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Public Citizen Issues Letter to Calif. Gov. Newsom
WASHINGTON, July 20 (TNSletter) -- Public Citizen issued the following letter to Gov. Gavin Newsom, D-California:
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Here is the text of the letter:
June 30, 2026
Governor Newsom Should Halt Cal/OSHA Cuts Amid Rising Heat Threats
Dear Governor Newsom:
Public Citizen, a national nonprofit consumer and worker advocacy organization with more than one million members and supporters, urges your administration to immediately avoid making the proposed cuts to Cal/OSHA enforcement funding. We also call on you to ensure that the accumulated surplus in the Occupational Safety and Health Fund (OSH ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, July 20 (TNSletter) -- Public Citizen issued the following letter to Gov. Gavin Newsom, D-California: * * * Here is the text of the letter: June 30, 2026 Governor Newsom Should Halt Cal/OSHA Cuts Amid Rising Heat Threats Dear Governor Newsom: Public Citizen, a national nonprofit consumer and worker advocacy organization with more than one million members and supporters, urges your administration to immediately avoid making the proposed cuts to Cal/OSHA enforcement funding. We also call on you to ensure that the accumulated surplus in the Occupational Safety and Health Fund (OSHFund) is fully used to protect California workers, with a focus on addressing the growing and deadly threat of occupational heat illness.
For FY 2026-27, your administration has proposed a $725,000 reduction to Cal/OSHA Enforcement, in addition to the $16 million already cut from the current year's budget. This reduction is not a fiscal necessity. Cal/OSHA is predominantly financed through the Occupational Safety and Health Fund, which is supported by a small employer surcharge on workers' compensation premiums and receives no state tax revenues. The OSHA Fund reported a $200 million surplus last fiscal year and is projected to have a $130 million surplus this year. However, as of December 2025, your administration directed that 50% of OSHA Fund revenues, or approximately $100 million, be held in reserve and withheld from Cal/OSHA. As a result, employer-financed safety funds remain unused while worker protections are reduced.
Cal/OSHA's declining enforcement capacity has had significant consequences for worker safety. As of January 31, 2026, 95 inspector positions remain unfilled, representing a 35% vacancy rate. Nine district offices are at or above 50% vacancy. Four offices lack a district manager, and three offices have no clerical staff. The July 2025 California State Auditor Report No. 2024-115 documented a 32% inspector vacancy rate in FY 2023-24 and found that only 17% of validated worker complaints resulted in an on-site inspection. On-site inspections followed employer-reported serious injuries and fatalities only 42% of the time. More recent data from the first three quarters of 2025 shows that conditions have worsened. Currently, 58% of all Cal/OSHA enforcement activity consists of letter investigations, which require employers to self-report hazards, rather than on-site visits. Cal/OSHA now responds to worker complaints with on-site inspections less than 45% of the time. California has only one field inspector for every 99,000 workers, while Oregon has one per 23,000 and Washington has one per 28,000.
The decline in enforcement presents a significant threat to workers exposed to heat. California enacted the nation's first outdoor heat standard in 2005 and later expanded these protections to indoor workers. Peer-reviewed research published in Health Affairs in December 2025 demonstrated that stronger enforcement of California's heat standard from 2010-2014 resulted in a 33% reduction in heat-related outdoor worker deaths, with a 51% reduction following the 2015 revision of the standard. The evidence demonstrates that enforcement, rather than standards existing solely on paper, is essential to safeguarding workers' lives. Cal/OSHA's heat illness prevention regulations apply to agriculture, construction, landscaping, oil and gas extraction, warehousing, and indoor workplaces where temperatures can become hazardous without effective controls. However, enforcement of these protections is now compromised. Of the 193 filled compliance officer positions statewide, only two industrial hygienists are available to conduct inspections for heat, silica, wildfire smoke, lead, noise, and other occupational health hazards.
Despite California's improved fiscal outlook and nearly $30 billion in combined reserves, your administration's May Revision, released May 14, 2026, maintained the proposed Cal/OSHA enforcement cuts. With the Legislature's June 15 budget deadline now passed, Public Citizen continues to monitor the enacted budget for any restoration of Cal/OSHA funding. We urge your administration to provide a full public explanation of the legal authority and conditions under which the OSH Fund reserve was imposed. Workers and the public must receive transparency regarding the withholding of employer-financed safety revenues from the agency responsible for their use.
Public Citizen calls upon your administration to take the following actions without delay:
1. Restore the full $725,000 proposed for Cal/OSHA Enforcement in the FY 2026-27 budget and commit to halting further reductions to this critically understaffed agency, as documented by the State Auditor and independent experts;
2. Direct that the full OSH Fund surplus, including the approximately $100 million currently held in reserve, be made available to Cal/OSHA Enforcement and Process Safety Management to fulfill their statutory mandate to protect California's workers;
3. Provide a comprehensive public accounting of all directives that have placed OSH Fund revenues in reserve, including the legal authority, duration, and specific conditions for their release;
4. Authorize immediate personnel actions, including market-rate compensation adjustments, to fill the more than 95 vacant inspector positions, with urgent priority for the nine district offices currently operating at or above 50 percent vacancy;
5. Redeploy qualified industrial hygienists and prioritize enforcement of heat illness prevention in high-risk industries and regions, consistent with Cal/OSHA's heat illness prevention standards; and
6. Restore the proposed $350,000 cut to Cal/OSHA's Process Safety Management unit, which is responsible for oversight of California's 13 oil refineries and more than 1,000 workplaces handling highly hazardous chemicals.
California's agricultural, construction, warehouse, and disaster recovery workers require immediate and decisive action to ensure their safety. An agency overwhelmingly supported by employer contributions and established to protect workers cannot justify a $200 million surplus while inspector positions sit vacant and heat-related fatalities continue. Public Citizen respectfully urges your administration to act without delay and requests that the California Legislature investigate why OSH Fund revenues are not being directed to benefit the workers whose employers have contributed these resources.
We appreciate your attention to this urgent matter and welcome the opportunity to discuss these concerns further.
Sincerely,
A'Ishah Johnson, MPH, Workers' Health and Safety Advocate, Public Citizen
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Original text here: https://www.citizen.org/article/governor-newsom-should-halt-cal-osha-cuts-amid-rising-heat-threats/
News Release here: https://www.citizen.org/news/newsom-should-reverse-funding-cuts-to-worker-safety-enforcement/
[Category: Political]
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Here is the text of the letter:
June 30, 2026
Governor Newsom Should Halt Cal/OSHA Cuts Amid Rising Heat Threats
Dear Governor Newsom:
Public Citizen, a national nonprofit consumer and worker advocacy organization with more than one million members and supporters, urges your administration to immediately avoid making the proposed cuts to Cal/OSHA enforcement funding. We also call on you to ensure that the accumulated surplus in the Occupational Safety and Health Fund (OSH ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, July 20 (TNSletter) -- Public Citizen issued the following letter to Gov. Gavin Newsom, D-California: * * * Here is the text of the letter: June 30, 2026 Governor Newsom Should Halt Cal/OSHA Cuts Amid Rising Heat Threats Dear Governor Newsom: Public Citizen, a national nonprofit consumer and worker advocacy organization with more than one million members and supporters, urges your administration to immediately avoid making the proposed cuts to Cal/OSHA enforcement funding. We also call on you to ensure that the accumulated surplus in the Occupational Safety and Health Fund (OSHFund) is fully used to protect California workers, with a focus on addressing the growing and deadly threat of occupational heat illness.
For FY 2026-27, your administration has proposed a $725,000 reduction to Cal/OSHA Enforcement, in addition to the $16 million already cut from the current year's budget. This reduction is not a fiscal necessity. Cal/OSHA is predominantly financed through the Occupational Safety and Health Fund, which is supported by a small employer surcharge on workers' compensation premiums and receives no state tax revenues. The OSHA Fund reported a $200 million surplus last fiscal year and is projected to have a $130 million surplus this year. However, as of December 2025, your administration directed that 50% of OSHA Fund revenues, or approximately $100 million, be held in reserve and withheld from Cal/OSHA. As a result, employer-financed safety funds remain unused while worker protections are reduced.
Cal/OSHA's declining enforcement capacity has had significant consequences for worker safety. As of January 31, 2026, 95 inspector positions remain unfilled, representing a 35% vacancy rate. Nine district offices are at or above 50% vacancy. Four offices lack a district manager, and three offices have no clerical staff. The July 2025 California State Auditor Report No. 2024-115 documented a 32% inspector vacancy rate in FY 2023-24 and found that only 17% of validated worker complaints resulted in an on-site inspection. On-site inspections followed employer-reported serious injuries and fatalities only 42% of the time. More recent data from the first three quarters of 2025 shows that conditions have worsened. Currently, 58% of all Cal/OSHA enforcement activity consists of letter investigations, which require employers to self-report hazards, rather than on-site visits. Cal/OSHA now responds to worker complaints with on-site inspections less than 45% of the time. California has only one field inspector for every 99,000 workers, while Oregon has one per 23,000 and Washington has one per 28,000.
The decline in enforcement presents a significant threat to workers exposed to heat. California enacted the nation's first outdoor heat standard in 2005 and later expanded these protections to indoor workers. Peer-reviewed research published in Health Affairs in December 2025 demonstrated that stronger enforcement of California's heat standard from 2010-2014 resulted in a 33% reduction in heat-related outdoor worker deaths, with a 51% reduction following the 2015 revision of the standard. The evidence demonstrates that enforcement, rather than standards existing solely on paper, is essential to safeguarding workers' lives. Cal/OSHA's heat illness prevention regulations apply to agriculture, construction, landscaping, oil and gas extraction, warehousing, and indoor workplaces where temperatures can become hazardous without effective controls. However, enforcement of these protections is now compromised. Of the 193 filled compliance officer positions statewide, only two industrial hygienists are available to conduct inspections for heat, silica, wildfire smoke, lead, noise, and other occupational health hazards.
Despite California's improved fiscal outlook and nearly $30 billion in combined reserves, your administration's May Revision, released May 14, 2026, maintained the proposed Cal/OSHA enforcement cuts. With the Legislature's June 15 budget deadline now passed, Public Citizen continues to monitor the enacted budget for any restoration of Cal/OSHA funding. We urge your administration to provide a full public explanation of the legal authority and conditions under which the OSH Fund reserve was imposed. Workers and the public must receive transparency regarding the withholding of employer-financed safety revenues from the agency responsible for their use.
Public Citizen calls upon your administration to take the following actions without delay:
1. Restore the full $725,000 proposed for Cal/OSHA Enforcement in the FY 2026-27 budget and commit to halting further reductions to this critically understaffed agency, as documented by the State Auditor and independent experts;
2. Direct that the full OSH Fund surplus, including the approximately $100 million currently held in reserve, be made available to Cal/OSHA Enforcement and Process Safety Management to fulfill their statutory mandate to protect California's workers;
3. Provide a comprehensive public accounting of all directives that have placed OSH Fund revenues in reserve, including the legal authority, duration, and specific conditions for their release;
4. Authorize immediate personnel actions, including market-rate compensation adjustments, to fill the more than 95 vacant inspector positions, with urgent priority for the nine district offices currently operating at or above 50 percent vacancy;
5. Redeploy qualified industrial hygienists and prioritize enforcement of heat illness prevention in high-risk industries and regions, consistent with Cal/OSHA's heat illness prevention standards; and
6. Restore the proposed $350,000 cut to Cal/OSHA's Process Safety Management unit, which is responsible for oversight of California's 13 oil refineries and more than 1,000 workplaces handling highly hazardous chemicals.
California's agricultural, construction, warehouse, and disaster recovery workers require immediate and decisive action to ensure their safety. An agency overwhelmingly supported by employer contributions and established to protect workers cannot justify a $200 million surplus while inspector positions sit vacant and heat-related fatalities continue. Public Citizen respectfully urges your administration to act without delay and requests that the California Legislature investigate why OSH Fund revenues are not being directed to benefit the workers whose employers have contributed these resources.
We appreciate your attention to this urgent matter and welcome the opportunity to discuss these concerns further.
Sincerely,
A'Ishah Johnson, MPH, Workers' Health and Safety Advocate, Public Citizen
* * *
Original text here: https://www.citizen.org/article/governor-newsom-should-halt-cal-osha-cuts-amid-rising-heat-threats/
News Release here: https://www.citizen.org/news/newsom-should-reverse-funding-cuts-to-worker-safety-enforcement/
[Category: Political]
Election Month Ruling By Supreme Court Regrettable
FAIRFAX, Virginia, July 20 [Category: Government/Public Administration] -- Americans for Limited Government posted the following news release:
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Election Month Ruling By Supreme Court Regrettable
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June 29, 2026, Fairfax, Va.-Americans for Limited Government Executive Director Robert Romano today issued the following statement on the Supreme Court's ruling in Watson v. Republican National Committee :
"In an apparent bid to avert Democrats' threatened Supreme Court packing scheme, Republican-appointed justices John Roberts and Amy Coney Barrett have apparently opted to just give Democrats ... Show Full Article FAIRFAX, Virginia, July 20 [Category: Government/Public Administration] -- Americans for Limited Government posted the following news release: * * * Election Month Ruling By Supreme Court Regrettable * June 29, 2026, Fairfax, Va.-Americans for Limited Government Executive Director Robert Romano today issued the following statement on the Supreme Court's ruling in Watson v. Republican National Committee : "In an apparent bid to avert Democrats' threatened Supreme Court packing scheme, Republican-appointed justices John Roberts and Amy Coney Barrett have apparently opted to just give Democratseverything they want including an election month voting where ballots are counted no matter how late they arrive after Election Day. Arguing there is no prohibition against late ballots, the nation's highest court has effectively made Election Day a dead letter. Now, the only resort for the American people who want to restore same-day voting is for Congress to pass another statute to clarify what federal law has already stated for more than a century was 'the day for the election...' This ruling is regrettable and will prove Stalin's maxim that it is not those who vote, but those who count the ballots that decide everything."
For media availability contact Americans for Limited Government at media@limitgov.org.
