Former Trump campaign head Corey Lewandowski went on Meet the Press today. The host of the show, Chuck Todd, was questioning Lewandowski on the same things everyone else on the Sunday shows had been talking about: the failure of the republican controlled Congress to repeal the ACA, chaos and personnel turnover in the White House, the […]
Author Archives: Brian Wolfman
In recent years, federal courts have been addressing corporate class-action defendants' claims that the federal class-action rule (Rule 23) contains an rigorous "ascertainability" requirement — a supposed need for the plaintiffs to show, at the certification stage (rather than at the remedy phase), that they have a crackerjack method for identifying the class members with […]
Last Friday marked the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's 6th birthday. It celebrated with a report describing what it considers the agency's top 6 accomplishments.These topics are described below, and the specifics are provided after the jump (with links to further information). 1. Our actions have resulted in nearly $12 billion in relief for more than 29 million harmed […]
In Competitive Enterprise Institute v. DOT, by a 2-1 vote, the D.C. Circuit has upheld a Department of Transportation rule banning use of e-cigarettes on commercial passenger flights. The main question was whether Congress's 1987 law making it illegal "to smoke" on certain commercial flights justified a recent regulatory ban on using (or, some might say, […]
This article by AP medical journalist Carla Johnson explains that Trump is not simply letting the Affordable Care Act fail (as he has occasionally pledged to do), but taking affirmative steps to harm the Act by making it harder to sign up for coverage. As the article explains, these actions could, in turn, destabilize markets in […]
The independence of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's director is under challenge in the D.C. Circuit. And the agency's arbitration rule is under siege from corporate America and in Congress. Meanwhile, the agency — because of its independence — keeps very busy doing the work Congress assigned to it. To see what the CFPB is up to, review […]
Peter Lurie — the current FDA associate commissioner for public health strategy and analysis and former deputy director of Public Citizen's Health Research Group — will become the President of the Center for Science in the Public Interest in September. Peter will succeed Mike Jacobson, who co-founded CSPI in 1971. Peter is terrific.
No doubt our readers have heard about the Congressional Budget Office's report on the repeal-only version of Trumpcare (sometimes pushed by Trump and often times pushed by ACA-hater purists). But if you want to actually read it, go here. The two key take-aways on number of people covered and premiums: The number of people who are […]
Given the political and legal controversy over the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's status as an independent agency, and the challenge to its structure pending en banc in the D.C. Circuit (go, for instance, here, here, and here), our readers may be interested in The Genesis of Independent Agencies by Patrick Corrigan and RIchard Revesz. Here is the abstract: The status […]
Two new lawsuits challenge conduct of Trump's "Election Integrity" Commission. ACLU v. Trump maintains that the Commission is meeting in secret and hiding its records in violation of the Federal Advisory Committee Act. Read the complaint here. And then there is Public Citizen v. U.S. Department of the Army, which Public Citizen describes this way: The Privacy Act […]