SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
Politics
Experts Warn Trump Attack on Nuclear Regulator Raises Disaster Risk
"Simply put," said one critic, "the U.S. nuclear industry will fail if safety is not made a priority."
May 23, 2025
U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday signed a series of executive orders that will overhaul the independent federal agency that regulates the nation's nuclear power plants in order to speed the construction of new fissile reactors—a move that experts warned will increase safety risks.
According to a White House statement, Trump's directives "will usher in a nuclear energy renaissance," in part by allowing Department of Energy laboratories to conduct nuclear reactor design testing, green-lighting reactor construction on federal lands, and lifting regulatory barriers "by requiring the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to issue timely licensing decisions."
The Trump administration is seeking to shorten the yearslong NRC process of approving new licenses for nuclear power plants and reactors to withinf 18 months.
"If you aren't independent of political and industry influence, then you are at risk of an accident."
White House Office of Science and Technology Director Michael Kratsios said Friday that "over the last 30 years, we stopped building nuclear reactors in America—that ends now."
"We are restoring a strong American nuclear industrial base, rebuilding a secure and sovereign domestic nuclear fuel supply chain, and leading the world towards a future fueled by American nuclear energy," he added.
However, the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) warned that the executive orders will result in "all but nullifying" the NRC's regulatory process, "undermining the independent federal agency's ability to develop and enforce safety and security requirements for commercial nuclear facilities."
"This push by the Trump administration to usurp much of the agency's autonomy as they seek to fast-ttrack the construction of nuclear plants will weaken critical, independent oversight of the U.S. nuclear industry and poses significant safety and security risks to the public," UCS added.
Edwin Lyman, director of nuclear power safety at the UCS, said, "Simply put, the U.S. nuclear industry will fail if safety is not made a priority."
"By fatally compromising the independence and integrity of the NRC, and by encouraging pathways for nuclear deployment that bypass the regulator entirely, the Trump administration is virtually guaranteeing that this country will see a serious accident or other radiological release that will affect the health, safety, and livelihoods of millions," Lyman added. "Such a disaster will destroy public trust in nuclear power and cause other nations to reject U.S. nuclear technology for decades to come."
Friday's executive orders follow reporting earlier this month by NPR that revealed the Trump administration has tightened control over the NRC, in part by compelling the agency to send proposed reactor safety rules to the White House for review and possible editing.
Allison Macfarlane, who was nominated to head the NRC during the Obama administration, called the move "the end of independence of the agency."
"If you aren't independent of political and industry influence, then you are at risk of an accident," Macfarlane warned.
On the first day of his second term, Trump also signed executive orders declaring a dubious "national energy emergency" and directing federal agencies to find ways to reduce regulatory roadblocks to "unleashing American energy," including by boosting fossil fuels and nuclear power.
The rapid advancement and adoption of artificial intelligence systems is creating a tremendous need for energy that proponents say can be met by nuclear power. The Three Mile Island nuclear plant—the site of the worst nuclear accident in U.S. history—is being revived with funding from Microsoft, while Google parent company Alphabet, online retail giant Amazon, and Facebook owner Meta are among the competitors also investing in nuclear energy.
"Do we really want to create more radioactive waste to power the often dubious and questionable uses of AI?" Johanna Neumann, Environment America Research & Policy Center's senior director of the Campaign for 100% Renewable Energy, asked in December.
"Big Tech should recommit to solutions that not only work but pose less risk to our environment and health," Neumann added.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Critics Say RFK's MAHA Report Offers 'Half-Baked Finger-Pointing' Instead of Real Policy Solutions
"To be meaningful, the findings of the report must translate into concrete actions that truly advance a healthier, more sustainable food system for America's farmers and consumers."
May 23, 2025
Hours after Republicans in the U.S. House passed a budget reconciliation package Thursday that would slash hundreds of billions of dollars in healthcare and federal food assistance programs for low-income Americans, the nation's top health agency released a highly anticipated report on chronic diseases in children—one that had nothing to say about the impacts those cuts will have on millions of children and instead offered a litany of complaints about families' lifestyles, vaccines, and "overmedicalization," with few solutions.
Led by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the so-called "Make America Healthy Again" Commission released The MAHA Report, urging the federal government to "act decisively" to reverse "the childhood chronic disease crisis by confronting its root causes—not just its symptoms."
But longtime campaigners in the food safety realm said that while the report's partial focus on the wide use of pesticides, herbicides, and other chemicals—many of which are banned in Europe—is a positive step, the document gave little indication that Kennedy and other Trump administration officials plan to listen to scientists who warn that these chemicals are linked to cancer, birth defects, and immune function.
As Civil Eatsreported in April, dozens of GOP lawmakers wrote to Kennedy and other commission members including Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin, warning that a push to limit pesticides in food was being pushed by "activist groups promoting misguided and sometimes malicious policies masquerading as health solutions."
"Protecting children's health and building a healthy food system must trump pesticide corporations' profits," said George Kimbrell, legal director of Center for Food Safety, in a Thursday statement. "Policy and governance must be based on sound science and reject fearmongering and lobbying influence alleging that these toxins are needed for a healthy food system or agricultural economy."