***
Original text here: https://getliberty.org/2026/06/election-month-ruling-by-supreme-court-regrettable/
* * *
Election Month Ruling By Supreme Court Regrettable
*
June 29, 2026, Fairfax, Va.-Americans for Limited Government Executive Director Robert Romano today issued the following statement on the Supreme Court's ruling in Watson v. Republican National Committee :
"In an apparent bid to avert Democrats' threatened Supreme Court packing scheme, Republican-appointed justices John Roberts and Amy Coney Barrett have apparently opted to just give Democrats ... Show Full Article FAIRFAX, Virginia, July 20 [Category: Government/Public Administration] -- Americans for Limited Government posted the following news release: * * * Election Month Ruling By Supreme Court Regrettable * June 29, 2026, Fairfax, Va.-Americans for Limited Government Executive Director Robert Romano today issued the following statement on the Supreme Court's ruling in Watson v. Republican National Committee : "In an apparent bid to avert Democrats' threatened Supreme Court packing scheme, Republican-appointed justices John Roberts and Amy Coney Barrett have apparently opted to just give Democratseverything they want including an election month voting where ballots are counted no matter how late they arrive after Election Day. Arguing there is no prohibition against late ballots, the nation's highest court has effectively made Election Day a dead letter. Now, the only resort for the American people who want to restore same-day voting is for Congress to pass another statute to clarify what federal law has already stated for more than a century was 'the day for the election...' This ruling is regrettable and will prove Stalin's maxim that it is not those who vote, but those who count the ballots that decide everything."
For media availability contact Americans for Limited Government at media@limitgov.org.
***
Original text here: https://getliberty.org/2026/06/election-month-ruling-by-supreme-court-regrettable/
Better Markets Issues Letter to SEC
WASHINGTON, July 20 (TNSletter) -- Better Markets, an organization that says it promotes pro-market, pro-business and pro-growth policies to help build a better financial system, issued the following letter to the Securities and Exchange Commission:
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Here is the text of the letter:
July 6, 2026
Vanessa A. Countryman
Secretary
U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission
100 F Street, NE
Washington, DC 20549-1090
Re: Semiannual Reporting, File No. S7-2026-15, 91 Fed. Reg. 24968 (May 7, 2026)
Dear Ms. Countryman:
Better Markets appreciates the opportunity to comment on the above-referenced ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, July 20 (TNSletter) -- Better Markets, an organization that says it promotes pro-market, pro-business and pro-growth policies to help build a better financial system, issued the following letter to the Securities and Exchange Commission: * * * Here is the text of the letter: July 6, 2026 Vanessa A. Countryman Secretary U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission 100 F Street, NE Washington, DC 20549-1090 Re: Semiannual Reporting, File No. S7-2026-15, 91 Fed. Reg. 24968 (May 7, 2026) Dear Ms. Countryman: Better Markets appreciates the opportunity to comment on the above-referencedproposal to allow companies to file semiannual reports instead of quarterly reports.2 The proposal would cut in half the information investors receive about the companies in which they invest. Companies would continue to be able to access the public markets to obtain capital while providing the public with less frequent updates about their financial health. Despite companies providing these quarterly updates for over 50 years, investors would now be left in the dark for six months at a time. This is inconsistent with the Commission's mission to protect investors.
It is also inconsistent with the bedrock of securities regulation in this country. The legislative history of the foundational securities laws "clearly establishes that investor protection through disclosure was the central goal."3 As a result, disclosure and transparency "are at the core of SEC regulations," and "SEC regulations are largely based on a disclosure paradigm."4 The objective of securities regulation is for investors to have timely and accurate information about a company before deciding whether to invest their hard-earned money in that company.5 So the Commission should want companies to provide investors with more, not less, disclosure.
The bottom line is that a shift to semiannual reporting would deprive investors of the information that they need and on which they rely to make informed investment decisions. This shift would also disproportionately impact retail investors, as institutional investors will have the resources and relationships to obtain the information they need but retail investors will not. And the explanations given for the proposal--a desire to increase the number of public companies, lessen short-term thinking, and reduce costs--do not justify eliminating quarterly reporting. For these reasons, discussed further below, the Commission should withdraw the proposal.
I. The only way to protect investors in a disclosure-based regulatory regime is to provide them with material information on a frequent basis.
Quarterly reports protect investors by providing them with essential information. Quarterly reports also further the goals of a disclosure-based regulatory regime. Semiannual reporting would be inconsistent with investor protection and our system of securities regulation.
A. Quarterly reports protect investors by providing them with essential information.
As discussed above, Congress and the Commission "have relied on disclosure regulations as the primary vehicle for protecting investors."6 Quarterly reports are essential to this effort to protect investors through disclosure. They are "one of the few structured feedback mechanisms available to public investors."7 Quarterly reports provide investors "with material information that they use to make informed investment decisions."8 Quarterly reports "allow for investors to review the health of a company's finances throughout the year, at regular and predictable intervals."9 Perhaps most importantly, quarterly reports "make it possible for investors to more easily compare companies, their financial performance, future profitability, and other objective factors."10 For these reasons, eliminating quarterly reporting would harm the "investors, investment professionals, and other third-party analysts that use and rely upon these filings."11
The Commission itself has recognized that "keeping investors informed is fundamental under the securities laws."12 Yet without quarterly reports, Main Street investors "would be further in the dark."13 "Ordinary people would know less about hundreds of companies that make up the stock market and hold sway over [their] day-to-day lives."14 The proposal might be a "windfall" for corporations who want the same access to investors' money with less disclosure.15 However, for investors, it "would mean less access to information and more exposure to risk."16
A shift to semiannual reporting would be especially problematic now because it would occur "just as investors are mastering the best tools they've ever had for" utilizing corporate disclosures.17 With artificial intelligence, reports "that once seemed voluminous can be mined instantly . . . for subtle shifts and emerging risks."18 In light of investors' ability to use AI to make "quick work" of analyzing securities filings, a capability that "will only accelerate as AI systems become more robust and more reliable," it is "an awfully strange time for the government to start thinking of giving investors less information rather than more."19
B. A shift to semiannual reports would frustrate the goals of a disclosure-based regime.
Eliminating quarterly reporting would also conflict with the rationales for a disclosurebased system of securities regulation. These rationales all favor frequent periodic disclosures:
First, requiring disclosure can induce corporate officers to behave more ethically and honestly because they know that their actions will regularly be reviewed and exposed. Second, disclosure requirements can reduce agency costs. Mandating disclosure reduces costs that shareholders would otherwise bear in trying to monitor their agent directors and corporate officers. Third, disclosure facilitates informed decision-making about whether to buy or sell a particular security, which makes the price of the security more accurate. Similarly, disclosing information narrows the informational asymmetry between corporations and their officers and investors. Fourth, disclosure serves the twin goals of maintaining (and at times increasing) investor confidence in the market and promoting the public good.20
A shift to semiannual reporting would frustrate all of these goals.
Less regular review and exposure of corporate information incentivizes less ethical behavior. A good example is the potential for insider trading. The SEC's own Investor Advisory Committee says that a shift to semiannual reporting would "increase insider-trading concerns because more frequent disclosure reduces insiders' ability to profit from nonpublic information.21 Corporate insiders "always know more than the market," and quarterly reports are "one of the mechanisms that compresses the window in which insiders can act on non-public information before it comes public."22 By "extending the interval between mandatory reports, semiannual reporting would widen the gap between inside and public information, increasing the risk that insiders could trade while possessing material information not yet available to the market."23
Less frequent reporting will also require investors to spend more time and effort monitoring the companies in which they invest. Empirical evidence "supports the theory that mandatory disclosure improves the monitoring capability of third parties [and] reduces costs for investors."24 Without quarterly reports, investors will incur higher costs to pursue trading gains.25 "Nobody wants to wait an extra three months to find out bad news, such as that a once-profitable company has begun losing money."26 And fewer updates "means that there is more information for investors to catch up on each time a company reports results."27 The existence of quarterly reports means that investors do not need to incur the time and expense of uncovering and digesting relevant information that accumulates over half a year because the SEC already requires that companies provide that information to investors every three months.28
Eliminating quarterly reporting will also reduce investors' ability to deploy their capital efficiently. Optimal levels of disclosure "help to ensure that capital finds its most productive uses."29 Required disclosures make securities prices more accurate,30 and "accurate securities prices promote the efficient allocation of capital."31 But "less frequent financial reporting would result in greater volatility in securities prices."32 The market's ability to price securities accurately, and investors' ability to identify the most productive use for their capital, "would be cut in half because of the new six-month reporting schedule."33 So even if "the most productive place to deploy capital could be identified, redistribution would theoretically occur half as often because of the extra ninety-day delay on the availability of substantive information."34
Semiannual reporting would also exacerbate the information asymmetries that already exist between corporations and investors. That is because quarterly reports are one of the "few mechanisms" that allow the public to close the information gap that exists between management and investors.35 "By cutting available information essentially in half, investors would 'be nearly powerless to overcome their informational and bargaining disadvantages.'"36
Finally, semiannual reporting would reduce investor confidence in the market. "With a relatively short period of time between quarterly reports, average investors are able to maintain confidence through continual access to meaningful information."37 As a result, reducing the frequency of reporting "runs the risk of lowering the confidence of average investors."38
II. A Shift to Semiannual Reporting Would Disproportionately Impact Retail Investors.
A shift to semiannual reporting would harm all investors but would harm some investors more than others. Specifically, it would have a disproportionate impact on retail investors. That is because quarterly reports are particularly significant for retail investors.
Unlike institutional investors who have direct access to company management, retail investors often rely on publicly available information to gauge the financial health of a company and assess its investment potential. Quarterly reports provide a treasure trove of financial data that enables retail investors to make informed decisions based on accurate and up-to-date information.39 Semiannual reporting would force retail investors to wait longer to receive this accurate and upto-date information, which would delay their ability to make informed investment decisions.
The differences in the abilities of institutional investors and retail investors to obtain information from sources other than periodic reports also means that a shift to semiannual reporting would exacerbate the asymmetries that exist among those investors. "Though institutional investors may still, and frequently do, extract from the issuer information that is not provided by the SEC's mandatory disclosure rules, those rules place individual investors on equal footing with their institutional counterparts as to certain core information."40 Thus:
Limiting quarterly public disclosure of corporate information risks giving an advantage to some investors while hurting others. The big Wall Street banks, the big mutual fund companies, and other sophisticated financial institutions with substantial research departments will continue to have ready access to corporate officers and corporate information. In an environment with less frequent reporting, these sophisticated and deep-pocketed investors would likely still gain access to information while the less-sophisticated and -resourced investors would be left in the dark, awaiting semi-annual or other disclosures. Due to this informational disadvantage, this latter group would likely suffer by getting "picked off" in the market as those with better information would be better positioned to trade against them.41
Even institutional investors agree. BlackRock has said previously that "a move to less frequent reporting" would "exacerbate" the divide "between average investors" and those able to access "alternative information sources."42 This would "lower the confidence of average investors that they have access to meaningful and timely information with which to make decisions."43
The SEC's Investor Advisory Committee also agrees. It says that the "potential negative impact would be particularly high for retail investors, who rely on quarterly financial disclosures and lack direct access to public company management and other costly proprietary data sources that can provide insight into public company performance or outlook."44 Even more than institutional investors, quarterly reports "empower retail investors by providing them with comprehensive financial information about a company's operations, revenue, expenses, profitability, and more"45--information they would not otherwise be able to obtain.
The increase in informational asymmetry between corporations and investors discussed above would therefore impact retail investors to a greater degree as a result of information asymmetry among investors themselves. Timely financial reporting ensures all investors are on an equal footing.46 Because quarterly reports are available to all, they "play a vital role in leveling the playing field among investors with regard to their access to information."47
Less frequent reporting thus "has the ability to create an information divide between sophisticated investors, who are able to access additional data, and average investors, who are not."48 The failure to report information for long stretches "doesn't mean it ceases to exist"; insiders will still have access to the information and the ability to act on it, but retail investors won't.49 So semiannual reporting would give institutional investors with large research budgets and access to management an even greater edge over individual investors than they have now.50
In this respect, a shift to semiannual reporting would make the public markets more like the private markets. In the private markets, the lack of disclosure "affects retail investors significantly more than institutional investors, who generally have the financial sophistication and bargaining power to obtain necessary information."51 They "have the resources to conduct their own due diligence into offerings for which there is very little information available."52 The private markets therefore "give every advantage to insiders and to institutional investors with more bargaining power, sophistication, and access to information."53 Just as "retail investors who lack these resources have less ability to determine for themselves which opportunities in the private markets are worthwhile,"54 a shift to semiannual reporting will make it harder for retail investors specifically to make an informed investment decision about a public company.
Full disclosure "is essential if the small investor is to have confidence in our financial markets."55 Yet a shift to semiannual reporting would reduce the disclosures that retail investors receive currently. The Commission has always, up to now, prioritized the interests of retail investors, and it should want to instill, not sap, retail investor confidence in securities markets.
III. The Commission's justifications for the proposal are not persuasive.
A. Semiannual reporting will not increase the number of public companies.
The Commission says that the proposal "is one step in a broader Commission effort to encourage more companies to go and remain public by reducing the costs and burdens associated with Exchange Act reporting."56 But there is no reason to think that a shift to semiannual reporting will encourage more companies to go public. The reason for the recent decline in the number of public companies is that companies are now able to raise all the capital they need in the private markets without the disclosure obligations of the public markets. The private markets have virtually no disclosure obligations. A shift to semiannual reporting from quarterly reporting will not incentivize companies to go public because companies have no periodic reporting obligations in the private markets. Cutting public companies' periodic reporting obligations from four times annually to two times annually does not change the math. Zero is still less than two.
