Trump Administration
New Trump Nuclear Reactor Policy: “Trust Us”
The Administration is eliminating safeguards and courting greater skepticism about nuclear safety
The Trump Administration is quietly dismantling safeguards for nuclear power. I’m neutral. But not if it’s being built with a “safety last” policy. Trump’s Department of Energy wants us to trust them to protect the public. But blind trust for federal agencies is in scarce supply these days. Trying to sneak through regulatory changes may speed things up in the short run but is likely to cause delays later. We know that the changes will be made by political appointees, with experts relegated to minor roles. This will build a legacy of distrust.
CONTINUE READINGKeeping Coal on Life Support
Trump is doing everything he can to boost coal. And still, the industry is on life support.
The good news for investors is that coal is behaving like much of the non-AI stock market this year. Yet this growth is taking place on a very low baseline, which had slumped well below from Great Recession levels. If investors are to be believed, Trump may be able to keep the coal industry on life support. But it’s still in the ICU.
CONTINUE READINGDoes the Unitary Executive Theory Exist? Not really.
It’s just another ideological confection to impose right-wing policies: the Supreme Court’s argument last week shows it
At Legal Planet, we often bemoan and gnash our teeth at the Unitary Executive Theory, which supposedly holds that because “the Executive Power shall be vested in the President of the United States,” Congress can not circumscribe the President’s removal authority or even his ability to manage federal agencies in any way. But last week, …
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CONTINUE READINGThe Decline and Fall of the “Regulatory Czar”
Now, the office doesn’t even have a home page, and its boss is lawyer who faces possible disbarment.
OIRA, the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, was known as “the most powerful agency you’ve never heard of. That was only three years ago. Under Trump, however, OIRA seems to have become a minor subdivision of the Office of Management and Budget run by Russell Vought. The main purpose of the office was to oversee the use of cost-benefit analysis by regulatory agencies. The Trump Administration has all but abandoned this analytical tool by refusing to quantify regulatory benefits, so it’s now cost-benefit analysis. As a result, OIRA seems to be adrift. One sign of this declining importance is that it’s hard to even find the name of the person running the office.
CONTINUE READINGAnother White House Assault on Federalism
Trump’s Executive Order about rebuilding in LA is a huge federal power grab.
esterday, Trump issued an executive order that attempts to eliminate the need for building permits in the LA burn area. The argument is that the permitting process this slows down the rebuilding that FEMA grants are supposed to assist. he idea seems to be that whenever Congress choses to subsidize an activity, it authorizes agencies to eliminate all state regulations that might be barriers. Supreme Court opinions are full of admonitions against just this kind of assault on state authority, especially in fields like building permits that are a traditional domain of state and local government. And no, this isn’t an area where the President can rely on the Supreme Court’s conservatives. As much as they seem to like presidential authority, the conservative Justices have also shown a strong attachment to federalism.
“OFF WITH THEIR HEADS!”
Trump’s new wildfire Executive Order purporting to pre-empt state and local permitting is the latest insanity emanating from the White House.
The Mad King strikes again, or at least is claiming to: President Trump has announced an executive order to allow victims of the Los Angeles wildfires to rebuild without dealing with “unnecessary, duplicative, or obstructive” permitting requirements…. The order calls on the Secretary of Homeland Security and the Federal Emergency Management Agency to “preempt” state …
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CONTINUE READINGThe Trump Administration is Squandering Our Natural Heritage
Proposed Endangered Species Act regulations are designed to stifle protections and provide developers even more power.
The world’s ecosystems have been subject to an increasingly dangerous cocktail of stressors from land and ocean over-development, invasive species, and pollution. But rather than stem the tide of these harms, the Trump administration has resurrected several regulatory changes to the Endangered Species Act designed to stifle species’ protections and provide land developers even more power to …
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CONTINUE READINGWant to Fight for Science? Look to South Dakota. No, Really.
We need a permanent grassroots strategy for science before we are buried in Idiocracy.
Nature this week offers a series of terrifying, interactive graphs detailing the Trump Administration’s Idiocratic War on Science. Not only has it butchered federal scientific research grants, but as you can see in this graphic, it has hollowed out the federal scientific workforce – the dedicated professionals who develop data to allow for science-informed policy …
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CONTINUE READINGWhat Critics of the Unitary Executive Missed
This conservative theory has damaged democracy in unexpected ways.
You would think that some of the conservatives on the Supreme Court would start to see that their ideas about how to run the government are flawed. Sadly, there’s no evidence that they’ve seen the light. It’s true that they seem to be willing to make an ad hoc exception for the Federal Reserve, showing the truth of the saying that everyone’s scared of the bond market. But other than that, they seem happy to allow a single person’s whims to control the government. We’re going to need to figure out some new approaches if we want to have a government that implements in the law in a rational, even-handed way.
CONTINUE READINGAnother White House Power Grab: PJM
Why emergency power auctions for the AI overlords will do little to reduce electricity prices.
Fresh on the heels of the White House takeover of Venezuela and its “uninvestable” oil sector, President Trump, Energy Secretary Chris Wright, and the rest of the National Energy Dominance Council have turned their sights on the largest wholesale electricity market in the United States – PJM. Their concern is high prices, which continue to …
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