In the News

Critics say Mr. Trump is overstating the impact of his deregulations, in part because the administration almost always loses court challenges to its actions. More than 88% of the administration’s deregulatory efforts through this week were blocked in court or withdrawn after a lawsuit, according to the Institute for Policy Integrity, a nonpartisan think tank at the New York University School of Law.

The administration’s efforts to ease environmental regulations have worsened the impact of the pandemic, according to a new report. The analysis from the Institute for Policy Integrity at the New York University School of Law pointed to the administration’s rollback of multiple regulations related to air pollution, power plants, ozone and particulate matter, HuffPost reports. It said the administration’s efforts were a “harbinger of the U.S. outbreak” and “exacerbated” many factors of the pandemic. 

New York University’s Institute for Policy Integrity (IPI), which has often been critical of President Donald Trump’s environmental rollbacks, is seeking to document the administration’s deregulatory efforts that have worsened the health risks of the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly in vulnerable communities. IPI’s July 14 report, “Weakening Our Defenses,” cites “multiple government failures” as responsible for the “staggering spread of COVID-19” in the U.S. as well as its devastating health and economic tolls.

President Donald Trump's ongoing efforts to roll back regulations designed to protect the environment, workers, and public health likely played a significant role in the spread of Covid-19 in the United States.That's according to a new report released Tuesday by New York University School of Law's Institute for Policy Integrity (IPI), a nonpartisan policy think tank. The 45-page report titled "Weakening Our Defenses" details how Trump's far-reaching deregulatory push has exacerbated several major risk factors for contracting and spreading Covid-19, such as high levels of air pollution, hazardous working conditions, and lack of adequate health insurance.

Regulatory rollbacks across the entire executive branch have put more Americans at risk for the coronavirus, according to a new report from New York University's Institute for Policy Integrity. "This administration's problematic policies have increased our collective susceptibility to COVID-19, and the consequences are getting more dire by the day," said Jason Schwartz, who authored the report, called "Weakening Our Defenses: How the Trump Administration's Deregulatory Push Has Exacerbated the COVID-19 Pandemic."

The Trump administration’s relentless push to gut dozens of environmental and public health safeguards worsened the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, a new report from New York University School of Law found. The lengthy analysis, which NYU’s Institute for Policy Integrity published Tuesday, comes as President Donald Trump and his team act as if the coronavirus threat is waning ― when the U.S. outbreak stands out as one of the worst in the world ― and as they work to finalize a frenzy of environmental rollbacks ahead of November’s election. “The administration’s problematic policies have increased our collective susceptibility to Covid-19, and the consequences are getting more dire by the day,” Jason Schwartz, legal director at the Institute for Policy Integrity and author of the report, said in a statement.

Even if interest groups battle rollbacks in court, federal officials could just stop enforcing some regulations, said New York University School of Law professor Richard Revesz. “Agencies have a fair amount of discretion of when to bring enforcement actions,” he said.

“At a time when more than 100,000 Americans have died from Covid and we know about this connection, the Trump administration is going to put in place some analytical techniques that will make it easier for them to kill more Americans,” said Richard Revesz, an expert on environmental law at New York University. Mr. Revesz and others said the change also defies the intent of the landmark Clean Air Act of 1970.

In a recent essay, William Yeatman, a research fellow at the Cato Institute, takes issue with the central conclusions of our recent essay in The Regulatory Review, “Regulatory Rollbacks Have Changed the Nature of Presidential Power.” Yeatman’s discussion of our piece is flawed. Most importantly, he wrongly attributes to us the view that the Trump Administration “has been too effective in rolling back Obama-era rules.” The claim in our article is far narrower and very different.

Richard Revesz of NYU’s School of Law and director of the Institute for Policy Integrity filed the amicus brief on behalf of Maryland and Delaware. He said the ruling made clear the EPA is obligated to prevent states from harming the air quality of their neighboring states when emissions travel downwind and “can’t cite cost as a reason to ignore the law altogether.”