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Item 1 of 9 A satellite image, according to Reuters analysis, shows the C5-SKY jet taxiing to the runway before its flight out of Syria, at Hmeimim air base, Syria December 8, 2024. 2025 Planet Labs PBC/Handout via REUTERS
[1/9]A satellite image, according to Reuters analysis, shows the C5-SKY jet taxiing to the runway before its flight out of Syria, at Hmeimim air base, Syria December 8, 2024. 2025 Planet Labs PBC/Handout via REUTERS Purchase Licensing Rights, opens new tab
Summary
Ousted Syrian ruler used private jet to move cash, valuables, and documents to Abu Dhabi, sources say
Plane made four flights in last days of Assad's regime, the last one from Russian base
Jet carried documents and hard drives mapping Assad's corporate empire
Syria's new government wants to recover assets linked to Assad's network
DAMASCUS/LONDON/DUBAI, April 17 (Reuters) - As his enemies closed in on Damascus, Bashar al-Assad, who ruled over Syria with an iron fist for 24 years, used a private jet to spirit away cash, valuables and confidential documents mapping the corporate web behind his wealth.
Yasar Ibrahim, the president's top economic adviser, arranged the leasing of the plane to transport Assad's treasured assets, relatives, aides and presidential palace personnel to the United Arab Emirates aboard four flights, according to an account of the operation pieced together by Reuters from more than a dozen sources.
Both places were on the cusp of entering court-enforced agreements to overhaul their police forces after high-profile police killings there sparked a nationwide reckoning over race and policing.
But it’s now clear that the administration’s move will be felt well beyond those two cities. In fact, it throws into question police reform efforts in at least eight other communities across the country, according to a ProPublica review. The need for change in these places was documented in a flurry of investigations published by the Justice Department in the final year of Joe Biden’s presidency. All of the probes found a “pattern or practice” of unlawful behavior that was routine enough that the federal government recommended reforms.
From Phoenix to Trenton, New Jersey, federal officials investigating the eight agencies found unjustified killings, excessive force, debtors’ prisons, retaliation against police critics, racial discrimination, unlawful strip searches and officers having sexual contact with sex workers during undercover operations.
Such findings are typically the first step toward a department agreeing to federal oversight and court-ordered reform. Over the years, the DOJ has credited such agreements, known as consent decrees, for having helped departments reduce unnecessary use of force, cut crime rates and improve responses to people with behavioral health needs. President Donald Trump’s Justice Department, however, has ordered its civil rights attorneys to pause such work until further notice, effectively reinstating the limited approach it took during the president’s first term. Department officials did not respond to questions about the pause or how long it would remain in effect.
For now, that means any reform efforts will be up to local leadership — a dynamic that experts say could bode poorly for communities with long histories of police abuse.
Cliff Johnson, an attorney and director of the Mississippi office of the MacArthur Justice Center, a nonprofit legal organization, was not optimistic.
“While those DOJ reports sometimes can lead municipalities, police departments and other offenders to come to Jesus,” Johnson said, “what we’ve been seeing, from our perspective, is folks saying, ‘I don’t need Jesus. I got Trump.’”
Louisiana leaders, for example, have slammed the Justice Department’s report, which found a pattern of problems in the way the state police used force against civilians. Gov. Jeff Landry said the report was an attempt by the Biden administration to “diminish the service and exceptionality” of the state police. And state Attorney General Liz Murrill said the Justice Department was being used to “advance a political agenda.”
The report was partly spurred by the 2019 death of Ronald Greene, who was killed while in the custody of Louisiana State Police. Officers repeatedly shocked him with a Taser, dragged him by his ankle shackles and then left him face down in the road. Some officers deactivated or muted their body cameras during the incident. Louisiana troopers had claimed Greene died when his car crashed after a high-speed chase. The department was forced to change its story when The Associated Press obtained and published body-camera footage of the incident.
Federal investigators found the episode was not an outlier. According to their report, officers in the department used Tasers without warning and against people who were restrained or who did not pose a threat, didn’t give people the chance to comply before using force, used force against people who weren’t a threat, and used excessive force against people running from officers.
A spokesperson for the Louisiana State Police did not answer questions about the report’s findings but said the agency is working to improve its relationship with citizens and other stakeholders. Landry’s office did not respond to ProPublica’s questions about the report and the state’s response, and Murrill’s office declined to comment.
Across the state line in Lexington, Mississippi, the Justice Department’s shift away from police accountability could also be consequential. Department officials said residents there were so afraid of local police that they were hesitant to meet with investigators in public, fearful of retaliation.
They had good reason to be concerned. In 2023, officers arrested an attorney who was representing citizens in police abuse cases against the department. She had been filming a traffic stop at the time.
The police force — made up of about 10 officers, some of whom are part time — is the smallest the Justice Department has investigated in decades. Federal investigators ultimately found that its officers use excessive force, discriminate against Black people, conduct stops and searches without probable cause, and arrest people purely for not having the money to pay fines.
It’s unclear what steps, if any, the Lexington Police Department is taking in response to the report. Police Chief Charles Henderson declined to comment and directed questions to the city attorney, who did not return a call.
Reform advocates have put their hopes in upcoming elections in Lexington that could bring in new leadership that is more interested in making changes at the police department.
In Mount Vernon, New York, advocates say they’ve seen little movement since the Justice Department found police there use excessive force, conduct unlawful strip and body cavity searches of arrestees, and fail to properly train officers and supervisors. It also found police discriminated against Black people. One group is considering legal action to bring the city to the table.
“It seems like Mount Vernon has put lip service on addressing the findings,” said Daniel Lambright, an attorney with the New York Civil Liberties Union. “It remains unclear actually what they’re doing to address the findings.”
