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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On Day One of his administration, Trump rescinded President Biden’s EO 14094 on “Modernizing Regulatory Review,” which reformed the rulemaking process to work in the public interest instead of for corporate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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Amnesty Blasts Israeli Death Penalty Bill as 'Institutionalized Discrimination Against Palestinians'
A leader at the human rights group called the proposal "a dangerous and dramatic step backwards and a product of ongoing impunity for Israel’s system of apartheid and its genocide in Gaza."
Nov 11, 2025
As Israel continues its "silent genocide" in the Gaza Strip one month into a supposed ceasefire with Hamas and Israeli settler attacks on Palestinians in the illegally occupied West Bank hit a record high, Amnesty International on Tuesday ripped the advancement of a death penalty bill championed by far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir.
Israel's 120-member Knesset "on Monday evening voted 39-16 in favor of the first reading of a controversial government-backed bill sponsored by Otzma Yehudit MK Limor Son Har-Melech," the Times of Israel reported. "Two other death penalty bills, sponsored by Likud MK Nissim Vaturi and Yisrael Beytenu MK Oded Forer, also passed their first readings 36-15 and 37-14."
Son Har-Melech's bill—which must pass two more readings to become law—would require courts to impose the death penalty on "a person who caused the death of an Israeli citizen deliberately or through indifference, from a motive of racism or hostility against a population, and with the aim of harming the state of Israel and the national revival of the Jewish people in its land."
Both Hamas—which Israel considers a terrorist organization—and the Palestine Liberation Organization slammed the bill, with Palestinian National Council Speaker Rawhi Fattouh calling it "a political, legal, and humanitarian crime," according to Reuters.
Amnesty International's senior director for research, advocacy, policy, and campaigns, Erika Guevara Rosas, said in a statement that "there is no sugarcoating this; a majority of 39 Israeli Knesset members approved in a first reading a bill that effectively mandates courts to impose the death penalty exclusively against Palestinians."
Amnesty opposes the death penalty under all circumstances and tracks such killings annually. The international human rights group has also forcefully spoken out against Israeli abuse of Palestinians, including the genocide in Gaza that has killed over 69,182 people as of Tuesday—the official tally from local health officials that experts warn is likely a significant undercount.
"The international community must exert maximum pressure on the Israeli government to immediately scrap this bill and dismantle all laws and practices that contribute to the system of apartheid against Palestinians."
“Knesset members should be working to abolish the death penalty, not broadening its application," Guevara Rosas argued. "The death penalty is the ultimate cruel, inhuman, and degrading punishment, and an irreversible denial of the right to life. It should not be imposed in any circumstances, let alone weaponized as a blatantly discriminatory tool of state-sanctioned killing, domination, and oppression. Its mandatory imposition and retroactive application would violate clear prohibitions set out under international human rights law and standards on the use of this punishment."
"The shift towards requiring courts to impose the death penalty against Palestinians is a dangerous and dramatic step backwards and a product of ongoing impunity for Israel's system of apartheid and its genocide in Gaza," she continued. "It did not occur in a vacuum. It comes in the context of a drastic increase in the number of unlawful killings of Palestinians, including acts that amount to extrajudicial executions, over the last decade, and a horrific rise of deaths in custody of Palestinians since October 2023."
Guevara Rosas noted that "not only have such acts been greeted with near-total impunity but with legitimacy and support and, at times, glorification. It also comes amidst a climate of incitement to violence against Palestinians as evidenced by the surge in state-backed settler attacks in the occupied West Bank."
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu launched the devastating assault on Gaza in response to the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023. Since then, Israeli soldiers and settlers have also killed more than 1,000 Palestinians in the West Bank, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
Netanyahu is now wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes and crimes against humanity, and Israel faces an ongoing genocide case at the International Court of Justice. The ICJ separately said last year that Israel's occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, is unlawful and must end; the Israeli government has shown no sign of accepting that.
The Amnesty campaigner said Tuesday that "it is additionally concerning that the law authorizes military courts to impose death sentences on civilians, that cannot be commuted, particularly given the unfair nature of the trials held by these courts, which have a conviction rate of over 99% for Palestinian defendants."
