(WASHINGTON, D.C.) – House Judiciary Committee Member Jamie Raskin (D-MD) joined Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial and Administrative Law Chairman David N. Cicilline (D-RI), Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial and Administrative Law Vice Chairman Joe Neguse (D-CO), and ten additional Democratic members of the Judiciary Committee sent a letter seeking answers regarding the Trump Administration’s apparent exploitation of the COVID-19 pandemic and its economic fallout to advance the Administration’s reckless deregulatory agenda. The letter, sent to Office of Management and Budget Acting Director Russell T. Vought, follows last month’s Executive Order citing the COVID-19 pandemic as justification for agencies to rescind, modify, or decrease enforcement of federal regulations.

In their letter, Members wrote, “Instead of addressing this crisis head-on, the Trump Administration appears to be exploiting the chaos of the pandemic by rolling back critical civil rights regulatory protections and environmental safeguards...Controversial in ordinary times, these measures have come as part of a concerted effort by the Administration to ram through a reckless deregulatory agenda while the country copes with a pandemic.”

In addition to Nadler, Cicilline, and Neguse, the letter was signed by Reps. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), Mary Gay Scanlon (D-PA), Sylvia R. Garcia (D-TX), Lucy McBath (D-GA), Ted Deutch (D-FL), Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX), Steve Cohen (D-TN), Henry C. "Hank" Johnson, Jr. (D-GA), and Madeleine Dean (D-PA).

Full text of the letter can be found below and here.

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