Who Knew? Mindless And Corrupt Deregulation Apparently Kills People
from the this-must-be-the-innovative-utopia-we-were-promised dept
You might recall that a central pillar of the Trump administration during the last election season was that a second Trump term would “take aim at big tech,” protect the little guy, rein in corporate power, and even “continue the legacy of antitrust enforcers like Lina Khan.” The press was filled with endless stories credibly parroting these sorts of claims, all day, everyday.
More than a year later and it’s nothing but corruption and cronyism as far as the eye can see.
The Trump administration and its courts have effectively destroyed regulatory independence, federal consumer protection, U.S. cybersecurity standards, and public safety oversight. Massive, terrible mergers are rubber stamped with reckless abandon, provided companies show authoritarian leadership they’re racist and feckless enough.
A 2025 report by nonprofit consumer advocacy firm Public Citizen calculated that the Trump administration has frozen regulatory action for at least 165 corporations under investigation for a wide variety of abuses, crimes, and fraud. And a more recent study by the nonprofit watchdog Environmental Integrity Project has found that EPA environmental protection has effectively ground to a halt:
“By analyzing a range of federal court and administrative data, the nonprofit Environmental Integrity Project found that civil lawsuits filed by the US Department of Justice in cases referred by the Environmental Protection Agency dropped to just 16 in the first 12 months after Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20, 2025. That is 76 percent less than in the first year of the Biden administration.”
Of course, this didn’t just begin with Trumpism. For the better part of the last fifty years years “free market Libertarians” and Republicans (often with help from corrupt Democrats) have waged a brutal war on the regulatory state, insisting repeatedly that the path toward innovative utopia in all industries required that we defund, understaff, and legally undermine regulators at every turn.
It’s worth noting the majority of these folks weren’t arguing for reasonable and modest regulation, they were arguing, repeatedly, for no meaningful oversight of corporate power whatsoever (see: telecom). When the reality of that unpopular policy choice surfaces in the form of mass suffering, financial hardship, and death, a lot of these very vocal opinion havers routinely get mysteriously fucking quiet.
When it comes to most regulatory agencies, including the EPA, the assault has been multi-pronged. Numerous rulings (like Loper Bright) by the extremist U.S. Supreme Court have utterly demolished regulatory autonomy. And if an enforcement action against a corporation for predatory behavior somehow is brought, Republicans at the 5th and 6th Circuits ensure it can’t go anywhere.
At the same time, you have clowns like Elon Musk waging open war on essential government employees under the pretense of innovative efficiencies, ensuring that agencies don’t have the staff to do their job even if they wanted to:
“Part of the decline in lawsuits against polluters could be due to the lack of staff to carry them out, experts say. According to an analysis from E&E News, at least a third of lawyers in the Justice Department’s environment division have left in the past year. Meanwhile, the EPA in 2025 laid off hundreds of employees who monitored pollution that could hurt human health.”
While authoritarians have taken this all to an entirely new level, the path to this point was paved by no limit of anti-governance propaganda by countless U.S. Libertarian “free market” types, who, from my vantage point, have faced zero reputational or financial harm from leading the country down the path to what will be some extremely bloody and ugly outcomes.
It’s not really possible to fathom the real-world impact of the complete collapse of the federal regulatory state across labor, consumer protection, environmental enforcement, and public safety is going to have in the decades to come. But fortunately for the individuals and companies that made all of this possible, our corporate press really doesn’t seem all that interested in covering the story with any zeal.
Even outlets that do cover this story tend to downplay the impact of the destruction of regulatory oversight structures that took generations to build, with explanations that lull the reader into a deep fucking slumber long before any serious point is made.
It will take decades to repair the damage this era of open corruption has caused, if we ever do. Some state enforcement will attempt to step in and fill the void, but that will prove erratic at best, and nonexistent in many MAGA-dominated states.
Even if we can dislodge ourselves from Trumpism, I suspect many of the most likely candidates for a Democratic Presidency (Gavin Newsom, Mark Kelly) somehow won’t find the time to ensure that restoring regulatory integrity is as big of a priority as restoring corporate research grants. Forcing boxed-in, understaffed, and underfunded regulators to take action on piecemeal issues only after large swaths of people have avoidably died in, once again, completely avoidable and terrible ways.
