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Beyond its attack on protections against the dangers of fossil fuel extractions, the Trump pro-polluter strategy includes a far broader assault on the laws and safeguards designed to limit pollution, support a clean energy economy, and protect public health and the environment. Trump’s Office of Management and Budget is overseeing a government-wide effort to deregulate industry pursuant to Trump’s Executive Order 13777, which requires each agency to establish a task force to identify regulations to eliminate.
In response, the EPA and the Departments of Interior, Energy, Transportation, and others have targeted dozens of safeguards that are already in effect or under development.
There are far too many to list them all here, but protections that the Administration has overturned, withdrawn, paused an ongoing rulemaking for, or is “reconsidering” include: the Clean Power Plan; the Waters of the U.S. Rule; EPA and DOT regulations to limit carbon pollution from vehicles and save consumers money; an EPA rule limiting toxic discharges from coal-ash holding ponds; Department of Energy appliance-efficiency standards that cut electricity bills; an EPA rule to make heavy-duty trucks less polluting; a rule barring children from working with toxic pesticides; implementation of the latest ozone air-quality standards in areas with unhealthy air; an EPA rule to update water-quality standards for uranium mining; risk-management standards to prevent catastrophic chemical accidents; responses to petitions from downwind states to control smog pollution; EPA standards to limit extra pollution during startup and shutdown of power plants; limits on methane from landfills; and a phaseout of the toxic pesticide chlorpyrifos, which is associated with developmental disabilities in children.
A clear and disturbing pattern emerges, however. The Administration does not oppose regulation where it can be used to benefit industry, as, for example, with DOE’s bizarre proposal to force ratepayers to subsidize old, expensive, and highly polluting coal-fired power plants.
Under Donald Trump and his polluter cabinet, the administrative state has become a vehicle for polluter priorities above all else.