New York Times | Trump Nominees Make Clear Plans to Sweep Away Obama Policies ... New York Times Over two weeks of hearings, Donald J. Trump's cabinet picks have strongly embraced a deeply conservative approach to governing. |
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Trump Nominees Make Clear Plans to Sweep Away Obama Policies ... - New York Times
Donald Trump, our new president, has vowed to dismantle many of the environmental policies passed under President Barack Obama. But for the next four years, when it comes to climate policy, the place to watch isnt the White House its the courtroom.
For the past eight years, Obama has positioned himself as a global leader in the fight against climate change. At home, hes passed regulations to lower emissions of greenhouse gases from cars and plants, hes boosted renewable energy, and set new records for protecting public land. On the international level, Obama has spearheaded global climate deals like the Paris accord, signing bilateral agreements with top polluters like China to reduce CO2 emissions.
The place to watch isnt the White House, its the courtroom
But all that is now in peril. Trumps pick for the head of the Environmental Protection Agency is Scott Pruitt, a man whos questioned the scientific evidence of human-made climate change. His transition team has sent an intimidating questionnaire to the Department of Energy asking for the names of employees who worked on climate policy (the Energy Department refused and Trumps later disavowed the questionnaire). He has picked Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State. And he has vowed to dismantle one of Obamas signature environmental policies in his first 100 days in office.
Environmental groups are already gearing up to fight any anti-climate action, and attorneys general from several states have vowed to bring the Trump administration to court. Thats where much of the fight over climate change and the environment is going to happen, likely for years to come. Its hard to predict what the outcomes will be. Trump is set to nominate a new Supreme Court justice, as well as fill in more than 100 judicial vacancies all over the US.
The courts will really decide the extent to which the Obama legacy is maintained or rolled back, says Maria Belenky, director of policy and research at Climate Advisers. The courts are the area of last resorts for a lot of environmental groups and a lot of states that have supported the Obama administrations agenda.
The Clean Power Plan, or CPP, is the core of Obamas plan to reduce CO2 emissions to curb climate change. But dismantling it wont be as easy, legal experts say; in fact, the CPP is already the subject of a heated legal battle at the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and litigation is only likely to continue. Two dozen states and industry groups have sued the EPA, arguing that the agency overstepped its authority under the Clean Air Act. The DC Circuit court heard arguments in September but hasnt made a decision yet. And whatever the Trumps administration is going to do, more legal battles are likely to follow.
Dismantling the CPP wont be easy
Trumps EPA could ask the DC Circuit for a so-called voluntary remand, a motion that would essentially halt the case while the EPA reviews the complaints, according to Michael Gerrard, the director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School. The EPA could then take its time to review the case, basically stalling the enforcement of the CPPs carbon-cutting requirements. But a group of attorneys general from several states liberal and conservative ones wrote a letter to Trump in December vowing to bring the administration to court if that were to happen.
Be assured that we would vigorously oppose in court any attempt to remand the Clean Power Plan back to EPA so late in the litigation, and prior to a decision from the Court on the merits of the claims, the letter read.
If the EPA waited for the DC Circuit to rule, and then decided to scrap the CPP altogether, lawsuits would still abound. Thats because the EPA has a legal obligation to curb greenhouse gas emissions based on a 2007 Supreme Court decision that defined those emissions are air pollutants under the Clean Air Act. In that ruling, the Supreme Court also asked the EPA to determine whether these pollutants can endanger public health and welfare. In 2009, the EPA issued the so-called endangerment finding the finding, based on scientific evidence, that CO2 and five other global warming pollutants are dangerous for the public. That finding was at the base of Obamas entire environmental policy.
If Scott Pruitts EPA tried to roll back the endangerment finding, the Natural Resources Defense Council would sue them, says David Doniger, the director of NRDCs Climate & Clean Air Program. And the NRDC would probably win, according to legal experts. I think it would be really difficult to roll back the endangerment finding, says Vicki Arroyo, the executive director of the Georgetown Climate Center at Georgetown Law. It would be really difficult at this stage to argue in a legally defensible manner that there is not endangerment given what were seeing with the Greenland ice melt, Antarctica, the more frequent severe storms, long droughts many of which have been connected to human responsibility for CO2 and other climate-related emissions.
The courts are going to be very, very busy.
