Will Trump’s Anti-Fun Goons Kill The Best Government Social Media Account Ever?

Last week, the now all-Republican US Consumer Product Safety Commission announced that under its “under new leadership,” it will kill a bunch of proposed rules it claimed “no longer align with agency priorities, and which fail to advance safety.”

In a statement, (Acting) CPSC Chair Peter Feldman proclaimed that the agency was “returning to a safety mission rooted in sound science, robust data, and common sense,” with the implication that under Joe Biden, the consumer safety watchdog had been doing weird science, acting on flimsy data, and throwing common sense to the wind like a stray yard dart with a pointy steel tip.

As you may recall, in May Donald Trump fired the three Democratic appointees to the CPSC without cause, which was very illegal, as if that mattered. The fired commissioners sued, a federal judge blocked Trump from firing them, and in July the Supremes decided they could be fired for now while their case is litigated, and if they win they might be reinstated, if there’s still a CPSC by then. (Trump wants to move it to HHS, so RFK Jr. hires can decide whether products are dangerous, possibly by licking them.)

Naturally, our first reaction was to wonder what this meant for the CPSC’s social media team, which famously gave the agency the funniest, most surreal social media presence on the internet, using the funny to call attention to safety messages, like their famous 2021 tweet combining Christmas tree safety reminders with a flaming skeleton.

Or the weirdass source of our featured image up top (archive link), part of a series involving poor Ted, the ATV rider who came unstuck in time,

Ted also showed up in full color alongside wagons in black and white on the Oregon Trail, doing his best to avoid dying of dysentery (archive link).

Among other recurring CPSC characters, there’s Handsome Ron, the European robin who loves a stylish hat. And safety.

As this July 25 post to Bluesky illustrates, the CPSC is happy to piggyback on viral videos (but not to do so on a bicycle designed for only a single rider).

The real genius of the CPSC account is that it brings a beautiful sense of surrealism — and also a genuine sweetness, kindness, and playfulness — to an agency that has sometimes been derided as the “fun police,” as encapsulated in this Muriel, you’re terrible! Onion story from 2000:

It was Thursday when, a half hour after the CPSC Bluesky account reminded folks not to stare at their phone while walking, since they might not see the Squirrel Uprising and could end up in the ER, the account posted a notice about the new policy changes, and then … well, nothing but straightforward notices of product recalls the rest of the day, a genre that the agency pointedly never joked about. Eventually, late Friday morning, we did get a couple of funny-ish posts: an announcement of the CPSC’s new “public playground safety handbook,” with a photo of playground equipment framed by books whose “titles” referenced CPSC posts of the past, like “My life in hats: The Handsome Ron Story” and “Not burning down your home: the anthology.”

Not a knee-slapper, but also not dour.

Another post directed readers to the CPSC’s YouTube archive of old television public service announcements, with the note that they’re being digitized and released “at a painfully slow pace.” So that was nice. The thread included a link to this trio of PSAs from the ‘70s starring character actor/comedian Louis Nye, whom many of you will recognize as “that guy from that thing.” It’s also a nice reminder that the CPSC has a long tradition of leavening serious safety messages with fun delivery.

Should we be worried that the CPSC’s delightfully batshit era has ended? We won’t know until we see more posts from the agency this week. In a fit of Doing a Journalism, we emailed the agency’s comms director for comment Friday, but didn’t hear back.

Now, on to the new shape of the CPSC’s regulatory agenda, which we are sad to inform you is Trumpy As Fuck. In his statement on the new way CPSC is doing things, CPSC Chair Feldman sniffed that from here on,

Regulations and practices that do not reasonably advance safety — but instead promote unscientific ideological agendas, impose unnecessary costs, restrict consumer choice, or reduce competition, entrepreneurship, and innovation — are no longer agency priorities.

Boys and girls, can you say “regulatory capture”?

Translated, Feldman’s statement means that if protecting consumer safety might cost manufacturers real money, the new CPSC will likely think twice as long as nobody’s maimed too badly.

As part of applying only the very best science, the CPSC announced it’s cancelled six proposed rules. Among them are a proposal to improve the safety of table saw blades, and another to reduce the risk of rollovers of “recreational off-highway vehicles” (ROVs) — those spindly four-wheeled off road contraptions that look like dune buggies. (Fun regulatory fact: ROVs have steering wheels and car-type controls; ATVs have handlebars). A related canceled proposal would have required making ROVs more resistant to “debris penetration,” like sticks or branches that poke into the vehicle and injure the occupants.

So goodbye to those “unnecessary” rule proposals, although Consumer Affairs notes that, per CPSC data, table saw blade accidents send about 29,000 people to the ER every year. Off-highway vehicle accidents (including ATVs) cause an average of more than 800 deaths and around 100,000 ER visits annually, per the CPSC. But hey, ATVs are involved in 92 percent of those injuries, so only 8,000 ER visits annually for the buggy-like ROVs, which at least have roll cages.

Big surprise: Industrial groups lobbied heavily against those rules, claiming they would be costly, burdensome and put them out of business because no one could afford their products. Just like every regulation ever has also driven every regulated company out of business.

For example, the head of the off-road vehicle manufacturers’ trade group was the primary source for an Idaho Falls TV station’s story last year, explaining that the debris penetration rule was unnecessary and would mean folks could never have fun again.

One line in Feldman’s statement really gave us pause: that bit about eliminating rules that “promote unscientific ideological agendas.” That’s usually Trumpspeak for any mention of climate change, a weird thing for a CPSC chair to even mention. Climate regulations have largely been the Environmental Protection Agency’s regulatory bailiwick, at least until last month, when EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin decided no, science isn’t real.

So what the hell “unscientific ideological agenda” was Feldman talking about? It took a moment, but then we glanced down. Oh yeah. The Woke Agenda to ban gas stoves, which was never an actual plan, not ever. But in late 2022, then-CPSC Commissioner Richard Trumka Jr. proposed looking into regulating new gas stoves because multiple studies showed gas stoves contribute to childhood asthma and emit nitrogen dioxide (NO2), carbon monoxide, formaldehyde, benzene, and other nasties even when turned off.

That science hasn’t gone away, and while it’s true that methane is a potent greenhouse gas, Trumka only talked about regulating gas stoves to make them safe for indoor use. If that couldn’t be done, he added, almost parenthetically, “Products that can’t be made safe can be banned.” His assurances that new rules would only apply to new stoves were ignored, and wingnuts in Congress and rightwing media started screaming that if liberal commie Joe Biden wanted to take away their gas stoves, he’d have to pry ‘em from their cold dead hands. (Rebecca popping in here to note that after reading about all the gas stoves and childhood asthma, she replaced hers with electric, and Donna Rose never had asthma again. You too might want to consider it, if you love your children!)

Working from the principle that facts shouldn’t get in the way of tropes about insane government regulators breaking down your door, Feldman just plain lied about gas stoves. He praised Great Leader’s “commitment to preserve the freedom of the American people to choose from a full range of goods and appliances,” and lied about the proposal itself. He said the CPSC review had rejected “a former commissioner’s proposal to ban gas stoves” — again, that was only one very unlikely possibility — and lied that the proposal was “rooted in climate ideology not consumer safety,” when the concerns were solely about the safety of consumers with gas stoves in their homes.

So no, we’re not expecting good things from the new crew at CPSC, whatever they end up doing with their social media accounts. And CSPC social media team? We wish you continued success and safety in the squirrel uprising. Be best.

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[Consumer Affairs / NPR / KIFI / Law Dork / Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health]

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