There is even reason to believe semiannual reporting could lead to fewer IPOs. Required disclosures "instill investor confidence, which is essential to a growing IPO market."57 Forcing investors that participate in the IPO to wait six months to see how management's representations about the company's business during the offering compare to actual results "is a recipe for skeptical investors demanding a higher risk premium to buy shares in newly public companies, which--if anything--makes the IPO market less attractive, not more."58
A shift to semiannual reporting is also a recipe for the Commission to have less insight into the market. For regulators such as the SEC that monitor systemic risk, "eliminating quarterly earnings would mean a 50% reduction in a data source they rely on heavily."59 Fewer corporate reports "could delay the detection of emerging risks, a concerning dynamic in an era of index funds, algorithmic trading, and rapid capital movement."60 It could also exacerbate the turmoil during a period of market stress. "In a downturn, a surefire way to make investors flee is to slow the information flow and make them wait an extra three months for updates."61
B. A shift to semiannual reporting will not curtail short-term thinking.
The Commission also says that a shift to semiannual reporting could allow companies to reduce their short-term thinking and focus on long-term planning.62 The problem is there is no evidence to support this supposition. As an initial matter, there is "limited evidence that shorttermism causes significant problems for publicly traded companies.63 And, even "if it did, changing the frequency of disclosure to a semiannual or annual basis would do little to check the problem."64 That is because numerous studies "have found no discernable improvements in corporate planning or performance in countries where it has been tried."65
For example, the United Kingdom shifted to semiannual reporting in 2014. Yet this "had no material impact on levels of corporate investment," including capital expenditures, spending on research and development, or spending on property, plant, and equipment.66 This makes sense, as "R&D investments, acquisitions, and capital expenditure decisions have multi-year horizons"--they "don't operate on three-month cycles, and they won't operate on six-month cycles either."67 So, in the United Kingdom, a shift to semiannual reporting did not lead to better valuations, better capital raising, or a healthier IPO market; instead, it "tracked a period during which the London Stock Exchange struggled to attract new listings and retain existing ones."68
The notion that the United States should eliminate quarterly reporting because other jurisdictions permit semiannual reporting makes no sense. It is the capital markets in the United States, not in other jurisdictions, that are the envy of the world. Perhaps it is "not coincidental[]" that "semiannual reporting is commonplace" in Europe and Asia but "valuation multiples" in those jurisdictions "tend to trail those of American companies."69 Our system of quarterly reporting has contributed to investors from around the world wanting to invest here. There is no reason to make our reporting regime mirror jurisdictions whose markets pale in comparison to ours.
C. Any cost savings from a shift to semiannual reporting will be outweighed by the loss of transparency and the increase in the costs of capital.
The Commission says further that the proposal would allow companies to "see a reduction in compliance costs of time and money, as they would incur these interim reporting costs only one time in connection with each fiscal year instead of three times in connection with each fiscal year pursuant to quarterly reporting."70 But the "costs of preparing these filings are miniscule compared with the size of the U.S. capital markets."71 So these costs must be weighed against the benefits of transparency with respect to the largest securities markets in the world.
These benefits extend not only to investors but to issuers themselves. The costs of quarterly reporting must be measured not only against the benefits to investors but against the benefits to issuers. The SEC ignores the fact that the "point of requiring timely, standardized financial reporting is to lower companies' cost of capital."72 "Capital markets operate most efficiently when investors have equal access to widely disseminated financial information."73
When reliable information is limited, the cost of capital rises because firms must pay a 'signaling premium' in order to encourage investors to supply funds. When information is not accessible to investors on an equal basis, the cost of capital rises because firms must pay an 'unfairness premium' in order to compensate for uncertainty. Thus, when the market is operating efficiently, the firm will communicate information regarding its true or 'intrinsic' value to investors and the cost of capital will approach the fair and equitable ideal.74
In other words, the increased investor confidence that disclosure engenders "results in lower capital costs for issuers because investors will not demand as large of premium for their investment."75 So the more "transparent and reliable a company's reporting is, all other things being equal, the lower its costs will be to borrow money or raise equity from outside investors."76
The Commission also says that a shift to semiannual reporting will reduce companies' costs because "more frequent disclosure increases the risk of disclosing proprietary information that could benefit competitors to the detriment of the reporting company."77 Yet, in a footnote, the Commission acknowledges that the "impact of the proposed rules on the disclosure of proprietary information would be limited to instances where delaying competitively sensitive information . . . decreases the value of the information to competitors."78 This is hardly a reason to deprive investors of the frequent corporate updates they have relied on for over 50 years.
* * *
As discussed above, the "foundation of securities regulation relies on disclosure to ensure investors have the information necessary to be protected in the markets."79 Disclosure is "widely credited with 'improved selection of new investment projects, improved managerial performance, and reduced investor risk."80 Thus, one of the "essential missions of the SEC is to ensure that investors are provided with material information."81 A desire to increase the number of public companies, curtail short-termism, and reduce costs do not justify providing investors with less disclosure--especially since semiannual reporting will not have those benefits. Indeed, in its economic analysis, the Commission itself seems to recognize the problem with its proposal:
Conversely, the efficiency of financial markets rests on material information becoming public in a timely fashion. In addition to protecting investors, greater availability of material information allows securities prices to better reflect their issuers' fundamental value and ultimately promotes capital formation as issuers have access to lower cost of capital and investors in those issuers' securities have access to higher liquidity. . . . A reduction in the frequency of interim reporting could result in delayed disclosure of material information, reduced comparability, and some lost information.82
This begs the question of why the Commission is proposing a shift to semiannual reporting in the first place. The Commission says it is simply a question of a "tradeoff" between "reducing regulatory burdens" on companies and "promoting efficient capital markets through timely disclosure."83 To the extent there is such a tradeoff--and, as discussed above, the Commission vastly overstates the benefits of a shift to semiannual reporting--the Commission's mission is not to reduce the so-called regulatory burdens on public companies but rather to protect investors, maintain fair, orderly, and efficient markets, and facilitate capital formation.84
The Commission seems all too willing to make "tradeoffs" that benefit corporations at the expense of investors. For example, the Commission suggests that it is simply trading the quarterly disclosures on Form 10-Q for the disclosures on Form 8-K. The Commission says that it believes that "the requirements of Form 8-K elicit important disclosures about material events on a more timely basis than quarterly reports on Form 10-Q."85 But, as the Commission must know, disclosures on Form 10-Q and disclosures on Form 8-K serve different purposes. Form 8K, which requires companies to disclose certain events when they occur, is no substitute for quarterly reports. That is because a Form 8-K tells investors something has happened, but it does not tell them the financial ramifications. Investors "are left holding a flag that says 'something changed' without any financial map of where they now stand."86 The "financial translation of a material event is precisely what quarterly reporting provides and what an 8-K cannot."87
The bottom line is that investors "now rely on quarterly reports for more than just viewing the company's past quarter's financial performance."88 Investors "utilize the information provided in Form 10-Q as a way to assess and predict the company's health and ensure stable performance."89 As a result, reducing the "frequency of disclosure requirements would therefore lead to diminished investor confidence and the likelihood of destabilizing our capital markets."90
Conclusion
We hope these comments are helpful as the Commission considers this matter.
Sincerely,
Benjamin L. Schiffrin, Director of Securities Policy, Better Markets, Inc., 2000 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, Suite 4008, Washington, DC 20006 (202) 618-6464
bschiffrin@bettermarkets.org
http://www.bettermarkets.org
* * *
Original text and footnotes here: https://bettermarkets.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Better-Markets-Comment-Letter-Semiannual-Reporting.pdf
News Release here: https://bettermarkets.org/newsroom/secs-plan-to-eliminate-quarterly-reporting-is-a-slap-in-the-face-to-investors/
[Category: Financial Services]
* * *
Here is the text of the letter:
July 6, 2026
Vanessa A. Countryman
Secretary
U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission
100 F Street, NE
Washington, DC 20549-1090
Re: Semiannual Reporting, File No. S7-2026-15, 91 Fed. Reg. 24968 (May 7, 2026)
Dear Ms. Countryman:
Better Markets appreciates the opportunity to comment on the above-referenced ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, July 20 (TNSletter) -- Better Markets, an organization that says it promotes pro-market, pro-business and pro-growth policies to help build a better financial system, issued the following letter to the Securities and Exchange Commission: * * * Here is the text of the letter: July 6, 2026 Vanessa A. Countryman Secretary U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission 100 F Street, NE Washington, DC 20549-1090 Re: Semiannual Reporting, File No. S7-2026-15, 91 Fed. Reg. 24968 (May 7, 2026) Dear Ms. Countryman: Better Markets appreciates the opportunity to comment on the above-referencedproposal to allow companies to file semiannual reports instead of quarterly reports.2 The proposal would cut in half the information investors receive about the companies in which they invest. Companies would continue to be able to access the public markets to obtain capital while providing the public with less frequent updates about their financial health. Despite companies providing these quarterly updates for over 50 years, investors would now be left in the dark for six months at a time. This is inconsistent with the Commission's mission to protect investors.
It is also inconsistent with the bedrock of securities regulation in this country. The legislative history of the foundational securities laws "clearly establishes that investor protection through disclosure was the central goal."3 As a result, disclosure and transparency "are at the core of SEC regulations," and "SEC regulations are largely based on a disclosure paradigm."4 The objective of securities regulation is for investors to have timely and accurate information about a company before deciding whether to invest their hard-earned money in that company.5 So the Commission should want companies to provide investors with more, not less, disclosure.
The bottom line is that a shift to semiannual reporting would deprive investors of the information that they need and on which they rely to make informed investment decisions. This shift would also disproportionately impact retail investors, as institutional investors will have the resources and relationships to obtain the information they need but retail investors will not. And the explanations given for the proposal--a desire to increase the number of public companies, lessen short-term thinking, and reduce costs--do not justify eliminating quarterly reporting. For these reasons, discussed further below, the Commission should withdraw the proposal.
I. The only way to protect investors in a disclosure-based regulatory regime is to provide them with material information on a frequent basis.
Quarterly reports protect investors by providing them with essential information. Quarterly reports also further the goals of a disclosure-based regulatory regime. Semiannual reporting would be inconsistent with investor protection and our system of securities regulation.
A. Quarterly reports protect investors by providing them with essential information.
As discussed above, Congress and the Commission "have relied on disclosure regulations as the primary vehicle for protecting investors."6 Quarterly reports are essential to this effort to protect investors through disclosure. They are "one of the few structured feedback mechanisms available to public investors."7 Quarterly reports provide investors "with material information that they use to make informed investment decisions."8 Quarterly reports "allow for investors to review the health of a company's finances throughout the year, at regular and predictable intervals."9 Perhaps most importantly, quarterly reports "make it possible for investors to more easily compare companies, their financial performance, future profitability, and other objective factors."10 For these reasons, eliminating quarterly reporting would harm the "investors, investment professionals, and other third-party analysts that use and rely upon these filings."11
The Commission itself has recognized that "keeping investors informed is fundamental under the securities laws."12 Yet without quarterly reports, Main Street investors "would be further in the dark."13 "Ordinary people would know less about hundreds of companies that make up the stock market and hold sway over [their] day-to-day lives."14 The proposal might be a "windfall" for corporations who want the same access to investors' money with less disclosure.15 However, for investors, it "would mean less access to information and more exposure to risk."16
A shift to semiannual reporting would be especially problematic now because it would occur "just as investors are mastering the best tools they've ever had for" utilizing corporate disclosures.17 With artificial intelligence, reports "that once seemed voluminous can be mined instantly . . . for subtle shifts and emerging risks."18 In light of investors' ability to use AI to make "quick work" of analyzing securities filings, a capability that "will only accelerate as AI systems become more robust and more reliable," it is "an awfully strange time for the government to start thinking of giving investors less information rather than more."19
B. A shift to semiannual reports would frustrate the goals of a disclosure-based regime.
Eliminating quarterly reporting would also conflict with the rationales for a disclosurebased system of securities regulation. These rationales all favor frequent periodic disclosures:
First, requiring disclosure can induce corporate officers to behave more ethically and honestly because they know that their actions will regularly be reviewed and exposed. Second, disclosure requirements can reduce agency costs. Mandating disclosure reduces costs that shareholders would otherwise bear in trying to monitor their agent directors and corporate officers. Third, disclosure facilitates informed decision-making about whether to buy or sell a particular security, which makes the price of the security more accurate. Similarly, disclosing information narrows the informational asymmetry between corporations and their officers and investors. Fourth, disclosure serves the twin goals of maintaining (and at times increasing) investor confidence in the market and promoting the public good.20
A shift to semiannual reporting would frustrate all of these goals.
Less regular review and exposure of corporate information incentivizes less ethical behavior. A good example is the potential for insider trading. The SEC's own Investor Advisory Committee says that a shift to semiannual reporting would "increase insider-trading concerns because more frequent disclosure reduces insiders' ability to profit from nonpublic information.21 Corporate insiders "always know more than the market," and quarterly reports are "one of the mechanisms that compresses the window in which insiders can act on non-public information before it comes public."22 By "extending the interval between mandatory reports, semiannual reporting would widen the gap between inside and public information, increasing the risk that insiders could trade while possessing material information not yet available to the market."23
Less frequent reporting will also require investors to spend more time and effort monitoring the companies in which they invest. Empirical evidence "supports the theory that mandatory disclosure improves the monitoring capability of third parties [and] reduces costs for investors."24 Without quarterly reports, investors will incur higher costs to pursue trading gains.25 "Nobody wants to wait an extra three months to find out bad news, such as that a once-profitable company has begun losing money."26 And fewer updates "means that there is more information for investors to catch up on each time a company reports results."27 The existence of quarterly reports means that investors do not need to incur the time and expense of uncovering and digesting relevant information that accumulates over half a year because the SEC already requires that companies provide that information to investors every three months.28
Eliminating quarterly reporting will also reduce investors' ability to deploy their capital efficiently. Optimal levels of disclosure "help to ensure that capital finds its most productive uses."29 Required disclosures make securities prices more accurate,30 and "accurate securities prices promote the efficient allocation of capital."31 But "less frequent financial reporting would result in greater volatility in securities prices."32 The market's ability to price securities accurately, and investors' ability to identify the most productive use for their capital, "would be cut in half because of the new six-month reporting schedule."33 So even if "the most productive place to deploy capital could be identified, redistribution would theoretically occur half as often because of the extra ninety-day delay on the availability of substantive information."34
Semiannual reporting would also exacerbate the information asymmetries that already exist between corporations and investors. That is because quarterly reports are one of the "few mechanisms" that allow the public to close the information gap that exists between management and investors.35 "By cutting available information essentially in half, investors would 'be nearly powerless to overcome their informational and bargaining disadvantages.'"36
Finally, semiannual reporting would reduce investor confidence in the market. "With a relatively short period of time between quarterly reports, average investors are able to maintain confidence through continual access to meaningful information."37 As a result, reducing the frequency of reporting "runs the risk of lowering the confidence of average investors."38
II. A Shift to Semiannual Reporting Would Disproportionately Impact Retail Investors.
A shift to semiannual reporting would harm all investors but would harm some investors more than others. Specifically, it would have a disproportionate impact on retail investors. That is because quarterly reports are particularly significant for retail investors.
