The Tiny Government Agency That Protects Americans From Dangerous Products Is Broken
Unsafe products are flooding the U.S. market. Yet after over a year of upheaval, former staffers fear the Consumer Product Safety Commission is smaller, slower, and weaker than ever.
Crystal Ellis says she had never heard of the Consumer Product Safety Commission before a life-altering tragedy brought her to its door. In 2014, her 2-year-old son, Camden, was killed when an unstable dresser fell over onto him.
“I had never had any interaction with the government other than paying my taxes,” she said recently. “Unfortunately, you only learn about this agency when you have a problem.”
The CPSC is a little-known federal agency that oversees the safety of more than 15,000 categories of products in the U.S., from table saws and portable generators to children’s toys and bassinets. The CPSC sets safety rules, educates the public, tests products, collects information about product-related injuries and deaths, and oversees recalls of potentially dangerous products from the market.
In recent years, the agency has introduced strong rules to lower the risk of infant deaths from inclined sleepers and reduce emergency room visits from water beads, among many other achievements.
In Ellis’s case, Camden’s death set her on the path to advocacy. She connected to other parents whose children had been killed the same way, worked hand in hand with the CPSC (which was collecting and finding patterns in injury and death data), and spoke in front of Congress. Eventually their work led to many dresser recalls, the passage of a new federal law designed to prevent furniture tip-overs, and the strengthening of safety standards to help keep other kids safe.
Once this had happened to her family, Ellis said, she couldn’t go to bed at night without knowing that she was doing everything she could to make sure it didn’t happen to anyone else.
Because she just hadn’t known. Ellis had gone to baby safety classes before having Camden, and she had learned about baby gates and child cabinet locks. Living in earthquake country, she even knew to anchor her large bookcases to the wall. But her son’s 30-inch-high dresser? It hadn’t occurred to her that furniture that short could be deadly, too.
“You hear a lot of, ‘well, everybody knows that,’” Ellis said. “Well, my son would have been a freshman in high school this year. And I can tell you right now, I feel very confident that the work that myself and Parents Against Tip-Overs have done, as well as other advocates, is the reason, and the CPSC is the reason, that you know that anchoring is important."
Recently, though, Ellis’s confidence in the agency has eroded. “There’s so many fires and so little staff,” she says. She wonders if the incident data the agency needs to develop new safety regulations are still being collected. She says she doesn’t feel as eager as she once did to connect parents with the agency for help.
She isn’t alone. Today, those who care the most about this critical agency say it is on shaky ground. Staff cuts have hollowed out some departments and eliminated others entirely. The agency’s already shoestring budget has been threatened with even more cuts. Public hearings that used to invite input from safety advocates and bereaved parents like Ellis have largely stopped, and the agency hasn’t held a press conference since 2024.
Consumer Reports spent more than a year on this investigation, combing through public records, hearings, and incident reports; talking to parents who have championed change in the wake of unspeakable loss; and conducting interviews with more than two dozen experts—both former CPSC staffers, and outside safety experts and advocates. Many of the people we spoke to worry about the CPSC’s currently diminished state, and whether it is still up to the job of keeping us safe.
The CPSC’s current leadership says the agency has not veered from its mission to protect consumers and is stronger than ever.
“Our remit from Congress is to protect American consumers from reasonable risks of harm from products, and by every objective metric the Commission has enjoyed the most successful and effective two years in its history,” said Steve Roney, the CPSC’s spokesperson, highlighting the agency’s record number of product recalls and its emphasis on intercepting products at the ports. “Critics who say we’re not living up to the intent of our mission are measuring the wrong things.”
Many interviewed for this article say that a key turning point was the high-profile firings of three of the CPSC’s commissioners in spring 2025. They saw this move as the most visible signal of how the White House has systematically stripped the agency of its independence over the past year and a half.
Because of a series of executive orders (and new leadership in place at the agency committed to following them), former staffers and outside safety experts say the White House now has a stranglehold on any new safety rules that the CPSC might otherwise implement. The agency is still free to enforce its old rules, and product recalls have actually spiked. But at the same time, many new rules that advocates say are vital for consumer safety have stalled.