In their report, federal investigators expressed concern that the police department’s “overly aggressive tactics unnecessarily escalate encounters.” In one instance, they wrote, five Mount Vernon officers used force on a man they thought was selling drugs — without announcing their presence or attempting to arrest him peacefully. Instead, one of the officers approached the man from behind and attempted to put him in an “upper body hold,” which started an altercation, according to the report. Police then threw the man to the ground. One officer drove his Taser into the suspect five times while another repeatedly punched him in the head. The man suffered a broken nose.
“The reform efforts have to continue,” said the Rev. Stephen Pogue, a member of the United Black Clergy of Westchester, an organization that works on social justice matters in Mount Vernon and surrounding areas. “We’re not in one of those places where Trump is our god. In Mount Vernon, we still need Jesus.”
Pogue said he hopes the city will host a public meeting about the report before the summer.
Mayor Shawyn Patterson-Howard and a police spokesperson did not reply to interview requests. But in December, the mayor said in a statement that the city would work with the Justice Department to address its findings. “We wholeheartedly support our good officers and at the same time will not tolerate and will punish unconstitutional policing,” she said.
In Phoenix, city and police officials have sent conflicting signals about the federal investigation, which found the Police Department used excessive and deadly force, violated the rights of homeless people, and discriminated against Black, Latino, Native American people, as well as those who have behavioral disabilities. “Why the hell would anybody ever accept a consent decree?” said one City Council member months before the report was released. Afterward, the head of the police union said the investigation was a “farce” and part of an “unprofessional smear campaign.”
But Mayor Kate Gallego has said the city is taking the report seriously. In September, the City Council passed several police reform measures, including requiring all officers who deal with the public to use body-worn cameras, even the special units that have been at the center of controversial shootings.
“Regardless of the new federal administration, these reforms are moving forward, and the mayor’s commitment to improving the police department is unwavering,” a mayoral spokesperson told ProPublica.
Some of the other cities the Justice Department had targeted are taking small steps toward fixing problems the federal investigators identified, though it’s unclear whether the efforts will result in lasting change.
In Oklahoma City, where Justice found in January that police officers discriminate against people with behavioral health disabilities, the city recently began funding mobile mental health units that can respond to incidents instead of police, said Jessica Hawkins, chair of the city’s Crisis Intervention Advisory Group. She said the city is also working on a written response to the DOJ report but didn’t know when it would be completed.
Police Chief Ron Bacy declined ProPublica’s request for an interview and through a spokesperson said the department was “still reviewing the report.”
In Memphis, Tennessee, where federal investigators found that police use excessive force, conduct unlawful stops and discriminate against Black people, the mayor put together a reform task force, led by a retired federal judge. “The DOJ report, in our case, kick-started a conversation that had sort of gone cold,” said Josh Spickler, executive director of Just City, an organization that works on litigation and justice matters in Memphis.
And in Trenton, New Jersey, where the Justice Department found that local police have a pattern or practice of using excessive force and conducting unlawful pedestrian and vehicle stops, City Council member Jasi Edwards has been hosting community meetings to introduce the idea of a civilian complaint review board and build support for the measure. Edwards said she plans to formally put forth her proposal sometime in the fall.
It will likely run into resistance, though. Representatives of the Police Department and mayor told ProPublica that they didn’t believe a civilian review board was necessary because it would be costly and there are existing ways for citizens to complain about police conduct. The DOJ report, they said, highlighted some areas in need of improvement but mischaracterized a number of cases and gave an inaccurate depiction of the department’s culture.
Last month, the police chief released a 15-page report on proposed measures intended to remedy the problems identified by federal investigators. The changes, which are still awaiting legal review, include prohibiting police from releasing K-9 dogs into mass gatherings or riot scenes and requiring a supervisor to go to a scene if someone reports being injured by police.
The police chief, Paul Socier, has also proposed several changes to how officers approach prostitution. Investigators found the department engaged in “outrageous government conduct” with sex workers by having sexual contact during undercover operations.
“We are hopefully headed in the right direction,” said Audra Doody, co-executive director of Safe Exit Initiative, an organization in Worcester that provides services, housing and counseling to sex workers who want to leave the sex trade. “With a time of such uncertainty, I want to believe our people in the community are telling the truth and actually are going to do what they say they’re going to do, which they seem like they are, right now.”
ProPublica is reporting on how the Trump administration’s efforts to reshape the federal government will impact the Department of Justice and its work on civil rights. If you’re a former or current Justice Department employee and you want to send us a tip, please contact us. We’re especially interested in the department’s Civil Rights Division. Topher Sanders can be reached by phone or on Signal at 904-254-0393 or by email at topher.sanders@propublica.org.