As CNN reported Monday:
The UN has previously condemned Israel's military courts in the occupied West Bank, saying that "Palestinians' right to due process guarantees have been violated" for decades, and denounced "the lack of fair trial in the occupied West Bank."
UN experts said last year that, "in the occupied West Bank, the functions of police, investigator, prosecutor, and judge are vested in the same hierarchical institution—the Israeli military."
Pointing to the hanging of Nazi official and Holocaust architect Adolf Eichmann, Guevara Rosas highlighted that "on paper, Israeli law has traditionally restricted the use of the death penalty for exceptional crimes, like genocide and crimes against humanity, and the last court-ordered execution was carried out in 1962."
"The bill's stipulation that courts should impose the death penalty on individuals convicted of nationally motivated murder with the intent of 'harming the state of Israel or the rebirth of the Jewish people' is yet another blatant manifestation of Israel's institutionalized discrimination against Palestinians, a key pillar of Israel’s apartheid system, in law and in practice," she asserted.
"The international community must exert maximum pressure on the Israeli government to immediately scrap this bill and dismantle all laws and practices that contribute to the system of apartheid against Palestinians," she added. "Israeli authorities must ensure Palestinian prisoners and detainees are treated in line with international law, including the prohibition against torture and other ill-treatment, and are provided with fair trial guarantees. They must also take concrete steps towards abolishing the death penalty for all crimes and all people."
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Kansas Editor Hopes $3 Million Payout for Police Raids Stops Future Attacks on Press
"In our democracy, the press is a watchdog against abuse," said Marion County Record publisher Eric Meyer. "If the watchdog itself is the target of abuse, and all it does is roll over, democracy suffers.”
Nov 11, 2025
A Kansas county has agreed to pay $3 million over 2023 police raids of a local newspaper and multiple homes—one of which belonged to its elderly publisher, whose death shortly followed—sparking nationwide alarm over increasing attacks on the free press.
Marion County agreed to pay the seven-figure settlement and issue a formal apology to the publishers of the Marion County Record admitting that wrongdoing had occurred during the August 11, 2023 raids on the paper's newsroom and two homes.
The apology states that the Marion County Sheriff's Office "wishes to express its sincere regrets to Eric and Joan Meyer and Ruth and Ronald Herbel for its participation in the drafting and execution of the Marion Police Department’s search warrants on their homes and the Marion County Record. This likely would not have happened if established law had been reviewed and applied prior to the execution of the warrant."
Bernie Rhodes, an attorney for the Record, told the paper, "This is a first step—but a big step—in making sure that Joan Meyer’s death served a purpose, in making sure that the next crazed cop who thinks they can raid a newsroom understands the consequences are measured in millions of dollars."
Rhodes was referring to the 98-year-old Record co-owner, who was reportedly in good health for her age, but collapsed and died at her home in the immediate aftermath of the raid by Marion police and country sheriff's deputies.
"This is a first step—but a big step—in making sure that Joan Meyer’s death served a purpose."
Eric Meyer, Joan Meyer's son and the current publisher of the Record, said: “The admission of wrongdoing is the most important part. In our democracy, the press is a watchdog against abuse. If the watchdog itself is the target of abuse, and all it does is roll over, democracy suffers.”
According to the Record, awards include:
- $200,000 to Eric Meyer, whose home was raided and two computers and a cellphone seized;
- $250,000 to reporter Deb Gruver, whose cell phone was seized;
- $300,000 to the Record;
- $600,000 to reporter Phyllis Zorn, whose cell phone was seized;
- $650,000 to former vice mayor Ruth Herbel, whose computer and cell phone were seized, and her husband, Ron, whose dementia was aggravated by the raid on their home; and
- $1 million to the estate of Joan Meyer.
Record business manager Cheri Bentz—who suffered aggravation of health conditions following one of the raids—previously settled with the county for $50,000.
Katherine Jacobsen, the US, Canada, and Caribbean program coordinator at the Committee to Protect Journalists, hailed the settlement as "an important win for press freedom amid a growing trend of hostility toward those who hold power to account."