Meanwhile, dangerous products continue to flood the marketplace. Consumers in the U.S. are increasingly buying imported stuff via third-party sellers online rather than in brick-and-mortar stores. Often, we can’t even see or touch something before we buy it. Counterfeits, dupes, and other suspiciously low-cost products feel impossible to avoid. And online, it can be harder to get recourse when something goes wrong.
In a July 2026 nationally representative CR survey of 2,124 U.S. adults, 98 percent of respondents agreed that they expect the manufacturer of a home product to design and test the product for safety before selling it. But for many categories of products, that just doesn’t happen. Dangerous products can and do go to the market without any testing or vetting.
Manufacturers almost always have the ability to make their products safer—often for very little cost—but in order to do that, they need to learn about the injuries and deaths that may be occurring, R. David Pittle, PhD, said in a recent interview. Pittle was a CPSC commissioner from 1973 to 1982, first appointed by President Richard Nixon and then reappointed by President Jimmy Carter. (After he left the CPSC, Pittle worked at Consumer Reports for over 20 years.) There needs to be an independent agency collecting, analyzing, and openly sharing that data with the public and manufacturers, he said.
“There has to be somebody who is paying attention, and that’s what CPSC has done, for more than 50 years; without it, consumers and product designers alike are flying blind,” Pittle said. “Most product hazards and design flaws are invisible to the naked eye of the average consumer. The main way we know about product risks is by the pain and suffering experienced by consumers in local ERs and morgues.”
Harmful consumer products were linked to about 36 million ER visits and a staggering 59,000 deaths in 2023, according to CPSC estimates. That’s roughly 162 deaths a day. But you probably don’t go through life worrying about all the ways an appliance or piece of furniture or toy could hurt or kill you. Nor should you. That’s someone else’s job; that’s this little agency’s job.
‘Critical Hazards Are Slipping Through the Cracks’
For a federal regulatory agency that is known for moving slowly and deliberately—and in an unusually apolitical manner—the turbulent changes that began in early 2025 were jarring, both to the agency’s staff and to outside observers.
Soon after President Donald Trump took office for his second term in January 2025, one of the agency’s Republican commissioners, Peter Feldman, became acting chair. While the commission was still made up of a bipartisan group (three Democrats and two Republicans), the agency’s previously staid public hearings got heated, with newly politicized rhetoric and debates.
The tension centered around the threat that the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) would plunder the agency for staff cuts, and a floated proposal that the agency’s work would move under the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The Democratic commissioners were resisting both of these moves, while the Republicans said they must comply.
The Democrats also attempted to ignore two executive orders that they knew would severely limit what the agency would be able to accomplish going forward. One executive order declared that previously independent agencies had to submit any significant new rules to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), a part of the White House, for approval. Another demanded that they counteract any new rule by identifying 10 existing ones to be repealed.
In one particularly eventful hearing on April 30, 2025, the three Democratic commissioners voted to advance a new safety rule on lithium-ion batteries used in e-bikes, e-scooters, and other micromobility products—the rule had been in the works since 2022—without submitting the rule to the White House for approval first. The Republican acting chair told them they were defying the president. The Democrats voted for it anyway, and since they still held the majority, the rule advanced.
The next week, in another tense public hearing, the Democrats challenged the acting chair about recent staff cuts. The day after that, they objected to a plan to invite DOGE into the agency to initiate mass layoffs. That is when all three Democratic commissioners were fired by order of the White House.
Mary Boyle, Alexander Hoehn-Saric, and Richard Trumka Jr. challenged their firings in federal court, arguing that the move was unconstitutional, given that the CPSC was created by Congress to be an independent agency where the commissioners could be removed by the president only “for neglect of duty or malfeasance.”
A district court initially reinstated the fired commissioners in June 2025, but that decision was reversed just weeks later. Then, in June 2026, the Supreme Court ultimately ruled in Trump v. Slaughter that the president could remove the leaders of independent agencies (including not only the CPSC but also the Federal Trade Commission, the Federal Communications Commission, and the National Labor Relations Board) at will.
Safety experts and advocates, including those at Consumer Reports, condemned the firings and the stripping of the agency’s independence and bipartisan leadership. A federal safety watchdog should be free to take “strong action to protect the public, based on scientific evidence and insulated from political whims,” they argued.
