Trump Transportation Department’s Deregulation Blitz Puts Public Safety at Risk

This story was originally published by ProPublica .

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On its face, the rule proposed in July by the country’s pipeline-safety regulator seemed innocuous. The regulator, a division of the U.S. Department of Transportation called the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, was proposing what looked like minor, bureaucratic changes to its process for issuing regulatory waivers. Between the lines, PHMSA watchers saw a much more consequential effort — one that would curtail the power of agency experts to impose conditions aimed at preventing catastrophic pipeline failures.

The rule was signed by Ben Kochman, whom the administration