House Republicans eye hearings on Judge Boasberg, bill to rein in federal judges

(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump is hosting French President Emmanuel Macron at the White House on Monday, with Russia and Ukraine set to be atop the agenda as the world marks three years since Vladimir Putin’s invasion.

Trump and Macron participated in a call with other G7 leaders before a bilateral meeting in the Oval Office. After they will hold a news conference in the East Room, where they can expect to be peppered with questions about the status of peace talks.

Macron convened European leaders for emergency meetings on Ukraine in Paris last week, as top U.S. officials held talks with Russian counterparts in Saudi Arabia without Ukraine and Europe.

Following those meetings, Macron said France and its partners agreed Ukraine must always be involved and its rights respected in negotiations and that security concerns of Europeans must be taken into account.

“Following discussions over the past few days with European colleagues and allies, we are committed to ensuring that peace returns to Ukraine in a just, solid, and lasting manner, and that the security of Europeans is strengthened through all upcoming negotiations,” Macron posted on X on Sunday ahead of his trip to Washington.

The Trump administration’s increased pressure on Ukraine to resolve the conflict, with Trump calling Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy a “dictator” and falsely blaming Ukraine for Russia’s ongoing assault. Trump escalated his criticism last week, when he said Ukraine has “no cards” to play as negotiations unfold.

Meanwhile, Trump said he’s had “good talks” with Putin. Trump has not appeared to make any demands of Russia as negotiations unfold, while he’s ruled out NATO membership and a return to Ukraine’s 2014 borders.

The posture marks a seismic shift in U.S. foreign policy, and comes as the Trump administration brandishes an “America First” agenda that could upend traditional transatlantic alliances.

Vice President JD Vance caused a stir when he took an aggressive tone toward Europe’s leadership on immigration, free speech and more as he spoke at the Munich Security Conference. Vance told U.S. allies the greatest threat to Europe was “within” and not Russia or China.

Vance doubled down on those themes in his speech at CPAC last week. Asked there about the future of U.S. alliances on the continent, Vance said they would continue to have “important” partnerships with Europe.

“But I really do think the strength of those alliances is going to depend on whether we take our societies in the right direction … That friendship is based on shared values,” he said.

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(WASHINGTON) — Calling it the “biggest deregulatory action in U.S. history,” the Environmental Protection Agency rolled out sweeping moves Wednesday aimed at walking back environmental protections and eliminating a host of climate change regulations, some decades in the making.

Taken together, the agency’s actions indicate a wholesale reorientation of the agency away from government support of renewable energy, carbon reduction programs and air, water and soil regulations while threatening to gut the government’s past scientific findings at the core of most climate regulations.

EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin rolled out over two dozen policy announcements, through a series of press releases and public statements. The list of proposed changes includes rolling back emission regulations on coal, oil and gas production and a promise to work across the federal agencies to reevaluate the government finding that determined that greenhouse gas emissions, such as carbon dioxide and methane, not only heat the planet but are a threat to public health.

“We are driving a dagger straight into the heart of the climate change religion to drive down cost of living for American families, unleash American energy, bring auto jobs back to the U.S. and more,” Zeldin wrote in a statement on EPA’s website.

The backlash from the environmental community was swift.

“If they get their way, they will wreck our air, our water, burn down our homes, and hand future generations an unlivable climate. From moms in the 1970s who wanted their kids to be able to play outside without getting asthma to young people in the 2020s who went on hunger strike to force Congress to pass a climate bill, generations of Americans have fought and sacrificed for these regulations,” the youth-led climate advocacy group Sunrise Movement wrote in response.

“Corporate polluters are celebrating today because Trump’s EPA just handed them a free pass to spew unlimited climate pollution, consequences be damned. The Biden administration put the first-ever carbon limits on dirty coal and gas plants, cutting toxic air pollution, saving lives, and avoiding $270 billion in climate damages. Rolling back these protections is a direct attack on the communities that have been forced to breathe toxic air from polluting plants for decades,” climate advocacy organization Evergreen Action Senior Power Sector Policy Lead Charles Harper wrote in a statement.