In a statement, Feldman applauded the decision: “The Supreme Court confirmed what we have maintained from the beginning: agencies that exercise executive authority are subject to presidential supervision and control.”
After the firings and the subsequent retirement by one of the two remaining commissioners, only one commissioner was left at the agency: the acting chair.
In recent months, the president nominated two additional Republican commissioners, and both were confirmed by the Senate. Some safety advocates hope that the other two vacancies will be filled by Democrats, which would then restore the agency’s traditional bipartisan makeup. Under the federal law creating the CPSC, no more than three of the agency’s commissioners can be affiliated with the same political party.
“The Commission’s ability to protect consumers is jeopardized so long as it continues to operate without dissenting voices or the benefit of impartial, bipartisan decision-making,” Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., the ranking member of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, which oversees the CPSC, told CR. “The president should nominate a Democratic Commissioner to the CPSC without delay.” (The committee’s chair, Sen. Ted Cruz , R-Texas, did not provide a comment.)
When asked by CR whether there is any downside to not having a bipartisan commission, the CPSC spokesperson responded that there was not. He also rejected the premise that the White House’s executive orders have constrained the agency’s ability to establish new rules and regulations. Rather, he said, the additional layers of review serve to strengthen the agency’s proposals before they advance to rulemaking.
The agency now has the minimum number of commissioners required to advance or finalize new rules. However, it remains to be seen whether they will do so, given the ongoing constraints that an administration with a penchant for deregulation is placing on them.
In an April 2026 strategic planning document, the acting chair wrote that the agency would prioritize aggressive enforcement, de-emphasize regulation, “cut red tape and reduce unnecessary burdens on American business.” A September 2026 press release announced the creation of a new position at the agency, chief enforcement officer, which the release said reflects the CPSC’s increased emphasis on enforcement. The agency’s enforcement actions have included, notably, criminal prosecutions for executives of companies that conceal information about defective products.
The CPSC can only enforce regulations that already exist, however. Safety advocates note that many categories of products don’t have CPSC rules that apply.
“Many people aren’t aware that countless product categories, including those linked to deaths and serious injuries, don’t have to meet any specific safety regulations,” says Gabe Knight, senior safety policy analyst at Consumer Reports. “Enforcing existing standards is important, but in a marketplace full of obscure online third-party sellers and outright scammers, it’s woefully insufficient.”
The agency did recently finalize narrow rules on both water beads and neck floats. It was able to advance these without OMB review because they weren’t considered “significant regulatory actions.” And the proposed lithium-ion battery safety standard for e-bikes, e-scooters, and other micromobility products was finally published in the Federal Register for public comment—over a year after the now-fired commissioners had initially voted to advance it.
But several other rules that were supposed to be finalized long ago are still floundering.
Rules that had been years in the making would have mandated safety features that reduced or eliminated carbon monoxide poisoning from portable generators, as well as gas furnaces and boilers; removed deadly chemicals from keyboard duster sprays; and prevented injuries and amputations from table saws. Together, all of these hazards are estimated to kill approximately 200 people and injure 50,000 a year, according to the agency’s research. These rules had been “at the finish line,” as one of the fired commissioners put it, but two of these rules have now been formally withdrawn and the two others have stalled.
Safety advocates have grown impatient. In a July 2025 forum convened by some members of Congress about what they saw as existential threats to the CPSC, several such advocates spoke up.
Donald Mays, who has been a product safety expert for 40 years (including for almost 20 years at CR), testified about some of the agency’s successes over the years. “No longer can manufacturers sell cribs that can strangle infants, toys that can choke or poison children, fabrics that easily catch fire, or furniture that can tip over and entrap or crush children, just to name a few,” he said.
He also made the consequences of the agency losing its momentum quite clear. “It is obvious to me that if the CPSC is required to take their foot off the gas pedal, lives will be lost, children and adults will suffer life-changing injuries, and unscrupulous companies will be emboldened to make and sell potentially harmful products.”
Trista Hamsmith also spoke at the forum. She became involved in product safety policy work after her 18-month-old daughter, Reese, died after swallowing a button battery. Because of her work, the bipartisan Reese’s Law passed, which directed the CPSC to strengthen safety rules for button cell and coin batteries.