The report also includes numerous mentions of health guidelines and standards in Europe, but Zeldin was clear in a call with reporters as the document was released that ensuring the health of American children "cannot happen through a European mandate system that stifles growth."
The commission suggested that U.S. farmers will continue to use 300 millions of pounds of glyphosate and 70 million pounds of atrazine per year—herbicides that, respectively, have been the subject of thousands of lawsuits filed by cancer patients and contaminate the drinking water of 40 million Americans.
While the World Health Organization has classified glyphosate as a probable carcinogen and numerous countries have banned the weed-killer, the MAHA Commission said "human studies are limited" regarding glyphosate and similar products. The report allowed that "a selection of research studies... have noted a range of possible health effects."
Even that language was enough to anger agricultural groups and the Republican politicians who are allied with them, with the American Soybean Association accusing the commission of "glaring misinformation and anti-farmer findings" on Friday.
Kimbrell said the report "falls woefully short of providing any next steps in how the government is going to stop this health epidemic from continuing."
"To be meaningful, the findings of the report must translate into concrete actions that truly advance a healthier, more sustainable food system for America's farmers and consumers," he said.
The report also makes no mention of factory farming and its link to antibiotic resistance via corporate farmers' widespread antibiotic use; the leading causes of death for children in the U.S., gun violence and car accidents; and dental cavities, which is one of the most common chronic health problems in children.
Kennedy has spearheaded an effort to remove fluoride from public drinking water, saying in the report that exposure to high levels of fluoride is linked to low IQ in children. Widespread community water fluoridation has been linked to a sharp decrease in tooth decay among children, with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention hailing the practice, now used in 60% of the country, as a major public health achievement.
Medical organizations have said concerns about fluoridation raised by Kennedy and others are unfounded.
During his confirmation hearings, Kennedy dismissed the idea that healthcare should be a human right—falsely claiming Americans prefer the for-profit health insurance industry to government-run systems that have been shown to be far less costly and have better outcomes. The report also makes no mention of the harms of tying healthcare to profit, even as it compared U.S. life expectancy and healthcare costs unfavorably to those in other wealthy nations.
In a video posted to social media, dietician Jessica Knurick emphasized that Kennedy is right to point out the nation's "chronic disease problem."
"But he gets the causes and the solutions completely wrong," she said. "His causes are not evidence-based and they play into the idea of scientific and regulatory corruption to erode trust in science. And his solutions distract from evidence-based solutions that could actually help while actively undermining public health."
With the MAHA Report focusing heavily on sedentary lifestyles and low-income people's reliance on ultraprocessed, inexpensive food, Food and Water Watch (FWW) senior policy analyst Rebecca Wolf said the document amounts to "half-baked finger-pointing that blames the sick."
"Improving public health in America cannot happen without reigning in corporate control. It is a grave mistake to exclude Big Ag from culpability," said Wolf. "Any administration serious about public health must strictly regulate the corporations putting our food and water supplies at risk."
Policy solutions that went ignored in the report, said Wolf, include:
- Closing the "Generally Recognized as Safe" loophole that allows corporations to self-certify the safety of food additives without Food and Drug Administration approval;
- Canceling plans to roll back existing regulations for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS;
- Fully funding and staffing food safety agencies, which have been slashed by the Trump administration; and
- Stopping state legislatures from passing laws called "Cancer Gag Act legislation" by opponents, which would limit pesticide manufacturer liability in health-related lawsuits.
"The report is right to highlight the health impacts of ultraprocessed foods, microplastics, PFAS, and pesticides," said FWW, "but falls short of directing real policy recommendations capable of reigning in corporate polluters."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Lina Khan Calls Republican FTC's Decision to Drop PepsiCo Suit 'Disturbing Behavior'
"This meritless dismissal is a win for monopolists and billionaires," said the senior legal counsel for the American Economic Liberties Project.
May 23, 2025
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission on Thursday dismissed a price discrimination lawsuit against the drink and food giant PepsiCo, a move that former FTC Chair Lina Khan, who served under former President Joe Biden, called "disturbing behavior."
The lawsuit, filed only a few days before U.S. President Donald Trump returned to the White House, accused PepsiCo of providing a big box retailer customer, Walmart, with pricing advantages, while increasing prices for competing customers and retailers.
"This lawsuit would've protected families from paying higher prices at the grocery store and stopped conduct that squeezes small businesses and communities across America," Khan wrote on X on Thursday. "Dismissing it is a gift to giant retailers as they gear up to hike prices."
The three members of the FTC, all Republicans, voted 3-0 to drop the suit. Current FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson, who was named chairman by Trump, cast the lawsuit as a "nakedly political effort to commit this administration to pursuing little more than a hunch that Pepsi had violated the law." He also said that the FTC under Biden "rushed to authorize the case." Ferguson also opposed the lawsuit when the FTC first voted to pursue it.
Antimonopoly groups were quick to criticize Thursday's move.
