5 things under the radar..

5 things Trump did this week while you weren't looking

Beneath the gun debate, Trump made some big policy moves.

By DANNY VINIK

In the aftermath of the Parkland shooting, debates over gun control raged across the nation; President Donald Trump strongly defended the National Rifle Association, though he also got behind a couple of modest restrictions. Despite the wall-to-wall coverage and widespread student protests, few political analysts in Washington expect any congressional action on gun control this year.

But behind that news, the Trump administration did continue to make other important policy moves—including continuing to undermine Obamacare’s consumer protections and weakening other Obama-era rules. And Trump officially rolled back one of Obama’s most important policy achievements, on net neutrality. Here’s how Trump changed policy this week:

1. HHS takes another shot at Obamacare
Republicans failed in their attempt to repeal Obamacare last year, and have shown no sign of taking another shot in 2018. Instead, they continue to slowly take apart the law, repealing the individual mandate in tax reform and using executive authority to undermine key components of the ACA.

This week, the Department of Health and Human Services, along with two other agencies, issued a proposed rule that expands a category of insurance plans exempt from Obamacare’s consumer protections, including the requirement that plans cover people with pre-existing conditions. These short-term plans are designed for consumers who have a short gap in insurance coverage. The Obama administration defined “short-term” as three months or less, effectively steering consumers to Obamacare’s insurance markets. Under the proposed rule, these short-term plans could provide coverage for up to a year.

Supporters say the expansion will allow consumers who face high premiums on Obamacare’s marketplaces to purchase cheaper coverage that better meets their needs. But critics decry the plans as “junk insurance” that will undermine Obamacare by siphoning young, healthy people away from the main insurance marketplaces, where they’re critical to keep the system afloat.

The announcement wasn’t exactly a surprise, as Trump had issued an executive order last fall directing HHS to issue such a rule. And it doesn’t take effect right away: The agencies are accepting comments on the proposal until April 23 and will issue a final rule sometime thereafter.

2. Department of Education considers changes to student debt rules
During the Trump administration, students with high levels of debt haven’t received much good news. The Department of Education, under Secretary Betsy DeVos, blocked an Obama-era rule that allowed students defrauded by for-profit colleges to have their loans forgiven. It also effectively neutered another rule that imposed tough new standards on schools or risk losing access to federal student loans.

But on Wednesday, those students received some positive news when the Education Department announced that it was seeking comments on when borrowers can have their loans wiped out in bankruptcy, a preliminary but noteworthy move. Under the current rules, the law allows borrowers to discharge student loans only when they face “undue hardship,” a narrowly defined category that makes it basically impossible to wipe out debt during the bankruptcy process. Now, DeVos has cracked open the door to a broader definition of “undue hardship,” a change that could bring huge relief to the nearly 5 million borrowers currently in default.

3. The DOT modifies Obama-era rule on "quiet cars"
In December 2016, at the end of the Obama administration, the Department of Transportation finalized a rule that required “quiet cars,” such as hybrid and electric vehicles, to emit an alert sound when they travel under 18.6 miles per hour. Advocates for the blind and visually impaired cheered the news, arguing that such people face a higher injury risk as hybrid and electric vehicles grow in popularity.

But this week, after receiving pushback from automakers, the Trump administration issued a revised rule that modifies some of those requirements, including delaying the compliance date from 2019 to 2020. It also allows automakers to vary the sound emitted by vehicles in certain situations, a victory for automakers who had argued that the original “sameness” requirement was unworkable. However it wasn’t all good news for automakers: The agency also denied a request from automakers to reduce the speed threshold to 12.4 miles per hour, saying that “no new data” would justify such a change.

4. USDA considers tightening food-stamp work requirements
The Trump administration has already opened the door to work requirements in state Medicaid programs. Now, it is considering stricter work requirements in another program: food stamps.

Under the law, able-bodied adults without dependents—ABAWDs, for short—are required to work or undertake a work-related activity, such as job training, to receive more than three months of food stamps in a 36-month period. However, that requirement has some big loopholes: Individuals may receive an exemption due to age or if they are medically unfit for work. And states can request a populationwide waiver from the requirement during times of high unemployment; those waivers were frequently granted during the Obama administration as states recovered from the Great Recession.

This week, the Department of Agriculture announced that it is considering reforms around ABAWDs, requesting comment on potential policy changes that would tighten the work requirements, including narrowing how and when states can request a waiver. Supporters of work requirements say they help get recipients back on their feet, while critics say they unfairly target the poor.

Like the Department of Education’s move on student loans, this is just a preliminary step. But it is a strong indicator of how the Trump administration intends to reform the program.

5. Net neutrality is officially dead
Few policy moves during the Trump administration attracted as much attention as the Federal Communications Commission’s decision to repeal Obama-era net neutrality rules, which required internet service providers to treat all traffic in the same. Supporters and critics flooded the agency with millions of comments, and lawmakers loudly cheered or slammed the decision.

But this week, when the FCC officially published the repeal in the Federal Register, there wasn’t much noise. Democratic lawmakers blasted out statements condemning the move, but the news received little attention in Washington, where the focus was almost entirely on guns in the aftermath of the Parkland shooting. That’s not exactly surprising; the real news reaction came when the FCC voted to repeal net neutrality in December, and this was just a procedural step. Still, this week, it became official: The Obama-era net neutrality rules are gone. And with that, the lawsuits over the repeal can begin.