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deregulation
Stop Tyrant Trump's Lawless Attack on the Regulations Keeping Us Safe
Trump deserves Impeachment and Removal from Office. Congress should act now, before more Americans die, get sick, or are injured from the destruction of long-established, critical protections.
Feb 21, 2026
“Deregulation” is an antiseptic word loved by the giant corporations that rule the people. In reality, health and safety “deregulation” spells death, injury, and disease for the American people of all ages and backgrounds. This is especially so with the deranged dictates from the Tyrant Trump, who is happily beholden to his corporate paymasters, who are making him richer by the day.
President Donald Trump’s mindless deregulation mania got underway in January 2025 with his illegal shutting down of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), which has saved lives in poor countries—by providing food, water, medicine, etc.—for a pittance. USAID spends less in a year than the Pentagon spends in a week. International aid groups predict that the ongoing cuts could lead to 9.4 million preventable deaths occurring in poor countries by 2030 unless the vicious and cruel, unlawful Trumpian shutdown is reversed.
It turns out Trump was just warming up for his illegal violence against innocent American families in both blue and red states. He has abolished requirements for the auto industry to limit its emissions and maintain fuel efficiencies. The result: more disease-bearing gases and particulates into the lungs of Americans, including the most vulnerable—children and people suffering from respiratory diseases.
Trump wants to roll back the regulations that would require auto company fleets to average 50 miles per gallon by 2031. In 2024, the US Department of Transportation’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said its proposed vehicle fuel economy standards would save Americans more than $23 billion in fuel costs while reducing pollution.
Rather than faithfully execute federal laws, and ensure the well-being of the people, Dictator Donald is using his position and time in the White House to enrich himself and to get his name on anything he can get away with.
Month after month, Trump is illegally reducing or shutting down lifesaving programs without the required congressional approval. One of his major targets is the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). This month, his puppet EPA head, Lee Zeldin, celebrated the elimination of lethal greenhouse gases from the EPA’s regulatory controls. Zeldin and Trump are in effect telling Americans, “Let them breathe toxic air.” Plus, more climate catastrophes.
Smothering wind and solar projects while boosting the omnicidal polluting oil, gas, and coal production is another way Trump is exposing people to sickening gases and particulates. A corporate cynic once joked, “No problem, you can always refuse to inhale.”
Trump’s treachery toward coal miners, whom he praises, is shocking. He cut the funds for free testing of coal miners’ lungs, often afflicted with the deadly black lung diseases that have taken hundreds of thousands of coal miners’ lives over the past century and a half. We worked to pass the Federal Coal Mine Health and Safety Act of 1969, to control the levels of coal dust causing this disease, but Trump is unraveling it by cutting law enforcement. The Trump administration says it is “reconsidering” the long-awaited proposed silica control regulations. More unnecessary delay. In 2024, Politico reported that “Mine Safety and Health Administration projects that the final rule will avert up to 1,067 deaths and 3,746 silica-related illnesses.”
In his mass firings of federal civil servants, Trump has included the ranks of federal safety inspectors for meat and poultry plants (USDA), for occupational health and safety (OSHA), and specialized areas like you would never imagine—such as nuclear security. Tyrant Trump worsened the potential danger for workers and communities by firing most of the inspectors general—again illegally—who are the powerful watchdogs over federal departments and agencies. Many inspector general positions are still vacant.
In terms of short and long-run perils, Trump’s attacks on scientific research and discovery to reduce or prevent diseases would be enough to give him the grisly record for knowingly letting Americans die. The assault on vaccines, including for contagious diseases, is staggering, led by RFK, Jr., the secretary of Health and Human Services.
RFK, Jr. becomes more extreme by the day. His actions go way beyond any legitimate skepticism of the drug companies. He is going along with officials in states like Florida who are about to ban children’s vaccine mandates, even for polio, measles, and whooping cough. He has severely slashed, without congressional authority, budgets for basic and applied science programs underway at universities and other public institutions. His salvos are resulting in the reduction of families getting their children vaccinated, who, if contagious, could infect their classmates. The so-called powerful medical societies have not risen to their optimal level of resistance to what is fast coming, a green light for epidemics—starting with the resurgence of measles now underway in places like South Carolina.
The crazed Menace-in-Chief wanted to abolish the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and its rescue responses to hyper-hurricanes, floods, and giant wildfires. He recklessly says the states can handle the carnage from such disasters. The real reason is that he doesn’t want to be held responsible for failing to properly respond to such disasters. Remember the criticism of George W. Bush’s response to Katrina?