Department was being used to “advance a political agenda.”</p><p>The report was partly spurred by the 2019 death of Ronald Greene, who was killed while in the custody of Louisiana State Police. Officers repeatedly shocked him with a Taser, dragged him by his ankle shackles and then left him face down in the road. Some officers deactivated or muted their body cameras during the incident. Louisiana troopers had claimed Greene died when his car crashed after a high-speed chase. The department was forced to change its story when The <a href="https://apnews.com/article/police-brutality-louisiana-ronald-greene-race-civil-rights-4446d9b069803545247c610882951763">Associated Press obtained and published</a> body-camera footage of the incident.</p><p>Federal investigators found the episode was not an outlier. According to their report, officers in the department used Tasers without warning and against people who were restrained or who did not pose a threat, didn’t give people the chance to comply before using force, used force against people who weren’t a threat, and used excessive force against people running from officers.</p><p>A spokesperson for the Louisiana State Police did not answer questions about the report’s findings but said the agency is working to improve its relationship with citizens and other stakeholders. Landry’s office did not respond to ProPublica’s questions about the report and the state’s response, and Murrill’s office declined to comment.</p><p>Across the state line in <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/25599570-findings-report-lexington-police-department/">Lexington, Mississippi</a>, the Justice Department’s shift away from police accountability could also be consequential. Department officials said residents there were so afraid of local police that they were hesitant to meet with investigators in public, fearful of retaliation.</p><p>They had good reason to be concerned. In 2023, officers arrested an attorney who was representing citizens in police abuse cases against the department. She had been filming a traffic stop at the time.</p><p>The police force — made up of about 10 officers, some of whom are part time — is the smallest the Justice Department has investigated in decades. Federal investigators ultimately found that its officers use excessive force, discriminate against Black people, conduct stops and searches without probable cause, and arrest people purely for not having the money to pay fines.</p><p>It’s unclear what steps, if any, the Lexington Police Department is taking in response to the report. Police Chief Charles Henderson declined to comment and directed questions to the city attorney, who did not return a call.</p><p>Reform advocates have put their hopes in upcoming elections in Lexington that could bring in new leadership that is more interested in making changes at the police department.</p><p>In <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/25599569-findings-report-investigation-of-the-mount-vernon-police-department/">Mount Vernon, New York</a>, advocates say they’ve seen little movement since the Justice Department found police there use excessive force, conduct unlawful strip and body cavity searches of arrestees, and fail to properly train officers and supervisors. It also found police discriminated against Black people. One group is considering legal action to bring the city to the table.</p><p>“It seems like Mount Vernon has put lip service on addressing the findings,” said Daniel Lambright, an attorney with the New York Civil Liberties Union. “It remains unclear actually what they’re doing to address the findings.”</p><p>In their report, federal investigators expressed concern that the police department’s “overly aggressive tactics unnecessarily escalate encounters.” In one instance, they wrote, five Mount Vernon officers used force on a man they thought was selling drugs — without announcing their presence or attempting to arrest him peacefully. Instead, one of the officers approached the man from behind and attempted to put him in an “upper body hold,” which started an altercation, according to the report. Police then threw the man to the ground. One officer drove his Taser into the suspect five times while another repeatedly punched him in the head. The man suffered a broken nose.</p><p>“The reform efforts have to continue,” said the Rev. Stephen Pogue, a member of the United Black Clergy of Westchester, an organization that works on social justice matters in Mount Vernon and surrounding areas. “We’re not in one of those places where Trump is our god. In Mount Vernon, we still need Jesus.”</p><p>Pogue said he hopes the city will host a public meeting about the report before the summer.</p><p>Mayor Shawyn Patterson-Howard and a police spokesperson did not reply to interview requests. But in December, the mayor said in a statement that the city would work with the Justice Department to address its findings. “We wholeheartedly support our good officers and at the same time will not tolerate and will punish unconstitutional policing,” she said.</p><p>In <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/25599574-phoenix-findings-report-final-final-508/">Phoenix</a>, city and police officials have sent conflicting signals about the federal investigation, which found the Police Department used excessive and deadly force, violated the rights of homeless people, and discriminated against Black, Latino, Native American people, as well as those who have behavioral disabilities. “Why the hell would anybody ever accept a consent decree?” said one City Council member months before the report was released. Afterward, the head of the police union said the investigation was a “farce” and part of an “unprofessional smear campaign.”</p><p>But Mayor Kate Gallego has said the city is taking the report seriously. In September, the City Council passed several police reform measures, including requiring all officers who deal with the public to use body-worn cameras, even the special units that have been at the center of controversial shootings.</p><p>“Regardless of the new federal administration, these reforms are moving forward, and the mayor’s commitment to improving the police department is unwavering,” a mayoral spokesperson told ProPublica.</p><p>Some of the other cities the Justice Department had targeted are taking small steps toward fixing problems the federal investigators identified, though it’s unclear whether the efforts will result in lasting change.</p><p>In Oklahoma City, where <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/25599575-findings-report-investigation-of-oklahoma-oklahoma-city-and-oklahoma-city-police-department/">Justice found in January</a> that police officers discriminate against people with behavioral health disabilities, the city recently began funding mobile mental health units that can respond to incidents instead of police, said Jessica Hawkins, chair of the city’s Crisis Intervention Advisory Group. She said the city is also working on a written response to the DOJ report but didn’t know when it would be completed.</p><p>Police Chief Ron Bacy declined ProPublica’s request for an interview and through a spokesperson said the department was “still reviewing the report.”</p><p>In Memphis, Tennessee, where <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/25599572-findings-report-memphis-police-department-and-the-city-of-memphis-0-0/">federal investigators found</a> that police use excessive force, conduct unlawful stops and discriminate against Black people, the mayor put together a reform task force, led by a retired federal judge. “The DOJ report, in our case, kick-started a conversation that had sort of gone cold,” said Josh Spickler, executive director of Just City, an organization that works on litigation and justice matters in Memphis.