Trump Administration
Coastal Communities Demand EPA Update Decades-Old Oil Spill Regulations
Written in Collaboration with Camila Gonzalez*
Coastal communities are bracing themselves. Thirty years after the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska, and almost nine years after the BP Deepwater Horizon rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico, they are facing the threat of another catastrophic oil spill. The Trump Administration is paving the way. The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management will …
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CONTINUE READINGDowngrading OIRA
The acting regulatory “czar” is the least experienced in history.
Overlooked amidst all the other news, the White House picked a new acting regulatory czar earlier this month. The acting Director of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs is Paul Ray, who is very junior and a virtual unknown. It’s difficult to imagine that he’s going to be very effective at telling cabinet officials …
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CONTINUE READINGEPA’s Mission: The Original Understanding
Guess what? EPA’s core mission wasn’t cutting regulatory costs.
What is EPA’s mission? To what extent is minimizing regulatory costs part of the core mission, as the Trump Administration seems to believe? Does the Trump/Pruitt/Wheeler view comport with original intent? History makes it clear that the answer is no. The title of the agency itself suggests that the core mission is protecting the environment, …
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CONTINUE READINGPublic Lands Watch: Final Changes to Sage Grouse Protections
BLM announces final version of revisions to protections for sage grouse on Western federal public lands
This blog post was drafted by Jamie T. Martinez. On March 15, the Trump administration finalized its plan to loosen protections on federal lands for the habitat of the greater sage-grouse, a near-threatened species that lives in sagebrush country across the western United States. The final plan amends the resource plans adopted in 2015 to …
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CONTINUE READINGWhy is Trump Getting the Cold Shoulder from the Car Companies?
The answer: His rollback promises them little profit and much uncertainty.
Usually, you’d expect a regulated industry to applaud an effort to lighten its regulatory burdens. So you would think that the car industry would support Trump’s effort to roll back fuel efficiency standards for new vehicles and take away California’s authority to set its own vehicle standards. But that effort is being met by silence …
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CONTINUE READINGRegulatory Review in Anti-Regulatory Times: The Trump Administration
Cost-benefit analysis turns out to make very little difference when the issue is rolling back regulations.
In theory, cost-benefit analysis should be just as relevant when the government is deregulating as when it is imposing new regulations. But things don’t seem to work that way. This is the first of two blog posts analyzing how costs and benefits figured in decisions during the past two years of unified GOP control of …
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CONTINUE READINGThe Power of the Purse
House Democrats have power to use appropriations process to stop Trump Administration environmental rollbacks
Dan has already posted about some of the big deregulatory steps the Trump Administration is likely to take in the next year. But the new Democratic majority in the House could have something to say about those steps, if they wanted to. Democrats will have even more leverage over spending bills than they had in …
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CONTINUE READINGThe Year Ahead
Here’s what to expect environmentally.
What are the key things to watch for in 2019 in the environmental area? Regulations. According to the Administration’s schedule, three big rules should be issued in March: repeal of the Waters of the United States rule (WOTUS), repeal and replacement of the Clean Power Plan, and the freeze on fuel efficiency standards. This seems …
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CONTINUE READINGSeven Bright Spots of 2018
Even in bad times, some things move in the right direction.
Yes, it was a grim year in many ways. But there actually were some bright spots. Here are just the high points, but if you want more detail, I’ve added links to relevant earlier blog posts at the end of this post on the website. Scott Pruitt. Pruitt resigned under fire. While his successor may …
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CONTINUE READINGPublic Lands Watch: Sage Grouse Plans Move Forward
Administration takes next steps to scale back protections for iconic Western bird on federal public lands.
I’ve posted before about proposals by the Trump Administration to roll back protections for the sage grouse, an iconic species of the Western United States, from oil and gas development on federal public lands. (The initial blog post with background is here; the specific proposed revisions are here.) The Administration has now issued a final …
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