Audit, Compliance and Risk Blog

Trump Administration proposes limited cuts in OSHA budget

Posted by Jon Elliott on Fri, Jul 18, 2025

On May 2, the Trump Administration issued its budget proposal for federal Fiscal Year (FY) 2026 (October 1, 2025 through September 30, 2026). The administration proposes a $582,381,000 budget for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), which would be a  7.9% ($49,928,000) decrease from OSHA’s adopted 2025 budget of $632.3 million (the Biden Administration had proposed $655.5 million; I wrote about it HERE). The remainder of this note summarizes the Administration proposal. 

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Tags: OSHA, workplace safety, Trump, Trump Administration, Workplace Safety Guidelines, Regulatory Compliance, Safety Standards, FY 2026 Budget, Federal Budget Proposal, Occupational Safety

Administration proposes massive cuts to EPA

Posted by Jon Elliott on Tue, Jul 08, 2025

The Trump Administration has issued its budget proposal for federal Fiscal Year (FY) 2026 (October 1, 2025 through September 30, 2026), including a 54% cut in the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) budget, from $9.1 billion in FY 2025, to $4.16 billion for FY 2026. Many of the cuts apply to grant programs, and the proposal would cut staffing by 9%, from 14,130 full-time-equivalent employees (FTE) to 12,856. Readers should note that these cuts are comparable to those proposed by President Trump during his first term; EPA’s actual annual budget depends on that adopted by Congress (or a continuing resolution in lieu of an adopted budget). The remainder of this note summarizes EPA’s proposed FY2026 budget, including proposed reductions, drawn from EPA’s “Budget in Brief” (68 pages) and “Justification of Appropriation Estimates” (736 pages). 

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Tags: EPA, RCRA, tsca, Clean Air Act, Environmental Policy, Climate, EPA Regulations, EPA Standards, Trump, Trump Administration, Climate Reporting

Trump administration reworking the Environmental Protection Agency

Posted by Jon Elliott on Tue, Mar 04, 2025

Since returning to office in January, President Trump and his administration have promulgated many actions to reduce and revamp the US federal government, and additional actions focused on specific agencies. I wrote about general approaches to environmental regulation HERE. In addition, The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has been a target of specific directives, and new EPA administrator Lee Zeldin has already announced important policy and procedural changes at his agency. The remainder of this note summarizes EPA-specific changes ordered and/or instituted as of the end of February 2025.

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Tags: EPA, tsca, clean water, Executive Order, Clean Air Act, environmental protection, Environmental Compliance, Trump, Trump Administration, Environmental Protection Agency

How President Trump and the Republican-led Congress make environmental regulatory changes?

Posted by Jon Elliott on Thu, Feb 27, 2025

Incoming President Trump and the Republican majorities in Congress have begun sweeping plans to reverse many of the outgoing Biden Administration’s environmental policies. The timing and practicality of these reversals depends very much on each of the targeted activity’s legal form – law, regulation, Executive Order (EO), or guidance document. They also depend on where each particular target is in the governmental process: a non-binding policy, a proposed regulation subject, a final regulation subject to administrative appeals or court attacks, and a final regulation. President Trump has taken early executive action under each of these sets of situations. I will write about some separately, but the remainder of this note summarizes each general type of situation, with examples of each set out in order ranging from quickest/easiest to most time consuming/difficult. 

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Tags: EHS, sustainability, Executive Order, Environmental Compliance, Policy Change, Trump, Trump Administration, Regulations