</p><p>And in <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/25599571-findings-report-investigation-of-the-city-of-trenton-and-trenton-police-department/">Trenton, New Jersey</a>, where the Justice Department found that local police have a pattern or practice of using excessive force and conducting unlawful pedestrian and vehicle stops, City Council member Jasi Edwards has been hosting community meetings to introduce the idea of a civilian complaint review board and build support for the measure. Edwards said she plans to formally put forth her proposal sometime in the fall.</p><p>It will likely run into resistance, though. Representatives of the Police Department and mayor told ProPublica that they didn’t believe a civilian review board was necessary because it would be costly and there are existing ways for citizens to complain about police conduct. The DOJ report, they said, highlighted some areas in need of improvement but mischaracterized a number of cases and gave an inaccurate depiction of the department’s culture.</p><p>In Worcester, Massachusetts, reforms are already moving forward in response to the <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/25599568-finding-report-worcester-pd/">Justice Department’s investigation</a>.</p><p>Last month, the police chief released a <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/25893819-worcester-police-doj-response/">15-page report</a> on proposed measures intended to remedy the problems identified by federal investigators. The changes, which are still awaiting legal review, include prohibiting police from releasing K-9 dogs into mass gatherings or riot scenes and requiring a supervisor to go to a scene if someone reports being injured by police.</p><p>The police chief, Paul Socier, has also proposed several changes to how officers approach prostitution. Investigators found the department engaged in “outrageous government conduct” with sex workers by having sexual contact during undercover operations.</p><p>“We are hopefully headed in the right direction,” said Audra Doody, co-executive director of Safe Exit Initiative, an organization in Worcester that provides services, housing and counseling to sex workers who want to leave the sex trade. “With a time of such uncertainty, I want to believe our people in the community are telling the truth and actually are going to do what they say they’re going to do, which they seem like they are, right now.”</p><div><div><p>ProPublica is reporting on how the Trump administration’s efforts to reshape the federal government will impact the Department of Justice and its work on civil rights. If you’re a former or current Justice Department employee and you want to send us a tip, please contact us. We’re especially interested in the department’s Civil Rights Division. Topher Sanders can be reached by phone or on Signal at 904-254-0393 or by email at <a href="mailto:topher.sanders@propublica.org">topher.sanders@propublica.org</a>.</p></div></div></div><link rel="canonical" href="https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-doj-freeze-police-reform-abuse-phoenix-trenton-louisville-minneapolis"><meta name="syndication-source" content="https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-doj-freeze-police-reform-abuse-phoenix-trenton-louisville-minneapolis"><script type="text/javascript" src="https://pixel.propublica.org/pixel.js" async></script>
Beyond Showerheads: Trump’s Attempts to Kill Appliance Regulations Cause Chaos
by Peter Elkind
ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.
Donald Trump makes no secret of his loathing for regulations that limit water and energy use by home appliances. For years, he has regaled supporters at his campaign rallies with fanciful stories about their impact. He is so exercised by the issue that, even as global stock markets convulsed Wednesday in response to his tariff plans, Trump took time out to issue an executive order titled “Maintaining Acceptable Water Pressure in Showerheads.”
Contemporary shower fixtures are only one of the items that rankle the president, who complains that “there’s no water coming and you end up standing there five times longer,” making it difficult to coif his “perfect” hair. He has frequently denounced dishwashers that he claims take so long and clean so poorly that “the electric bill is ten times more than the water”; toilets that require flushing “ten or 15 times”; and LED lightbulbs, which he faults for making him look orange.
In his first term, Trump pursued an array of gimmicks to try to undermine the rules. His moves were opposed by industry and environmental groups alike. If it’s possible for regulations to be popular, these ones are. They have cut America’s water and energy consumption, reduced global-warming emissions and saved consumers money. Legal prohibitions stymied most of Trump’s maneuvers back then, and the Biden administration quickly reversed the steps Trump managed to take.
Trump’s executive order on showerheads generated headlines, but it’s likely to have little effect (more on that later). Far more consequential steps have been taken outside the Oval Office.
With the aid of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency team, Trump appears to be attempting an end run that could succeed where his past attempts failed: by simply terminating the consulting contract that the Department of Energy relies on to develop and enforce the rules. In late March, DOGE’s “wall of receipts” stated that it had “deleted” a Department of Energy contract for Guidehouse LLP (a PricewaterhouseCoopers spinoff) for “Appliance Standards Analysis and Regulatory Support Service,” producing a listed savings of $247,603,000. That item has now disappeared from the DOGE website, and its current status remains unclear.
This has produced confusion for everyone from appliance manufacturers to government officials to the contractors paid to enforce the rules. If the contract is indeed canceled, experts told ProPublica, it would cripple the government’s efficiency standards program, which relies on the consulting firm’s technical expertise and testing labs to update standards, ensure compliance and punish violators.
“It would have a huge impact,” said George Washington University law professor Emily Hammond, who helped run the program as deputy general counsel at the Department of Energy and now serves on its appliance standards advisory committee. “DOE does not have the internal capacity to do that work. Taking that away pulls the rug out from under the agency’s ability to run that regulatory program.”
Appliance manufacturers seem almost as concerned. “This is not a positive development,” said Josh Greene, vice president for government affairs at A.O. Smith, the largest manufacturer of water heaters in the U.S. Terminating the Guidehouse contract, he said, would create “a wild Wild West” where “upstart manufacturers” are free to import poor-quality products because “they know there’s no one to enforce the rules. That’s not good for American manufacturing and it’s not good for consumers.”
The Department of Energy has made no public attempts to clarify the matter. An agency spokesperson did not respond to ProPublica’s requests for comment. Emails to DOGE and the White House brought no reply. And Guidehouse officials, reportedly eager to lay low, also offered no response to multiple requests for comment.
The government’s efficiency requirements originated with the Energy Policy and Conservation Act, signed into law in 1975, when the concern was an energy shortage, not global warming. Today, the Department of Energy is required to set rules for energy and water use by more than 70 appliances and commercial products sold in the U.S. The agency must consider imposing stricter standards for each product every eight years, based on what is “technologically feasible and economically justified.” Manufacturers then have three to five years to make their products measure up.
