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FACING FOES: An executive order signed by President Trump
Donald John TrumpMulvaney: ‘We’ve overreacted a little bit’ to coronavirus Former CBS News president: Most major cable news outlets ‘unrelentingly liberal’ in ‘fear and loathing’ of Trump An old man like me should be made more vulnerable to death by COVID-19 MORE directing agencies to slash regulations in order to boost the economy is likely to lead to a number of court challenges.
The order directs agency heads to “identify regulatory standards that may inhibit economic recovery,” highlighting that regulations could be permanently or temporarily lifted in order to fight the economic fallout of the coronavirus.
But experts say speeding up the regulatory process or nixing public comment periods would likely be slammed in court unless the Trump administration can demonstrate their actions are necessary due to the pandemic.
“The problem there is those measures have to be directly related to addressing the pandemic. They can’t just be political priorities the Trump administration wants to speed up and get across the finish line in the first term,” said Amit Narang, a regulatory policy advocate with Public Citizen, pointing to the requirements of the Administrative Procedure Act.
“They’re not going to be able to claim that their ideological rollbacks are needed urgently to address the coronavirus just because they’re going to create economic growth. It’s not an argument that’s going to carry water on the policy side but certainly on the legal side in court either,” Narang said.
The order may be as likely to spur eye rolls as it is to spur lawsuits, however, as some say the directive is more about messaging than affecting regulation.
Critics say even with the accelerated timeline the administration seems to be pushing, the White House has little time to accomplish much else this term.
“What are you going to do? Are you going to review the whole suite of statutes and regulations that you implement and that you’ve spent three-and-a-half years rolling back and then you’re going to try and get more blood from a stone? And then try to accomplish that feat by 2021? It’s not going to be possible,” said John Walke with the Natural Resources Defense Council.
The Trump administration told The Hill they believe the order will withstand legal challenge.
“Statutes frequently allow an expedited regulatory process during urgent circumstances. The heart of what this administration is working to accomplish is clear: get our economy back to historic levels and get millions of Americans back to work,” the White House said by email.
The Trump administration has prided itself on pushing deregulation since nearly day one, with the president signing orders to nix two regulations for every new rule they want to issue and another requiring agencies to offset the costs of any new rules by scrapping old ones.
But Walke and others argue the administration will face hurdles with its approach.
“Trump does not want to appear helpless so he’s directing agencies to pin blame for the economy on regulations that have nothing to do with the economy. It’s plain to see that the pandemic and shelter-in-place orders are the reasons for the economic downturn,” Walke said.
The move may also sound familiar to those follow environmental politics…
The Trump order encourages the temporary suspension of regulations, a move already in use by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
The agency in late March issued a temporary order, though it has no set end date, announcing it would not fine companies that stop monitoring their pollution emissions — something required by both the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act.
The EPA says companies must document when they stopped monitoring and why the coronavirus was the cause to avoid fines down the road, but environmental groups and states have already sued, arguing the damage will have already been done, risking the health of residents near industrial operations.
It’s a playbook that could easily be adopted by other agencies, who might consider lifting private lending restrictions, regulations on food safety like inspection line requirements at meatpacking plants or suspending contract rules that require agencies to pick the most competitive bid.
Read more on the order and its potential challenges here.
MAKING DECISIONS: A federal judge late last week threw out a lawsuit attempting to reinstate a moratorium on leasing federal land to coal producers.
The administration first attempted to end an Obama-era ban on new coal leasing on public lands in 2017, although Judge Brian Morris ruled last year that the Trump administration did not take the required steps to comply with environmental laws.
Morris ruled Friday that the administration has since “remedied the violation” after completing an assessment this year that found no significant impacts of resuming coal leases.
He added those attempting to pause the leasing, including several states, tribes and environmental groups, “remain free to file a complaint to challenge the sufficiency” of the assessment.
Jenny Harbine, an attorney with Earthjustice, who was on the case, told The Hill in an email that the ruling “doesn’t change the writing on the wall, which is that coal is giving way to cleaner, cheaper renewable sources of energy.”
Coal-fired power generation has a made up a smaller part of the U.S. energy sector in recent years and new data has shown that this year more energy is expected to be produced from renewable sources than coal.
