#regulatory-rollback

#regulatory-rollback

Secretary of the U.S Department of Transportation Sean Duffy has a suggestion for better travel this holiday season: have you considered just being in a good mood? That's the message of DOT's new " civility campaign" titled "The Golden Age of Travel Starts with You," and it's meant to address the surge in unruly passenger air travel - even if some might argue it encapsulates the transportation profession's over-focus on personal responsibility over systemic reform in the air and on the ground.

On Wednesday, president Trump announced plans to drastically lower fuel efficiency standards for new cars and pick-up trucks, the New York Times reports, claiming the move will save over $100 billion over the next five years and lower the average price tag of new vehicles by $1,000. But both symbolically and in actual effect, the move would be firmly putting Biden era environmental policy in the rear view mirror, ditching regulations and consumer incentives to encourage the adoption of electric vehicles.

Under the Conservatives' proposals, mandatory ESG disclosures, including a company's carbon footprint, diversity metrics and social governance data, would be made voluntary once again. ESG rules were initially introduced as a voluntary standard, allowing firms to demonstrate transparency around sustainability, workplace culture and board governance. Over the past decade, however, the measures have evolved into complex mandatory frameworks administered by regulators such as the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), HMRC, and Companies House.

For The Verge's exclusive tour of these secretive labs, I watch researchers peer at cell chemistries down to the atomistic level, using electron microscopes. Others work at a larger scale, all the way up to the Megashaker. Inside a cavernous hall, an enormous sliding test chamber envelops one of GM's double-stacked, 205-kilowatt-hour battery packs - the type that powers hulking models like the Cadillac Escalade IQ.

In late July, the President launched his AI action plan. Packaged with three accompanying executive orders, the plan's first order of business is to "remove red tape and onerous regulation," including the overturning of the Biden administration's executive order on AI, which emphasized harm-prevention, guardrails, and government capacity-building. One very specific "guardrail" that the Trump administration has demolished is "woke AI"-AI that is trained to avoid the truth in favor of politically correct shibboleths.

In 2023, truck manufacturers struck a deal with the California Air Resources Board to drastically reduce emissions and invest in electric trucks. This summer, however, several of the companies - Daimler Truck, Volvo Group, Paccar and Traton - backed out of the partnership and sued California, with support from the Trump administration. Now fossil-fuel-aligned corporations are leveraging political connections to weaken oversight, erode environmental protections and entrench their dominance.