Trump’s Environmental Deregulation Legacy

No president did more to deregulate environmental protection than Donald Trump. Environmental deregulation started early. At the beginning of his administration, Trump signed an executive order that for every new regulation issued, at least two regulations must be identified for elimination. That was a signal we were in for a long deregulatory ride, one that lasted the …

The Continued Attacks On Environmental Protection By Lame Duck Trump

As the Trump administration winds down, the environmental rollbacks continue and even seem to increase. The air, water, soil, human health, and animals are not exempt. What matters most to the people running the federal agencies charged with protecting the environment is industry, namely the fossil fuel industries. Interior Secretary David Bernhardt worked as an …

Lawsuits Challenge Trump’s Rollback of Obama-Era Power Plant Wastewater Standards

One hallmark of the Trump administration is rolling back Obama-era environmental standards. Environmental groups fight the rollbacks with lawsuits. Nine environmental groups filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in early November over its rollback of national powerplant wastewater standards limiting water pollution from coal-fired power plants. Filed in the District of Columbia …

Why Trump Must Be Voted Out To Save the Environment

Not too long after taking office, Trump issued an executive order that for every new regulation enacted, two must be eliminated. The Brookings Institute tracked the administration’s deregulatory actions and found 74 actions, as of August 2020, taken to weaken environmental protection. The Trump environmental record has at least been consistent. President Obama established the Clean …

Trump Administration Bails Out the Declining Oil and Gas Industry

The Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury Department began a corporate bailout in March. Since then, oil and gas companies issued $99.3 billion in new bonds, a report by Friends of the Earth, Public Citizen, and BailoutWatch found.  The Federal Reserve bought debt from 19 oil and gas companies, and those companies have since sold debt …

Trump Administration Loophole Allows Industrial Facilities to Pollute Neighborhoods

President Trump set a target on environmental regulations early in his presidency. After taking office in 2017, he issued an executive order that for every new regulation enacted, two are eliminated. His deregulation includes rollbacks of laws protecting the air, water, and addressing climate change. The Brookings Institute found that as of August 2020, the Trump administration enacted 74 …

Trump’s Wildfire Prevention Funding Cuts

Trump’s budget for 2020 cut funding for a wildfire suppression program by almost $600 million, recent research by the Western Values Project found. His administration acknowledged that 63 million acres of federal forest lands and 70,000 communities are at risk of severe wildfires. “Instead of increasing budgets to try to prevent fires, the federal government …

11 Threatened Species That Need Protection Under the Endangered Species Act

The legacy of former President Donald Trump is environmental deregulation. Part of that legacy includes delaying protection for 11 species identified as needing endangered status. The Trump administration instead put them on a candidate list.  In early January, the Center for Biological Diversity filed a formal notice of its intent to use then-Interior Secretary David …

The Restoration of Environmental Regulation

The four long years of environmental deregulation came to an end on January 20 when Joe Biden took office. While the Trump administration’s legacy is one of relaxing and deleting environmental laws as giveaways to the oil and gas industry, the Biden administration has already made it clear it will restore environmental regulation. On the …