"This meritless dismissal is a win for monopolists and billionaires," said Lee Hepner, senior legal counsel at the American Economic Liberties Project, in a statement on Thursday. "Adding insult to injury, the agency dropped the case just one day before the parties were due to justify extensive redactions in the complaint, denying the public the ability to review the facts and judge the merits for themselves. This is a corporate pardon for Walmart and PepsiCo."
Open Markets legal director Sandeep Vaheesan said the move illustrates that despite their rhetoric, the current FTC commissioners are "not willing to faithfully apply the law enacted by Congress."
Stacy Mitchell, co-director at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, which is an advocate for independent businesses, called it "effectively an endorsement of the predatory tactics Walmart uses to crush local grocery sores, create food deserts, and drive up prices."
The agency had sued PepsiCo under the Robinson-Patman Act, a 1936 law intended to prevent price discrimination but has been little used in recent decades.
The announcement of the dropped lawsuit came the same day it was reported that the FTC is investigating the progressive watchdog group Media Matters for America over potential coordination with other groups, including the Global Alliance for Responsible Media, which was a World Federation of Advertiser initiative. Media Matters president Angelo Carusone confirmed in a statement to Axios that the investigation is over claims Media Matters and other groups coordinated advertising boycotts of the social media site X.
X's owner, billionaire Elon Musk, who has played a core role in the Trump administration, has ongoing lawsuits against both the World Federation of Advertisers and Media Matters.
Keep ReadingShow Less
These Six Republicans Stand to Profit After Breaking Their Vow to Protect Medicaid
"Millions of Americans will see their healthcare, food, and education costs skyrocket, all so House Republicans can hand themselves and their wealthiest donors a huge tax break."
May 22, 2025
Just five weeks after pledging that they would not support the Republican Party's budget reconciliation package if it included cuts to Medicaid, six GOP lawmakers ultimately did just that on Thursday morning—and an analysis by government watchdog Accountable.US suggested they voted for the legislation to benefit themselves, despite the suffering it would cause for their constituents.
Along with cutting Medicaid for close to 14 million Americans and slashing nearly $300 billion in food assistance, the bill Republicans voted on in the early morning hours after weeks of deliberation included a tax policy proposal to expand a provision called Section 199A, which was previously introduced during the first Trump administration as part of the GOP's original law providing tax breaks for corporations and the wealthy.
The bill that passed in the House Thursday would raise the percentage of qualifying business income—such as rental income—people can deduct from their taxes from 20% to 23%. The provision is now set to expire at the end of the year.
If it's extended as written in the reconciliation bill, Accountable.US identified six Republican House members who could directly benefit from the expansion of the "pass-through deduction": Reps. Rob Bresnahan of Pennsylvania, Rob Wittman of Virginia, Jen Kiggans of Virginia, Young Kim of California, Juan Ciscomani of Arizona, and Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey.
Those six lawmakers were among the 12 who last month wrote to GOP leaders to say they represent "districts with high rates of constituents who depend on Medicaid" and to "reiterate our strong support for this program that ensures our constituents have reliable healthcare."
"We cannot and will not support a final reconciliation bill that includes any reduction in Medicaid coverage for vulnerable populations," wrote the lawmakers last month. "Cuts to Medicaid also threaten the viability of hospitals, nursing homes, and safety-net providers, nationwide. Many hospitals—particularly in rural and underserved areas—rely heavily on Medicaid funding, with some receiving over half their revenue from the program alone."
"It is the peak of hypocrisy that the loudest and most vocal opponents of Medicaid cuts cowered in a matter of days in favor of a bill that will make the largest cuts to Medicaid in modern history—all to pay for lower taxes for the richest."
With the six Republican members poised to earn thousands more each year from the pass-through income deduction, those concerns appeared to have evaporated on Thursday.
"It is the peak of hypocrisy that the loudest and most vocal opponents of Medicaid cuts cowered in a matter of days in favor of a bill that will make the largest cuts to Medicaid in modern history—all to pay for lower taxes for the richest," said Tony Carrk, executive director of Accountable.US. "Even worse, those very members stand to financially gain from those tax cuts, while their own constituents lose their healthcare. Their votes aren't just a flip-flop; they are a betrayal to hardworking Americans everywhere who will be worse off because of this bill."
Accountable's Cash in Congress project found that for the 2023 tax filing year, the six members of Congress earned a combined $327,000 in pass-through income, according to financial disclosures.
Bresnahan stands to benefit the most from the extension of Section 199A, The American Prospectreported, as he earned at least $137,000 from rental properties. Out of the six lawmakers, he also represents the most Medicaid beneficiaries: 230,000.
Wittman reported $105,000 or more in pass-through rental income, and represents 125,000 people who receive Medicaid. Kiggans reported $50,000 and represents 130,000 people who use the healthcare program for low-income Americans.
All together, reported The American Prospect, the lawmakers represent 971,000 Medicaid beneficiaries who could be affected by a work requirement amendment that would go into effect at the end of 2026 and other provisions.
"Millions of Americans will see their healthcare, food, and education costs skyrocket, all so House Republicans can hand themselves and their wealthiest donors a huge tax break," said Accountable. "The only 'winners' in this bill are the billionaires that paid for it."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular