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Richard Revesz, director of the Institute for Policy Integrity and professor of law and dean emeritus at NYU School of Law, suggested the GAO's findings provide "yet another example of how the administration is ignoring science and economics in its policy decisions."

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.

“I think all of this will come back to haunt Trump,” says Richard Revesz, director of the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University School of Law. “By making very aggressive use of tools to dismantle the policies of the prior administration, Trump has made it easier for the next administration to do the same. Once the norms are broken, it's easier for the next administration to follow what looks like the new normal.”

Richard L. Revesz, a law professor and director of the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University Law School, said events described in the memo amounted to “uncharted waters” and reflected a broader pattern of the Trump administration’s actions toward inspectors general at other agencies. “The inspectors general are part of a system of ensuring that agencies operate within the law,” Mr. Revesz said. “Every citizen should actually care about that.”

Bethany Davis Noll, who directs NYU’s Institute for Policy Integrity, noted that “Republican-appointed judges are finding against the administration at a similar rate to the Democratic judges.” And these losses at the hands of Republican appointees run the gamut, from immigration to environment to health care. Both the census and DACA cases “went against the administration even though the Supreme Court is majority Republican,” Noll said.

The rulings showed that in key instances Trump's administration has been unable to craft high-profile policies that will stand up in court. The administration has lost 79 out of 85 cases involving federal agencies on deregulatory or policy issues tracked by the Institute for Policy Integrity, a think tank connected to New York University School of Law.

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.

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.”