From: Courthouse News Service
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“No court has reviewed and said to an agency you have to change something you disseminated because it’s not correct,” U.S. Magistrate Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley said during a motion to dismiss hearing.
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“The government disseminates millions of pieces of information every day,” Corley said. “Do you really think that’s what Congress intended?”
Editor’s Note: President Trump’s Executive Order on Evaluating and Improving the Utility of Federal Advisory Committees is available here.
From: E & E News
More than half of EPA’s science advisory committees could be vulnerable to repeal by the end of the fiscal year under an executive order released Friday.
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Trump’s order also caps the total number of advisory bodies across the government at 350. That’s a sharp decrease from approximately 1,000 total committees at federal agencies at any given time, according to the General Services Administration.
Editor’s Note: See, Unwarranted Deputization: Increased Delegation of Law Enforcement Duties to Financial Institutions Undermines American Competitiveness.
From: Politico
By MATEI ROSCA and PATRICK TEMPLE-WEST
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But with this big step into the tightly regulated world of finance, the company will expose itself to a type of regulatory intrusion that is not common in its traditional realm of online media. Chief among the concerns, according to experts, are the possibilities that Facebook’s global coin could be exposed to money laundering using the company’s main website and its sister platforms WhatsApp and Instagram.
From: The Regulatory Review
Elizabeth Golberg
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EU–U.S. regulatory cooperation has also witnessed some of these limitations. Sectoral agreements including aviation, marine equipment, financial services, and organic farming agreements have shown positive results. Although important, these agreements do not add up to a strategic regulatory cooperation relationship, and horizontal agreements on regulatory cooperation—such as a 1998 mutual recognition agreement—have not generated expected results. As “rule-makers,” the two parties continue to find it difficult to recognize each other’s regulations and regulatory approaches. Even attempts at “soft” cooperation, such as examining the impact of trade in regulatory impact assessments, while having led to modification of both EU guidelines and a U.S. executive order, have not been followed up on in practice.
From: The Regulatory Review
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Agencies must navigate many internal processes to properly establish and participate in a partnership. For example, agency officials carefully vet potential partners for any conflicts of interest or prior misconduct that could reflect poorly on the agency. Agencies also must ensure that their authorizing statutes permit them to engage in activities related to the partnership and that they spend partnership-related funds in a manner consistent with both their appropriations statutes and governmentwide authorities pertaining to grants and procurement.
From: The Regulatory Review
From: The Regulatory Review
Cary Coglianese and Todd Rubin
Federal agencies issue thousands of regulations each year. In making these rules, agencies follow a notice-and-comment process that allows the public to weigh in on new regulatory proposals. These public comments can boost the quality of regulations by giving regulators access to well-informed views and relevant information they might not otherwise have.
From: Forbes
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But a Democratic Congress is unlikely to entertain regulatory reform, and certainly not stoop to working with Trump on it apart from perhaps some half-hearted tweaks accompanying big infrastructure spending. For that reason I have been suggesting a new “iconic” executive order on guidance, since most law is from agencies now, not Congress. In 2018, there were 313 laws passed by Congress and signed by Trump, but 3,368 rules and regulations, not even counting guidance.
From: The Free State Foundation
Posted by Randolph J. May
Jim Tozzi, one of the nation’s foremost experts on regulation, and a “founder” of the notion of centralized executive branch regulatory review, has started a new site to track developments relating to regulation of social media. His new page is here.
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As I say, Jim is one of the “founders” of the modern regulatory reform movement, so whatever he is doing at any time bears watching – and certainly, now, no one denies that potential regulation of social media bear watching.
From: National Review
By Wayne Crews & Ryan Young
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Dark matter can take the form of guidance documents, memoranda, notices, circulars, or even press releases indicating a policy change, such as Labor Department designation of independent contractors. Guidance is not supposed to be legally binding on citizens, or even the issuing agency, yet as the Administrative Conference of the United States has detailed, those who are regulated by agencies have reason to feel obliged to comply with the policy content of such pronouncements.
