Good morning and Happy Friday! Thanks for starting your day with me.
As I was starting into my fridge yesterday afternoon, checking my eggs against the latest recall and trying to remember where I bought my lettuce, I commenced ruminating on deregulation.
Deregulation, in the context of revoking laws and “red tape” to make life easier for corporations, has been a goal of the Republican Party for decades, was one of four tenets making up “Reaganomics,” and often goes hand-in-hand with the idea of making government smaller. Cutting through regulations, red tape, and pointless rules that make corporations jump through hoops sounds great for business, right? Not only does it allow corporations to be more nimble, but, theoretically, it also brings down costs for businesses and, concurrently, consumers.
Ronald Reagan deregulated a lot of things during his two terms in office, most notably banks and financial institutions, which, along with an assist from his successors, led to Wall Street running amok today.
Deregulation of the financial sector was yet another big idea that was supposed to be good for Americans, and it was — for the elite. Begun in earnest by Reagan, the process was continued under Clinton who declared many of the FDR-era laws "antiquated." He abolished the Glass-Steagall Act, which kept commercial banks from speculating on Wall Street with other people's money. The act was supposed to be a "major achievement that will benefit American consumers, communities and businesses of all sizes." With amazing shortsightedness, Clinton declared at the signing ceremony that we're "modernizing the financial services industry, tearing down these antiquated walls."
Deregulation was in full swing -- always framed as modernization or in the name of efficiency. The prohibition on interstate banking was also removed, allowing for the creation of "too big to fail" banks. In 2000, Congress passed the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which prohibited the regulation of credit default swaps. The elite forgot, however, that short-term efficiency can turn into long-term disaster when the risks in the economic system accumulate. And so we were inching toward the Meltdown of 2008, which wrought havoc among so many members of the middle class.
Reagan also cut back on environmental regulations, slashing both the EPA’s staff and budget, and scaling back enforcement of laws against large-scale polluters. Reagan also enacted Executive Order 12291, which required regulatory agencies to perform a cost-benefit analysis for all major rules. That EO essentially forced agencies to choose business development and profit over the good of the American people.
In my first year of law school, we spent quite a bit of time on the basis of Congress’s power to regulate interstate commerce. Over the course of several weeks, we read dozens of cases in which companies pulled some pretty shady shit to make a profit off an unsuspecting public, like calling dyed animal fat “butter,” selling meat from sick chickens to consumers, and compounding milk with fats and oils that were not dairy-related. Hell, anyone who has read The Jungle (1906) knows exactly why we need food regulation. (Note: Everyone should read The Jungle.)
Sinclair splattered The Jungle with blood and guts as he chronicled the unsanitary conditions inside Chicago’s meatpacking plants. As readers turned the novel’s pages, their stomachs turned as well. Sinclair described walls painted with animal blood and plastered with flesh, rotten beef doctored with chemicals and dead rats and sawdust swept into sausage meat. Workers infected with tuberculosis coughed and spat blood onto floors and used open latrines next to processed meat.
The vivid, nauseating descriptions lent momentum to the pure food movement, which had begun in the 1880s with the work of food scientists such as U.S. Department of Agriculture chief chemist Harvey Washington Wiley. Investigative journalists exposed rampant packaging fraud, such as brick dust sold as cinnamon and tinted corn syrup marketed as honey.
Much like vaccines eradicating deadly illnesses, it seems that decades of having our food inspected before it’s sold to us has caused much of the American public — specifically, the right — to believe that such inspections and regulations are no longer necessary.
Since Trump took office in January of 2025, and subsequently installed RFK Jr. as head of HHS (which oversees the FDA), America’s food supply has been compromised. This summer, we’ve had to deal with more than 23,000 cases of cyclosporiasis in 47 states, resulting in two deaths (so far), which the Trump administration tried to blame on Taco Bell, rather than Taylor Farms, a produce company that invested heavily in MAGA causes and deregulation. Since April, we’ve seen recalls of eggs (Salmonella), blueberries (E. coli), cookies (undeclared allergens), jalapeños (Salmonella), fruit pouches (plaster), soup (spoilage), frozen berries (Hepatitis A), powdered baby formula (Botulism), Ricotta (Listeria), and God only knows what else. I got tired halfway through looking them all up.