Changes to the rules and regulations announced Wednesday will still have to go through the federal regulatory process and will likely have to stand up to numerous court challenges from environmental groups. However, today’s flurry of actions makes good on the president’s campaign promises to gut many of the long-established rules and regulations initially created to protect our water, air, soil and human health.

Endangerment finding

One of the most significant announcements was that the EPA would engage in the”formal reconsideration” of the agency’s endangerment finding.

In 2009, the EPA issued an “endangerment finding” determining that greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide, methane, and others, pose a danger to public health and the environment. This ruling, prompted by the 2007 Supreme Court decision in Massachusetts v. EPA, gave the EPA the legal authority to regulate these emissions under the Clean Air Act (CAA).

This finding represents the legal underpinning for many regulations concerning greenhouse gas emissions, including emissions standards for vehicles, power plants and oil and gas production — all of which Zeldin said the agency would also reevaluate as it reconsiders the finding.

If the Trump Administration decides the endangerment finding is no longer applicable and that determination survives court challenges, 16 years’ worth of emissions regulations, including those enacted under President Biden, could be jeopardized.

Vehicle emissions standards

Zeldin also took aim at Biden-era vehicle standards, saying the EPA would terminate the tailpipe emissions regulations announced by the previous administration last year.

While the Trump Administration has repeatedly referred to these standards as an EV “mandate”, there was no such mandate put in place by the Biden administration.

The Biden Environmental Protection Agency implemented tailpipe emissions standards last March that established an average of allowed emissions across a vehicle manufacturer’s entire fleet of offered vehicles. The standards would have only impacted cars from model years 2027 to 2032 and allowed for a range of usable technologies, including fully electric cars, hybrids and improved internal combustion engines. These standards applied to light and medium-duty vehicles. A separate set of standards were released for heavy-duty vehicles.

As Zeldin’s EPA announced reconsideration of these standards, it released a statement saying, the regulations imposed, “$700 billion in regulatory and compliance costs,” alleging they took away, “Americans’ ability to choose a safe and affordable car for their family and increases the cost of living on all products that trucks deliver.”

Impacts on coal

Another of the policies being reconsidered is the “Clean Power Plan 2.0,” which targets emissions from coal and natural gas power plants.

At the time, the agency claimed the new regulations would represent a massive reduction in pollution and save hundreds of billions of dollars in climate and public health costs as it would force power plants to control 90% of their carbon pollution through methods like carbon capture and tightened the emissions standards for toxic metals like mercury that are released from coal-fired plants.

In one of many press releases sent on Wednesday, the EPA called the rules “overreaching” and “an attempt to shut down affordable and reliable electricity generation in the United States, raising prices for American families, and increasing the country’s reliance on foreign forms of energy.”

Social cost of carbon

Also among the 31 actions announced by the agency is a revisiting of the “social cost of carbon,” with Zeldin saying the previous administration used the metric to “advance their climate agenda in a way that imposed major costs.”

In 2010, the EPA under then-President Barack Obama released its first estimate for what it called the “social cost of carbon,” or SC-CO2. This metric meant to capture in dollars the long-term damage created by carbon dioxide emissions each year.

It estimated, in effect, the cost of damages related to climate change, including changes in agricultural productivity, human health, property damages from added flood risk, changes in energy costs and other considerations.

The Biden Administration later updated the estimate process to include consideration of additional factors, leading to an increase in the national SC-CO2. In December 2023, the Biden EPA updated the metric at a dramatically higher rate — $190 per ton of carbon, compared to the administration’s earlier estimate of $51 per ton.

“To Power the Great American Comeback, we are fully committed to removing regulations holding back the U.S.,” Zeldin said in the announcement.

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(WASHINGTON) — Chris Wright, President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to be secretary of the Department of Energy, laid out his key priorities, including restoring “energy dominance,” increasing technological innovation and cutting regulatory red tape, during a nearly three-hour confirmation hearing on Wednesday.