The courts are likely to hear cases on a hosts of other environmental issues as well. If the federal government fails to protect species under the Endangered Species Act, for example, environmental groups could sue federal agencies for inaction. If Trump decides to undo some of the controversial national monuments designated by Obama under the Antiquities Act, like the Bears Ears National Monument in Utah, that could also wind up in the courts. The courts are going to be very, very busy evaluating the limits of American administrative laws, says David Victor, an expert on international climate policy at the University of California, San Diego.
How the courts will rule is difficult to predict. Trump will be able to nominate a new Supreme Court justice, skewing that courts balance to the conservative side. If environmental cases are picked up by the Supreme Court, a new composition will matter for the decision. The vacant Supreme Court seat is going to be huge right now, says Belenky at Climate Advisers. Not as important, but equally worrisome for environmentalists, are the more than 100 judicial vacancies across the US that Trump will be able to fill with his appointees.
A couple of the openings are at the Second Circuit, which has emerged as an important circuit for cases about how water is regulated under the Clean Water Act, according to Robin Craig, an environmental law professor at the University of Utah. Other openings are at the Ninth Circuit, which is important for endangered species cases, according to Gerrard. The Supreme Court will get much of the attention but the federal courts pose a much more immediate opportunity, says Victor at the University of California, San Diego.
As Trump steps into office, environmental groups are watching out for rollbacks to climate policy, fully ready to hit the green button on litigation, Belenky says. Some are confident that the courts will eventually sway on their side, if only because the American public including Trump voters overwhelmingly want a clean environment to lead healthy lives.
I think the Trump administration can do many damaging things but ultimately the law is on our side, so well win cases if we have to bring them against these rollbacks, and well also find that theyll lose in the court of public opinion, says Doniger at the NRDC. The public supports these safeguards, the public wants clear air and water, the public wants a safe climate.
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It's judges, not Trump, who will decide Obama's environmental legacy - The Verge
CNN | Obama Transfers 4 From Guantnamo, Leaving 41 There as Term Ends New York Times WASHINGTON The Obama administration's long and fitful effort to wind down the Guantnamo Bay wartime prison came to a close on Thursday with an announcement that it had transferred four more men out of the detention complex. Their departures are ... Obama's last transfer of Gitmo detainees, Trump inherits 41 Obama's errors leave Gitmo promise unfulfilled Obama Makes Last-Minute Move to Get Detainees Out of Gitmo |
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Obama Transfers 4 From Guantnamo, Leaving 41 There as Term Ends - New York Times
President Obama speaks to U.S. troops at Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas, in 2012. Obama removed the large U.S. ground combat forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, as promised. But as the leaves office, the U.S. is still waging war in those two countries, as well as Syria. Tony Gutierrez/AP hide caption
President Obama speaks to U.S. troops at Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas, in 2012. Obama removed the large U.S. ground combat forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, as promised. But as the leaves office, the U.S. is still waging war in those two countries, as well as Syria.
Among the many things President Obama will be handing off to his successor this week: stubborn wars in three separate countries.
Obama came to office eight years ago vowing to end U.S. military interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet President-elect Trump stands to inherit the nation's longest war ever in Afghanistan, as well as renewed fighting in Iraq that has spread to Syria.
The outgoing president was reminded of the persistence of those wars at the pomp-filled farewell ceremony the Pentagon put on for him him earlier this month at a nearby military base.
"Mr. President, we've been at war throughout your tenure," said Gen. Joesph Dunford, chosen by Obama in 2015 to be chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. "That's a period longer than any other American president."
That's right: Obama is the first president to serve eight years and preside over American wars during every single day of his tenure. That's not what Obama wanted or expected.
But he reminded the troops seeing him off that thanks to a new approach he's taken to those wars, the number of American forces involved in them has dropped sharply.
"Not by letting our forces get dragged into sectarian conflicts and civil wars, but with smart, sustainable, principled partnerships," Obama said of the strategy he's shifted to of training, advising and assisting local forces to do the ground fighting. "That's how we brought most of our troops home from nearly 180,000 troops in Iraq and Afghanistan down to 15,000 today."
Fewer forces, but protracted conflict
Of those remaining in the field, 8,400 U.S. forces are in Afghanistan. That's still more than the small residual force Obama had aimed to leave behind.
Some of those American forces in Afghanistan are fighting 13 different groups that the U.S. considers terrorists. Others are training and advising Afghan security forces to fight the Taliban, which Washington does not formally consider a terrorist organization.
Defense Secretary Ash Carter (left) arrives in Kabul in December with Gen. John Nicholson (center), the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan. David Welna/NPR hide caption
Defense Secretary Ash Carter (left) arrives in Kabul in December with Gen. John Nicholson (center), the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan.