The Energy Department typically stiffens a requirement only after years of study, comment, negotiation and testing (and sometimes litigation) among industry, consumer and environmental groups. The law also includes an “anti-backsliding” provision that bars relaxation of standards that have been finalized. Guidehouse and its subcontractors have for years performed virtually all the necessary technical work; they also maintain a certification database that U.S. authorities use to keep illegal products from being imported.
Republican lawmakers, anti-regulation advocates and right-wing media have long decried the efficiency rules as an impingement on personal freedom, limiting product choice. The early rollout of water-throttling products produced some of the issues Trump complains about, lampooned in a 1996 “Seinfeld” episode titled “The Shower Head.”
But in the decades since, the standards have been widely embraced, dramatically cutting energy and water consumption, reducing emissions and providing plenty of attractive consumer choices. In 2023, Consumer Reports found that “even the simplest and least expensive showerheads can provide a satisfying shower.” Dishwashers and clothes washers clean better while using less than half as much water and energy as they once did. The transition to LED light bulbs, nearly complete, is estimated to have cut energy bills by $3 billion a year and eliminated the need for about 30 large power plants.
In January, days before Trump returned to office, a Department of Energy report estimated that the efficiency standards are now saving the average American household about $576 a year on their utility bills, while cutting the nation’s energy consumption by 6.5% and water consumption by 12%. A 2022 survey by the Consumer Federation of America found that 76% of Americans support the government setting efficiency standards for appliances.
None of that has slowed Trump’s attacks. During his first term, the Department of Energy ignored legal deadlines for considering efficiency updates on 28 products, blocked the long-planned rollout of new lightbulb rules and sought to bypass finalized appliance standards through byzantine legal maneuvers. Among other things, the Energy Department announced special new “product classes” for dishwashers, clothes washers and dryers that completed their “normal” cycle in an hour or less. This would exempt any such “short-cycle” devices that were introduced from the existing limits on water and energy use.
Manufacturers never brought those models to market. Most existing appliances already had a “short cycle” option that did their job well; those short on time simply had to push that button. And by mid-2022, Biden’s Energy Department had reversed Trump’s regulatory moves. The department went on to issue an array of tightened home appliance rules jointly recommended by industry and consumer groups; most were finalized early enough to be immune from congressional rollback.
This didn’t stop Trump from boasting on the 2024 campaign trail that he had changed everything during his first term. He vowed to fix it all again when he returned to the White House. “Eliminate energy efficiency standards for appliances” was on Project 2025’s list of “needed reforms.”
Sure enough, on his first day back in the White House, Trump issued two executive orders targeting the efficiency rules. On Feb. 11, he posted on Truth Social: “I am hereby instructing Secretary Lee Zeldin to immediately go back to my Environmental Orders, which were terminated by Crooked Joe Biden, on Water Standard and Flow pertaining to SINKS, SHOWERS, TOLIETS, WASHING MACHINES, DISHWASHERS, etc., and to likewise go back to the common sense standards on LIGHTBULBS, that were put in place by the Trump Administration, but terminated by Crooked Joe. I look forward to signing these orders.” (In fact, the rules Trump cited were issued and enforced by the Department of Energy, not the Environmental Protection Agency, where Administrator Zeldin presides.)
None of the standards Trump listed were subject to an executive order, or any other kind of rapid rollback. In simple terms, Trump did not have the legal authority to change these rules.
No matter. Energy Secretary Chris Wright — who had listed “affordability and consumer choice in home appliances” among his top nine priorities — took up the cause. Three days after Trump’s Truth Social post, Wright announced that the Department of Energy was postponing “seven of the Biden-Harris administration’s restrictive mandates on home appliances,” which “have driven up costs, reduced choice and diminished the quality of Americans’ home appliances.” Wright’s list of seven affected “home appliances” actually included three types of commercial equipment and three other regulations long past the point where they could be undone.
That left only one household-product regulation that could be challenged. It involved an item that seemed like an improbable symbol of “freedom” and “consumer choice”: the tankless, gas-fueled hot water heater.
The vast majority of U.S. homes have traditional water heaters with 40- to 50-gallon tanks. By contrast, tankless gas products represent 10% of sales. They are about the size of a carry-on suitcase and heat a stream of water on demand. They’re energy-efficient and roughly twice as expensive as standard heaters.
But the rules governing tankless gas water heaters were vulnerable because they were issued in the final weeks of Biden’s term. That meant lawmakers could reverse them under the Congressional Review Act, which allows lawmakers to block a recently enacted agency rule, if a resolution to do so passes both houses and is signed by the president.
Appearing at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Feb. 20, Wright drew cheers as he offered a Trumpian litany — “My dishwasher has to run for two hours now, and at the end I got to clean the dishes” — before turning to hot water heaters. “We have a factory in the southeastern part of the United States that employs hundreds of people to build a particularly popular product these days,” Wright said. “It is a tankless water heater powered by natural gas,” which he described as “selling like hotcakes.” So, what did the Biden administration do, he asked. “They passed a regulation that would make that product illegal, and that company would be dead.” But under Trump, declared Wright, waving his arms, “we are fixing that problem. That factory is staying open. … America is back, baby!”
Wright returned to “the hot-water thing” in a FoxBusiness interview a month later. Assailing “nanny-state, crazy, top-down mandates that makes it more expensive for American consumers and businesses to buy what they want,” he said the new rule was going to shut down a factory “just built in the southeast United States.” Wright acknowledged that U.S. law bars elimination of other efficiency updates that he and Trump have targeted because they’ve already been finalized. “We can’t officially get rid of them,” he commented. “So we just pushed back the enforcement date, hopefully, to never.”
Wright’s portrayal omitted significant details. The administration’s actions involve a single beneficiary: Rinnai, a Japanese appliance company with $3.3 billion in revenues last year. In 2022, Rinnai opened a $70 million factory south of Atlanta, where about 250 U.S. workers build “non-condensing” tankless gas water heaters, a major moneymaker for the company.