Unlike institutional investors who have direct access to company management, retail investors often rely on publicly available information to gauge the financial health of a company and assess its investment potential. Quarterly reports provide a treasure trove of financial data that enables retail investors to make informed decisions based on accurate and up-to-date information.39 Semiannual reporting would force retail investors to wait longer to receive this accurate and upto-date information, which would delay their ability to make informed investment decisions.
The differences in the abilities of institutional investors and retail investors to obtain information from sources other than periodic reports also means that a shift to semiannual reporting would exacerbate the asymmetries that exist among those investors. "Though institutional investors may still, and frequently do, extract from the issuer information that is not provided by the SEC's mandatory disclosure rules, those rules place individual investors on equal footing with their institutional counterparts as to certain core information."40 Thus:
Limiting quarterly public disclosure of corporate information risks giving an advantage to some investors while hurting others. The big Wall Street banks, the big mutual fund companies, and other sophisticated financial institutions with substantial research departments will continue to have ready access to corporate officers and corporate information. In an environment with less frequent reporting, these sophisticated and deep-pocketed investors would likely still gain access to information while the less-sophisticated and -resourced investors would be left in the dark, awaiting semi-annual or other disclosures. Due to this informational disadvantage, this latter group would likely suffer by getting "picked off" in the market as those with better information would be better positioned to trade against them.41
Even institutional investors agree. BlackRock has said previously that "a move to less frequent reporting" would "exacerbate" the divide "between average investors" and those able to access "alternative information sources."42 This would "lower the confidence of average investors that they have access to meaningful and timely information with which to make decisions."43
The SEC's Investor Advisory Committee also agrees. It says that the "potential negative impact would be particularly high for retail investors, who rely on quarterly financial disclosures and lack direct access to public company management and other costly proprietary data sources that can provide insight into public company performance or outlook."44 Even more than institutional investors, quarterly reports "empower retail investors by providing them with comprehensive financial information about a company's operations, revenue, expenses, profitability, and more"45--information they would not otherwise be able to obtain.
The increase in informational asymmetry between corporations and investors discussed above would therefore impact retail investors to a greater degree as a result of information asymmetry among investors themselves. Timely financial reporting ensures all investors are on an equal footing.46 Because quarterly reports are available to all, they "play a vital role in leveling the playing field among investors with regard to their access to information."47
Less frequent reporting thus "has the ability to create an information divide between sophisticated investors, who are able to access additional data, and average investors, who are not."48 The failure to report information for long stretches "doesn't mean it ceases to exist"; insiders will still have access to the information and the ability to act on it, but retail investors won't.49 So semiannual reporting would give institutional investors with large research budgets and access to management an even greater edge over individual investors than they have now.50
In this respect, a shift to semiannual reporting would make the public markets more like the private markets. In the private markets, the lack of disclosure "affects retail investors significantly more than institutional investors, who generally have the financial sophistication and bargaining power to obtain necessary information."51 They "have the resources to conduct their own due diligence into offerings for which there is very little information available."52 The private markets therefore "give every advantage to insiders and to institutional investors with more bargaining power, sophistication, and access to information."53 Just as "retail investors who lack these resources have less ability to determine for themselves which opportunities in the private markets are worthwhile,"54 a shift to semiannual reporting will make it harder for retail investors specifically to make an informed investment decision about a public company.
Full disclosure "is essential if the small investor is to have confidence in our financial markets."55 Yet a shift to semiannual reporting would reduce the disclosures that retail investors receive currently. The Commission has always, up to now, prioritized the interests of retail investors, and it should want to instill, not sap, retail investor confidence in securities markets.
III. The Commission's justifications for the proposal are not persuasive.
A. Semiannual reporting will not increase the number of public companies.
The Commission says that the proposal "is one step in a broader Commission effort to encourage more companies to go and remain public by reducing the costs and burdens associated with Exchange Act reporting."56 But there is no reason to think that a shift to semiannual reporting will encourage more companies to go public. The reason for the recent decline in the number of public companies is that companies are now able to raise all the capital they need in the private markets without the disclosure obligations of the public markets. The private markets have virtually no disclosure obligations. A shift to semiannual reporting from quarterly reporting will not incentivize companies to go public because companies have no periodic reporting obligations in the private markets. Cutting public companies' periodic reporting obligations from four times annually to two times annually does not change the math. Zero is still less than two.
There is even reason to believe semiannual reporting could lead to fewer IPOs. Required disclosures "instill investor confidence, which is essential to a growing IPO market."57 Forcing investors that participate in the IPO to wait six months to see how management's representations about the company's business during the offering compare to actual results "is a recipe for skeptical investors demanding a higher risk premium to buy shares in newly public companies, which--if anything--makes the IPO market less attractive, not more."58
A shift to semiannual reporting is also a recipe for the Commission to have less insight into the market. For regulators such as the SEC that monitor systemic risk, "eliminating quarterly earnings would mean a 50% reduction in a data source they rely on heavily."59 Fewer corporate reports "could delay the detection of emerging risks, a concerning dynamic in an era of index funds, algorithmic trading, and rapid capital movement."60 It could also exacerbate the turmoil during a period of market stress. "In a downturn, a surefire way to make investors flee is to slow the information flow and make them wait an extra three months for updates."61
B. A shift to semiannual reporting will not curtail short-term thinking.
The Commission also says that a shift to semiannual reporting could allow companies to reduce their short-term thinking and focus on long-term planning.62 The problem is there is no evidence to support this supposition. As an initial matter, there is "limited evidence that shorttermism causes significant problems for publicly traded companies.63 And, even "if it did, changing the frequency of disclosure to a semiannual or annual basis would do little to check the problem."64 That is because numerous studies "have found no discernable improvements in corporate planning or performance in countries where it has been tried."65
For example, the United Kingdom shifted to semiannual reporting in 2014. Yet this "had no material impact on levels of corporate investment," including capital expenditures, spending on research and development, or spending on property, plant, and equipment.66 This makes sense, as "R&D investments, acquisitions, and capital expenditure decisions have multi-year horizons"--they "don't operate on three-month cycles, and they won't operate on six-month cycles either."67 So, in the United Kingdom, a shift to semiannual reporting did not lead to better valuations, better capital raising, or a healthier IPO market; instead, it "tracked a period during which the London Stock Exchange struggled to attract new listings and retain existing ones."68
The notion that the United States should eliminate quarterly reporting because other jurisdictions permit semiannual reporting makes no sense. It is the capital markets in the United States, not in other jurisdictions, that are the envy of the world. Perhaps it is "not coincidental[]" that "semiannual reporting is commonplace" in Europe and Asia but "valuation multiples" in those jurisdictions "tend to trail those of American companies."69 Our system of quarterly reporting has contributed to investors from around the world wanting to invest here. There is no reason to make our reporting regime mirror jurisdictions whose markets pale in comparison to ours.
C. Any cost savings from a shift to semiannual reporting will be outweighed by the loss of transparency and the increase in the costs of capital.
The Commission says further that the proposal would allow companies to "see a reduction in compliance costs of time and money, as they would incur these interim reporting costs only one time in connection with each fiscal year instead of three times in connection with each fiscal year pursuant to quarterly reporting."70 But the "costs of preparing these filings are miniscule compared with the size of the U.S. capital markets."71 So these costs must be weighed against the benefits of transparency with respect to the largest securities markets in the world.
These benefits extend not only to investors but to issuers themselves. The costs of quarterly reporting must be measured not only against the benefits to investors but against the benefits to issuers. The SEC ignores the fact that the "point of requiring timely, standardized financial reporting is to lower companies' cost of capital."72 "Capital markets operate most efficiently when investors have equal access to widely disseminated financial information."73
When reliable information is limited, the cost of capital rises because firms must pay a 'signaling premium' in order to encourage investors to supply funds. When information is not accessible to investors on an equal basis, the cost of capital rises because firms must pay an 'unfairness premium' in order to compensate for uncertainty. Thus, when the market is operating efficiently, the firm will communicate information regarding its true or 'intrinsic' value to investors and the cost of capital will approach the fair and equitable ideal.74
In other words, the increased investor confidence that disclosure engenders "results in lower capital costs for issuers because investors will not demand as large of premium for their investment."75 So the more "transparent and reliable a company's reporting is, all other things being equal, the lower its costs will be to borrow money or raise equity from outside investors."76
The Commission also says that a shift to semiannual reporting will reduce companies' costs because "more frequent disclosure increases the risk of disclosing proprietary information that could benefit competitors to the detriment of the reporting company."77 Yet, in a footnote, the Commission acknowledges that the "impact of the proposed rules on the disclosure of proprietary information would be limited to instances where delaying competitively sensitive information . . . decreases the value of the information to competitors."78 This is hardly a reason to deprive investors of the frequent corporate updates they have relied on for over 50 years.
* * *
As discussed above, the "foundation of securities regulation relies on disclosure to ensure investors have the information necessary to be protected in the markets."79 Disclosure is "widely credited with 'improved selection of new investment projects, improved managerial performance, and reduced investor risk."80 Thus, one of the "essential missions of the SEC is to ensure that investors are provided with material information."81 A desire to increase the number of public companies, curtail short-termism, and reduce costs do not justify providing investors with less disclosure--especially since semiannual reporting will not have those benefits. Indeed, in its economic analysis, the Commission itself seems to recognize the problem with its proposal:
Conversely, the efficiency of financial markets rests on material information becoming public in a timely fashion. In addition to protecting investors, greater availability of material information allows securities prices to better reflect their issuers' fundamental value and ultimately promotes capital formation as issuers have access to lower cost of capital and investors in those issuers' securities have access to higher liquidity. . . . A reduction in the frequency of interim reporting could result in delayed disclosure of material information, reduced comparability, and some lost information.82
This begs the question of why the Commission is proposing a shift to semiannual reporting in the first place. The Commission says it is simply a question of a "tradeoff" between "reducing regulatory burdens" on companies and "promoting efficient capital markets through timely disclosure."83 To the extent there is such a tradeoff--and, as discussed above, the Commission vastly overstates the benefits of a shift to semiannual reporting--the Commission's mission is not to reduce the so-called regulatory burdens on public companies but rather to protect investors, maintain fair, orderly, and efficient markets, and facilitate capital formation.84
The Commission seems all too willing to make "tradeoffs" that benefit corporations at the expense of investors. For example, the Commission suggests that it is simply trading the quarterly disclosures on Form 10-Q for the disclosures on Form 8-K. The Commission says that it believes that "the requirements of Form 8-K elicit important disclosures about material events on a more timely basis than quarterly reports on Form 10-Q."85 But, as the Commission must know, disclosures on Form 10-Q and disclosures on Form 8-K serve different purposes. Form 8K, which requires companies to disclose certain events when they occur, is no substitute for quarterly reports. That is because a Form 8-K tells investors something has happened, but it does not tell them the financial ramifications. Investors "are left holding a flag that says 'something changed' without any financial map of where they now stand."86 The "financial translation of a material event is precisely what quarterly reporting provides and what an 8-K cannot."87
The bottom line is that investors "now rely on quarterly reports for more than just viewing the company's past quarter's financial performance."88 Investors "utilize the information provided in Form 10-Q as a way to assess and predict the company's health and ensure stable performance."89 As a result, reducing the "frequency of disclosure requirements would therefore lead to diminished investor confidence and the likelihood of destabilizing our capital markets."90
Conclusion
We hope these comments are helpful as the Commission considers this matter.
Sincerely,
Benjamin L. Schiffrin, Director of Securities Policy, Better Markets, Inc., 2000 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, Suite 4008, Washington, DC 20006 (202) 618-6464
bschiffrin@bettermarkets.org
http://www.bettermarkets.org
* * *
Original text and footnotes here: https://bettermarkets.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Better-Markets-Comment-Letter-Semiannual-Reporting.pdf
News Release here: https://bettermarkets.org/newsroom/secs-plan-to-eliminate-quarterly-reporting-is-a-slap-in-the-face-to-investors/
[Category: Financial Services]
American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network Issues Letter to OMB
WASHINGTON, July 20 (TNSletter) -- The American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network issued the following letter to the Office of Management and Budget:
* * *
Here is the text of the letter:
July 10, 2026
Russell Vought
Director
Office of Management and Budget
725 17th St. NW
Washington, D.C. 20503
Re: OMB-2026-0034 - Regulation Federal Financial Assistance Proposed Rule 91 Fed. Reg. 32198 (May 29, 2026)
Dear Director Vought:
The American Cancer Society (ACS) and the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network (ACS CAN) appreciate the opportunity to comment on the Office of Management ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, July 20 (TNSletter) -- The American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network issued the following letter to the Office of Management and Budget: * * * Here is the text of the letter: July 10, 2026 Russell Vought Director Office of Management and Budget 725 17th St. NW Washington, D.C. 20503 Re: OMB-2026-0034 - Regulation Federal Financial Assistance Proposed Rule 91 Fed. Reg. 32198 (May 29, 2026) Dear Director Vought: The American Cancer Society (ACS) and the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network (ACS CAN) appreciate the opportunity to comment on the Office of Managementand Budget's (OMB) Federal Financial Assistance Proposed Rule. The ACS mission is to improve the lives of people with cancer and their families through advocacy, research, and patient support, to ensure everyone has an opportunity to prevent, detect, treat, and survive cancer. ACS, operating throughout the United States (U.S.), is the largest voluntary health organization in the country. ACS CAN is making cancer a top priority for public officials and candidates at the federal, state, and local levels. ACS CAN empowers advocates nationwide to make their voices heard and influence evidence-based public policy change, as well as legislative and regulatory solutions that will reduce the cancer burden. As ACS's nonprofit, nonpartisan advocacy affiliate, ACS CAN is more determined than ever to end cancer as we know it, for everyone.
