confirmed. that marks the 14th nominee in the trump administration to be approved by the senate. almost as many confirmations as president obama had over the same span back in 2009. in a last ditch protest, senate democrats took to the floor, railing against the former oklahoma attorney general s ties to the oil and gas industry and his prior lawsuits against the very agency he now leads. cnn government regulation correspondent rene marsh joins me now live. rene, a district judge in oklahoma, he s ordering pruitt to hand over thousands of communications with oil and gas companies while he was attorney general. what are they looking for? that s right. despite his confirmation that just happened a few hours ago, we real should i expect even more drama. his opponents say he was often an advocate for the energy industry and now a watch dog group s request for his e-mail communication, that happened some two years ago. when that request was not granted, the center for media and democracy
it s called the congressional review act or congressional republicans are now turning this relatively obscure law into a powerful tool to try to undo some of the regulations issued by the obama administration. just weeks before the 44th president left the white house. let s bring in cnn government regulation correspondent rene marsh. i guess the bottom line, what is the congressional review act and how are republicans using it? right, so, here s one on one. the president can use his power to undo any of barack obama s executive orders. but what he cannot do on his own is repeal any law that went through a formal rule-making process. so, that s where congress comes in, and this obscure law that congress is using allows them to essentially quickly wipe out any law that was finalized in the end of the obama presidency. this is a tactic that is faster than creating a new rule to counter the old ones, and you only need a simple majority. well, that ends today.
nutrition standards for school luches to a regulation intend to increase access for treatment for opioid use. they re moves that have right leaning advocacy groups applauding. the stars really have aligned. we have republican congress, republican ptd and outgoing democratic administration. in the past lawmakers have attempted to use the congressional review act, some 72,000 times. but again have only been successful once. so, when congress uses it five times in just one week, that truly is unprecedented. of course, jake, there is a deadline to all this. they can only go at this in this way for the next 60 legislative days. aso there s a limit. all right, rene marsh, thank you so much. coming up immigration and equal pay for women, not usually the kind of thing that you see focused upon on super bowl ads. but this year how advertisers are getting political with the largest political audience in the world. stay with us. m an idaho potato farmer and i finally found our big idaho po
two weeks into the trump administration, republicans in congress have started to undo regulations put in place by president obama in his final days in office. dozens of rules are expected to be on the chopping block. let s bring in cnn government regulation correspondent rene marsh, who s watching all of this for us. how are republicans doing? so, the president, as you know, he can unroll or roll back any of former president barack obama s executive orders, but what he cannot do on his own is repeal laws that went through that formal rulemaking process. that s where congress comes in. and this obscure law that congress is using essentially allows them to wipe out any law finalized in the end of the obama administration. this is a tactic that is faster than creating new rules to counter the old ones, and you
from coal and the mining industry. essentially, it required these companies to do checks, data checks to see how many chemicals, what s the level of chemical within these streams, that may be a by product from the coal industry, the mining industry. yesterday the house votes today repeal it and the senate a short time ago vote today repeal this regulation. environmentalists obviously very concerned. they re saying well, if you re not collecting the data and you re not monitoring the chemicals in the stream, how will you know what the environmental impact will be from mining and the coal industry? so, that s the concern there. but on the other side you have the coal industry saying this was too burdensome, it was a financial burden. you know, it was killing jobs within the industry. so, really today, the repealing of this vote, jake, is seen as a very big win for the coal industry. the first of many obama era environmental regulations to go. likely rene, marsh, thank you so