Overnight Regulation: Consumer chief makes personal plea to Trump to save arbitration rule | Labor Department to appeal ruling against overtime rule | Judge partially blocks transgender ban
Welcome to Overnight Regulation, your daily rundown of news from the federal agencies, Capitol Hill, the courts and beyond. It’s Monday evening and both the House and Senate are in session this week. The GOP is set to unveil its tax bill on Wednesday. But the big story in Washington today is the first set of indictments from special counsel Robert Mueller. Click here for The Hill’s live blog on the Mueller investigation.
THE BIG STORY
The director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has written an unusual plea to President Trump, asking him to save the agency’s rule on forced arbitration.
Richard Cordray wrote what he called a “simple, personal appeal” to Trump, asking him not to sign a resolution from Congress that would kill the CFPB rule.
“Many have told me that I am wasting my time writing this letter — that your mind is made up and your advisors have already made their intentions clear,” Cordray wrote. “But this rule is all about protecting people who simply want to be able to take action together to right the wrongs done to them.”
{mosads}
Cordray states in the letter that he and Trump have never met or spoken, despite their 10 months of overlap in the government.
“I think you really don’t like to see American families, including veterans and service members, get cheated out of their hard-earned money and be left helpless to fight back,” Cordray wrote. “I know that some have made elaborate arguments to pretend like that is not what is happening. But you are a smart man, and I think we both know what is really happening here.”
Trump is widely expected to sign the resolution repealing the rule, which bans banks and credit card companies from blocking customers from suing them in class-action cases. Cordray wrote that he knew he had slim chances of changing Trump’s mind, but felt compelled to try.
ON TAP FOR TUESDAY
The Senate Energy Committee holds a hearing to review “new efficiency opportunities provided by advanced building management and control systems.”
The Senate Commerce Committee will meet to consider nominees, including two to regulatory agencies: Bruce Landsberg to be a member of the National Transportation Safety Board and Raymond Martinez to be administrator of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration.
The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee will hold an oversight hearing on the federal response to the 2017 hurricane season with FEMA Administrator Brock Long. Expect lawmakers to focus on the controversial contract with Whitefish Energy to restore power to Puerto Rico. Officials on Sunday cancelled the deal amid scrutiny over how the tiny company from Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke’s hometown landed the massive contract.
The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee will hold a hearing on the 2020 Census.
REG ROUNDUP
Labor: The Trump administration is going to bat for an Obama-era regulation — sort of. The Labor Department is appealing a Texas judge’s decision to toss out the Obama-era rule that would have extended overtime pay to some 4 millions Americans.
The Labor Department said it filed a notice Monday to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, but will ask the court to hold the appeal in abeyance to give officials time to rewrite the rule.
The department is defending its authority to create the overtime rule, but not the salary limit set by the Obama administration, which it intends to change.
Critics of the rule said it raised the overtime threshold too much and too quickly. It would have forced employers to pay overtime to most salaried workers earning less than $47,476 annually; the salary cutoff for overtime pay now stands at $23,660.
In his August ruling, federal District Judge Amos Mazzant said the Labor Department improperly looked at salaries instead of job descriptions when determining whether a worker should be eligible for overtime pay.
The department put out a request in May for public comments on how the rule should be changed and is now reviewing more than 140,000 submissions.
An official said the department is hoping the court will rule the case is moot once the agency rewrites the rule and sets appropriate salary levels to qualify for overtime pay.
Lydia Wheeler has the details here.
Questions about GOP’s deregulatory push: Republicans are not only ending Obama-era regulations, they are hoping to slam the door on future regulatory actions in an unprecedented campaign that could have an impact for years to come.
The GOP Congress has repealed 14 rules from the Obama administration and one new rule from the independent Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) since President Trump took office.
Regulations that have been rolled back include regulatory actions that limited the government’s ability to drug test for unemployment benefits, created new reporting requirements for potential government contractors who have violated labor laws and protected consumer rights to settle disputes with financial institutions in court.
Under the procedure Republicans are using, a federal agency is barred from issuing a “substantially similar” regulation in the future without an act of Congress.
Whether the GOP can rule out future action, however, remains to be seen. The whole process, based on the 1996 Congressional Review Act (CRA), is uncharted territory.
Transgender ban: A federal court has blocked President Trump in part from changing the military’s transgender policy as a case against his ban works its way through court.
A judge on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ruled Monday that Trump’s directive changing the transgender policy back to what it was before June 2016 and banning new transgender recruits from enlisting cannot be enforced while the case is being reviewed in court.