Hamsmith told the senators that she had been hearing from many parents whose children had been hurt by dangerous toys, furniture, and other household hazards. She said the parents had told her that, like her, they didn’t care about fights between Republicans and Democrats; they just wanted to know why the agency’s vital work seemed to be slowing down.
“Their grief is raw, their anger is justified, and their message is clear: We need action,” Hamsmith said. “The CPSC is underfunded, overwhelmed, and often too slow to act; critical hazards are slipping through the cracks. … If we allow dysfunction or partisanship to weaken the CPSC even further, it won’t be a bureaucratic failure; it will be a moral one.”
The Story of a Recall, and a Lifesaving System at Risk
Photo of Camden Ellis2014
In June 2014, when a 30-inch-high dresser fell on Crystal Ellis’ 2-year-old son Camden, no mandatory stability standard for furniture like this existed.
2014–2016
Following Camden’s death, Ellis was contacted by the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), a federal agency that she (like many other people) had never heard of before. She learned that it collected data from stories like hers through databases like SaferProducts.gov, and that the patterns that emerged could lead to new product safety standards. In 2015, according to CPSC data, a child in the U.S. died every two weeks or was injured every 24 minutes from furniture or TVs tipping over.
2016–2018
Ellis also connected with other parents who had experienced similar tragedies, and she co-founded an advocacy group called Parents Against Tip-Overs (PAT).
Working together, PAT, other advocates, and CPSC staff raised the public profile of this hazard and called for change.
On June 28, 2016, the CPSC announced a recall of millions of Ikea chests and dressers, one of the largest product recalls ever.
2020
Ellis’ experience showed her the importance of recording each family’s story and the value of involving them in the fight to strengthen safety rules. She pushed for the establishment of a new “consumer ombudsman” role to help facilitate both.
2022–2023
Congress passed the Stop Tip-Overs of Unstable, Risky Dressers on Youth (STURDY) Act in 2022, which required the CPSC to adopt a new standard for dressers mandating strong and practical stability tests.
2024–2026
In the years following the STURDY Act, dresser recalls surged.
2025
In 2025, there were seismic changes to the CPSC. The White House fired three of the agency’s leaders and impeded its ability to pass new rules. Staff levels were cut, public hearings were limited, scientific research slowed, and several departments (including the consumer ombudsman’s office) were eliminated.
The next Camden
Former CPSC staff, outside safety experts, and CR advocates interviewed for this story fear that the agency doesn’t currently have the staff, the budget, or the independent rulemaking power to address the next hazard that emerges—to prevent the next tragedy.
Photo: Courtesy of Crystal Ellis
A Dwindling Staff and a Deluge of Dangerous Products
In 1974, not long after Nixon signed the law that established the CPSC, the brand-new agency had 786 full-time staff positions. A few years later, it grew to almost 1,000 staffers. But it’s been trending down: In 2024, before the new administration took office, the CPSC had the equivalent of 546 full-time staffers, according to the federal budget.
As of this year, after the agency’s DOGE-led downsizing, the estimate was 459—a number that may include unfilled positions. The Office of Inspector General called this an “unprecedented turnover.”
“It was very sudden, and it was a very difficult time for a lot of people,” says Khalisa Phillips, PhD, who was a human factors psychologist at the CPSC for 14 years before she resigned from the agency in September 2025. “Those months in 2025 were just brutal.”
The CPSC is minuscule in comparison to other agencies that play a role in consumer protection, even after their own DOGE-related cuts. The Environmental Protection Agency now has over 12,000 employees and a budget of $8.8 billion. The Food and Drug Administration has over 18,000 and a budget of $7 billion. Even the diminutive Federal Trade Commission has 1,100 employees and a budget of $426 million.
The first full year it operated, 1974, the CPSC had a budget (adjusted for inflation) of $243 million. By 2025, its budget had shrunk to $151 million. For fiscal year 2027, Feldman requested that Congress cut it even further, to $135 million. (Congress ultimately granted a continuation of the previous budget, $151 million.)
“We are lean by nature, and there is nothing new about the need for us to seek efficiency, and to differentiate between what would be nice to have and what we need to do,” Feldman said in a hearing last summer.