ACS CAN advocates to ensure that the best scientific research that will advance health outcomes is funded and translated into interventions that are accessible by all. That means a process that is transparent, grounded in science, and merit based. Several aspects of this draft rule stand in the way of those tenets, creating an opaque and non-merit-based review process, setting unclear standards that discourage research and interventions critical to improving health outcomes, and generating an environment of uncertainty. Taken together, this rule will impede the federal research enterprise, stifle innovation, limit access to proven health interventions, and would risk not only American's health but also accelerate the ongoing loss of American leadership in biomedical research as talent and capital move to countries with more predictable research environments. As discussed in more detail below, ACS CAN strongly opposes the proposed rule and urges the administration to withdraw the rule.
We object to the proposed rule on a number of grounds:
* The opaque and non-scientific criteria for proposed review will create uncertainty and stifle innovation. The introduction of non-merit-based review means that researchers will no longer seek to advance the most scientifically promising research ideas but rather will be faced with trying to craft "safe" proposals that attempt to appeal to changing and subjective topics of interest to the administration or even specific appointed individuals charged with making award determinations.
* Barriers to specific research fields and topics will stand in the way of progress. Cancer mortality rates have dropped by 34% since 1991, but this progress has not benefited all groups equally. Further progress requires identifying where outcomes have lagged and understanding the causes of stark disparities in cancer incidence and survival across demographic groups. The proposed rule would discourage this work by creating uncertainty about whether health disparities research falls within the prohibition on "disparate impact studies" and by barring funding for programs with participation criteria that include race.
* Grant cancellation for any cause creates an environment of fear and uncertainty and drives down investments in innovation. In the past year, thousands of research and training grants were terminated or frozen, at a loss of hundreds of millions of already invested taxpayer dollars. In many cases, no reasons were provided for the disruptions causing confusion. As a result, biomedical graduate student admissions have dropped, the researcher employment outlook has dimmed, and other countries have sought to capitalize by recruiting U.S. researchers.1
* Proven health intervention programs could be curbed, reducing progress. While biomedical discoveries are an important part of improved patient care and outcomes, realizing these benefits requires effective implementation in real-world settings. This proposed rule could affect vital cancer control programs at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and worsen cancer outcomes through decreased implementation of effective scientific discoveries.
SECTION-BY-SECTION DISCUSSION OF THE PROPOSED REVISIONS TO SUBTITLE A OF 2 CFR
Subpart C - Pre-Federal Award Requirements and Contents of Federal Awards
Section 200.205 - Federal Agency Review of Merit of Proposals [200.205] The longstanding National Institutes of Health (NIH) review process is one that leverages peer scientific review by over 20,000 scientists every year to establish scientific merit of proposals through study sections.2 This review provides scorings that allow proposals to be ranked, and at institutes like the National Cancer Institute (NCI) the very best proposals are funded at what is known as a payline. Even in this process there is some flexibility to fund otherwise highly scoring but unselected projects that address unmet needs. This general model of peer review is common across the biomedical research ecosystem, and a very similar program is employed by ACS to grant over $130 million per year to advance cancer research outcomes. Relying on the expert opinions of scientific peer reviewers, ACS has funded 53 innovative researchers who later received recognition of their cutting-edge work by winning the Nobel Prize. Many other investments identified through the rigorous ACS review process resulted in breakthroughs that have changed standard of care for cancer patients, from discovery of the first ever chemotherapy treatment almost 80 years ago to more recent targeted therapies that have substantially increased patient survival. Despite the proposed rule's statement in the preamble that "OMB proposes a variety of changes designed to ensure and emphasize the need for merit-based selection of recipients for discretionary Awards,"3 the proposed rule nonetheless seeks to make this peer-review assignment of merit a secondary consideration in making awards. The proposed rule makes clear that political appointees would be the primary decisionmakers and "peer review recommendations remain advisory and are not ministerially ratified, routinely deferred to, or otherwise treated as de facto binding by senior appointees or their designees." [200.205(d)] The proposed rule charges these appointees to select award recipients based on ill-defined, subjective, and potentially ever-changing criteria, such as the "President's policy priorities" [200.205(b)(1)], "national interest" [200.205(b)], and avoidance of "anti-American values" [200.205(b)(2)(iv)].
While scientific peer review of proposals is unlikely to change drastically from year to year absent major scientific advances, the interpretation of the proposed review criteria based on priorities is likely to swing wildly from administration to administration. Combined with the rule's provisions on termination and suspension [200.340] that allow broad discretion for grant cancellations that do not meet "national interest as they exist at the time of the termination" [200.340(a)(2)], applicants are faced with the challenge of how to pursue research deemed of interest by one administration while not being in jeopardy of cancellation by the next administration which may have different interests.
Such a policy would stymie long-term federal research as researchers would have no way of predicting the political interests of future administrations. In 2025 just such a swing occurred, resulting in thousands of cancelled grants and a loss of nearly a half a billion dollars in sunk costs, a preview of what such subjective, non-scientific grant approval processes combined with an expanded ability to cancel grants portend.4 Faced with such uncertainty, the best researchers are likely to no longer pursue the most scientifically meaningful research, but rather select low-risk, low-yield ideas; move to other countries with a more predictable funding environment; or leave research altogether. All of these would result in loss of American leadership in biomedical innovation. Importantly, this policy change would also likely slow down the pipeline of new patient care solutions. It takes 17 years on average for a biomedical discovery to be implemented into clinical practice.5 Adaptation of research interests to target political interests would disrupt a researcher's focus of advancing promising health solutions that take more than a decade to achieve.
A further challenge with requiring detailed appointee review of grants prior to awarding is the effect on NIH's ability to release grants in a timely manner. NIH typically does not have many political appointees, and while this responsibility may be delegated, requiring all grants to be funneled through a handful of individuals creates a major bottleneck. This administration has already implemented such review, and the results are a record slow pace of grant approvals. As of June 2026, the rate of new grants issued is only at 48% of the rate seen in 2024, potentially creating funding gaps that lead labs to reduce personnel, or compressing timelines to use granted funds, which may lead to inefficient use.6
Lastly, the dependence on individual appointee review of grants runs counter to the administration's own calls for the pursuit of "Gold Standard Science." The Office of Science and Technology Policy's guidance for implementing Gold Standard Science lays out nine tenets, including one on the use of unbiased peer review. This tenet lays out a process for selecting grant recipients via peer review which states that "[s]ubjecting science to unbiased peer review (sometimes referred to as merit review) refers to the impartial and independent evaluation, by qualified experts" and requires that "[a]gencies shall prioritize unbiased peer review to advance sound science in the review, selection, and awarding of Federal grants and contracts."7 Moreover, the administration states the process "should ensure appropriate reviewer selection, prioritizing expertise, independence, and viewpoint diversity...with clear disclosure of potential conflicts of interest," concluding that "[a]wards must be granted based on merit, without bias in the selection of awardees." (emphasis added) The OMB rule runs counter to this guidance, indicating that appointees are not to defer to peer review, but rather "must instead use their independent judgment when evaluating Federal award proposals" [200.205.(c)]. The proposed rule sets no process for ensuring that appointees or their designees who are responsible for determining which proposals to fund have met the gold-standard criteria for being a reviewer of proposals. This conflict between the Gold Standard Science guidance and the proposed rule will lead to further confusion as researchers attempt to navigate contradictory frameworks and be forced to guess how much one person's perspective may impact the likelihood of their application's success.
Subpart D - Post Federal Award Requirements
a. Section 200.300 - Statutory and National Policy Requirements
[200.300] Cancer impacts everyone, but it doesn't impact everyone equally. While it may not be the stated intent, the proposed rule would have a chilling impact on research and programs that aim to address differing health outcomes by including broad and unclear language regarding DEI and "disparate impact studies." In particular, the proposed rule bans use of federal funds for "disparate impact studies", and it is unclear how this applies to health disparities research, including research that aims to understand and remedy the disparities that result in starkly higher incidence and death rates for certain demographic groups. The term "disparate impact studies" is undefined, and the lack of clarity as to whether it includes health disparities research would have a severe chilling effect on this area of study. Furthermore, it is unclear how to interpret this language in concert with other federal requirements, including the NIH Policy and Guidelines on The Inclusion of Women and Minorities as Subjects in Clinical Research, which requires explicit consideration of race in order to ensure inclusion of minorities in clinical trials.8 Further, the proposed rule removes existing regulatory language protecting against discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity [200.300(b)(2)]. Taken together with the administration's cancellation of disparities related grants and merit review restrictions that do not allow federal support for programs where participation criteria include race [200.205(b)(2)(i)], this proposal has the potential to effectively eliminate federally funded work to understand and address racial, ethnic, and gender-based health disparities.
ACS research shows how differences in social determinants of health, such as race, ethnicity, geography, disability status, sexual orientation, and socioeconomic factors, are associated with profound inequities in cancer incidence, care delivery, and patient outcomes, including stark disparities in survival.9 For example, individuals diagnosed with cancer residing in rural areas face challenges in accessing cancer care and experience worse outcomes than their counterparts living in more metropolitan areas, and are more likely to have limited incomes and face serious financial hardship.
10,11 Research has also shown similar disparities by race, ethnicity, and gender, and recent studies show that more than 25% of cancer survivors report significant levels of disability after cancer diagnosis, including disabilities that impact mobility and self-care.12 Understanding the root causes of these differences is key to identifying solutions to improve outcomes for all people with cancer. The proposed rule, however, has the potential to selectively block federal funding for the subset of grants seeking to address disparities defined by race or transgender characteristics, despite these groups frequently experiencing some of the largest differences in health outcomes and mortality. Moreover, factors contributing to health disparities, whether rural-urban differences or those associated with race or ethnicity, are complex and intertwined. Meaningful results and solutions require research that takes all social determinants into consideration, where appropriate.
For ACS CAN, advancing health equity means advocating for evidence-based policies that provide everyone with a fair and just opportunity to prevent, detect, treat, and survive cancer - regardless of income, race, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability status, or where they live. For instance, Black men in the U.S. have the highest documented prostate cancer incidence rates in the world and are more likely to be diagnosed at an advanced stage compared to non-Hispanic White men with prostate cancer, with mortality in Black men approximately two to three times that of men in other racial and ethnic groups.13 Black women have a 40% higher breast cancer death rate despite having a 4% lower incidence rate than White women.14 LGBTQ+ people also face a unique and increased cancer burden, disproportionately affected by disparities in risk factors and are more likely to be unhoused, and experience poverty and food insecurity,15,16,17 which can lead to worse cancer outcomes.
Research that focuses on specific populations or demographics is vital to helping identify existing widespread disparities that help inform the best interventions and cancer treatments for everyone.
For example, genetic factors can play an important role in the susceptibility of certain cancer types for particular populations. Per the increased incidence in prostate cancer for Black men mentioned above, a previous pooled study (that included ACS study data) showed the importance of large-scale genetic studies in men of African ancestry specifically to better understand prostate cancer susceptibility in this high-risk population and discovered nine novel risk variants for this population.18 Population specific studies not only inform the contribution of genetic ancestry to cancer risk, but also help inform cancer prevention and early detection guidelines and whether certain guidelines are applicable across different populations.19 By ensuring that everyone, including Black and LGBTQ+ communities for example, have access to care, serious diseases like cancer can be detected and treated earlier - often resulting in better health outcomes and lower costs for the entire healthcare system.
This proposed rule could also impact efforts to ensure clinical trials are representative of the U.S. population, a basic tenet underlying clinical trial validity, and is in direct conflict with the NIH Policy and Guidelines on The Inclusion of Women and Minorities as Subjects in Clinical Research.20 Clinical trials are designed to test an intervention on a small group of people in a controlled setting to determine if the intervention is safe and effective for a broader population. But, for trial results to be relevant to the broader population, they have to mirror that population with respect to health, and socioeconomic and demographic variables. Failure to ensure representative populations can result in ineffective or dangerous drugs being used by the broader population, mask important differences that should inform clinical practice,21,22 and also represents non-reproducible research, which the administration's Gold Standard Science initiative seeks to eliminate.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has rejected drug applications solely on the basis that the trials did not include participants representative of the U.S. population. Statutory requirements passed as part of the Food and Drug Omnibus Reform Act (FDORA) of 2022 require drug sponsors to submit diversity action plans to FDA for their pivotal drug trials that will ensure that trials reflect the U.S. population with a disease, as historically some racial and ethnic populations in the U.S. have otherwise been vastly underrepresented in cancer clinical trials that support new drug approvals. These action plans describe methods to ensure representative participation in clinical trials, which can help ensure that drugs developed are effective and safe across all demographics. While this administration has not begun enforcing this law, the proposed rule again stands in direct conflict to it. It is critical not only that this bipartisan provision be fully implemented, but that federally funded research efforts similarly ensure representative participation.
b. Section 200.340 - Termination and Suspension
[200.340] Since 2025, over 5,000 NIH research grants have been frozen or terminated.3Often, no reason was provided for the disruptions, which were apparently unrelated to research performance or misconduct. Although over 4,000 of those disrupted grants have been subsequently reinstated, the loss in research funding due to the disruption is approximately $459 million.3 More significant, however, are the impacts the funding uncertainty has introduced in the research environment. Cancer research projects often take years of work by teams of researchers to yield the results that have given us breakthrough treatments and deeper understanding of the causes and early development of cancer. The value of early-stage research is lost when a project is unable to reach completion because funding was revoked. Moreover, fewer grants overall are being awarded, meaning many projects will never begin. As of late March 2026, for example, NCI had committed less than one-third of the funds for new and competing research awards than awarded during a typical year in the previous administration.4
The sudden and devastating disruptions to research when in-progress grants are cancelled would become an ongoing risk due to changes in the proposed rule that would codify a framework where grants can be terminated by the awarding agency for any reason. Historically, grants could only be prematurely terminated for misconduct or if the agency determined that the research would not accomplish the goals as stated in the original award. The proposed rule, in contrast, states that any grant may be terminated if the agency "determines that a termination is in the interest of the Federal agency or pass-through entity, including if a Federal award does not effectuate program goals, Federal agency priorities, or the national interest as they exist at the time of the termination." [200.340(a)(2)] The stated rationale for these changes is to align research award policies with the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) which applies to procurement contracts. This represents a fundamental misunderstanding of the time scale and commitment needed for biomedical research and development, and these changes will have a severe chilling effect on investigators seeking to begin the kind of four- or-five-year research projects that can lead to breakthroughs and cures.