“Non-condensing” tankless heaters are less efficient and less expensive than “condensing” tankless heaters, which reuse heat from their exhaust gases. As a result, Rinnai wouldn’t be able to continue selling them when the new standards went into effect in December 2029.
That, however, wasn’t going to put the company out of business; it wasn’t likely to shut down its U.S. factory, either, though Rinnai raised that specter in government filings where its U.S. president warned the new standards would make the Georgia plant “largely obsolete … eliminating” all its jobs.
Rinnai sells a broad array of products across the world. It also already sold condensing tankless heaters in the U.S. that met the new standard and were imported from Japan. And Rinnai had plans to make them in Georgia, according to the company’s most recent annual report. (Rinnai agreed to make its U.S. chief, Frank Windsor, available for an interview with ProPublica, then canceled twice at the last minute. The company ultimately declined to respond to questions about its public representations.)
Nonetheless, the company, now backed by the Trump administration, has pursued a multitrack campaign to roll back the new standards. Its efforts appear to be on the point of success. A resolution has passed the House and won Senate approval on Thursday. Rinnai has spent $375,000 on Washington lobbyists since 2023, according to disclosure reports. The company also joined with Republican attorneys general in a court challenge to the energy rule.
Three major Rinnai competitors supported the Biden-era regulations. Wisconsin-based A.O. Smith has actively lobbied against Rinnai’s effort to win a congressional rollback. Greene said blocking the standard will “disadvantage” U.S. companies, which have already invested in more efficient condensing technology, by allowing continued sale of Rinnai’s less expensive competing products. “In this time of ‘America First,’ it just seems to us a shame that where we’re heading is rewarding foreign manufacturers,” Greene said. “There should be a level playing field.”
Meanwhile the administration’s campaign has expanded to multiple fronts. On Wednesday, the Department of Energy announced a review of its procedures for energy standards, which one expert described as a reprise of the first Trump administration’s attempts to create procedural hurdles to updating efficiency standards.
Then there was the executive order on showerheads that same day. It, too, seeks to revive a move by the first Trump administration: to circumvent the limits on waterflow by redefining “showerheads” to include multiple nozzles, each of which could emit as much water as the entire showerhead was previously allowed. The Biden-era Energy Department killed that regulation, and Trump is attempting to bring it back while proclaiming that “notice and comment is unnecessary because I am ordering the repeal.”
That order will have virtually no effect because manufacturers have little interest in making showerheads that exceed the current limits, according to Andrew deLaski, executive director of the Appliance Standards Awareness Project, a nonprofit coalition of groups that support the efficiency rules. “The president is asserting king-like authority,” he added, about Trump’s claim that he does not have to follow administrative procedures.
In the end, DOGE could have more of an impact than a would-be monarch, if it’s able to kill the Guidehouse contract. Then, deLaski said, “it would be next to impossible for DOE to enforce its efficiency standards.”
That’s not good for American manufacturing and it’s not good for consumers.”</p><p>The Department of Energy has made no public attempts to clarify the matter. An agency spokesperson did not respond to ProPublica’s requests for comment. Emails to DOGE and the White House brought no reply. And Guidehouse officials, reportedly eager to lay low, also offered no response to multiple requests for comment.</p><p>The government’s efficiency requirements originated with the Energy Policy and Conservation Act, signed into law in 1975, when the concern was an energy shortage, not global warming. Today, the Department of Energy is required to set rules for energy and water use by more than 70 appliances and commercial products sold in the U.S. The agency must consider imposing stricter standards for each product every eight years, based on what is “technologically feasible and economically justified.” Manufacturers then have three to five years to make their products measure up.</p><p>The Energy Department typically stiffens a requirement only after years of study, comment, negotiation and testing (and sometimes litigation) among industry, consumer and environmental groups. The law also includes an “anti-backsliding” provision that bars relaxation of standards that have been finalized. Guidehouse and its subcontractors have for years performed virtually all the necessary technical work; they also maintain <a href="https://www.regulations.doe.gov/">a certification database</a> that U.S. authorities use to keep illegal products from being imported.</p><p>Republican lawmakers, anti-regulation advocates and right-wing media have long decried the efficiency rules as an impingement on personal freedom, limiting product choice. The early rollout of water-throttling products produced some of the issues Trump complains about, lampooned in a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUt6BWeL1GE">1996 “Seinfeld” episode</a> titled “The Shower Head.”</p><p>But in the decades since, the standards have been widely embraced, dramatically cutting energy and water consumption, reducing emissions and providing plenty of attractive consumer choices. In 2023, <a href="https://www.consumerreports.org/home-garden/showerheads/buying-guide/">Consumer Reports</a> found that “even the simplest and least expensive showerheads can provide a satisfying shower.” <a href="https://advocacy.consumerreports.org/press_release/consumer-reports-new-dishwasher-standards-will-help-consumers-save-money-on-energy-bills-while-ensuring-shoppers-have-good-choices-that-perform-well/">Dishwashers</a> and <a href="https://www.consumerreports.org/washing-machines/yes-your-washing-machine-is-using-enough-water/">clothes washers</a> clean better while using less than half as much water and energy as they once did. The transition to LED light bulbs, nearly complete, is estimated to have cut energy bills by $3 billion a year and eliminated the need <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2022/04/26/biden-incandescent-lightbulb-ban-trump/">for about 30 large power plants</a>.