Are we healthy again, yet?
How did we get here? Well, food safety inspections hit historic lows under the Trump administration, thanks to DOGE, federal layoffs, and putting a guy in charge of HHS who drinks milk that comes directly from a cow’s filthy nether regions.
From ProPublica:
About two dozen current and former Food and Drug Administration officials blame the pullback on deep staffing cuts under the Trump administration. The stark reduction marks a dramatic shift in oversight at a time when the United States has never been more dependent on foreign food, which accounts for the vast majority of the nation’s seafood and more than half its fresh fruit.
The stakes are high: Foreign products have been increasingly linked to outbreaks of foodborne illness. In recent years, FDA investigators have uncovered disturbing lapses in facilities producing food bound for American supermarkets. In Indonesia, cookie factory workers hauled dough in soiled buckets. In China, seafood processors slid crawfish along cracked, stained conveyor belts. Investigators have reported crawling insects, dripping pipes and fake testing data purporting to show food products were pathogen free.
***
Inspections began to decline early in the administration, after 65% of the staff in the FDA divisions responsible for coordinating travel and budgets left or were fired in the name of government efficiency.
In July of 2025, Trump’s FDA quietly stopped testing food for Campylobacter, Cyclospora, Listeria, Shigella, Vibrio, and Yersinia, leaving only the tests for E. Coli and Salmonella in place. A bad move, considering that in addition to all the damage Cyclospora has already caused via lettuce, it has now migrated to other fresh produce.
Republicans love to trot out “deregulation” as a panacea to keep Wall Street happy, but the fact is that we don’t have these regulations in place, for food or otherwise, just to give federal bureaucrats something to do. These laws and rules exist for a reason, and it’s generally to keep people safe and to keep corporations from harming people in pursuit of profits.
Consider the Ford Pinto case, in which Ford Motor Company, in the early 1970s, decided that it was cheaper to settle lawsuits with Pinto owners who were injured by their infamously exploding cars than to pay $11 per vehicle to fix the faulty gas tanks, even though they estimated that decision would result in 180 serious burn injuries and 180 burn deaths. Or the notorious McDonald’s coffee case, wherein the fast food giant ignored more than 700 complaints that their coffee was causing serious burns in order to save money on buying coffee beans.
The bottom line is that we simply can’t trust businesses to do the right thing. Hence, laws and regulations. And while I’m sure the giant corporations that hold so much sway over our quality of life would love to operate freely and unfettered, it’s the job of the government to hold the line to keep people safe.
Yesterday, the Trump administration announced a plan to “deregulate” Head Start, one of the truly good programs this country has ever put in place.
The Trump administration announced on Thursday that it would move forward with a plan to eliminate hundreds of federal regulations governing Head Start, in what advocates fear is a push to gut a 61-year-old antipoverty program aimed at helping the nation’s most impoverished young children.
The proposed plan, detailed in earlier reporting by The New York Times, would remove most of Head Start’s 133 pages of federal requirements for math and literacy curricula, class sizes, medical screenings, home visits. Even a requirement that children brush their teeth after meals would end.
Administration officials say the changes will save money by lifting onerous requirements, serve more children by increasing class sizes, and give states and municipalities more control in how the program is run. Critics say the changes will gut the core components of a singular institution that has served 30 million young children with high classroom standards and more health and antipoverty services than most states provide.
There are lots of places the federal government could save money — not starting meaningless foreign wars, allowing the Trump family to raid the federal treasury, and paying off the January 6ers would be a great start. We could stop renovating things and covering all of Washington, DC in gold leaf. We could force billionaires and corporations to pay their fair share of taxes. But if there’s one place we don’t need the specter of deregulation, it’s in a classroom intended to raise small children out of poverty.
In other news: Trump tries to get around SCOTUS on birthright citizenship; ICE agents are who we thought they were; The US might be running out of ammo; and The High Note.
Let’s go.
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Yeah, you can’t do that
Yesterday, Donald Trump issued two new executive orders designed to get around the Supreme Court’s most recent decision upholding birthright citizenship, which is explicitly laid out in the 14th Amendment.
