Tech barons have long dreamed of creating a libertarian territory free of all regulation and taxation. They have not yet succeeded in that self-serving effort, but the Trump Administration is increasingly adopting policies that push the United States in that direction.
One sign of that is the growing decriminalization of business misconduct. The trend has reached the point that the Wall Street Journal published a front-page story this week headlined “Justice Department Pulls Back on Corporate Crime.” The article noted that the DOJ has recently been “closing a string of criminal investigations with lenient resolutions or no charges at all.”
The DOJ often defends that approach by claiming it is better to prosecute individual executives rather than the company. Yet the Journal points out that in those recent cases no charges were brought against individuals either.
This permissive approach is not limited to criminal cases. It also appears to be the modus operandi of many regulatory agencies. The New York Times recently reported that the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, which is charged with investigating discriminatory practices at federal contractors, inexplicably dropped a case involving pervasive and egregious sexual harassment at the Navy shipyard operated by BAE Systems in Norfolk, Virginia. The investigation was also said to have found that black women were paid less and promoted less frequently than their male counterparts.
It appears that many other cases are being dropped or not initiated. Since Trump began his second term, the OFCCP has not announced a single new conciliation agreement, the document used when the agency has reached a settlement with a contractor to end an abuse.
A related agency, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, is radically changing the way it operates. It is abandoning cases in which employer practices have a disparate negative impact on certain groups of workers, usually racial minorities. It is also undermining future cases of that kind by moving toward the elimination of the requirement that large employers report demographic information on their workforce through the EEO-1 survey. At the same time, the EEOC is giving priority to cases in which white men claim they are victims of reverse discrimination.
A retreat from enforcement can also be seen in the environmental arena. The EPA is announcing fewer and fewer major penalty cases against polluters. Trump is helping to undermine regulations by issuing a series of pardons to individuals who had been convicted of crimes under the Clean Air Act for selling devices that enable diesel trucks to defeat their emission controls and thus emit far more pollution.
The same goes for consumer protection, especially with regard to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which once took on the big banks and is now a shell of its former self. After Trump returned to office, the CFPB was essentially demolished. Now it is being brought back to life for the pernicious purpose of investigating non-profit community lenders whose customers may include immigrants.
Regulatory agencies, like the Justice Department, are increasingly being shorn of their legitimate enforcement functions and are showing vigor only when it comes to pursuing MAGA ideological objectives.
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