Biden's Chief Federal Officer For Chemical Safety Has To Also Clean Up Toxic Admin Mess Trump Left
A few days after the inauguration of President Joe Biden, Michal Freedhoff settled into her cramped home office in a suburb of Washington, D.C., to get to work as the nation’s new top chemical regulator. It was a key role, charged with protecting Americans from toxic substances used in agriculture and manufacturing. But going back decades, the office had gained a reputation for being captured by the companies it regulated. Under the Trump administration, the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention, like many federal agencies, had taken a hard turn away from science. Important new rules, years in the making, had been delayed or diluted.
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When Freedhoff dug in, what she found was often just … weird. Like a pile of simple, low-level tasks that had ended up on her desk: two hundred perfunctory notices that hadn’t been sent to the federal register, the daily log of official government actions. Fifteen months worth of new chemical rules that had been approved but not publicly announced. They weren’t controversial. It’s just that nobody but the office head had been allowed to click a button.
Gradually, Freedhoff, a hyperlogical fast talker who occasionally flashes a big smile when something amuses her, realized that her predecessor under then-President Donald Trump simply hadn’t delegated routine duties — a symptom of the distrust within the office between career employees and political appointees. In those first strange weeks, Freedhoff would gaze out on a sea of staffers’ faces filling a Microsoft Teams grid on her screen and ask why something happened the way it did. No one would respond. Later, she’d learn that there was no thoughtful answer to “why”; the person responsible was simply following orders. Often, Freedhoff found, staff had been detailed to trivial projects to help companies that had relationships with Trump appointees.
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This time around, progressive activists don’t want Biden to wait that long. They’re pushing him to use the executive branch in as muscular a fashion as possible, as the Trump administration did, using bold legal means — like granting a petition asking a polluter to pay for tests — to crack down on corporate malfeasance. “We’re frustrated, throughout the administration, with a lack of creativity and willingness to just throw up their hands when they get to the first barrier,” said Dorothy Slater, a senior researcher with the Revolving Door Project, which focuses on agency appointments.
The EPA scientists who blew the whistle on managers who allegedly manipulated their work in favor of industry also wanted Freedhoff to take more aggressive action. Optimistic about her appointment, they originally filed their complaints soon after the 2020 election. A couple months into the job, Freedhoff sent out an all-staff memo recognizing several examples of political interference and affirming her commitment to scientific integrity. Later, she announced new advisory councils and recordkeeping requirements. But none of it did what the whistleblowers really wanted: remove the accused managers, most of whom remain in their positions, engendering distrust both within the agency and outside it.
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https://grist.org/accountability/shes-supposed-to-protect-americans-from-toxic-chemicals-first-she-just-has-to-fix-trumps-mess-and-decades-of-neglect/