“I see three immediate tasks where I will focus my attention if I get the privilege of being confirmed. The first is to unleash American energy at home and abroad to restore our energy dominance,” Wright said. “Second, we must lead the world in innovation and technology breakthroughs.”

“Third, we must build things in America again and remove barriers to progress,” he added. “Federal policies today make it too easy to stop projects and very hard, hard to start and complete projects.”

Wright, currently the CEO of fracking company Liberty Energy, has long been a proponent of expanding domestic oil and gas production and has been openly critical of policies aimed at curbing the impacts of climate change.

In his testimony before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, Wright expressed support for a range of energy technologies, saying during an exchange with Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, “I am for improving all energy technologies that can better human lives and reduce emissions. They go together.”

He particularly emphasized the roles of commercial nuclear energy, liquefied natural gas and geothermal energy in his envisioned expansion of domestic energy production.

Natural gas accounts for about a third of domestic energy, according to the DOE. For domestic use, it is typically delivered as a gas — its super-chilled liquefied form LNG has become a major U.S. export. The United States is already the world’s largest LNG exporter. The incoming Trump administration has said it will undo the Biden administration’s pause on new export facility approvals and expand LNG exports further.

Nuclear power currently provides about 20% of U.S. domestic electricity production, according to the DOE.

Geothermal energy is heat energy harnessed from reservoirs, either existing or man-made, within the earth’s crust. It is considered a renewable energy source but only accounted for 0.4% of U.S. energy in 2023, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

“Energy is the essential agent of change that enables everything that we do, everything,” Wright said Wednesday. “A low energy society is poor. A highly energized society can bring health, wealth and opportunity for all.”

“The stated mission of the company that I founded, Liberty Energy, is to better human lives through energy,” he added. “Liberty works directly in oil, natural gas, next-generation geothermal and has partnerships in next-generation nuclear energy and new battery technology.”

Wright’s stated energy priorities represent a shift from the Biden administration’s focus on clean energy manufacturing, particularly wind and solar energy, and reflect what Republicans have called an “all-of-the-above energy policy” that includes increased production of oil and gas products.

The anticipated policy shift has caused concerns in climate advocacy circles. Those concerns emerged in the hearing room as 10 protesters from youth-led climate advocacy organization Sunrise Movement were arrested after disrupting the hearing, the group told ABC News.

Wright acknowledged the protesters, saying, “You have to understand that there isn’t dirty energy and clean energy. All energies are different, and they all have different trade-offs. Different people have different weights or valuations of trade-offs. Different geographies or locations have climates more favorable to this energy versus that energy. So it’s a complicated dialog, which means it’s not easy to get people to share this broader perspective on it. I think we’re seeing a little bit of that in passionate, well-meaning, wonderful people that have been sitting in the hearing room today.”

The shift is being celebrated by Republicans, including Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairman Mike Lee, R-Utah, who said during the hearing that Wright’s nomination “really couldn’t be coming at a more urgent time,” heavily criticizing the Biden administration’s energy policies.

“On his very first day in office, President Biden halted new oil and natural gas leases on public lands and waters, effectively cutting off access to resources that could have powered our economy and benefited the lives of ordinary Americans,” Lee added. “Over the past four years, the same administration has dismantled domestic energy production, canceled leases and weaponized regulations to discourage investment in pipelines and critical energy infrastructure.”

Some Democrats on the committee questioned Wright’s views around climate change, including whether it contributes to disasters like the wildfires in Los Angeles — a connection he stopped short of making, though he did call climate change “a real and global phenomenon.”

In shifting the focus of the DOE away from environmental impacts and toward increased production, Wright said the aim is to reduce costs for the public.

“Ten percent of Americans got a disconnection notice to their utilities in the last 12 months,” Wright said. “More than 20% of Americans report struggles paying their bills — whether it’s paying their energy bills, whether it’s filling their car with gas or heating their home or paying their electricity bill. So, this is important. It’s not just important for national security and industry and all that — it’s important for the quality of life of every American.”

“Energy is the infrastructure of life,” he added. “It’s what makes everything possible.”

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