Common Dreams: “It’s clear that Trump doesn’t want the public weighing in on these dangerous deregulatory initiatives,” said Katie Tracy of Public Citizen. On Friday, the General Services Administration—an independent agency that supports the functioning of the government bureaucracy—quietly eliminated a tool known as the POST Application Programming Interface (API) from the Regulations.gov website. Last Monday, organizations that had previously used the POST system received an email from GSA informing them that “as of Friday, the POST method will no longer be allowed for all users with the exception of approved use cases by federal agencies.” As tech reporter Matthew Gault explained on Friday for 404 Media, which first obtained the email:
POST allowed third-party organizations like Fight for the Future, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and Public Citizen to gather comments from their supporters using their own forms and submit them to the government later.
Regulations.gov has been instrumental as a method for people to speak up against terrible government regulations. During the fight over Net Neutrality in 2017, FFTF gathered more than 1.6 million comments about the pending rule and submitted them all to the FCC in one day by POSTing to the API.
While it is still possible to lodge complaints through the website, Katie Tracy, senior regulatory policy advocate at Public Citizen, says that “the tool offered an easier means for the public to provide input by allowing organizations to collect and submit comments on their behalf.” “Now,” Tracy says, “those interested in submitting comments will be forced to navigate the arduous and complicated system on Regulations.gov.” Gault put it more plainly: “The site’s user interface sucks. Users have to track down the pending regulation they want to comment on by name or docket number, click the ‘comment’ button, and then fill out a form, attach a file, provide an email address, provide some personal details, and fight a CAPTCHA.”
See also The New Republic [no paywall] “The Trump administration has essentially stopped enforcement of laws against companies, says Rohit Chopra, who served as the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau during the Biden administration. In an interview on Right Now With Perry Bacon, Chopra explained how Trump and his aides are decimating the agency Chopra once ran, as well as stopping other parts of the government from regulating big businesses. Lawsuits filed by attorneys general in blue states and independent groups are now the best way to rein in corporations, he argued. If Democrats get back in power, they must fully commit to fighting companies that price gouge and engage in anti-competitive behavior, he said. You can watch a video of the interview here.”