"When you look at the performance of the Afghan forces this year, it was a tough year," said Gen. John Nicholson, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, at a December news conference held at Bagram Airfield. "They were tested, but they prevailed."
Others take a dimmer view of the effort to shift the lead in fighting the Taliban to Afghanistan's security forces.
"It's basically playing whack-a-mole," says John Sopko, who since 2012 has been the U.S. Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction.
While presenting SIGAR's latest report at a military think tank in Washington earlier this month, Sopko described the Afghan National Security Forces as hobbled by corruption and poor leadership.
"We're defining success by the absence of failure," Sopko said of those forces' ongoing attempts to retake territory lost to the Taliban. "At a minimum, they're playing defense, and are not taking the fight to the Taliban."
What's more, a war that began with a U.S. invasion 15 years ago in October 2001 appears to have no end in sight.
"The situation in Afghanistan, in the rosiest possible reasonable analysis, is a stalemate," said Stephen Biddle, a military analyst at the Council on Foreign Relations and George Washington University. The war, he added "can only be sustained if the U.S. Congress keeps writing multibillion-dollar-a-year checks to keep the Afghan National Security Forces in the field."
One of the 8,400 remaining U.S. troops in Afghanistan guards the bay of a CH-47 Chinook transport helicopter as it flies near Kabul. David Welna/NPR hide caption
One of the 8,400 remaining U.S. troops in Afghanistan guards the bay of a CH-47 Chinook transport helicopter as it flies near Kabul.
The rise of ISIS
And then there's the war Obama has waged since 2014 against the Islamic State, both in Iraq and Syria.
"These terrorists have lost about half of their territory," Obama told troops at his Pentagon farewell ceremony. "They are losing their leaders, towns and cities are being liberated, and I have no doubt this barbaric terrorist group will be destroyed because of you."
Last month the top U.S. commander in Iraq, speaking at a fire base just outside Mosul that was held by Islamic State forces as recently as July, defended what many see as a slow-motion assault on the Islamic State forces holding that city.
"Any army on the planet, to include the United States Army, would be challenged by this fight," said Gen. Stephen Townsend. "The Iraqi army has come back from near defeat two years ago, and now they're attacking this major city."
In neighboring, war-ravaged Syria, at least 600 U.S. Special Forces are now on the ground, mainly to train and assist local rebel forces. The ultimate aim is to oust Islamic State fighters from Raqqa, the capital of the group's self-declared caliphate.
Some experts doubt such an approach arming and training an array of Syrians from often competing factions will work.
"We're losing, they're winning," says the Brooking Institution's Michael O'Hanlon. "They maybe don't say it in quite those terms, because they like the fact that we're still pulling the wool collectively over our own eyes, but the idea of defeating ISIS, replacing (Syrian President Bashar) Assad, and doing all this with a minimal American military investment, does not add up to a logical policy."
As for the incoming president, it's not clear how he'll fight these inherited wars. Trump barely mentioned Afghanistan during his campaign. It's also unclear how he'd handle the anti-Islamic State campaign in Iraq and Syria.
One clue may be found in what retired Gen. Michael Flynn, Trump's national security adviser, told NPR last summer.
"Where is the king of Jordan, where's the emirs of some of these other countries?," Flynn asked rhetorically about nations in the region he felt should be doing more to fight the Islamic State. "They need to actually stand up and, internationally and publicly, condemn this violent form of this ideology that is operating inside of their bloodstream right now and I don't see it. And that's where the president of the United States needs to place a different set of demands on these guys."
When Flynn uttered those words, Trump was just the Republican nominee for the White House. The now-president-elect's recommended strategy for fighting the Islamic State had been characteristically blunt.
"I would just bomb those suckers," Trump told a campaign rally in Iowa shortly before that state's caucuses a year ago.
As president and commander in chief, Trump soon will have the power to do so.
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After 8 Years Of Unbroken War, Obama Hands Over Conflicts To Trump - NPR
New York Times | In Farewell, Obama Sets Red Lines That Would Pull Him Back Into Fray New York Times President Obama addressed a wide range of issues, including Chelsea Manning and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, during his last meeting with the White House press corps. By REUTERS. Photo by Stephen Crowley/The New York Times. Watch in Times ... At Final White House Press Conference, Obama Offers Both Reflections And Rebukes Obama's parting words: 'We're going to be OK' Obama says he'll speak up post-White House if he sees 'core values' at risk |
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In Farewell, Obama Sets Red Lines That Would Pull Him Back Into Fray - New York Times