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Migrant workers on temporary visas who say they were fired for workplace activism are demonstrating for a colleague who died on the job. The former employees of Sarbanand Farms, in a remote Washington town, are planning a protest on Tuesday afternoon, in the wake of Ernesto Silva Ibarra’s death. Ibarra, who was 28-years-old, had fallen ill in the fields on Friday—the result of Sarabanand threatening workers with deportation if they miss three days of work, advocates of the organizers said. The hospitalization led to 70…

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The amount of penalties that federal regulators have collected from misbehaving financial firms has declined sharply in just the first 200 days of the Trump administration. The immediate reduction amounts to a tangible benefit for Wall Street brokers, courtesy of a President who’s filled his executive offices with former bankers, and has signed executive order to roll back financial regulations. A Wall Street Journal analysis shows that The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CTFC) and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority…

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Top House Democrats are calling on the Trump administration to reveal the identities of those behind secretive efforts to deregulate the US economy. The lawmakers sent a letter on Monday to White House aides who oversee the regulatory process. They said the rule-slashing initiatives appear to run afoul of laws on transparency and record-keeping, citing reporting by The New York Times and ProPublica, “We believe the interests of the American public must be paramount when reviewing the worthiness of regulations,” the legislators said. They called for…

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Legislation purporting to grant terminally-ill Americans easier access to unapproved therapies cleared the Senate on Thursday, despite concerns that it could lead to unsafe drugs creeping onto the market. The upper chamber unanimously approved of the FDA Reauthorization Act, including an amendment that contained Sen. Ron Johnson’s (R-Wisc.) “Right to Try” law. Similar laws have already been passed in 37 states, allowing those facing life-threatening illnesses to use medication that hasn’t been approved by the Food and Drug Administration. The laws stipulate that the therapies…

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An inside look at the Trump administration’s deregulatory agenda was proffered in the resignation of a 30-year veteran of the Environmental Protection Agency. Elizabeth Southerland announced this week that she was leaving her post at the agency, where she served as a senior executive with both the Water and Superfund programs. On her way out, she sent a lengthy farewell message to her colleagues, which was posted by the advocacy group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). PEER described Southerland as “an eyewitness to the wreckage…

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Amid Republican efforts to insulate banks from lawsuits, Democrats are hoping to grill Wells Fargo executives about recent developments in the bank’s fake accounts scandal. Every Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee sent a letter on Tuesday to Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), the panel’s chair, asking for a hearing featuring Wells CEO Timothy Sloan and the chair of the bank’s board of directors, Stephen Sanger. The move comes just days after Wells “admitted that it signed up hundreds of thousands of its auto loan customers for…

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