President Trump signed two executive orders on Thursday targeting birthright citizenship. He and his top advisers said one was intended to prevent non-U.S. citizens from giving birth in the United States in an attempt to gain citizenship for their newborns. The second order expands the definition of who does not qualify for birthright citizenship.
Yeah… aren’t all Trump’s kids, by his own definition, technically anchor babies? Not Tiffani, I guess, but the rest sure are. Ivana wasn’t a citizen until 1988, and Melania was naturalized in 2006.
All of that aside, none of this is legal, and it’s going to be impossible to enforce. In introducing the orders, Stephen Miller said, “The President is using his authority as commander in chief to sign an executive order using the new ruling the Supreme Court issued to expand the definition of people who are ineligible for birthright citizenship.” I laughed out loud, because being commander in chief applies to the US military and only the US military. It certainly doesn’t give Trump the power to unilaterally amend the Constitution in defiance of the Supreme Court.
Thankfully, the ACLU is already on it.
In a statement, the ACLU blasted the president’s attempted end-run around the supreme court decision and predicted that the new orders will not survive a court challenge.
“The Supreme Court already decided this issue: Birthright citizenship is guaranteed by the Constitution. No additional executive order can change the meaning of the Constitution,” the deputy director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, Cody Wofsy, said. “Any executive order that tries to rewrite birthright citizenship will meet the same fate as the last one”.
ICE agents are as bad as we thought
The Ohio Immigrant Alliance has published a report delving into the disturbing history of 59 “sexually and physically abusive ICE and CBP agents.” As many of us have long suspected, violent offenders are running amok inside DHS agencies and on our streets.
An analysis of ICE and Border Patrol agents who committed sexual or violent offenses against women and children found an alarming pattern: 85% committed sex offenses, nearly two-thirds targeted children, and many remained employed for decades despite red flags.
This report presents that data, examines how failures in vetting, training, accountability, and institutional culture enabled this crisis, and proposes reforms for Congress and law enforcement at every level.
Among the findings are these:
It’s not surprising, but it’s harrowing to see it spelled out in black and white.
Nobody panic, but we might be running out of missiles
Hey, this is going great.
NEW YORK/WASHINGTON, Aug 4 (Reuters) - The U.S. Army has used up much of its global stockpile of highly accurate long-range missiles during its five-month war with Iran, according to three people familiar with the data, raising concerns about the military's readiness for future conflicts.
The missiles are principally the Army's surface-to-surface weapons, known as Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) and Precision Strike Missiles (PrSM). The U.S. has used "virtually all" of these weapons, according to two of the sources.
Keep in mind, these particular missiles cost about $1 million each, but sure, let’s save money by deregulating Head Start.
According to WaPo, Trump and Pete Hegseth clashed over the shortage at Camp David last weekend, though Trump has since denied both the argument with Hegseth and that a shortage exists.
“President Donald Trump’s frustration over the Iran war boiled over at Camp David last week, where he demanded answers from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on why he had apparently been misled on extreme munitions shortages that now threaten to limit military options with Iran, two people familiar with the exchange told The Washington Post.”
***
“The shortages, particularly in long-range guided missiles and air-defense interceptors, have been part of the reason Trump has pulled back from launching additional massive strikes against Iran in recent days, one of the sources said.
Trump said Monday that he had ordered and subsequently called off “the biggest attack since World War II,” pending claims of new negotiations over the Strait of Hormuz.”
At least we won’t be able to bomb any civilians for a while.
The High Note
Each Day, I do my best to leave you with a smile on your face, a song in your heart, and the will to fight another day.
Okay, we have a trailer for the Chris Hansen “To Catch a Predator” movie, Primetime. As someone who regularly took part in “TCAP Sundays” in the early days of Twitter, I can’t decide whether this is hilarious or not. You be the judge.
All I know is that I can’t stop laughing at Robert Pattinson as Chris Hansen. Everything that comes out of A24 is either amazing or super-weird, with no in-between.
Hey, survive and advance out there today, kids. Don’t let the bastards get you down. Have a great weekend!
