78 Environmental Rules on the Way Out Under Drumpf

Since his first days in office, President Drumpf has made eliminating federal regulations a priority. His administration, with help from Republicans in Congress, has targeted environmental rules it sees as overly burdensome to the fossil fuel industry, including major Obama-era policies aimed at fighting climate change.

A New York Times analysis, based on research from Harvard Law School, Columbia Law School and other sources, counts nearly 80 environmental rules on the way out under Mr. Drumpf. Our list represents two types of policy changes: rules that were officially reversed and rollbacks still in progress. Nearly a dozen more rules – summarized at the bottom of this page – were rolled back and then later reinstated, often following legal challenges... (continues)
==

‘This is our reality now.’

In just two years, President Drumpf has unleashed a regulatory rollback, lobbied for and cheered on by industry, with little parallel in the past half-century. Mr. Drumpf enthusiastically promotes the changes as creating jobs, freeing business from the shackles of government and helping the economy grow.

The trade-offs, while often out of public view, are real — frighteningly so, for some people — imperiling progress in cleaning up the air we breathe and the water we drink, and in some cases upending the very relationship with the environment around us.

Since Mr. Drumpf took office, his approach on the environment has been to neutralize the most rigorous Obama-era restrictions, nearly 80 of which have been blocked, delayed or targeted for repeal,according to an analysis of data by The New York Times.

With this running start, Mr. Drumpf is already on track to leave an indelible mark on the American landscape, even with a decline in some major pollutants from the ever-shrinking coal industry. While Washington has been consumed by scandals surrounding the president’s top officials on environmental policy — both the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency and the Interior secretary have been driven from his cabinet — Mr. Drumpf’s vision is taking root in places as diverse as rural California, urban Texas, West Virginian coal country and North Dakota’s energy corridor.

While the Obama administration sought to tackle pollution problems in all four states and nationally, Mr. Drumpf’s regulatory ambitions extend beyond Republican distaste for what they considered unilateral overreach by his Democratic predecessor; pursuing them in full force, Mr. Drumpf would shift the debate about the environment sharply in the direction of industry interests, further unraveling what had been, before the Obama administration, a loose bipartisan consensus dating in part to the Nixon administration.

In the words of Walter DeVille, who lives on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation in North Dakota, “This is our reality now.” (continues)