General
A Disinformation Deluge on California Policies
Trump and House Republicans are trying to ‘flood the zone’ when it comes to wrongly blaming California environmental regulations for the LA fires.
Trump’s longtime strategy of ‘flooding the zone” — aka overwhelming opponents with a flurry of announcements and superficial initiatives — took a literal turn last week, when his administration ordered the release of a significant amount of water from two dams in the Central Valley to try to score political points. As the New York …
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CONTINUE READINGCrisis at DOJ’s Environment & Natural Resources Division
Guest contributors Sommer Engels, Andrew Mergen, and Justin Pidot write that dismantling ENRD will be disastrous for future administrations, the American people, and even for the Trump Administration.
The Environment and Natural Resources Division (ENRD) of the Department of Justice faces its most profound crisis since it was established in 1909. In a little over a week, the Trump administration has (1) reassigned four career managers (leading nearly half of ENRD’s sections) to the newly formed Office of Sanctuary Cities Enforcement; (2) placed …
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CONTINUE READINGTrump’s Offshore Wind Ban vs. China’s Wind Juggernaut
Why is the Trump administration kneecapping the U.S. offshore wind industry while China becomes a global giant?
This January, when I was in Beijing for a workshop at Tsinghua University on offshore wind, presentation after presentation from Chinese experts revealed just how China has become an absolute juggernaut in offshore wind. Professors from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and Tsinghua walked us through the governance structure — state planning, targets, industrial …
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CONTINUE READINGProject 2025 Envisions Congressional Override of Biden Era Regulations
Paper #2 in Monograph Series
UC Berkeley’s Center for Law, Energy, & Environment (CLEE) is sponsoring a series of papers evaluating aspects of Project 2025, The Heritage Foundation publication, entitled “Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise,” which is being followed to a significant degree as a blueprint for the Trump Administration. CLEE published excerpts from the 922 page Project 2025 …
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CONTINUE READINGDid California Policies Make the LA Fires Worse?
California’s environmental and climate regulations did not make the climate-fueled Palisades and Eaton fires more destructive or harder to fight. Here’s why.
We know climate change is partly to blame. Are California’s environmental policies regarding land and water management also to blame for the supercharged firestorm that has ravaged Los Angeles? It’s not just conspiracy theories on social media or misguided news stories; that’s the position of some congressional Republicans and President-elect Trump, who hold power over future …
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CONTINUE READINGHonoring Michael Zischke (1954-2025)
A Force in the CEQA World
Michael Zischke was a talented and award-winning land use and environmental lawyer, Mike was widely recognized for his extensive expertise in California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) litigation and compliance.
CONTINUE READINGRed #3 is Going
Will OYGBIV Follow?
Yesterday’s FDA’s ban on the food dye red #3, which takes California’s recent ban nationwide, is welcome and long overdue. Red #3 is a known animal carcinogen, and appears to have been excluded from an earlier FDA ban on its use in cosmetics and externally applied drugs primarily through clerical error. As I described in a …
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CONTINUE READINGClimate Takeaways from Newsom’s Budget Proposal
The Governor’s proposed 2025-26 budget would tap the recent voter-approved climate bond and seek new emergency funds.
For more than a month, California has worked at “Trump-proofing” the State budget. Now you could say the Governor is looking to fire-proof it too. On Friday, as wildfires continued to rage across Southern California, officials from the California Department of Finance presented the Governor’s proposed 2025-26 budget. Earlier in the week, the Governor—who has …
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CONTINUE READINGDOGE: A Dodgy Path to Deregulation
It’s supposed to be cost-saving, but the savings are trivial on the scale of the federal budget.
Musk and Ramaswami have said that their DOGE project will cut the federal budget by eliminating unnecessary regulations and cutting regulatory agencies. Putting aside what “unnecessary” means here, that’s not even going to be a downpayment on the kind of budget cuts they’re seeking. The numbers are pretty simple. Suppose they eliminated EPA entirely. That …
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CONTINUE READINGLA Fires and the Climate Connection
New UCLA research connects the dots between the climate crisis and the supercharged LA wildfires. “Hydroclimate whiplash” means worse floods, droughts, and fires.
Like millions of Angelenos, I’ve been staying indoors and off the roads, glued to the Watch Duty app, radio, and TV coverage as LA is engulfed by these historic fires. The last 48 hours of coverage has focused, understandably, on the firefight and immediate devastation. Now, it’s time to start hearing about the climate connection, …
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