But many safety experts and advocates are appalled at the agency’s shrinkage. “This is an agency that’s chronically underfunded, and has such a small footprint, given its relatively large mandate,” says Courtney Griffin, director of consumer product safety for the Consumer Federation of America. “I would love to see a budget that actually reflects the mission that this agency has.”
The CPSC oversees about 15,000 categories of products sold in America. The agency’s work requires a very wide range of very specific expertise, but each specific skillset may only be held by one staffer at a time. With every employee who is fired or forced into early retirement, the diverse and broad work of the agency may become more challenging. Meanwhile, there is no shortage of dangerous stuff entering the U.S. market.
In addition to stopping dangerous things from reaching the market, part of the CPSC’s job is to get ahead of hazards from new product categories, through its testing labs and engineering research. But the agency has largely cut back on that work as well.
“I’m unaware of the lab initiating any investigation of hazards other than in the recall context,” said a former staffer who left the agency recently and asked to go unnamed. “In terms of basic science, it seems that they’re no longer at the forefront of global product safety. They’ve stopped the long-term investment in science.”
This year, a report from the Government Accountability Office on the agency’s performance noted that there were 140 million shipments of children’s products that entered the U.S. in 2024—yet, last year, only 23 of the country’s 328 ports actually had port inspectors. “The large volume of products entering U.S. ports makes it challenging to ensure compliance,” the authors of the report wrote, in a marked understatement.
| Agency | Staff | Budget |
|---|---|---|
| Environmental Protection Agency | about 12,000 | $8.8 billion |
| Food and Drug Administration | about 18,000 | $7 billion |
| Occupational Safety and Health Administration | about 1,600 | $629 million |
| Federal Trade Commission | about 1,100 | $426 million |
| Consumer Product Safety Commission | 459 | $151 million |
An Agency in Retreat
While some of the changes in the agency’s priorities can be put down to budget constraints, other changes may reflect a shift in philosophy. The CPSC has long positioned itself as a global leader and a collaborator in product safety, but former staffers observe that it now seems to be retreating to “America First” isolation.
The acting chair withdrew the agency’s longtime participation in an international product safety organization that brings together regulators, manufacturers, and advocates from around the world. He cut off regulatory discussions with the European Union and China. The Office of International Programs, which trained overseas manufacturers and exporters on U.S. safety rules and best practices, was disbanded.
The acting chair framed these decisions as patriotic imperatives rather than fiscal ones. For instance, he said that the agency’s overseas trainings on U.S. safety rules had given Chinese businesses special treatment.
“This is shortsighted,” Austin Schlick said while speaking at the July 2025 Senate forum about the agency. Schlick was previously general counsel of the CPSC, and later its executive director. “Heading off the development of hazardous products is far more cost-effective than trying to recall or seize the products later.”
The three-person Small Business Ombudsman department, which catered mostly to American businesses, has also been eliminated. Small businesses often don’t have their own legal compliance departments, and the ombudsman’s now-defunct number was one companies could call if they needed help understanding and complying with complicated safety regulations.
The well-beloved Consumer Ombudsman, Jonathan Midgett, PhD, who helped consumers and bereaved family members report problems and navigate the agency’s bureaucracy, was forced into early retirement.
In 2024, the Consumer Ombudsman responded to about 500 incoming calls or emails from consumers or consumer organizations, according to the agency’s own performance metrics. The Small Business Ombudsman office received about 6,000 inquiries that year, and it responded 100 percent of the time.
These numbers matter because they show that individual consumers and businesses weren’t just being offered these resources—they were using them, Michelle Barry, president of the advocacy organization Safe Infant Sleep, wrote in a recent letter to the agency.
“If consumers are expected to report hazards and participate in product safety efforts, they need somewhere to go when a problem does not fit neatly into a form or database,” Barry wrote. “If businesses are expected to understand and comply with CPSC requirements, they need somewhere to go when those requirements are unclear. Technology cannot completely replace that human connection.”
Multiple members of the communications office, including the one person doing Spanish translations and outreach to the Spanish-speaking community, were also fired.