"Journalists must be able to work freely and without fear of having their homes raided and equipment seized due to the overreach of authorities," she added.
The raids—during which police seized the Record‘s electronic equipment, work product, and documentary materials—were conducted with search warrants related to an alleged identity theft investigation.
However, critics—who have called the warrants falsified and invalid—noted that the raids came as the Record investigated sexual misconduct allegations against then-Marion Police Chief Police Gideon Cody. The raids, they say, were motivated by Cody's desire to silence the paper's unfavorable reporting about him.
State District Judge Ryan Rosauer ruled last month that Cody likely committed a felony crime when he instructed a witness with whom he allegedly had an improper romantic relationship to delete text messages they exchanged before, during, and after the raids.
While Cody will not be tried in connection with Meyer's death or the 2023 raids, Rosauer ordered him to stand trial over the deleted texts.
Meyer at the time expressed dismay that Cody wasn't being tried for his mother's death or the raids. He also worried that Cody was being made a scapegoat, as other people and law enforcement agencies were involved in the incident.
Following the announcement of the settlement, Meyer said that "this never has been about money, the key issue always has been that no one is above the law."
"No one can trample on the First and Fourth Amendments for personal or political purposes and get away with it," he continued. "When my mother warned officers that the stress they were putting her under might lead to her death, she called what they were doing Hitler tactics."
"What keeps our democracy from descending as Germany did before World War II is the courage she demonstrated—and we’ve tried to continue—in fighting back," Meyer added.
"This never has been about money, the key issue always has been that no one is above the law."
Five consolidated federal civil rights lawsuits have been filed in the US District Court for the District of Kansas, alleging wrongful death, unlawful searches, retaliation for protected speech, and other claims tied to the raids.
“It’s a shame additional criminal charges aren’t possible,” Meyer said, “but the federal civil cases will do everything they can to discourage future abuses of power.”
Although unable to savor the Record's victory, Joan Meyer presciently told the officers raiding her home, "Boy, are you going to be in trouble."
“She was so right," said Rhodes.
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GOP NYC Councilwoman Openly Dares Mamdani to Arrest Netanyahu With New Year's Invite
Despite Mamdani's campaign pledge, legal experts have consistently cast doubt on a New York City mayor's authority to order the arrest of a foreign leader.
Nov 11, 2025
New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani may have a chance to fulfill one of his campaign promises on his first day of office, although legal experts have repeatedly cast doubt on his power to make it happen.
Republican New York City Councilwoman Inna Vernikov on Tuesday sent a formal invitation to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to speak in New York City on January 1, 2026, while at the same time daring Mamdani to keep his pledge to have him arrested on war crimes charges.
"On January 1, Mamdani will take office," Vernikov wrote in a post on X. "And also on January 1, I look forward to welcoming Bibi to New York City. NY will always stand with Israel, and no radical Marxists with a title can change that."
The International Criminal Court (ICC) last year issued an arrest warrant for Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed during Israel's war in Gaza that has killed at least 69,000 Palestinians.
During his successful mayoral campaign, Mamdani repeatedly said that he would enforce the warrant against Netanyahu should the Israeli leader set foot in his city.
Although Mamdani backed off some of his most strident past statements during the campaign, particularly when it comes to the New York Police Department (NYPD), he doubled down on arresting Netanyahu during a September interview with The New York Times.
"This is a moment where we cannot look to the federal government for leadership," Mamdani told the paper. "This is a moment when cities and states will have to demonstrate what it actually looks like to stand up for our own values, our own people."
However, legal experts who spoke with the Times cast doubt on Mamdani's authority as the mayor of a major American city to arrest a foreign head of government, even if the person in question has been indicted by the ICC.
Among other things, experts said that the NYPD does not have jurisdiction to arrest Netanyahu on international war crimes charges, and the Israeli leader would have to commit some crime in violation of local state or city laws to justify such an action.
Additionally, the US has never been party to the ICC and does not recognize its legal authority.
Matthew Waxman, a professor at Columbia Law School, told the Times that Mamdani's stated determination to arrest Netanyahu was "more a political stunt than a serious law-enforcement policy."
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