</p><p>In January, days before Trump returned to office, a <a href="https://eta.lbl.gov/publications/energy-and-economic-impacts-us">Department of Energy report</a> estimated that the efficiency standards are now saving the average American household about $576 a year on their utility bills, while cutting the nation’s energy consumption by 6.5% and water consumption by 12%. A 2022 survey by the Consumer Federation of America found that <a href="https://consumerfed.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Appliance-Survey-Issue-Brief.pdf">76% of Americans</a> support the government setting efficiency standards for appliances.</p><p>None of that has slowed Trump’s attacks. During his first term, the Department of Energy ignored legal deadlines for considering efficiency updates on 28 products, blocked the long-planned rollout of new lightbulb rules and sought to bypass finalized appliance standards through byzantine legal maneuvers. Among other things, the Energy Department announced special new “product classes” for dishwashers, clothes washers and dryers that completed their “normal” cycle in an hour or less. This would exempt any such “short-cycle” devices that were introduced from the existing limits on water and energy use.</p><p>Manufacturers never brought those models to market. Most existing appliances already had a “short cycle” option that did their job well; those short on time simply had to push that button. And by mid-2022, Biden’s Energy Department had reversed Trump’s regulatory moves. The department went on to issue an array of tightened home appliance rules <a href="https://appliance-standards.org/document/agreement-home-appliance-efficiency-standards-will-preserve-consumer-features-and-deliver">jointly recommended</a> by industry and consumer groups; most were finalized early enough to be immune from congressional rollback.</p><p>This didn’t stop Trump from boasting on the 2024 campaign trail that he had changed everything during his first term. He vowed to fix it all again when he returned to the White House. “Eliminate energy efficiency standards for appliances” was on Project 2025’s list of “needed reforms.”</p><p>Sure enough, on his first day back in the White House, Trump issued two executive orders targeting the efficiency rules. On Feb. 11, he posted on Truth Social: “I am hereby instructing Secretary Lee Zeldin to immediately go back to my Environmental Orders, which were terminated by Crooked Joe Biden, on Water Standard and Flow pertaining to SINKS, SHOWERS, TOLIETS, WASHING MACHINES, DISHWASHERS, etc., and to likewise go back to the common sense standards on LIGHTBULBS, that were put in place by the Trump Administration, but terminated by Crooked Joe. I look forward to signing these orders.” (In fact, the rules Trump cited were issued and enforced by the Department of Energy, not the Environmental Protection Agency, where Administrator Zeldin presides.)</p><p>None of the standards Trump listed were subject to an executive order, or any other kind of rapid rollback. In simple terms, Trump did not have the legal authority to change these rules.</p><p>No matter. Energy Secretary Chris Wright — who had listed “affordability and consumer choice in home appliances” among his <a href="https://www.energy.gov/articles/secretary-wright-acts-unleash-golden-era-american-energy-dominance">top nine priorities</a> — took up the cause. Three days after Trump’s Truth Social post, Wright <a href="https://www.energy.gov/articles/energy-department-acts-lower-prices-and-increase-consumer-choice-household-appliances">announced</a> that the Department of Energy was postponing “seven of the Biden-Harris administration’s restrictive mandates on home appliances,” which “have driven up costs, reduced choice and diminished the quality of Americans’ home appliances.” Wright’s list of seven affected “home appliances” actually included three types of commercial equipment and three other regulations long past the point where they could be undone.</p><p>That left only one household-product regulation that could be challenged. It involved an item that seemed like an improbable symbol of “freedom” and “consumer choice”: the tankless, gas-fueled hot water heater.</p><p>The vast majority of U.S. homes have traditional water heaters with 40- to 50-gallon tanks. By contrast, tankless gas products represent 10% of sales. They are about the size of a carry-on suitcase and heat a stream of water on demand. They’re energy-efficient and roughly twice as expensive as standard heaters.</p><p>But the rules governing tankless gas water heaters were vulnerable because they were issued in the final weeks of Biden’s term. That meant lawmakers could reverse them under the Congressional Review Act, which allows lawmakers to block a recently enacted agency rule, if a resolution to do so passes both houses and is signed by the president.</p><p>Appearing at <a href="https://www.energy.gov/articles/us-secretary-energy-chris-wright-delivers-remarks-cpac">the Conservative Political Action Conference</a> on Feb. 20, Wright drew cheers as he offered a Trumpian litany — “My dishwasher has to run for two hours now, and at the end I got to clean the dishes” — before turning to hot water heaters. “We have a factory in the southeastern part of the United States that employs hundreds of people to build a particularly popular product these days,” Wright said. “It is a tankless water heater powered by natural gas,” which he described as “selling like hotcakes.” So, what did the Biden administration do, he asked. “They passed a regulation that would make that product illegal, and that company would be dead.” But under Trump, declared Wright, waving his arms, “we are fixing that problem. That factory is staying open. … America is back, baby!”</p><p>Wright returned to “the hot-water thing” in <a href="https://www.foxbusiness.com/media/us-department-energy-bringing-common-sense-back-nixes-dei-requirements">a FoxBusiness interview</a> a month later. Assailing “nanny-state, crazy, top-down mandates that makes it more expensive for American consumers and businesses to buy what they want,” he said the new rule was going to shut down a factory “just built in the southeast United States.” Wright acknowledged that U.S. law bars elimination of other efficiency updates that he and Trump have targeted because they’ve already been finalized. “We can’t officially get rid of them,” he commented. “So we just pushed back the enforcement date, hopefully, to never.”</p><p>Wright’s portrayal omitted significant details. The administration’s actions involve a single beneficiary: Rinnai, a Japanese appliance company with $3.3 billion in revenues last year. In 2022, Rinnai opened a $70 million factory south of Atlanta, where about 250 U.S. workers build “non-condensing” tankless gas water heaters, a major moneymaker for the company.</p><p>“Non-condensing” tankless heaters are less efficient and less expensive than “condensing” tankless heaters, which reuse heat from their exhaust gases. As a result, Rinnai wouldn’t be able to continue selling them when the new standards went into effect in December 2029.