Administrative Law
Why Does the Trump Administration Keeping Attacking Science?
Apparently, the Administration views science as fatally infected with woke ideas and lacking much other value.
Make no mistake, the Trump Administration is engaged in a serious, carefully honed, effort to undermine American science. The National Science Foundation has lost a third of its staff, while the National Institutes of Health have lost 20%. EPA’s science office is being shuttered. Trump’s proposed budget included a 54% cut for NSF, 12% for NIH, and 46% for NASA’s space research. And last week, the government proposed changes to politicize research funding decisions at the expense of merit review. It also proposes making continuation of long-term funding dependent on political whim, which will drive researchers away from projects taking longer commitments.
CONTINUE READINGTrump versus Cost-Benefit Analysis
EPA’s disavowal of CBA is the culmination of a longer assault.
EPA recently said it would no longer try to quantify the harms done by the two most serious, widespread air pollutants. Given that these are the most fully understood of all environmental impacts, it’s not clear what future regulations, if any, might be still subject to cost benefit analysis. This didn’t come out of the blue. Rather, it is the culmination of a series of steps that began when Trump took office in 2017. By 2018, Trump’s executive orders and other administration actions had led me to write a post about “the rise of benefit-blind analysis.” Little did I know what was coming down the road.
CONTINUE READINGThe Story of California’s Advanced Clean Trucks Regulation
New CLEE report & webinar tells the story of this first-of-its-kind supply-side regulation for zero-emission trucks
California has been a global pioneer on electric vehicles, and that leadership extends to zero-emission trucks. To address the pollution and disproportionate impacts on disadvantaged communities, the California Air Resources Board (CARB) adopted the first-of-its-kind Advanced Clean Trucks (ACT) regulation in 2020. This landmark standard required truckmakers to begin selling zero-emission versions (such as battery …
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CONTINUE READINGThe Path to Abundance, Part VI
Abundance reforms at the federal level may have the most political success if they are low-salience, and elite driven
This is the sixth post in a series of six posts. The first post is here. The second post is here. The third post is here. The fourth post is here. The fifth post is here. As I discussed in my last blog post, the politics of abundance reform are difficult. Reform often requires short-term …
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CONTINUE READINGThe Path to Abundance, Part V
Abundance reforms will require consensus and trust, which are in short supply in American politics
This is the fifth post in a series of six posts. The first post is here. The second post is here. The third post is here. The fourth post is here. In my last post I noted some important political challenges to abundance reforms: It is unlikely that they will produce immediate political benefits, but …
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CONTINUE READINGJudicial Review of the Hegseth Gambit
Hegseth and the “God Squad” may have just stepped into a morass.
As expected, the Endangered Species Committee issued a blanket exemption, preventing any challenges to oil and gas drilling in the Gulf that threaten endangered species. Hegseth’s request for the exemption is premised on the existing (but possibly insufficient) protections that the government is currently giving endangered species. Thus, it’s not quite a license for Exxon to send out harpoon boats to kill off whales. It does, however, raise the suspicion that the current protections are grossly inadequate and that the government expected to lose in court, before in effect breaking the glass and pulling the red emergency lever.
CONTINUE READINGThe Path to Abundance, Part IV
Abundance reforms may not produce immediate political benefits, and may see significant backlash
This is the fourth post in a series of six posts. The first post is here. The second post is here. The third post is here. As I discussed in my last blog post, abundance policy reforms will necessarily require tradeoffs, which leads us to politics. Will the political context allow for making decisions about …
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CONTINUE READINGThe Path to Abundance, Part III
Abundance reforms will pose difficult tradeoffs, including with environmental goals and public participation
This is the third post in a series of six posts. The first post is here. The second post is here. The reforms that abundance advocates have proposed are varied, in part because they target a wide range of policy areas. I will begin with housing as an example of the reforms being proposed – …
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CONTINUE READINGThe Path to Abundance, Part II
Reducing legal and procedural obstacles to development is a necessary, but probably not sufficient, solution
This is the second post in a series of six posts. The first post is here. As I explained in my prior post, the United States (and indeed other countries) has not produced the level of infrastructure for housing or energy required to address housing demand, demand for energy to advance economic development, the needed …
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CONTINUE READINGThe Path to Abundance, Part I
Exploring the legal, policy, and political challenges for the abundance movement.
The abundance movement is having a moment. Abundance policy reformers call for legal and policy reforms to advance more housing, energy, and other infrastructure. Abundance advocacy has motivated a Yes In My Backyard (YIMBY) movement that has pushed for major changes to local land-use regulation to build more housing in states across the country. One …
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