BE SMART ABOUT is our unfortunate series highlighting examples of those in power who you need to stay informed about so you can share this knowledge and together we can Be Smart and Actively Dissent.
Today we discuss a recent action of Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, who will be a repeat participant in the BE SMART ABOUT series.
In late March with little notice, Trump signed an executive order to revoke the 2014 Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces order President Obama put in place to ensure that companies with federal contracts comply with 14 labor and civil rights laws. The 2014 order was an attempt to keep the worst violators from receiving taxpayer dollars
Congressional Republicans have fought unrelentingly for years to weaken the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, put into place under the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010. The purpose of the CFPB is to promote fairness and transparency for mortgages, credit cards, and other consumer financial products and services. The CFPB was created to provide a single point of accountability for enforcing federal consumer financial laws and protecting consumers in the financial marketplace.
Congress continues to use the Congressional Review Act to end regulations which were put into place under President Obama to benefit citizens and govern corporate behavior, as corporations inherently act for their own financial benefit in spite of any short or long term harm to society.
Promising to "remove every job-killing regulation we can find," Trump said even more regulation-cutting bills were on the way.
If you've ever browsed the internet, you've inevitably viewed things you wouldn't want to admit. Maybe you inadvertently clicked the wrong link and ended up at a website you never meant to view, or clicked on your trusted friend's link in an e-mail that turned out to be very NSFW (it's so commonplace, there's even an acronym for it, Not Safe For Work).
As discussed one week ago on Smart Dissent, on Tuesday an Executive Order was signed which spits in the face of every human or other living organism in the world including billions of future ones.
The Senate has once again turned to the Congressional Review Act, a measure they've been usually nonstop over the past two months to repeal laws issued by the prior administration with only a majority vote. Earlier this week, they approved a bill nearly along party lines to repeal hunting restrictions on national wildlife refuges in Alaska. These restrictions were instituted by the Fish and Wildlife Service in 2016 to protect predator species from hunters.
On March 8th, we shared that the Senate voted 49-48 to eliminate a regulation requiring federal contractors to disclose and correct safety violations.
Again on March 22nd, the Senate voted against worker protections and work place safety, this time by a 50-48 vote. In this case, the vote was to nix an OSHA rule that allowed up to five years to penalize a company for failing to report harmful incidents.
In a celebratory tweet Sunday evening, Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) trumpeted a new law passed by Congress that makes it easier for states to make unemployment benefits subject to drug tests.
The old rule, implemented under former President Barack Obama, mandated that states could only test applicants if they were looking for work in jobs that require regular drug screenings.
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But Democrats have warned that the new law essentially vilifies jobless Americans and plays into the often-false stereotype that unemployed people are more likely to use drugs.
The White House signed an executive order on Monday aiming to "reorganize" the executive branch of government. Titled the "Comprehensive Plan For Reorganizing The Executive Branch," the order seeks to empower the president and his advisers to eliminate federal agencies. Essentially, we have the "destruction of the administrative state" words Steve Bannon used several weeks ago put into direct action.