In a climate of funding uncertainty, investigators cannot commit to hiring the staff needed to do the work. In a recent survey, 61% of researchers said that federal policy changes in the past year led to layoffs of postdoctoral researchers or staff, and 58% reported delayed hiring processes.23 Early career scientists and emerging investigators hesitate to commit to research careers, potentially impacting the progress of science years and decades into the future.24 In February of this year, NIH acknowledged that the changes to grant funding mechanisms have made it more difficult for early stage investigators to receive awards: the funding rate for these researchers dropped from 26% in 2024 to 19% in 2025.25
Until recently, the U.S. has been a global leader in biomedical innovation, including cancer research and treatment discovery. The chilling effect of recent changes to U.S. research funding has put this status in jeopardy. In a recent survey of NIH-funded researchers, 13% reported having lost laboratory researchers to institutions in other countries, and 8% have advised trainees to seek work outside the U.S.29 We are already seeing the effects of these changes; in 2025, China passed the U.S. in the number of cancer research publications, and is rapidly gaining in other areas such as clinical trial openings.26 In order to maintain U.S. leadership in discovery and innovation, retain exceptional scientists, and spur investment in cures, research must be reliably funded through a predictable, transparent process that is based on solid, unbiased scientific rationale.
IMPACT ACROSS THE CANCER CARE CONTINUUM
In addition to driving cancer research and innovation, federal grants and other financial assistance significantly impact cancer prevention, early detection, diagnosis, treatment, and survivorship. The CDC provides federal financial assistance to state, local, and territorial health departments, tribal governments and organizations, universities and academic institutions, nonprofit organizations, and healthcare systems to provide millions of cancer screening exams, collect and analyze cancer data, support community-focused cancer coalitions, improve cancer care delivery, and educate the public directly on cancer risk and survivorship. A reduction or loss in these programs due to the stipulations in the proposed rule would mean limiting people's access to proven cancer programs and risk worsening cancer outcomes. Lastly, we are concerned about limitations placed on the use of funds for publication costs [200.461]. Patients, providers and other researchers utilize research findings to inform care and drive research progress forward. New discoveries can only benefit patients if they are published and accessible, yet the proposal would effectively curb that access.
CONCLUSION
Thank you for the opportunity to comment on the Office of Management and Budget's Proposed Rule. We appreciate the administration's commitment to accountability in federal spending and stand ready to partner on approaches that protect scientific excellence while delivering faster breakthroughs for patients. However, we reiterate our concern that this rule as drafted would actually waste invested dollars and further threaten our global leadership in scientific innovation. ACS CAN strongly opposes the proposed rule and urges the administration to withdraw the rule. Additionally, we urge the administration to extend the consultative process by 90 days so that smaller organizations can weigh in on its impact. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us or have your staff contact Mark Fleury, Principal, Policy Development - Emerging Science at Mark.Fleury@cancer.org or Gladys Arias, Principal, Health Equity Policy Analysis & Legislative Support at Gladys.Arias@cancer.org.
Sincerely,
Lisa A. Lacasse, MBA William Dahut, MD, President Chief Scientific Officer, American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network American Cancer Society
* * *
Original text and footnotes here: https://www.fightcancer.org/sites/default/files/acs_can_final_omb_comment_letter10july2026.pdf
News Release here: https://www.fightcancer.org/releases/acs-can-calls-administration-withdraw-rule-jeopardizes-future-cancer-research
[Category: Medical]
* * *
Here is the text of the letter:
July 10, 2026
Russell Vought
Director
Office of Management and Budget
725 17th St. NW
Washington, D.C. 20503
Re: OMB-2026-0034 - Regulation Federal Financial Assistance Proposed Rule 91 Fed. Reg. 32198 (May 29, 2026)
Dear Director Vought:
The American Cancer Society (ACS) and the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network (ACS CAN) appreciate the opportunity to comment on the Office of Management ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, July 20 (TNSletter) -- The American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network issued the following letter to the Office of Management and Budget: * * * Here is the text of the letter: July 10, 2026 Russell Vought Director Office of Management and Budget 725 17th St. NW Washington, D.C. 20503 Re: OMB-2026-0034 - Regulation Federal Financial Assistance Proposed Rule 91 Fed. Reg. 32198 (May 29, 2026) Dear Director Vought: The American Cancer Society (ACS) and the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network (ACS CAN) appreciate the opportunity to comment on the Office of Managementand Budget's (OMB) Federal Financial Assistance Proposed Rule. The ACS mission is to improve the lives of people with cancer and their families through advocacy, research, and patient support, to ensure everyone has an opportunity to prevent, detect, treat, and survive cancer. ACS, operating throughout the United States (U.S.), is the largest voluntary health organization in the country. ACS CAN is making cancer a top priority for public officials and candidates at the federal, state, and local levels. ACS CAN empowers advocates nationwide to make their voices heard and influence evidence-based public policy change, as well as legislative and regulatory solutions that will reduce the cancer burden. As ACS's nonprofit, nonpartisan advocacy affiliate, ACS CAN is more determined than ever to end cancer as we know it, for everyone.
ACS CAN advocates to ensure that the best scientific research that will advance health outcomes is funded and translated into interventions that are accessible by all. That means a process that is transparent, grounded in science, and merit based. Several aspects of this draft rule stand in the way of those tenets, creating an opaque and non-merit-based review process, setting unclear standards that discourage research and interventions critical to improving health outcomes, and generating an environment of uncertainty. Taken together, this rule will impede the federal research enterprise, stifle innovation, limit access to proven health interventions, and would risk not only American's health but also accelerate the ongoing loss of American leadership in biomedical research as talent and capital move to countries with more predictable research environments. As discussed in more detail below, ACS CAN strongly opposes the proposed rule and urges the administration to withdraw the rule.
We object to the proposed rule on a number of grounds:
* The opaque and non-scientific criteria for proposed review will create uncertainty and stifle innovation. The introduction of non-merit-based review means that researchers will no longer seek to advance the most scientifically promising research ideas but rather will be faced with trying to craft "safe" proposals that attempt to appeal to changing and subjective topics of interest to the administration or even specific appointed individuals charged with making award determinations.
* Barriers to specific research fields and topics will stand in the way of progress. Cancer mortality rates have dropped by 34% since 1991, but this progress has not benefited all groups equally. Further progress requires identifying where outcomes have lagged and understanding the causes of stark disparities in cancer incidence and survival across demographic groups. The proposed rule would discourage this work by creating uncertainty about whether health disparities research falls within the prohibition on "disparate impact studies" and by barring funding for programs with participation criteria that include race.
* Grant cancellation for any cause creates an environment of fear and uncertainty and drives down investments in innovation. In the past year, thousands of research and training grants were terminated or frozen, at a loss of hundreds of millions of already invested taxpayer dollars. In many cases, no reasons were provided for the disruptions causing confusion. As a result, biomedical graduate student admissions have dropped, the researcher employment outlook has dimmed, and other countries have sought to capitalize by recruiting U.S. researchers.1
* Proven health intervention programs could be curbed, reducing progress. While biomedical discoveries are an important part of improved patient care and outcomes, realizing these benefits requires effective implementation in real-world settings. This proposed rule could affect vital cancer control programs at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and worsen cancer outcomes through decreased implementation of effective scientific discoveries.
SECTION-BY-SECTION DISCUSSION OF THE PROPOSED REVISIONS TO SUBTITLE A OF 2 CFR
Subpart C - Pre-Federal Award Requirements and Contents of Federal Awards
Section 200.205 - Federal Agency Review of Merit of Proposals [200.205] The longstanding National Institutes of Health (NIH) review process is one that leverages peer scientific review by over 20,000 scientists every year to establish scientific merit of proposals through study sections.2 This review provides scorings that allow proposals to be ranked, and at institutes like the National Cancer Institute (NCI) the very best proposals are funded at what is known as a payline. Even in this process there is some flexibility to fund otherwise highly scoring but unselected projects that address unmet needs. This general model of peer review is common across the biomedical research ecosystem, and a very similar program is employed by ACS to grant over $130 million per year to advance cancer research outcomes. Relying on the expert opinions of scientific peer reviewers, ACS has funded 53 innovative researchers who later received recognition of their cutting-edge work by winning the Nobel Prize. Many other investments identified through the rigorous ACS review process resulted in breakthroughs that have changed standard of care for cancer patients, from discovery of the first ever chemotherapy treatment almost 80 years ago to more recent targeted therapies that have substantially increased patient survival. Despite the proposed rule's statement in the preamble that "OMB proposes a variety of changes designed to ensure and emphasize the need for merit-based selection of recipients for discretionary Awards,"3 the proposed rule nonetheless seeks to make this peer-review assignment of merit a secondary consideration in making awards. The proposed rule makes clear that political appointees would be the primary decisionmakers and "peer review recommendations remain advisory and are not ministerially ratified, routinely deferred to, or otherwise treated as de facto binding by senior appointees or their designees." [200.205(d)] The proposed rule charges these appointees to select award recipients based on ill-defined, subjective, and potentially ever-changing criteria, such as the "President's policy priorities" [200.205(b)(1)], "national interest" [200.205(b)], and avoidance of "anti-American values" [200.205(b)(2)(iv)].
While scientific peer review of proposals is unlikely to change drastically from year to year absent major scientific advances, the interpretation of the proposed review criteria based on priorities is likely to swing wildly from administration to administration. Combined with the rule's provisions on termination and suspension [200.340] that allow broad discretion for grant cancellations that do not meet "national interest as they exist at the time of the termination" [200.340(a)(2)], applicants are faced with the challenge of how to pursue research deemed of interest by one administration while not being in jeopardy of cancellation by the next administration which may have different interests.
Such a policy would stymie long-term federal research as researchers would have no way of predicting the political interests of future administrations. In 2025 just such a swing occurred, resulting in thousands of cancelled grants and a loss of nearly a half a billion dollars in sunk costs, a preview of what such subjective, non-scientific grant approval processes combined with an expanded ability to cancel grants portend.4 Faced with such uncertainty, the best researchers are likely to no longer pursue the most scientifically meaningful research, but rather select low-risk, low-yield ideas; move to other countries with a more predictable funding environment; or leave research altogether. All of these would result in loss of American leadership in biomedical innovation. Importantly, this policy change would also likely slow down the pipeline of new patient care solutions. It takes 17 years on average for a biomedical discovery to be implemented into clinical practice.5 Adaptation of research interests to target political interests would disrupt a researcher's focus of advancing promising health solutions that take more than a decade to achieve.
A further challenge with requiring detailed appointee review of grants prior to awarding is the effect on NIH's ability to release grants in a timely manner. NIH typically does not have many political appointees, and while this responsibility may be delegated, requiring all grants to be funneled through a handful of individuals creates a major bottleneck. This administration has already implemented such review, and the results are a record slow pace of grant approvals. As of June 2026, the rate of new grants issued is only at 48% of the rate seen in 2024, potentially creating funding gaps that lead labs to reduce personnel, or compressing timelines to use granted funds, which may lead to inefficient use.6
Lastly, the dependence on individual appointee review of grants runs counter to the administration's own calls for the pursuit of "Gold Standard Science." The Office of Science and Technology Policy's guidance for implementing Gold Standard Science lays out nine tenets, including one on the use of unbiased peer review. This tenet lays out a process for selecting grant recipients via peer review which states that "[s]ubjecting science to unbiased peer review (sometimes referred to as merit review) refers to the impartial and independent evaluation, by qualified experts" and requires that "[a]gencies shall prioritize unbiased peer review to advance sound science in the review, selection, and awarding of Federal grants and contracts."7 Moreover, the administration states the process "should ensure appropriate reviewer selection, prioritizing expertise, independence, and viewpoint diversity...with clear disclosure of potential conflicts of interest," concluding that "[a]wards must be granted based on merit, without bias in the selection of awardees." (emphasis added) The OMB rule runs counter to this guidance, indicating that appointees are not to defer to peer review, but rather "must instead use their independent judgment when evaluating Federal award proposals" [200.205.(c)]. The proposed rule sets no process for ensuring that appointees or their designees who are responsible for determining which proposals to fund have met the gold-standard criteria for being a reviewer of proposals. This conflict between the Gold Standard Science guidance and the proposed rule will lead to further confusion as researchers attempt to navigate contradictory frameworks and be forced to guess how much one person's perspective may impact the likelihood of their application's success.
Subpart D - Post Federal Award Requirements
a. Section 200.300 - Statutory and National Policy Requirements
[200.300] Cancer impacts everyone, but it doesn't impact everyone equally. While it may not be the stated intent, the proposed rule would have a chilling impact on research and programs that aim to address differing health outcomes by including broad and unclear language regarding DEI and "disparate impact studies." In particular, the proposed rule bans use of federal funds for "disparate impact studies", and it is unclear how this applies to health disparities research, including research that aims to understand and remedy the disparities that result in starkly higher incidence and death rates for certain demographic groups. The term "disparate impact studies" is undefined, and the lack of clarity as to whether it includes health disparities research would have a severe chilling effect on this area of study. Furthermore, it is unclear how to interpret this language in concert with other federal requirements, including the NIH Policy and Guidelines on The Inclusion of Women and Minorities as Subjects in Clinical Research, which requires explicit consideration of race in order to ensure inclusion of minorities in clinical trials.8 Further, the proposed rule removes existing regulatory language protecting against discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity [200.300(b)(2)]. Taken together with the administration's cancellation of disparities related grants and merit review restrictions that do not allow federal support for programs where participation criteria include race [200.205(b)(2)(i)], this proposal has the potential to effectively eliminate federally funded work to understand and address racial, ethnic, and gender-based health disparities.
ACS research shows how differences in social determinants of health, such as race, ethnicity, geography, disability status, sexual orientation, and socioeconomic factors, are associated with profound inequities in cancer incidence, care delivery, and patient outcomes, including stark disparities in survival.9 For example, individuals diagnosed with cancer residing in rural areas face challenges in accessing cancer care and experience worse outcomes than their counterparts living in more metropolitan areas, and are more likely to have limited incomes and face serious financial hardship.