Again, with Trump, it is all about him, feeding his insatiable MONSTROUS EGO, rather than saving American lives. Recently, tragic events have forced him to reconsider. He is bringing back some of the experts and rescuers he fired from FEMA earlier last year.
Rather than faithfully execute federal laws, and ensure the well-being of the people, Dictator Donald is using his position and time in the White House to enrich himself and to get his name on anything he can get away with—the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the US Institute of Peace, the US Treasury Department’s relief checks during Covid-19, the federal investment accounts, special visas, and a discount drug program. (See the February 16, 2026, article in the New York Times by Peter Baker titled, A Superman, Jedi and Pope).
Chronically lying; threatening violence against his opponents and people abroad; slandering anyone he feels like via the compliant mass media, including journalists and editors; and generally wrecking America as a serial law violator, Trump deserves to be told, “YOU’RE FIRED.” (This was his favorite TV show catchphrase). Trump deserves Impeachment and Removal from Office. Congress should act now, before more Americans die, get sick, or are injured from the destruction of long-established, critical protections under both Republican and Democratic administrations.
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'Patently False': Trump Official Blasted Over Claim That CFTC Has Power to Oversee Prediction Markets
The Trump family stands to make big money from the total deregulation of “prediction markets.” A key official now claims they can only be overseen by a federal agency in bed with industry CEOs.
Feb 20, 2026
As President Donald Trump plans to profit from his own "prediction" betting app, his administration is claiming that sole regulatory oversight of the burgeoning gambling industry belongs to an agency advised by executives from the multibillion-dollar betting companies themselves. Critics say it's totally illegal.
On Tuesday, Mike Selig, the chair of the Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), announced that the agency had filed a brief attempting to fight "an onslaught of state-led litigation" against companies like Polymarket, Kalshi, Crypto.com, and other apps.
States have alleged that these apps—which allow users to earn money by making accurate predictions on sports and other events—should be regulated similarly to gambling apps, which are subject to licensing requirements, age restrictions, and tax obligations.
But the brief filed by Selig asserts that the CFTC, which has much looser regulations, has "exclusive jurisdiction" over the prediction apps, which he referred to as "derivatives markets"—a term for venues where people trade financial contracts backed by stocks, bonds, or commodities.
"American prediction markets aren’t new. They have been regulated by the CFTC for more than two decades and serve legitimate economic purposes," he said. "These markets have changed the way people consume news, monitor events, [and] engage in politics, and can be more accurate than competing products."
"Congress gave the CFTC comprehensive authority over any contract based on a commodity, and the legal definition of a commodity is very broad," he continued.
Being regulated by CFTC is an obvious boon to the betting companies, because it essentially means they'll be regulating themselves.
As The Lever noted, Selig's statement came just days after he'd "recruited top executives from those same companies—including leaders from Polymarket, Kalshi, Crypto.com, DraftKings, and FanDuel—to help advise regulators on how to 'develop clear rules of the road for the Golden Age of American financial markets.'"
It's not merely a corporate giveaway, but also an apparent act of brazen self-dealing for the Trump family, whose media company just months ago partnered with Crypto.com to launch its own prediction platform called "Truth Predict."
It just so happens that Crypto.com's parent company also donated $30 million to Trump's super PAC in 2025. Meanwhile, Donald Trump Jr. is an investor and unpaid adviser to Polymarket and a paid adviser to Kalshi.
Prediction betting apps, which allow users to make money predicting political events, have faced accusations of insider trading from those who may have foreknowledge of the Trump administration's activities.
In January, a user created a new account and bet $32,000 that Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro would be out of power by the end of the month. Within hours, Trump had launched an operation to kidnap the president, netting the user a $436,000 payday.
Just days later, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt drew suspicion when she abruptly looked up at the clock and ended a press conference just seconds before a Kalshi bet marked it to conclude, which allowed those who bet it would not go over time to win 50 times what they'd wagered. The White House denied any insider trading, calling it "100% Fake News."
While prediction markets have become the toast of the Trump administration, the push for near-total deregulation has even some Republicans worried.
Senate Agriculture Chair John Boozman (R-Ark.), whose committee oversees the CFTC, said on Wednesday that he'd be speaking with Selig about his announcement.
