What's the evidence for weakening FAA regulation?

EDIT: I'm getting downvoted, but I really am curious. It's extremely uncommon for government bureaucracy to roll back regulations, and as far as I can tell from some Googling, the FAA has not done so. So what regulations are being weakened?

Cozy relationships between the FAA and manufacturers, executive orders requiring them to 'collaborate' with manufacturers, evidence suggesting retaliation against whistleblowers, etc. there were significant investigations after the the MCAS tragedy. And they lost a lot of credibility as leaders in regulation when they waited to ground the max after the crashes while others took the lead.

Edit: Replying to the edit - oh come on HN dont downvote their question it's a reasonable question, my original response didn't link any articles.

The regulation doesn't specifically have to get rolled back. In this case a large part of weakening regulations is shifting to allowing the manufacturer (Boeing) to regulate themselves and allowing (or forcing) ties between regulator and manufacturer to get too close.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/26/us/politics/boeing-faa.ht...

Ah, so regulatory capture? I can see that.

It also seems like the ATC system is stretched thin, as well as the airlines themselves in terms of pilots. Though I may be biased since I'm much more aware of ATC problems given the various YouTube channels I watch covering aviation.

Yep that was what I was referring to with shortages and exhaustion - not great with the recent revelations of the near misses. It's a warning that if the work to maintain those safety numbers isn't done we can't expect them to stay the same. Air travel is still safe, and has a lot of headroom before it's as bad as cars. But even that argument is kind of scary to see people making. Going from "even a single failure is unacceptable" to "even with 2 planes falling out of the sky it's still safer than driving" is a shift in mindset that threatens to invalidate that latter argument.

> as far as I can tell from some Googling, the FAA has not done so

That's because Google has become useless, not because the info isn't there.

You should try and find some of the analysis articles close to the MCAS disaster that explain how it's not the FAA that certifies airplanes any more, but the manufacturer basically self certifies.

[Yes, they're FAA employees but paid by Boeing. Do you also believe in Santa Claus?]