Power

Trump has quietly appointed 71 people to dismantle government regulations

Surprise: nearly a third of the appointees are conflicted in some way.

Power

28
The number of appointees to Trump’s government “deregulation teams” who have conflicts of interest.
Power

Trump has quietly appointed 71 people to dismantle government regulations

Surprise: nearly a third of the appointees are conflicted in some way.

Donald Trump’s family may be embroiled in a series of horrific controversies, but that isn’t stopping the 45th president from systematically dismantling government regulations wherever possible.

According to a joint report from The New York Times and ProPublica, Trump has quietly appointed 71 individuals to “deregulation teams,” 28 of which are conflicted in some significant way.

From the Times article:

The appointees include lawyers who have represented businesses in cases against government regulators, staff members of political dark money groups, employees of industry-funded organizations opposed to environmental rules and at least three people who were registered to lobby the agencies they now work for.

At the Education Department alone, two members of the deregulation team were most recently employed by pro-charter advocacy groups or operators, and one appointee was an executive handling regulatory issues at a for-profit college operator.

Considering that just days ago Walter Shaub Jr. — the director of the Office of Government Ethics — resigned from his post saying “There isn’t much more I could accomplish at the Office of Government Ethics, given the current situation,” there’s probably some reason to worry that Trump’s appointees may have less than altruistic goals in their regulatory pursuits.