“This is an area that just caught fire. I don’t think anybody expected it to grow at the rate that it has,” Boozman said. “But there is concern; it’s the Wild West. There’s not much regulation.”
Democrats, meanwhile, argued that Selig was asserting authority that didn't exist.
"This is patently false," wrote Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) in a response to Selig's announcement on social media. "Congress has not given the exclusive power to the CFTC to regulate prediction markets. He just made this up out of thin air because the gambling companies that back Trump wanted him to."
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) added that "Trump’s CFTC chair is trying to strip states of their authority to regulate gambling within their borders and hamstring their ability to protect Americans from getting ripped off."
Some states are still pushing ahead as usual. In an act of defiance to the administration, the same day as Selig's announcement, gaming regulators in Nevada appeared to thumb their nose at the CFTC by filing a lawsuit seeking to block Kalshi from operating sports betting in the state.
“Its continued operation harms the state and the public every day and poses an existential threat to the state’s gaming industry,” Jessica Whalen, chief deputy solicitor general for the attorney general’s office, wrote in the filing. “Kalshi has continued to dramatically expand its business, rather than attempting to maintain any kind of status quo.”
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Corporate Polluters Running Rampant Under Trump as EPA Enforcement 'Dying a Quick Death'
“Administrator Zeldin is removing all incentives for big polluters to follow the law and turning a blind eye to those who suffer from the impacts of pollution.”
Jan 22, 2026
The Trump administration settled just 15 of the illegal pollution cases referred by the US Environmental Protection Agency in the first year of President Donald Trump's second term in the White House, according to data compiled by a government watchdog—the latest evidence that Trump officials are placing corporate profits above the EPA's mission to "protect human health and the environment."
In the report, The Collapse of Environmental Enforcement Under Trump's EPA, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) noted Thursday that in the first year of former President Joe Biden's administration, 71 cases referred by the EPA were prosecuted by the US Department of Justice (DOJ).
“Under [EPA Administrator] Lee Zeldin, anti-pollution enforcement is dying a quick death,” said Tim Whitehouse, executive director of PEER and a former enforcement attorney at EPA.
The DOJ lodged just one environmental consent decree in a case regarding a statutory violation of the Clean Air Act from the day Trump was inaugurated just over a year ago until now—signaling that the agency "virtually stopped enforcing" the landmark law that regulates air pollution.
"Enforcing the Clean Air Act means going after violators within the oil, gas, petrochemical, coal, and motor vehicle industries that account for most air pollution," reads the report. "But these White House favorites will be shielded from any serious enforcement, at least, while Lee Zeldin remains EPA’s administrator."
“For the sake of our health and the environment, Congress and the American people need to push back against Lee Zeldin’s dismantling of EPA’s environmental enforcement program.”
In the first year of his first term, Trump's DOJ settled 26 Clean Air Act cases, even more than the 22 the department prosecuted in Biden's first year.
The report warns that plummeting enforcement actions are likely to contribute to health harms in vulnerable communities located near waterways that are filled with "algae blooms, bacteria, or toxic chemicals" and near energy and chemical industry infrastructure, where people are more likely to suffer asthma attacks and heart disease caused by smog and soot.
“Enforcing environmental laws ensures that polluters are held accountable and prevented from dumping their pollution on others for profit,” said Joanna Citron Day, general counsel for PEER and a former senior counsel at DOJ’s Environmental Enforcement Section. “For the sake of our health and the environment, Congress and the American people need to push back against Lee Zeldin’s dismantling of EPA’s environmental enforcement program.”
EPA's own enforcement and compliance database identifies 2,374 major air pollution sources that have not had a full compliance evaluation in at least five years, and shows that no enforcement action has been taken at more than 400 sources that are marked as a "high priority."
Nearly 900 pollution sources reported to the EPA that they exceeded their wastewater discharge limits at least 50 times in the past two years.
The agency has also repealed its rules limiting carbon pollution from gas-powered cars, arguing that the EPA lacks the authority to regulate carbon.
As public health risks mount, PEER noted, Zeldin is moving forward with plans to stop calculating the health benefits of rules aimed at reducing air pollution, and issued a memo last month detailing a "compliance first" policy emphasizing a "cooperative, industry-friendly approach" to environmental regulation.
“Administrator Zeldin is removing all incentives for big polluters to follow the law," said Whitehouse, "and turning a blind eye to those who suffer from the impacts of pollution.”
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