Politics
Amazon’s New Urban Headquarters Could Flip A Red State To Blue
A city-state rundown on how an influx of Democratic-leaning tech workers could impact swing states like Arizona, Wisconsin and Michigan
UPDATE: Thanks to commenter Bob below who pointed out that the employee numbers from the San Francisco Chronicle that I used to make the calculations below have since been significantly revised downward. As Geekwire reports, the numbers I cited were for Amazon company-wide, not just Seattle. In fact, Amazon employees 40,000 in Washington state, not …
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CONTINUE READINGState of Play: Trump v. the Environment
Here’s a roadmap to what he’s done — and how things will probably unfold.
How has Trump impacted environmental law? What’s going to happen next? CLEE has issued a new report assessing the state of play in environmental law seven months of the Trump presidency. The report, 200 Days & Counting, reviews the Administration’s environmental proposals and offers a glimpse into what may be coming down the pike. The report focuses …
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CONTINUE READINGHigh Time to Fix California’s Affordable Housing Crisis
California Political Leaders Announce Historic Housing Accord
The Sacramento Bee reports that California Governor Jerry Brown and the Democratic leaders of the State Senate and Assembly have reached an 11th-hour agreement to address California’s chronic, steadily growing affordable housing crisis. (The California Legislature’s 2017 session concludes in mid-September.) That’s good news indeed–and a most welcome (if overdue) proposed fix to one of …
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CONTINUE READINGPushing Back Against Presidential Power
It’s time to rethink the amount of power presidents have claimed over regulatory policy.
If there was ever a time to think hard about presidential power, that time is now. That’s a very broad question, but the part most relevant for this blog is the President’s role in controlling government regulation. There is no question that presidents have and will continue to have a huge influence on regulatory policy. …
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CONTINUE READING200 Days & Counting: Environmental Threat Assessment
The Trump Administration presents a barrage of threats to the environment. Which threats are worst?
This is the last in our series on the state of play concerning U.S. environmental protection at this point of the Trump Administration. We can classify threats along three dimensions: the likelihood of harm, the seriousness and irreversibility of the harm, and the irreversibility of the institutional or legal change. Here’s an assessment of our …
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CONTINUE READING200 Days & Counting: Executive Orders
Trump loves issuing executive orders. Mostly, they don’t mean much.
Trump has issued a flood of executive orders. Many of them are “full of sound and fury. . . signifying nothing.” They actually concern actions that he doesn’t have the power to take himself. Instead, they relate to responsibilities that Congress gave to an administrative agency like EPA, not the White House. There are a …
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CONTINUE READING200 Days & Counting: Enforcing Environmental Laws
Don’t expect the Administration to take the lead in enforcement. Others will need to step up.
As the Bush Administration learned, it can be difficult to pass new legislation or enact new regulations. But another way of gutting environmental rules is much easier: just stop enforcing them. An agency’s enforcement decisions receive essentially no judicial review and precious little publicity. Cuts in enforcement budgets receive even less public notice and are …
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CONTINUE READING200 Days & Counting: Pollution and Climate Change
Trump and Pruitt want to take an ax to EPA regulation. That will be harder than they think.
Rolling back EPA regulations is one of the Trump Administration’s priorities. The most notable example is Obama’s Clean Power Plan, which aimed to cut CO2 emissions from power plants. The other rule that has gotten considerable attention is the so-called WOTUS rule, which defines federal jurisdiction to regulate wetlands and watersheds. But these are not …
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CONTINUE READINGGuest Blogger Justin Pidot: Two Years after Gold King Disaster, Trump Would Slash Funding for Abandoned Mines Cleanup
Congress Should Ensure that Money Is Available to Address Pollution on Public Lands
In recent legal battles, the State of Utah has rarely sided with the environment. It is a significant moment, therefore, when Utah files a lawsuit aimed to force polluters to pay for contamination they have caused, as it did last week when it sued mine owners and contractors for the EPA related to the Gold …
CONTINUE READINGNew Study: California Climate Policies Bringing Over $9 Billion And 41,000 Jobs To Southern California’s Inland Empire
Report commissioned by Next 10 and written by Berkeley Law’s CLEE and UC Berkeley’s labor center
With the legislature just passing a landmark extension of cap-and-trade through 2030 by a supermajority vote, attention now turns to implementing the state’s major climate programs to achieve the ambitious climate goals for that year and beyond. Critics frequently argue that efforts to fight climate change hurt the economy and cost jobs. Yet as I …
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