10,11 Research has also shown similar disparities by race, ethnicity, and gender, and recent studies show that more than 25% of cancer survivors report significant levels of disability after cancer diagnosis, including disabilities that impact mobility and self-care.12 Understanding the root causes of these differences is key to identifying solutions to improve outcomes for all people with cancer. The proposed rule, however, has the potential to selectively block federal funding for the subset of grants seeking to address disparities defined by race or transgender characteristics, despite these groups frequently experiencing some of the largest differences in health outcomes and mortality. Moreover, factors contributing to health disparities, whether rural-urban differences or those associated with race or ethnicity, are complex and intertwined. Meaningful results and solutions require research that takes all social determinants into consideration, where appropriate.
For ACS CAN, advancing health equity means advocating for evidence-based policies that provide everyone with a fair and just opportunity to prevent, detect, treat, and survive cancer - regardless of income, race, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability status, or where they live. For instance, Black men in the U.S. have the highest documented prostate cancer incidence rates in the world and are more likely to be diagnosed at an advanced stage compared to non-Hispanic White men with prostate cancer, with mortality in Black men approximately two to three times that of men in other racial and ethnic groups.13 Black women have a 40% higher breast cancer death rate despite having a 4% lower incidence rate than White women.14 LGBTQ+ people also face a unique and increased cancer burden, disproportionately affected by disparities in risk factors and are more likely to be unhoused, and experience poverty and food insecurity,15,16,17 which can lead to worse cancer outcomes.
Research that focuses on specific populations or demographics is vital to helping identify existing widespread disparities that help inform the best interventions and cancer treatments for everyone.
For example, genetic factors can play an important role in the susceptibility of certain cancer types for particular populations. Per the increased incidence in prostate cancer for Black men mentioned above, a previous pooled study (that included ACS study data) showed the importance of large-scale genetic studies in men of African ancestry specifically to better understand prostate cancer susceptibility in this high-risk population and discovered nine novel risk variants for this population.18 Population specific studies not only inform the contribution of genetic ancestry to cancer risk, but also help inform cancer prevention and early detection guidelines and whether certain guidelines are applicable across different populations.19 By ensuring that everyone, including Black and LGBTQ+ communities for example, have access to care, serious diseases like cancer can be detected and treated earlier - often resulting in better health outcomes and lower costs for the entire healthcare system.
This proposed rule could also impact efforts to ensure clinical trials are representative of the U.S. population, a basic tenet underlying clinical trial validity, and is in direct conflict with the NIH Policy and Guidelines on The Inclusion of Women and Minorities as Subjects in Clinical Research.20 Clinical trials are designed to test an intervention on a small group of people in a controlled setting to determine if the intervention is safe and effective for a broader population. But, for trial results to be relevant to the broader population, they have to mirror that population with respect to health, and socioeconomic and demographic variables. Failure to ensure representative populations can result in ineffective or dangerous drugs being used by the broader population, mask important differences that should inform clinical practice,21,22 and also represents non-reproducible research, which the administration's Gold Standard Science initiative seeks to eliminate.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has rejected drug applications solely on the basis that the trials did not include participants representative of the U.S. population. Statutory requirements passed as part of the Food and Drug Omnibus Reform Act (FDORA) of 2022 require drug sponsors to submit diversity action plans to FDA for their pivotal drug trials that will ensure that trials reflect the U.S. population with a disease, as historically some racial and ethnic populations in the U.S. have otherwise been vastly underrepresented in cancer clinical trials that support new drug approvals. These action plans describe methods to ensure representative participation in clinical trials, which can help ensure that drugs developed are effective and safe across all demographics. While this administration has not begun enforcing this law, the proposed rule again stands in direct conflict to it. It is critical not only that this bipartisan provision be fully implemented, but that federally funded research efforts similarly ensure representative participation.
b. Section 200.340 - Termination and Suspension
[200.340] Since 2025, over 5,000 NIH research grants have been frozen or terminated.3Often, no reason was provided for the disruptions, which were apparently unrelated to research performance or misconduct. Although over 4,000 of those disrupted grants have been subsequently reinstated, the loss in research funding due to the disruption is approximately $459 million.3 More significant, however, are the impacts the funding uncertainty has introduced in the research environment. Cancer research projects often take years of work by teams of researchers to yield the results that have given us breakthrough treatments and deeper understanding of the causes and early development of cancer. The value of early-stage research is lost when a project is unable to reach completion because funding was revoked. Moreover, fewer grants overall are being awarded, meaning many projects will never begin. As of late March 2026, for example, NCI had committed less than one-third of the funds for new and competing research awards than awarded during a typical year in the previous administration.4
The sudden and devastating disruptions to research when in-progress grants are cancelled would become an ongoing risk due to changes in the proposed rule that would codify a framework where grants can be terminated by the awarding agency for any reason. Historically, grants could only be prematurely terminated for misconduct or if the agency determined that the research would not accomplish the goals as stated in the original award. The proposed rule, in contrast, states that any grant may be terminated if the agency "determines that a termination is in the interest of the Federal agency or pass-through entity, including if a Federal award does not effectuate program goals, Federal agency priorities, or the national interest as they exist at the time of the termination." [200.340(a)(2)] The stated rationale for these changes is to align research award policies with the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) which applies to procurement contracts. This represents a fundamental misunderstanding of the time scale and commitment needed for biomedical research and development, and these changes will have a severe chilling effect on investigators seeking to begin the kind of four- or-five-year research projects that can lead to breakthroughs and cures.
In a climate of funding uncertainty, investigators cannot commit to hiring the staff needed to do the work. In a recent survey, 61% of researchers said that federal policy changes in the past year led to layoffs of postdoctoral researchers or staff, and 58% reported delayed hiring processes.23 Early career scientists and emerging investigators hesitate to commit to research careers, potentially impacting the progress of science years and decades into the future.24 In February of this year, NIH acknowledged that the changes to grant funding mechanisms have made it more difficult for early stage investigators to receive awards: the funding rate for these researchers dropped from 26% in 2024 to 19% in 2025.25
Until recently, the U.S. has been a global leader in biomedical innovation, including cancer research and treatment discovery. The chilling effect of recent changes to U.S. research funding has put this status in jeopardy. In a recent survey of NIH-funded researchers, 13% reported having lost laboratory researchers to institutions in other countries, and 8% have advised trainees to seek work outside the U.S.29 We are already seeing the effects of these changes; in 2025, China passed the U.S. in the number of cancer research publications, and is rapidly gaining in other areas such as clinical trial openings.26 In order to maintain U.S. leadership in discovery and innovation, retain exceptional scientists, and spur investment in cures, research must be reliably funded through a predictable, transparent process that is based on solid, unbiased scientific rationale.
IMPACT ACROSS THE CANCER CARE CONTINUUM
In addition to driving cancer research and innovation, federal grants and other financial assistance significantly impact cancer prevention, early detection, diagnosis, treatment, and survivorship. The CDC provides federal financial assistance to state, local, and territorial health departments, tribal governments and organizations, universities and academic institutions, nonprofit organizations, and healthcare systems to provide millions of cancer screening exams, collect and analyze cancer data, support community-focused cancer coalitions, improve cancer care delivery, and educate the public directly on cancer risk and survivorship. A reduction or loss in these programs due to the stipulations in the proposed rule would mean limiting people's access to proven cancer programs and risk worsening cancer outcomes. Lastly, we are concerned about limitations placed on the use of funds for publication costs [200.461]. Patients, providers and other researchers utilize research findings to inform care and drive research progress forward. New discoveries can only benefit patients if they are published and accessible, yet the proposal would effectively curb that access.
CONCLUSION
Thank you for the opportunity to comment on the Office of Management and Budget's Proposed Rule. We appreciate the administration's commitment to accountability in federal spending and stand ready to partner on approaches that protect scientific excellence while delivering faster breakthroughs for patients. However, we reiterate our concern that this rule as drafted would actually waste invested dollars and further threaten our global leadership in scientific innovation. ACS CAN strongly opposes the proposed rule and urges the administration to withdraw the rule. Additionally, we urge the administration to extend the consultative process by 90 days so that smaller organizations can weigh in on its impact. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us or have your staff contact Mark Fleury, Principal, Policy Development - Emerging Science at Mark.Fleury@cancer.org or Gladys Arias, Principal, Health Equity Policy Analysis & Legislative Support at Gladys.Arias@cancer.org.
Sincerely,
Lisa A. Lacasse, MBA William Dahut, MD, President Chief Scientific Officer, American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network American Cancer Society
* * *
Original text and footnotes here: https://www.fightcancer.org/sites/default/files/acs_can_final_omb_comment_letter10july2026.pdf
News Release here: https://www.fightcancer.org/releases/acs-can-calls-administration-withdraw-rule-jeopardizes-future-cancer-research
[Category: Medical]
Woodwell Climate Research Center: Wildfire's Natural Balancing Mechanism is Breaking Down
FALMOUTH, Massachusetts, July 19 (TNSjou) -- Woodwell Climate Research Center, formerly the Woods Hole Research Center, issued the following news:
* * *
Wildfire's natural balancing mechanism is breaking down
In Canada's boreal forests, climate change is impacting feedback loops that once regulated temperature rise
-
In 2023, Canada experienced its worst wildfire season to date. Fires raged across all 13 provinces and territories, breaking national records for burned area and carbon emissions.
Fires have a complex impact on both the global and regional climate. While fires contribute to ... Show Full Article FALMOUTH, Massachusetts, July 19 (TNSjou) -- Woodwell Climate Research Center, formerly the Woods Hole Research Center, issued the following news: * * * Wildfire's natural balancing mechanism is breaking down In Canada's boreal forests, climate change is impacting feedback loops that once regulated temperature rise - In 2023, Canada experienced its worst wildfire season to date. Fires raged across all 13 provinces and territories, breaking national records for burned area and carbon emissions. Fires have a complex impact on both the global and regional climate. While fires contribute towarming through the release of stored carbon from trees and soil, they also create an unexpected cooling effect. Postfire changes to vegetation composition and coverage have an impact on albedo--the amount of sunlight reflected by a surface. The absence of the tree canopy no longer conceals snow, thus reflecting more incoming solar radiation which can cool the local environment.
"If you have a more reflective surface, like ice or snow in particular, it's going to reflect more of that sunlight back to space, and so it's going to have a cooling effect compared to if it wasn't there," says Rogers. "Because if it wasn't there, then the darker land or the ocean would have absorbed more of it and heated."
These changes in albedo have historically partially offset the warming caused by fire-induced emissions; however, climate change is disrupting this balancing effect.
In a newly published paper (https://www.pnas.org/doi/epdf/10.1073/pnas.2600434123), co-authored by Woodwell Climate Senior Scientist Dr. Brendan Rogers, researchers found a 29% decrease of the regional climate-cooling impact of boreal wildfires since the 1960s. This represents one aspect of a critical shift in past ecosystem dynamics--not only is climate change responsible for rising global temperatures, but it is also weakening the natural mechanisms that once regulated this rise.
"The consequences of retreating snow cover become especially clear at the scale of individual fires," says Max van Gerrevink, lead author of the study and postdoctoral researcher at Wageningen University and Research. "Historically, nearly half of all Canadian wildfires reached a natural climatic break-even point, where snow-driven surface cooling fully offset the warming caused by fire-related emissions. Today, that proportion has fallen dramatically, to only about one in four or five fires."
The study used remote sensing to map the predicted changes in surface albedo over a 70-year postfire period assuming carbon dioxide emissions maintain current levels until 2050, then decrease, eventually reaching net zero by 2100. For Canada's boreal forests, this means earlier snow disappearance rates, later snow onset and warming temperatures--all of which impact albedo.
When considered alongside a previous study co-authored by Rogers, the decreasing power of the cooling effect is projected to continue even further.
"Compared to pre-climate change, we're talking about, over the next several decades... a 50% to 60% reduction due to earlier snowmelt," says Rogers. "It's important to be aware of this when you're thinking about 'What does this mean for the earth system,' and 'How might you manage these fires.'"
The implications of this finding are of growing concern, as warmer and drier weather conditions associated with continued climate change are subjecting Canada's boreal forests to more severe and longer fire seasons. During the 2023 Canadian fire season, an estimated 647 teragrams of carbon were released--a number comparable to the annual fossil fuel emissions of the largest-emitting nations and only exceeded by India, China and the United States.
With more carbon being released annually from worsening fire seasons and a diminishing climate-cooling effect, Canada's boreal ecosystems are facing an amplified threat from exacerbated warming. As the study found, the subsequent weakening of the climate-cooling impact implies that contemporary boreal fires are, on average, twice as likely to result in a net climate-warming influence.
"Fires both warm through greenhouse gas emissions and cool through changes to land surface albedo," says Rogers. "The cooling impact is declining, but the carbon impact is not, and it might even be growing because we're seeing more permafrost emissions after wildfires."
Rogers stressed the importance of considering albedo and carbon as two parts of a larger equation rather than two factors that act in opposition. This is due to the fact that albedo's impact is limited to the geographic area where these fluctuations occur and therefore is not as widespread. Furthermore, he emphasized the need for measures that directly target carbon emissions in order to comprehensively address climate change.
"The reality is the spatial footprint from the albedo changes in Canada have very little impact on us down here in the lower 48 or other parts of the globe," says Rogers. "And I think that's important, because the carbon impacts are global and do impact us and everyone else on the planet."
* * *
Original text here: https://www.woodwellclimate.org/albedo-wildfire-climate-change/
[Category: Environment]
* * *
Wildfire's natural balancing mechanism is breaking down
In Canada's boreal forests, climate change is impacting feedback loops that once regulated temperature rise
-
In 2023, Canada experienced its worst wildfire season to date. Fires raged across all 13 provinces and territories, breaking national records for burned area and carbon emissions.
Fires have a complex impact on both the global and regional climate. While fires contribute to ... Show Full Article FALMOUTH, Massachusetts, July 19 (TNSjou) -- Woodwell Climate Research Center, formerly the Woods Hole Research Center, issued the following news: * * * Wildfire's natural balancing mechanism is breaking down In Canada's boreal forests, climate change is impacting feedback loops that once regulated temperature rise - In 2023, Canada experienced its worst wildfire season to date. Fires raged across all 13 provinces and territories, breaking national records for burned area and carbon emissions. Fires have a complex impact on both the global and regional climate. While fires contribute towarming through the release of stored carbon from trees and soil, they also create an unexpected cooling effect. Postfire changes to vegetation composition and coverage have an impact on albedo--the amount of sunlight reflected by a surface. The absence of the tree canopy no longer conceals snow, thus reflecting more incoming solar radiation which can cool the local environment.
