Environmentalists say the Trump administration’s just-announced monthslong delay of its self-imposed deadline for finalizing a rollback of an Obama-era rule tightening facility safety Risk Management Plan (RMP) requirements may suggest the plan is “dead in the water” as it signals ongoing legal doubts about undoing the changes.
November 15, 2026
David Reynolds
David Reynolds was a reporter with Inside Washington until May 2019.
Archived Articles
Worker advocates are urging OSHA to bolster protections for whistleblowers who report health and safety violations by speeding investigations of claims and supporting Democrats' proposals to improve protections, though a contractor says it would be more efficient to first identify whether some whistleblowers are just disgruntled employees.
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A labor union attorney says environmental statutes' citizen suit provisions could give workers a powerful tool in their fight to reduce their exposures to hazardous chemicals, because laws such as the Clean Air Act impose much greater penalties for violations that increase exposures compared to workplace safety statutes.
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The White House has completed review of a draft final rule that will remove or revise duplicative, unnecessary, and inconsistent safety and health standards though the measure is not expected to include an Obama-era plan to expand when OSHA’s safety standard applies to power equipment that is shut off for repairs.
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Groups representing major industries are urging EPA to quickly finalize its rollback of an Obama administration rule that strengthened the Risk Management Plan (RMP) facility accident prevention program, fearing expected litigation over the rollback could extend beyond some of the existing RMP rule’s compliance deadlines.
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Environmentalists are charging that the Trump administration’s process for approving new chemicals under the recently revised toxics law without restrictions fails to adequately address risks to workers, building on long-standing opposition to the new chemicals review process as Acting EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler has pledged revisions.
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The Labor Council for Latin American Advancement (LCLAA) and environmental groups are suing to compel the Trump administration to finalize EPA’s Obama-era proposed ban on use of methylene chloride in paint strippers, claiming that the June 2016 revised toxics law requires the agency to protect workers from unreasonable risks.
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A federal district judge is ordering the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB) to issue within one year a final rule requiring chemical facilities to report their accidental releases, backing health and public interest groups’ claims that CSB has unreasonably delayed the rule that could inform worker protections and is mandated by law.
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The Trump administration has dropped planned rollbacks of Obama-era EPA pesticide rules intended to provide farmworkers with similar protections to workers in industries regulated by OSHA, part of a deal with Democratic senators to win confirmation for the Trump administration’s pick to lead EPA’s toxics office.
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The Supreme Court is facing calls to end its long-standing precedent deferring to OSHA and other agencies' interpretations of their own rules, with a critic's opening legal brief urging the justices to scrap the “egregiously wrong” precedent because it allows regulators to change rules on a whim without notice-and-comment rulemaking.
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