However, the judge denied the plaintiff’s motion to block the ban on funds for gender reassignment surgery.
In a 76-page memo accompanying the ruling, Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly wrote that the plaintiffs are likely to succeed in their case arguing the transgender ban violates their Fifth Amendment right to due process.
“The court finds that a number of factors–including the sheer breadth of the exclusion ordered by the directives, the unusual circumstances surrounding the President’s announcement of them, the fact that the reasons given for them do not appear to be supported by any facts, and the recent rejection of those reasons by the military itself — strongly suggest that Plaintiffs’ Fifth Amendment claim is meritorious,” she wrote.
Rebecca Kheel has the details.
Whitefish probe: The FBI is reportedly investigating the $300 million contract awarded to Whitefish Energy to repair Puerto Rico’s electrical grid in the wake of Hurricane Maria.
People familiar with the matter told The Wall Street Journal that FBI agents from the San Juan field office are examining the deal and how Whitefish and the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA) came to the agreement.
Neither the FBI nor Whitefish responded to requests for comment.
The report comes after Puerto Rico’s state-run electric utility said Sunday it had accepted the governor’s request to immediately cancel its contract with Whitefish, a small Montana-based energy firm headquartered in Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke’s hometown.
During a Sunday press conference, Gov. Ricardo Rosselló called for PREPA to “immediately” cancel the deal, which was made in September, shortly after the hurricane hit the island.
More from Rebecca Savransky and Timothy Cama here.
Campaign finance: A watchdog group is alleging an RV transaction conducted by Ryan Zinke’s congressional campaign could be illegal and has asked the Federal Election Commission to investigate the Interior secretary’s old campaign accounts.
In a 20-page complaint filed Monday, the Campaign Legal Center said the FEC should consider whether Zinke violated campaign finance laws during his campaigns for Congress.
The group pointed to the campaign’s April 2016 purchase of an RV from Zinke’s wife, totaling $59,100, and additional spending for repairs and upkeep. The campaign reported in June that it had sold a 2004 RV to a family friend for $25,000.
The Campaign Legal Center said that transaction means the campaign could have violated finance laws barring campaigns from using funds for personal benefit, either by purchasing a vehicle from Zinke’s wife for above market value or selling it to a family friend for below market value.
Aviation: Senate Democrats are demanding that President Trump’s nominee to serve on a federal safety board clarify his position regarding flight safety rules.
A group of lawmakers, lead by Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), have asked Bruce Landsberg to explain a string of critical statements that he made regarding the 1,500-hour training requirement for commercial airline pilots.
Landsberg, who Trump nominated to be a National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) member, is scheduled to testify in front of the Senate Commerce Committee on Tuesday.
At issue is a law that requires co-pilots to have 1,500 hours of flight training experience under their belt before they can get a license to fly commercial passenger airliners. Congress implemented the rule after a deadly 2009 Colgan Air crash in New York, in which pilot error was to blame.
Melanie Zanona has more on the controversy here.
Airport security: It’s about to get a whole lot tougher to fly to the United States.
U.S.-bound passengers are facing a new wave of stricter airline security measures, from tougher bag checks to questioning from ticket agents.
Airlines were required to have the standards in place by Thursday as part of the Trump administration’s effort to beef up global aviation security and stay on top of evolving terrorism threats.
The protocols, announced this summer, could be an inconvenience for travelers.
But not all the security procedures will be visible to travelers.
Because Halloween is a day away…: A conservative nonprofit ran a Halloween-themed TV ad on Monday urging President Trump to fire two Obama-era holdovers it dubbed the “zombie regulators.”
The ad from Americans for Limited Government says it’s time that Trump showed the door to Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director Richard Cordray and Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Mel Watt.
“The Obama zombie regulators are threatening the Trump agenda,” the ad says with pictures of a zombified Cordray and Watt.
Lydia Wheeler with more on the ad.
Environment: In case you missed it… A federal appeals court Friday halted implementation of a portion of an Obama administration regulation that set emissions-reduction standards for trucks’ trailers.
In a brief order regarding the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) rule, the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia said that a trailer industry group “has satisfied the stringent requirements for a stay pending court review.”
At issue is a 2016 regulation that increased fuel efficiency and greenhouse gas standards for heavy-duty trucks.
For the first time, the EPA asserted authority to regulate the design of trailers. The trailers do not have engines, but their aerodynamics can significantly impact the efficiency of the truck-trailer combination.
The standards were due to take effect Jan. 1. The Trump administration is considering repealing the trailer portion of the rule, among other pieces.
Obama administration.
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