Top Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee are pressing Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. to provide details on the department’s staffing and program cuts -- including a study of cancer rates in firefighters -- questioning the department’s authority to make such changes.
September 16, 2026
Labor unions and Democratic lawmakers are mounting an aggressive campaign to reinstate the work force slashed by the Trump administration at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), with lawmakers raising concerns in congressional hearings and unions suing to ensure “the whole of NIOSH is functional.”
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Ahead of OSHA’s public hearing next month on a Biden-era proposed heat illness prevention rule, House Republican lawmakers and industry representatives are pointing to the rule as a key example of agency overreach, questioning both its utility and feasibility for industries operating across diverse climates and conditions.
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The AFL-CIO is calling on Congress to “immediately intervene” to require the Trump administration to reinstate all staff at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) as well as defend a federal budget that maintains and increases funding for job safety agencies like OSHA.
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Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV) is seeking the reinstatement of both the functions and staff of a recently gutted National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) facility in West Virginia, arguing the cuts endanger the health and safety of coal miners and undermine decades of public health research.
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Democrats are introducing legislation to strengthen health and safety protections for miners following the gutting of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), which focuses in part on research related to black lung and innovative technologies to keep mines safe.
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President Donald Trump has nominated Deputy Solicitor of Labor Jonathan Snare to serve on the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission (OSHRC), but without an additional nomination and confirmation to the panel, OSHRC will continue to lack a quorum to address the backlog of cases before it.
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Republicans on the House workforce committee are urging the Labor Department (DOL) to withdraw proposed OSHA regulations and rescind final Biden-era ones as part of a broader push to overhaul “burdensome” regulations from the department.
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Senate Democrats are raising concerns over whether the Trump administration will provide adequate funding for OSHA, given prior Republican lawmakers’ attempts to slash the agency’s budget, pressing Keith Sonderling on the issue at his confirmation hearing to be Labor Department (DOL) deputy secretary.
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Several members of California OSHA’s (Cal/OSHA) standards board and labor representatives are strongly criticizing a bill pending in Congress that would eliminate federal OSHA, charging such a move would be disastrous for workers across the country and weaken state protections even in states that have their own regulatory programs such as the Golden State.
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