The agency’s current lack of transparency led to a backlash—and more public attention than it’s used to—when a report by KFF Health News revealed that hospitals were being told that they would soon be required to hand over personally identifiable patient information as part of the CPSC’s “modernized” method of collecting emergency room visit data. Twelve Democratic members of Congress and CR’s safety advocates demanded the program be suspended until the agency publicly justified the move.
Product safety experts and engineers who work with manufacturers on the voluntary standards-setting process also say that it is taking longer than it used to for them to get injury and death data that they request from the CPSC; this then makes their standards-setting process take longer, too.
“It just feels like the doors are closing on access and information,” says Crystal Ellis, the safety advocate who went on to help found Parents Against Tip-Overs after her son’s death.
The CPSC’s spokesperson told CR that the agency has decided to redirect resources away from its international training program and toward enforcement at American ports and along the border. He also said that the office of communications is busier than ever.
Former staffers and safety experts see all of the agency’s recent staff cuts and changing priorities as evidence of a shrinking emphasis on education (making sure unsafe stuff never gets made) in favor of an increased appetite for enforcement (removing unsafe stuff from the marketplace and punishing bad actors). Prevention is proactive, while recalls are reactive. Ideally, a well-functioning agency would be able to do both.
But recalls are likely what the agency is best known for, and the easiest way for it to publicize a problem they’ve found. And today’s CPSC doesn’t seem to be holding back on those.
The New Year of the Recall
High-profile recalls over the past year include lead-leaching faucets, poorly designed above-ground swimming pools, and squishy toys with deadly water beads inside. Under the new leadership, in 2025, the CPSC broke every agency record for how many recalls they’ve announced, coordinating 424 recalls of roughly 26 million products last year; it also issued over 88,000 takedown notices to online platforms. There have been 506 recalls this year, as of the end of October, and over 140,000 takedown notices this year. CPSC’s Steve Roney says that the Commission is “extremely proud” of the record-setting work of its staff.
There has also been a steep increase in the frequency of “product safety warnings” in addition to recalls. When the agency is able to get in touch with a manufacturer or importer of a dangerous product and agree on a remedy, the company will issue a recall. But when it can’t find the company, or the company doesn’t cooperate, then all the agency can do is warn the public not to use the product anymore.
For example, in May 2025, the CPSC announced the recall of over 100,000 Chinese-made faucets sold by three companies for containing lead. But it merely warned the public about an untold number of faucets sold by seven other companies, providing no remedy to consumers harmed by those. Experts say that, while warning the public is a positive step, a rising proportion of warnings rather than recalls shows that it’s getting harder to keep bad actors accountable in a global online marketplace.
A previous high-water mark for recalls was 2007, which was dubbed the infamous “Year of the Recall.” Hundreds of millions of toxic and dangerous toys, jewelry, and cribs were recalled that year, which led directly to the passage of the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act the following year to expand the CPSC’s authority.
The Year of the Recall had made it clear to policymakers that there was a big problem in the market that needed to be addressed. Likewise, some critics of the current agency’s priorities say that 2025’s record-breaking number of recalls (and the growing proportion of product safety warnings) is actually a bad sign, indicative of systemic problems in the marketplace.
“Every recall essentially is a failure of product safety, not a victory to be celebrated,” says Jonathan Midgett, the former consumer ombudsman. He adds that he believes that the loss of the small-business and international training programs, especially, have made the global marketplace less safe.
“It’s like a dentist never teaching kids how to brush their teeth because he measures ‘success’ by how many cavities he fills per year,” Midgett says.
The CPSC Loses Its ‘Heart’
After Crystal Ellis’s son, Camden, died, the first interaction she had with the CPSC was via a formal letter notifying her that the agency wanted to investigate the incident. She had already been dealing with local authorities, the funeral home, and lawyers, and was in a fog of exhaustion and grief. She came to understand the potential for something good to come out of participating in the investigation, but she felt that she could have easily been put on the defensive by a letter from the government.
She wanted there to be a “soft landing spot” with the agency for anyone who would be unfortunate enough to be in her position in the future—which is why, back in 2020, she (and her nonprofit organization Parents Against Tip-Overs) helped advocate for the creation of Jonathan Midgett’s position of consumer ombudsman.