</p><p>That, however, wasn’t going to put the company out of business; it wasn’t likely to shut down its U.S. factory, either, though Rinnai raised that specter in government filings where its U.S. president warned the new standards would make the Georgia plant “<a href="https://freebeacon.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/EERE-2017-BT-STD-0019-0612_attachment_1.pdf">largely obsolete</a> … eliminating” all its jobs.</p><p>Rinnai sells a broad array of products across the world. It also already sold condensing tankless heaters in the U.S. that met the new standard and were imported from Japan. And Rinnai had plans to make them in Georgia, according to the company’s <a href="https://www.rinnai.co.jp/en/corp/csr/pdf/report2024.pdf">most recent annual report</a>. (Rinnai agreed to make its U.S. chief, Frank Windsor, available for an interview with ProPublica, then canceled twice at the last minute. The company ultimately declined to respond to questions about its public representations.)</p><p>Nonetheless, the company, now backed by the Trump administration, has pursued a multitrack campaign to roll back the new standards. Its efforts appear to be on the point of success. A resolution has passed the House and won Senate approval on Thursday. Rinnai has spent $375,000 on Washington lobbyists since 2023, according to disclosure reports. The company also joined with Republican attorneys general in a court challenge to the energy rule.</p><p>Three major Rinnai competitors supported the Biden-era regulations. Wisconsin-based A.O. Smith has actively lobbied against Rinnai’s effort to win a congressional rollback. Greene said blocking the standard will “disadvantage” U.S. companies, which have already invested in more efficient condensing technology, by allowing continued sale of Rinnai’s less expensive competing products. “In this time of ‘America First,’ it just seems to us a shame that where we’re heading is rewarding foreign manufacturers,” Greene said. “There should be a level playing field.”</p><p>Meanwhile the administration’s campaign has expanded to multiple fronts. On Wednesday, the Department of Energy announced a review of its procedures for energy standards, which one expert described as a reprise of the first Trump administration’s attempts to create procedural hurdles to updating efficiency standards.</p><p>Then there was the executive order on showerheads that same day. It, too, seeks to revive a move by the first Trump administration: to circumvent the limits on waterflow by redefining “showerheads” to include multiple nozzles, each of which could emit as much water as the entire showerhead was previously allowed. The Biden-era Energy Department killed that regulation, and Trump is attempting to bring it back while proclaiming that “notice and comment is unnecessary because I am ordering the repeal.”</p><p>That order will have virtually no effect because manufacturers have little interest in making showerheads that exceed the current limits, according to Andrew deLaski, executive director of the Appliance Standards Awareness Project, a nonprofit coalition of groups that support the efficiency rules. “The president is asserting king-like authority,” he added, about Trump’s claim that he does not have to follow administrative procedures.</p><p>In the end, DOGE could have more of an impact than a would-be monarch, if it’s able to kill the Guidehouse contract. Then, deLaski said, “it would be next to impossible for DOE to enforce its efficiency standards.”</p><div><div><p><a href="https://www.propublica.org/people/doris-burke">Doris Burke</a>, <a href="https://www.propublica.org/people/mark-olalde">Mark Olalde</a> and <a href="https://www.propublica.org/people/Pratheek-rebala">Pratheek Rebala</a> contributed research.</p></div></div></div><link rel="canonical" href="https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-showerheads-appliances-led-lights-regulation-energy-department-chaos"><meta name="syndication-source" content="https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-showerheads-appliances-led-lights-regulation-energy-department-chaos"><script type="text/javascript" src="https://pixel.propublica.org/pixel.js" async></script>
The Trump administration’s antisemitism task force aims to pursue a consent decree with Columbia University as a condition of restoring $400M in annual funding. A consent decree would give a federal judge the responsibility to oversee changes at Columbia and may last for years. The report follows a turbulent month at the school, where its interim president—who took over in August—resigned a week after conceding to administration demands.
The Joint Task Force on Combating Antisemitism—first created in early February by executive order—has launched over 60 investigations into major universities for alleged antisemitism and civil rights violations. This week, the administration froze $1B in grants to Cornell and $790M to Northwestern amid the probes. The State Department has also rescinded visas from nearly 400 students for their alleged involvement in campus protests.
The administration has also reduced federal Department of Education funding and laid off roughly half of its workers. See a tracker of administration actions on education here.
The French far-right leader Marine Le Pen has been barred from running for president in 2027 after a court found her guilty of a vast system of embezzlement of European parliament funds and banned her from running for public office with immediate effect.
The decision was a political earthquake for Le Pen, the leader of the far-right anti-immigration National Rally (RN) party, who had hoped to mount a fourth campaign to become president.
Marine Le Pen, a leader of France's nationalist-populist National Rally party, was convicted yesterday of embezzling millions in European Union funds. A Paris court sentenced the 56-year-old to four years in prison—two years under house arrest and two years suspended—and imposed an approximately $108K fine. She was also barred from holding public office for five years, effective immediately, likely disqualifying her from the 2027 presidential election.
The court found Le Pen and 24 other party officials misappropriated roughly $4.8M in funds intended for EU parliamentary aides, instead diverting the money to fictitious assistants to pay party staff between 2004 and 2016, violating EU regulations. National Rally was fined more than $2.1M for its role.
Le Pen, who was the runner-up in France's 2017 and 2022 presidential elections, plans to appeal the ruling, though a final decision before the next election is unlikely. Her political protégé, Jordan Bardella, is expected to replace Le Pen on the ballot in the 2027 election.
