Tell your Members of Congress: Use the CRA to Repeal Trump Regime Rules & Regulations
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Call Script
My name is __________. I am a constituent, and my zip code is _______. I am a member of Indivisible SF.
The Congressional Review Act (CRA) gives Congress 60-days to overturn racist, destructive, and corrupt rules and regulations promulgated by the Trump regime in its last days of power. That clock is ticking and action needs to commence now. Please use your power under the CRA to revoke the worst of the worst starting with:
DHS: Procedures for Asylum and Withholding of Removal (Docket# 2020-26875). This cruel and racist rule permanently codifies precedents set by Trump's Department of Homeland Security to greatly restrict asylum eligibility and to deny entry to men, women and children fleeing persecution including actions specifically taken to target Latin Americans under threat by political death squads and drug cartel violence.
DoJ: Rule to Eliminate Claims for Title VI Disparate Impact (RIN 1190-NYD). This Department of Justice rule promulgated under Attorney General Barr undercuts the basis for race, gender, sexual-orientation, religion, and national-origin discrimination lawsuits brought under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and sets a precedent for eliminating all discrimination lawsuits under a variety of civil rights laws.
EPA: Strengthening Transparency in Pivotal Science Underlying Significant Regulatory Actions and Influential Scientific Information (Docket# 2020-29179). This deceptive Environmental Protection Agency rule is intended to cripple the EPA's ability to issue health and safety rules and regulations based on proven damage to peoples' health.
Background
The processes for creating, amending, and overturning federal rules and regulations are complex, arcane, and lengthy. To oversimplify, there are four possible ways to overturn or revoke Trump regime rules and regulations:
Presidential executive action. President Biden has issued executive orders suspending or freezing some Trump rules, and he has ordered executive branch departments and agencies to begin a review process.
Congressional Review Act (CRA). Under the CRA, Congress has a 60-day window of opportunity to revoke a recently finalized rule or regulation. That process needs to commence forthwith.
Amend existing or issue new rules or regulations. The various federal departments and agencies must undertake the long, complicated process of revoking, amending, or creating rules and regulations.
Enactment of new law. Congress and the president must enact new laws that revoke, amend, or create new rules, regulations, and policies.
The first two of these tracks (executive action and CRA) can only be applied to rule and regulation subsets, some of which overlap and some of which do not. In other words, some rules and regulations can be overturned by executive action, some by CRA, some by both, and some cannot be revoked by either method (and figuring out which fits into what category is extremely difficult for volunteer amateurs like us). But note that anything accomplished by Biden’s executive action can be undone the same way by whomever comes after him in office, but something overturned by congressional action can only be restored the same way.
So as a practical matter, to undo the damage of the Trump regime we need to press for action on all four fronts: executive action, CRA, agency action, and new legislation. The three rules we are today asking Congress to revoke using the CRA are:
DHS: Procedures for Asylum and Withholding of Removal (Docket# 2020-26875, PDF version RIN-AC42). This cruel and racist rule permanently codifies precedents set by Trump's Department of Justice to greatly restrict asylum eligibility and to deny entry to men, women and children fleeing persecution. Designed by Trump advisor Stephen Miller, an unabashed white-nationalist, these actions were specifically taken to target Latin Americans under threat by political death squads and drug cartel violence. As a practical matter, under these rules, it has become almost impossible for anyone who is from south of our border, Africa, or the Caribbean to successfully petition for asylum.
DoJ: Rule to Eliminate Claims for Title VI Disparate Impact (RIN 1190-NYD). This Department of Justice rule promulgated under Attorney General Barr did not go through normal notice and comment procedures, so information on it is hard to find. It's designed to undercut discrimination lawsuits brought under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Title VI prohibits discrimination by federal, state, and local governments and requires equal access to all government funding, benefits, and services. Prior to Barr's new rule, individual and class action lawsuits claiming that some government policy or program violated Title VI only had to prove that it had a negative disparate impact against nonwhites, women, and other protected classes. Under the new rule, plaintiffs have to prove that the discrimination was intentional. In other words, if the government action didn't explicitly say “white only,” or “no females need apply,” or “except gays and lesbians,” then it cannot be in violation of Title VI. If this pernicious rule is allowed to stand, it sets a precedent for undercutting all other race, gender, religion, sexual-orientation, and national-origin discrimination lawsuits under a variety of civil rights laws.
EPA: Strengthening Transparency in Pivotal Science Underlying Significant Regulatory Actions and Influential Scientific Information (Docket# 2020-29179, PDF version RIN 2080-AA14). This Environmental Protection Agency rule is intended to cripple the EPA's ability to issue health and safety rules based on proven damage to peoples' health. The EPA relies on scientific studies to justify new health/safety rules. Most of those studies are, in part, based on raw data contained in health records. (Similar to the “Erin Brockovich” court case where health records showed that Hexavalent Chromium from a PG&E plant was causing cancer in residents nearby.) This Trump rule requires that the raw data be made public, but doing so would violate the patient-privacy requirement of the HIPAA law, which means that science studies using health data could not be used to justify new health/safety rules. Blocking government regulation of business – even to protect health and safety -- is a core tenet of Republican ideology because for them, corporate profits rule supreme over all other considerations.
Additional References
Tracking the Trump Administration’s “Midnight Regulations” ~ ProPublica