Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore, Creative Commons 2.0
It has been a busy first few days for the US President.
In addition to the executive order to provide relief from the Affordable Care Act known as ObamaCare, President Trump has taken numerous other steps to undo actions taken by his predecessor and to hamstring federal agencies efforts to regulate businesses and other organizations.
According to The FDA Law Blog, immediately after taking office, the Trump administration set in motion the process to undo numerous regulations issued by the Obama administration. The White House memorandum from Chief of Staff Reince Priebus to all agencies announced a regulatory freeze except in “urgent circumstances relating to health, safety, financial, or national security matters” until a Presidential appointee has reviewed the regulation. The memorandum also demanded the immediate withdrawal of all regulations that had been submitted but not yet published in the Federal Register and required a temporary postponement on all regulations that have already been published but have not yet taken effect.
In related news, the Huffington Post reports that the EPA has frozen all grants and prohibited EPA employees from discussing the freeze. It is not yet clear whether the freeze is temporary or indefinite. EPA grant programs affected by the freeze are listed here.
On Monday, Trump followed this up by signing an executive order announcing a federal hiring freeze.
Trump, however, is not just stopping federal agencies from completing their work and doing their jobs. He is also actively taking actions to change policies he and the GOP disagree with including an anti-abortion order that reinstates Ronald Reagan’s global gag rule which bars international health organizations that receive U.S. funding from mentioning abortion as a family planning option. He has announced that the US is withdrawing from the TPP, announced plans to renegotiate NAFTA and plans to revive orders relating to pipeline projects such as the Keystone Pipeline project and the Dakota Access Pipeline.
The above are only a few of the highlights and more is sure to come.
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