"If you have a more reflective surface, like ice or snow in particular, it's going to reflect more of that sunlight back to space, and so it's going to have a cooling effect compared to if it wasn't there," says Rogers. "Because if it wasn't there, then the darker land or the ocean would have absorbed more of it and heated."
These changes in albedo have historically partially offset the warming caused by fire-induced emissions; however, climate change is disrupting this balancing effect.
In a newly published paper (https://www.pnas.org/doi/epdf/10.1073/pnas.2600434123), co-authored by Woodwell Climate Senior Scientist Dr. Brendan Rogers, researchers found a 29% decrease of the regional climate-cooling impact of boreal wildfires since the 1960s. This represents one aspect of a critical shift in past ecosystem dynamics--not only is climate change responsible for rising global temperatures, but it is also weakening the natural mechanisms that once regulated this rise.
"The consequences of retreating snow cover become especially clear at the scale of individual fires," says Max van Gerrevink, lead author of the study and postdoctoral researcher at Wageningen University and Research. "Historically, nearly half of all Canadian wildfires reached a natural climatic break-even point, where snow-driven surface cooling fully offset the warming caused by fire-related emissions. Today, that proportion has fallen dramatically, to only about one in four or five fires."
The study used remote sensing to map the predicted changes in surface albedo over a 70-year postfire period assuming carbon dioxide emissions maintain current levels until 2050, then decrease, eventually reaching net zero by 2100. For Canada's boreal forests, this means earlier snow disappearance rates, later snow onset and warming temperatures--all of which impact albedo.
When considered alongside a previous study co-authored by Rogers, the decreasing power of the cooling effect is projected to continue even further.
"Compared to pre-climate change, we're talking about, over the next several decades... a 50% to 60% reduction due to earlier snowmelt," says Rogers. "It's important to be aware of this when you're thinking about 'What does this mean for the earth system,' and 'How might you manage these fires.'"
The implications of this finding are of growing concern, as warmer and drier weather conditions associated with continued climate change are subjecting Canada's boreal forests to more severe and longer fire seasons. During the 2023 Canadian fire season, an estimated 647 teragrams of carbon were released--a number comparable to the annual fossil fuel emissions of the largest-emitting nations and only exceeded by India, China and the United States.
With more carbon being released annually from worsening fire seasons and a diminishing climate-cooling effect, Canada's boreal ecosystems are facing an amplified threat from exacerbated warming. As the study found, the subsequent weakening of the climate-cooling impact implies that contemporary boreal fires are, on average, twice as likely to result in a net climate-warming influence.
"Fires both warm through greenhouse gas emissions and cool through changes to land surface albedo," says Rogers. "The cooling impact is declining, but the carbon impact is not, and it might even be growing because we're seeing more permafrost emissions after wildfires."
Rogers stressed the importance of considering albedo and carbon as two parts of a larger equation rather than two factors that act in opposition. This is due to the fact that albedo's impact is limited to the geographic area where these fluctuations occur and therefore is not as widespread. Furthermore, he emphasized the need for measures that directly target carbon emissions in order to comprehensively address climate change.
"The reality is the spatial footprint from the albedo changes in Canada have very little impact on us down here in the lower 48 or other parts of the globe," says Rogers. "And I think that's important, because the carbon impacts are global and do impact us and everyone else on the planet."
* * *
Original text here: https://www.woodwellclimate.org/albedo-wildfire-climate-change/
[Category: Environment]
WCUC Opening Ceremony Celebrates over 39 countries in attendance
MADISON, Wisconsin, July 19 [Category: Financial Services] -- The World Council of Credit Unions posted the following news release:
* * *
WCUC Opening Ceremony Celebrates over 39 countries in attendance
*
SYDNEY, Australia- The 2026 World Credit Union Conference officially opened Sunday in Sydney with its iconic Parade of Flags, as attendees representing more than 39 countries took the stage, many wearing national dress to celebrate the cultures, diversity and shared purpose of the global credit union movement.
More than 2,400 credit union professionals are attending this year's conference, ... Show Full Article MADISON, Wisconsin, July 19 [Category: Financial Services] -- The World Council of Credit Unions posted the following news release: * * * WCUC Opening Ceremony Celebrates over 39 countries in attendance * SYDNEY, Australia- The 2026 World Credit Union Conference officially opened Sunday in Sydney with its iconic Parade of Flags, as attendees representing more than 39 countries took the stage, many wearing national dress to celebrate the cultures, diversity and shared purpose of the global credit union movement. More than 2,400 credit union professionals are attending this year's conference,the premier global gathering for credit unions and financial cooperatives.
The Parade of Flags served as a powerful visual reminder of the movement's international reach and the relationships that connect credit union leaders across regions, cultures and financial systems.
"Year after year, the Opening Ceremony remains one of the most meaningful moments of the World Credit Union Conference," said Christi Swoboda, Vice President of Meetings and Events for World Council of Credit Unions. "The Parade of Flags is more than a tradition. It is a celebration of the people, cultures and shared purpose that make this global movement so special."
Now in its 21st convening since 2005, the World Credit Union Conference continues to serve as a global meeting point for leaders to exchange ideas, strengthen collaboration and advance cooperative finance on an international stage.
The ceremony also marked a significant leadership moment for Mike Lawrence, Chair of the World Council of Credit Unions Board of Directors and CEO of the Customer Owned Banking Association, who delivered farewell remarks as he prepares to retire from COBA and conclude his service as WOCCU Board Chair.
In his remarks, Lawrence reflected on his years of service, the relationships that unite the global credit union movement and the importance of continued collaboration in advancing cooperative finance.
"Credit unions are built on trust. They are rooted in their communities. This week, Sydney becomes more than a conference location. It becomes a meeting place for ideas, partnership and share purpose." Lawrence said.
Hosted by World Council of Credit Unions and the Customer Owned Banking Association, the conference will feature internationally recognized speakers Freddie Ravel, Holly Ransom and the Honorable Julia Gillard AC, along with breakout sessions, networking and strategic discussions focused on the future of cooperative finance.
Held each July, the World Credit Union Conference gathers thousands of credit union professionals from around the world to align strategy, share innovation, strengthen partnerships and build momentum for the year ahead.
World Council of Credit Unions (WOCCU) is the global trade association for the credit union movement, advancing cooperative finance worldwide. Through advocacy, education and more than 300 technical assistance programs in 90 countries, WOCCU advances financial inclusion and strengthens cooperative finance across diverse markets. Globally, more than 67,000 credit unions across over 100 countries serve more than 412 million people and hold over $3.8 Trillion (USD) in assets. Learn more at www.woccu.org.
***
Original text here: https://www.woccu.org/newsroom/releases/WCUC_Opening_Ceremony_Celebrates_over_39_countries_in_attendance
* * *
WCUC Opening Ceremony Celebrates over 39 countries in attendance
*
SYDNEY, Australia- The 2026 World Credit Union Conference officially opened Sunday in Sydney with its iconic Parade of Flags, as attendees representing more than 39 countries took the stage, many wearing national dress to celebrate the cultures, diversity and shared purpose of the global credit union movement.
More than 2,400 credit union professionals are attending this year's conference, ... Show Full Article MADISON, Wisconsin, July 19 [Category: Financial Services] -- The World Council of Credit Unions posted the following news release: * * * WCUC Opening Ceremony Celebrates over 39 countries in attendance * SYDNEY, Australia- The 2026 World Credit Union Conference officially opened Sunday in Sydney with its iconic Parade of Flags, as attendees representing more than 39 countries took the stage, many wearing national dress to celebrate the cultures, diversity and shared purpose of the global credit union movement. More than 2,400 credit union professionals are attending this year's conference,the premier global gathering for credit unions and financial cooperatives.
The Parade of Flags served as a powerful visual reminder of the movement's international reach and the relationships that connect credit union leaders across regions, cultures and financial systems.
"Year after year, the Opening Ceremony remains one of the most meaningful moments of the World Credit Union Conference," said Christi Swoboda, Vice President of Meetings and Events for World Council of Credit Unions. "The Parade of Flags is more than a tradition. It is a celebration of the people, cultures and shared purpose that make this global movement so special."
Now in its 21st convening since 2005, the World Credit Union Conference continues to serve as a global meeting point for leaders to exchange ideas, strengthen collaboration and advance cooperative finance on an international stage.
The ceremony also marked a significant leadership moment for Mike Lawrence, Chair of the World Council of Credit Unions Board of Directors and CEO of the Customer Owned Banking Association, who delivered farewell remarks as he prepares to retire from COBA and conclude his service as WOCCU Board Chair.
In his remarks, Lawrence reflected on his years of service, the relationships that unite the global credit union movement and the importance of continued collaboration in advancing cooperative finance.
"Credit unions are built on trust. They are rooted in their communities. This week, Sydney becomes more than a conference location. It becomes a meeting place for ideas, partnership and share purpose." Lawrence said.
Hosted by World Council of Credit Unions and the Customer Owned Banking Association, the conference will feature internationally recognized speakers Freddie Ravel, Holly Ransom and the Honorable Julia Gillard AC, along with breakout sessions, networking and strategic discussions focused on the future of cooperative finance.
Held each July, the World Credit Union Conference gathers thousands of credit union professionals from around the world to align strategy, share innovation, strengthen partnerships and build momentum for the year ahead.
World Council of Credit Unions (WOCCU) is the global trade association for the credit union movement, advancing cooperative finance worldwide. Through advocacy, education and more than 300 technical assistance programs in 90 countries, WOCCU advances financial inclusion and strengthens cooperative finance across diverse markets. Globally, more than 67,000 credit unions across over 100 countries serve more than 412 million people and hold over $3.8 Trillion (USD) in assets. Learn more at www.woccu.org.
***
Original text here: https://www.woccu.org/newsroom/releases/WCUC_Opening_Ceremony_Celebrates_over_39_countries_in_attendance
'It's About Time': ALG Praises House Passage Of Sunshine Protection Act, Urges Senate Passage
FAIRFAX, Virginia, July 19 [Category: Government/Public Administration] -- Americans for Limited Government posted the following news release:
* * *
'It's About Time': ALG Praises House Passage Of Sunshine Protection Act, Urges Senate Passage
*
July 15, 2026, Fairfax, Va.-Americans for Limited Government Executive Director Robert Romano today issued the following statement praising the House for passing the Sunshine Protection Act and urged the Senate to do the same:
"The House has finally passed legislation that will end standard time once and for all. No more sunsets in the middle of the ... Show Full Article FAIRFAX, Virginia, July 19 [Category: Government/Public Administration] -- Americans for Limited Government posted the following news release: * * * 'It's About Time': ALG Praises House Passage Of Sunshine Protection Act, Urges Senate Passage * July 15, 2026, Fairfax, Va.-Americans for Limited Government Executive Director Robert Romano today issued the following statement praising the House for passing the Sunshine Protection Act and urged the Senate to do the same: "The House has finally passed legislation that will end standard time once and for all. No more sunsets in the middle of theafternoon. It's about time. Nobody likes the constant clock changes. The fact is that under current law, there was never a way to opt out of standard time whereas states were permitted to opt out of daylight savings time if they really wanted to, as Arizona and Hawaii do. School districts can always have starting bells later to compensate if there is concern about later sunrises during the winter months, although it's worth noting almost all districts are already on Christmas vacation during the shortest days. Clearly, based on the House vote, and unanimous passage of practically identical legislation by the Senate in 2022, and the President's support, daylight savings time is far more popular. But really, it's just let's pick a time and stick with it. Compromise if needs be: shave a half hour off standard time. Anything's better than the clock changes, and the early sunsets in the winter are frankly depressing. But the bill's fine the way it is. It is time for the Senate to immediately take up this common sense, bipartisan legislation, stop switching the clocks and let the sun shine into the evening for good."
For media availability contact Americans for Limited Government at media@limitgov.org.
***
Original text here: https://getliberty.org/2026/07/its-about-time-alg-praises-house-passage-of-sunshine-protection-act-urges-senate-passage/
* * *
'It's About Time': ALG Praises House Passage Of Sunshine Protection Act, Urges Senate Passage
*
July 15, 2026, Fairfax, Va.-Americans for Limited Government Executive Director Robert Romano today issued the following statement praising the House for passing the Sunshine Protection Act and urged the Senate to do the same:
"The House has finally passed legislation that will end standard time once and for all. No more sunsets in the middle of the ... Show Full Article FAIRFAX, Virginia, July 19 [Category: Government/Public Administration] -- Americans for Limited Government posted the following news release: * * * 'It's About Time': ALG Praises House Passage Of Sunshine Protection Act, Urges Senate Passage * July 15, 2026, Fairfax, Va.-Americans for Limited Government Executive Director Robert Romano today issued the following statement praising the House for passing the Sunshine Protection Act and urged the Senate to do the same: "The House has finally passed legislation that will end standard time once and for all. No more sunsets in the middle of theafternoon. It's about time. Nobody likes the constant clock changes. The fact is that under current law, there was never a way to opt out of standard time whereas states were permitted to opt out of daylight savings time if they really wanted to, as Arizona and Hawaii do. School districts can always have starting bells later to compensate if there is concern about later sunrises during the winter months, although it's worth noting almost all districts are already on Christmas vacation during the shortest days. Clearly, based on the House vote, and unanimous passage of practically identical legislation by the Senate in 2022, and the President's support, daylight savings time is far more popular. But really, it's just let's pick a time and stick with it. Compromise if needs be: shave a half hour off standard time. Anything's better than the clock changes, and the early sunsets in the winter are frankly depressing. But the bill's fine the way it is. It is time for the Senate to immediately take up this common sense, bipartisan legislation, stop switching the clocks and let the sun shine into the evening for good."
For media availability contact Americans for Limited Government at media@limitgov.org.
***
Original text here: https://getliberty.org/2026/07/its-about-time-alg-praises-house-passage-of-sunshine-protection-act-urges-senate-passage/