethylene oxide exposure for decades. These actions show, yet again, that this administration has little to no regard for the health and welfare of working people or any interest in protecting children from exposure to toxic chemicals.
Minovi declared that "ethylene oxide emissions controls need to be strengthened—not dismantled," an argument echoed by Jane Williams, executive director of California Communities Against Toxics and chair of the Sierra Club National Clean Air Team.
"Walking back key regulations for ethylene oxide sterilizer facilities is essentially giving a highly polluting industry a get-out-of-jail-free card. Sterilizers are some of the largest, most toxic chemical manufacturing facilities in the country,” said Williams. "Rather than regressing on key protections, these facilities need even more controls in place to ensure the safety of workers and nearby communities."
People who live near sterilizer facilities also spoke out against the proposed rule, which now faces a 45-day public comment period.
"We understand that industry applied heavy pressure to weaken the previously finalized rule. We also understand that industry remains more concerned with their profits than the lives of those who live near sterilizer facilities, like my community in Laredo," said Tricia Cortez, executive director of Rio Grande International Study Center in Texas.
"Sterilizer facilities like Midwest must be held accountable for their dangerous, cancer-causing emissions," she said. "We need an EPA that works to protect us, the people, not financial interests and corporations that continue to cause so much harm to so many."
Victor Alvarado, founder and coordinator for Comité Diálogo Ambiental, said that "I remember the EPA informing us that Steri-Tech's ethylene oxide emissions in my hometown of Salinas, Puerto Rico, were so high that we had one of the highest rates of toxic air cancer risk in the United States... Eliminating the new protections against ethylene oxide emissions is unjust."
The EPA proposal comes after President Donald Trump in July signed a series of proclamations easing pollution rules for over 100 facilities focused on energy, chemical manufacturing, iron ore processing, and sterile medical equipment. His "regulatory relief," as the Republican called it, applied to dozens of sterilization plants.
The Southern Environmental Law Center and Natural Resources Defense Council responded by filing a federal lawsuit on behalf of CleanAIRE NC, Sustainable Newton, Savannah Riverkeeper, and Virginia Interfaith Power & Light.
"We always knew the presidential exemptions issued last year were part a broader plan to put the interests of corporate polluters above the health and well-being of American families," Sustainable Newton president Maurice Carter said Friday. "But we won't stop fighting to protect our community by demanding commonsense, reasonable measures that even the EPA has said would reduce harmful emissions by 90% and lower cancer risks by 92%."
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