Trump Signs Executive Order to Cancel Protections for Clean Air and Water
Part of administrations systematic campaign to eviscerate rules intended to safeguard communities from industrial pollution
President Donald Trump signed an executive order late Wednesday that would direct some government agencies to incorporate a sunset provision into their regulations governing energy production, an attempt to undermine or negate key environmental and safety safeguards currently in place. In response, David Arkush, director of Public Citizen’s Climate Program, issued the following statement:
“Trump continues making moves that are equal parts dumb and cruel. Here, he tries to put the federal public protectors whose jobs he is slashing on quicksand, causing even more chaos and suffering than he already has. If the order is carried out, rules that protect the American public from all manner of harms will expire automatically unless federal safety regulators do mountains of needless paperwork, with vastly diminished resources and staffing.
“It would be one thing to order agencies to periodically review rules and update or repeal them as appropriate—and give agencies the resources to do that job well. It is quite another to slash their resources while ordering that all environmental and safety regulations should automatically expire.
“Fortunately, it is so nonsensical to put an arbitrary end date on all rules that courts will likely strike down attempts to comply. Like everything this administration has done, this order is nothing if not arbitrary and capricious—and thus agency actions to carry it out will likely fail to meet the standard to survive judicial review.
“Why should clean air or clean water rules expire automatically? It only makes sense if you’re engaged in a systematic campaign to do everything that might conceivably put more money in the pockets of your billionaire corporate cronies, regardless of who you hurt along the way.”
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