However, the administration has been supportive of the coal industry.
“Coal is and will continue to be a critical part of our nation’s energy portfolio and we are committed to the responsible development of our abundant resources and advancing American energy independence, jobs, and economic growth,” said a February statement from Acting Assistant Secretary for Land and Minerals Management Casey Hammond on the government assessment.
Read more about that decision here.
In other court news…
A federal court in Montana invalidated 440 oil and gas leases sold across the West, ruling Friday the Trump administration did not properly follow a plan to protect sage grouse habitat.
U.S. District Court Judge Brian Morris said the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) under the Trump administration “undercut” the 2015 plan the agency created under the previous administration that set aside land for the threatened bird.
The decision strikes down a 2018 memo that sought to change that plan, meaning the government will have to return millions of dollars for oil and gas contracts spread over some 336,000 acres.
“The errors here occurred at the beginning of the oil and gas lease sale process, infecting everything that followed,” Morris wrote.
Environmentalists are hopeful the decision will lead to reversals on more oil and gas leases in other states.
“The court’s decision is not only good news for the sage-grouse, it reaffirms the historic plan that BLM worked out with farmers, ranchers, conservationists, energy groups, and government officials,” Earthjustice attorney Michael Freeman, who represented conservation groups in the suit, said in a release. “It confirms that the Trump administration violated the law in bulldozing those commitments in its haste to sell off lands that are owned by all Americans to the oil and gas industry.”
Read more about that ruling here.
STIMULATING CONVERSATION: The Sierra Club is putting forth a nearly $6 trillion, 10-year stimulus plan that aims to create millions of jobs in both traditional infrastructure and clean energy.
The group commissioned a report from economists at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, which was shared first with The Hill. The report proposes a plan for creating 4.6 million jobs to upgrade infrastructure annually and another 4.5 million jobs to transition to a clean energy economy annually.
“Congress needs to enact a plan for economic renewal, not a return to the unjust status quo,” Ben Beachy, the director of the Sierra Club’s Living Economy Program, told The Hill.
“Congress needs to enact a forward-looking stimulus package that would put millions of people back to work while building an economy that supports cleaner air and water, higher wages, healthier communities, greater equity and a more stable climate,” Beachy said.
The traditional infrastructure jobs included in the proposal would be for improving roads, schools, public parks and recreation and other areas. The clean energy and agriculture jobs are in areas such solar and wind energy, energy efficiency and land restoration.
The report follows the House’s passage of a $3 trillion stimulus package earlier this month that includes funding to help low-income households pay for water and energy, but does not include specific assistance for the clean energy industry. At the time, environmentalists including the Sierra Club had called for something more ambitious.
“The package that Congress passed would provide essential relief for families and workers,” Beachy said. “As we look forward, we also need a plan to put millions of people back to work building a healthier, more equitable economy.”
Environmentalists have argued that stimulus legislation should move the country toward a clean energy future rather than continuing the status quo.
Of the 4.5 million clean energy transition jobs outlined in the Sierra Club’s new report, about 3.2 million would be in clean energy, 700,000 would be in energy efficiency and 500,000 would be in land and agriculture.
These clean energy jobs would entail a $320 billion public investment annually. The report assumes this public investment would be matched with an equal private investment. It estimates that the $640 billion spent annually on clean energy in total would lower carbon dioxide emissions by 45 percent by 2030.
Read more about the report here.
OUTSIDE THE BELTWAY:
SF, other California cities permitted to sue oil industry over climate change, judge rules, The San Francisco Chronicle reports
Alliant Energy Announces Plans To Shutter Wisconsin Coal Plant, Wisconsin Public Radio reports
Human activity threatens billions of years of evolutionary history, researchers warn, CNN reports
This kind of coal could fuel COVID‑19 recovery, E&E News reports
ICYMI: Stories from Tuesday and the long weekend…
Green group proposes nearly $6T infrastructure and clean energy stimulus plan
Court strikes down 440 oil and gas leases across the West
Trump anti-reg push likely to end up in court
Loss of Louisiana marsh lands highly likely as sea levels rise, study shows
Judge throws out lawsuit attempting to halt federal coal leases
