Week in Review

IN THE NEWS

• President Donald J. Trump signed the Tools to Address Known Exploitation by Immobilizing Technological Deepfakes on Websites and Network Act into law, requiring online platforms to remove nonconsensual intimate visual depictions. The law mandates that platforms must establish victim reporting processes. The law also imposes fines or imprisonment of up to two years for violations involving adults and three years for minors, and further penalizes threats to disclose nonconsensual intimate visual depictions for intimidation or extortion. U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) praised the law for protecting victims of revenge porn and deepfake abuse. Digital rights groups and free speech advocates reportedly argued that the law is overbroad and could censor legal content—such as pornography or LGBTQ+ material—and infringe on privacy and due process rights.
• The U.S. Supreme Court granted President Trump temporary authority to remove two Democratic-appointed independent agency officials, blocking a lower court order that had reinstated them. The Court declined to fast-track the broader legal question about presidential removal powers, and instead will proceed following a complete briefing and hearing.
• The Trump Administration filed an emergency application requesting that the U.S. Supreme Court block a lower court order allowing discovery into whether the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) must comply with Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. The Administration claims that DOGE is a presidential advisory body, not an agency subject to FOIA. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit recently allowed limited discovery to proceed, including questioning DOGE’s head under oath and disclosing internal recommendations. The lawsuit, filed by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, is one of several testing whether DOGE’s operations must be open to public scrutiny.
• The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) lacked authority to issue an order that required broadcasters to submit employment demographics data. The order mandated that television and radio broadcasters with five or more full-time employees file “Form 395-B,” which collects race, ethnicity, and gender data about employees that the FCC would publicly disclose on a broadcaster-identifiable basis. The court explained that the FCC’s public interest mandate, which requires the agency to make decisions that benefit and protect the public, did not authorize such data collection. In a statement on the court’s decision, FCC Commissioner Anna M. Gomez argued that the ruling struck down reasonable transparency measures but agreed that the FCC engaged in an “ideological crusade” to control private companies’ hiring practices.
• The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed a lawsuit against cryptocurrency startup Unicoin and three of its top executives, accusing them of making false and misleading statements in the process of raising over $100 million from investors. According to the complaint, Unicoin and its executives misrepresented the value of assets backing their tokens, overstated sales figures, and falsely claimed the tokens were SEC-registered. The SEC seeks permanent injunctive relief, forfeiture of ill-gotten gains with prejudgment interest, civil penalties, and prohibitions on executives serving as officers or directors. Alex Konanykhin, CEO of Unicoin, reportedly responded to the lawsuit by arguing that the charges were “blatantly false,” asserting that the company had successfully passed two prior SEC investigations.
• A federal judge ruled that immigration authorities violated his injunction by boarding eight migrants onto a deportation flight to South Sudan without providing adequate notice. Judge Brian E. Murphy of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts previously ordered immigration officials to inform migrants and their attorneys and allow time for legal objections before removing these migrants to “third countries.” Government attorneys reportedly defended the flight, citing safety risks due to the migrants’ criminal convictions and arguing that no specific notice period was mandated. Judge Murphy reportedly stated that he would issue a remedy and consider further action depending on the government’s proposals for how to comply with prior orders on deportation procedures.
• The U.S. Senate advanced a motion to consider the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins Act or the GENIUS Act. The bill would establish a regulatory framework for stablecoins— cryptocurrencies pegged to stable reference assets such as a fiat currency or commodity. The GENIUS Act would require stablecoin issuers to obtain a permit from federal regulators—or state regulators if the total issued cryptocurrency is under $10 billion—in addition to mandating that all issued assets are backed one-to-one by cash reserves, U.S. Treasury Bills, repurchase agreements, or deposits covered by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. Some Democratic senators remain skeptical of the bill, arguing it limits oversight by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, creates a parallel corporate banking system based on cryptocurrency, and promotes presidential corruption by providing “even more opportunities to reward buyers of Trump’s coins.”
• The U.S. House of Representatives passed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, a budget reconciliation bill that would raise the deduction cap for state and local taxes (SALT) to $40,000 from the proposed $30,000, and extend SALT eligibility to individuals earning up to $500,000. The bill would also impose new Medicaid work requirements on an accelerated timeline. Environmental regulatory provisions would limit green energy tax credits to energy facility projects that begin construction within 60 days of the bill’s enactment and are in service prior to 2028. The bill would delist gun silencers from the National Firearms Act, ending the requirement for purchasers to obtain a $200 tax stamp.
• The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) submitted the first-ever construction permit request for a small modular nuclear reactor (SMR) to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). The TVA operates three nuclear power plants, which fulfill 40 percent of the Tennessee Valley’s power across seven states. TVA is considering the use of SMRs, like the one proposed at the Clinch River Nuclear Site, to help fill an estimated need for 26 gigawatts of power in the Valley by 2035. The proposed design—the BWRX-300—is a boiling water reactor with fully passive safety measures that do not require any operator intervention. The same design is already under construction in Ontario, Canada.

WHAT WE’RE READING THIS WEEK

• In a forthcoming article in the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, Shelley Welton, the Presidential Distinguished Professor of Law and Energy Policy at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School, and Conor Harrison, an associate professor of geography at the University of South Carolina, argued that the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act was an “unprecedented embrace of climate derisking.” Welton and Harrison claimed that this embrace did not extend to nuclear energy due to a failed nuclear “renaissance” in the early 2000s. They reviewed turn-of-the-century nuclear derisking policies and projects in Georgia, Florida, and the Carolinas, and found that cost-overruns, post-Fukushima safety concerns, cheap fossil fuels, and cost-recovery schemes contributed to the failure of new plants. They concluded that, although small modular reactors may be the future of nuclear power, regulatory derisking is a complex strategy employing market forces that may actually delay the renewable energy transition.
• A new report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) lacks effective systems to track and secure Americans’ genomic data when research involves foreign testing entities. The report warned that data shared with entities tied to countries of concern—such as China, Iran, or Russia—could be vulnerable to misuse. GAO concluded that key agencies, including the National Institutes of Health and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, have not fully implemented supply chain risk protocols or developed comprehensive compliance monitoring systems. To mitigate national security threats, GAO recommended that HHS improve training, begin systematic tracking of foreign collaborations, and strengthen oversight of researcher data practices.
• In a recent article in the Journal of Regulatory Economics, Michael Dortz, and Jeffrey Wagner, a professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology, analyzed the economic effects of right to repair laws and antitrust threats on competition and sustainability in U.S. repair markets. Dortz and Wagner employed a model simulating how original equipment manufacturers, which dominate the market for repairs due to intellectual property control, adjust their sharing of repair information and parts because of regulatory pressure. They found that the credible threat of right to repair laws encouraged these manufacturers to partially share intellectual property, which lowered repair costs, increased the number of repairs, reduced economic waste, and enhanced consumer surplus, even without formal legislation. They suggested using the threat of right to repair laws to incentivize manufacturers to voluntarily share intellectual property, improving repair market efficiency and supporting sustainability goals.

EDITOR’S CHOICE

• In an essay in The Regulatory Review, Jo Ann Barefoot, the CEO and co-founder of the Alliance for Innovative Regulation, argued that financial regulators must rethink their approaches to oversight in the digital age. Barefoot explained that most current regulatory systems rely on outdated, analog-era processes that limit visibility into emerging risks. She highlighted innovations such as techsprints, digital regulatory reporting, and machine-readable rules as tools to help agencies modernize. Barefoot urged regulators to embrace these technologies to improve effectiveness, reduce costs, and keep pace with the evolving financial sector.