Demolition Agenda: How Trump Tried to Dismantle American Government, and What Biden Needs to Do to Save It

The Trump administration rolled back critical environmental and worker protections that must be reinstated by President Biden, according to this clearheaded polemic. University of Texas law professor McGarity (Pollution, Politics, and Power) identifies the coalition of free market fundamentalists, corporate Republicans, and “Trumpian populists” who carried out this deregulation agenda, including Scott Pruitt, the former head of the Republican Attorneys General Association (“a group that assisted energy companies in their legal challenges to federal regulations”), who became director of the Environmental Protection Agency. McGarity also details how Mick Mulvaney “took a meat axe” to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which was created “to protect ordinary folks from predatory lenders, abusive bill collectors... and a host of other scammers,” and notes that in 2018 the Trump administration defunded a project to build a machine capable of producing 1.5 million N95 masks a day in the event of an emergency and, during the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic, ignored the Obama administration’s “playbook” for handling such an outbreak. McGarity’s proposals for repairing the damage include “reinvigorating government service” by boosting public sector pay and stressing the need for government action to fight climate change. Backed by solid research and deep knowledge of regulatory law, this is a persuasive argument for the power of government to make a positive impact. (May)