This position would be the one government employee you could call directly if you or a loved one was hurt by a product. The person calling would get a guide to lead them through an otherwise bewildering bureaucracy. And the agency would get the detailed information it needed to identify patterns of harm caused by products, which in turn would eventually lead to recalls or rules.
“It wasn’t just about helping parents, but it was important for the agency to get all of the data connected to product safety incidents,” Ellis says. Midgett was a good fit; he had already worked at the agency since 2001, and had a background in both psychology and engineering.
“You’re going to have to have somebody like Jonathan Midgett, someone who is so calm, and warm, and caring, like a Mr. Rogers type, who’s going to make you feel at ease to share the worst details of the worst days of your life,” Ellis says. “It’s like we made the wish into the void, and there was Jonathan.”
Midgett would talk to family members for hours at a time, listening without judgment and building up trust with patience, empathy, and compassion. Together they would unpack what happened and put together a report for the agency’s public safety incident database, SaferProducts.gov, to record it for posterity. Then they would figure out what, if anything, could be done next to make sure other families wouldn’t have to experience what they did.
With Midgett’s help, people who had never even heard of the agency before they were touched by tragedy sometimes became the agency’s biggest collaborators and champions.
“He talked to family members for weeks, months, years at a time,” says Richard Trumka Jr., one of the commissioners who was fired last year. “It’s led to recalls and rulemakings. He’s saved lives. To lose him is to lose the heart of our agency.”
After DOGE forced Midgett into early retirement in early 2025, the position of consumer ombudsman was eliminated.
When CR asked the CPSC about the loss of this position, the agency’s spokesperson Steve Roney wrote that the decision to cut the office followed questions about its effectiveness. “There were no reliable performance metrics demonstrating whether, or to what extent, the Consumer Ombudsman’s activities resulted in recalls, safety warnings, or other concrete consumer safety outcomes,” he wrote.
But for bereaved parents, there is no reliable metric for coping with grief after unfathomable loss. Mayra Romero-Ferman, whose infant daughter died in her sleep at 6 months old, started to cry when she was asked about her experience working with Midgett.
“He was such a lifeline,” she said, “while I navigated not only grief, but participating in the industry’s development of voluntary standards, speaking at hearings, and involving myself with the agency. So it just kind of breaks my heart that other folks who are going through that now don’t have someone to guide them through the process.”
Crystal Ellis also feels the loss. “I don’t want regular citizens to have to wait in a line that lobbyists don’t have to wait in,” she said. “I want regular citizens to be able to access their own government to say, ‘Help me,’ and get that help.”
Where Does the CPSC Go From Here?
Given all the changes it’s undergone in the past year and a half, safety experts and advocates interviewed for this story are concerned that—without a shift in the agency’s priorities—it’s the American public that will suffer.
“It’s like death by a thousand paper cuts,” says R. David Pittle, the former CPSC commissioner. “You don’t know what you’re losing till it’s gone.”
CR safety advocates say that consumers need a more proactive CPSC to help people stay safe, and that Congress, the White House, and the agency’s own leadership all have a role to play.
“The CPSC must be willing and able under any administration to set new rules—leveraging the expertise of its scientists and engineers to inform strong, evidence-based product safety standards that save lives and prevent injuries,” says Gabe Knight, the senior safety policy analyst for CR. “For the CPSC to be the independent-minded regulator Congress envisioned when it created the agency, the White House needs to nominate and the Senate needs to confirm commissioners from both parties.”
The stakes for inaction are high, Knight adds. “The Commission needs to make it a top priority to engage with consumers directly, to help them keep their loved ones safe and prevent future tragedies,” she says. “On average, consumer products are associated with at least six people dying every hour—and no one wants it to be someone they love.”
Pittle says the CPSC is the only federal agency that’s ever been tasked with the mission and authority to protect consumers from unreasonably dangerous products.
“Prior to CPSC opening its doors in 1973, no one had a reliable grasp of how many injuries and deaths occurred in America, which products were involved, and what remedies would be effective in reducing the carnage,” Pittle said. “Over the last 53 years, consumers have grown to depend on CPSC to use its authority to rid the marketplace of unreasonable risks. When a restrained or diminished CPSC can’t take decisive action, consumers are left to pay the price.”