That’s all depressing as hell, but I’m bored of people normalizing or downplaying the real-world impact of some of the worst corruption this country has ever seen (which is truly saying something).
Filed Under: consumer protection, consumers, deregulation, environment, labor, regulatory state
Comments on “Who Knew? Mindless And Corrupt Deregulation Apparently Kills People”
It's a feature, not a bug
Billionaires have realized that they don’t need 300M+ of us; they only need about 1% of that to service them. Everyone else is expendable.
And so they’ve used their enormous economic power to turn the GOP into a death cult: every action (or inaction) is designed to kill. Well, kill everyone but them. Safe in their disaster-proof armored refuges, they intend to survive all this and be the last ones standing on a dying planet.
Had someone written this 25 years ago I would have labeled it as paranoid speculation. But today? Not so much. And if you’re considering applying that label, then I ask you: what, exactly, would they be doing differently if this was not their goal?
Re:
These failson billionaires are like Thierry Meyssan, closet neo-Nazis with fucked up agendas.
Sorry for bringing up someone so vile. But as someone who lost a coworker to Flight 77, that name looms in my mind.
“Clean air, Clean water, safe food, worker protections, and safe infrastructure? No we can’t have any of that,” said the pro-life party. “Now shut up and enjoy your mercury.”
If it was up to those pulling the strings we would still have lead paint and leaded gas. Asbestos would be the go to insulation. Laws would have been passed to protect to polluters rather than make them clean up their act. We didn’t magically clean up out waterways and smog. It took environmental regulations that some think are no longer needed.
Re:
Industry saw what happened with CFCs and vowed ‘never again!’ Not that they will take more care and aoend more time researchng the impact of what they release into the environment, but the global movement to address the problem. They want to make sure that never happens again because it cost them money to enact.
Keep an eye on the sudden claims that atmospheric aluminium is no biggie that keep popping up now Starlink is a thing and using the atmosphere as a wastrel incinerator on the regular. We’re getting to see the denial movement being built in real time.
Re: Lets see.
Japan and the ROC, decided it didnt like Pollution so Cut heavy manufacturing. They can Now fish off the Coast lines.
Columbia river, End point into the Ocean, Still has Dumping problems, and Needles Running out into the Ocean.
I would love to make a Suggestion to Trump that SHOULD make many happy. USA, Corps into Export and import, Love to play with National prices. They Equalize them With the Prices they are selling Our Meats and grains and corn. NOT counting Plumped up 30 pound Turkey’s, And 2 cases of Egg contamination that REQUIRED all eggs to be destroyed And Prices to go thru the roof.
The USA is 1 of 3 nations that Export Beef, the most. Also the same for IMPORTING IT BACK. Same idea as the Oil industry. Getting Double paid. They raise national Prices so that the Other nations Cant find Cheaper prices.
IF they would Separate, National and Exported Prices, A very large chare of Groceries would Drop in Prices.
The Rules for Capitalism are not being met. They do not and will not Compete with anyone. They dont have to.
Credibly or credulously?
While I agree with the overall thrust of this argument, it feels kind of like popcorn. It doesn’t demonstrate specific damage, through statistics OR through examples. It also doesn’t really dig into political theory. The end result is something like beer the morning after a party – flat and flavorless.
It just kills me because I know you can do better. This feels like a low-effort from the comments, not an article from one of the regular journalists here.
Re: noticed the same thing
I had the same reaction, the title made me think there was something more specific than what he actually talked about.
Oddly enough the general political camp Karl’s pointing the finger at has been very critical of Trump with respect to things like tariffs, immigration policy, and separation of powers.
The writers at The Unpopulist stand out in this regard.
Hey, red food dye is being replaced, tho’! Surely that will balance out everything else.
Re:
Highly processed foods that increase liver fat are as dangerous as the other things but their not actually banned yet.
Re: re
Go eat that 30 pound Turkey, Which nature has never seen.
Go find the Dark meat in Chicken and Turkey’s.
Re: Re:
It doesn’t necessarily matter if something appears “in nature” — nature makes plenty of unhealthy shit all on its own. That’s part of why Appeal to Nature is a fallacy.
What matters is HOW it was made. Selective breeding? Maybe okay. Growth hormones and unhealthy feed? Probably not okay.