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In the News

  • Scott Pruitt’s Dirty Politics

    Federal agencies are supposed to abide by the Administrative Procedure Act of 1946, to insure that the work informing new regulations is transparent, reasoned, and not overly politicized. Bethany Davis Noll, an environmental lawyer at the N.Y.U. Institute for Policy Integrity, said, “It’s also so you don’t have agencies turning on a dime in response to an election.” Courts hold agencies to the “arbitrary and capricious” standard: to rescind a regulation, they must demonstrate sound reasoning tied to a factual record.

  • Dispute Over Coal’s Effects on Climate Change Heads to Court

    The Trump Interior Department could not rush through an impact statement quickly just to get it out of the way, according to Jayni Foley Hein, policy director at New York University’s Institute for Policy Integrity. That’s because the National Environmental Policy Act, its regulations, and various court decisions have laid out firm guidelines about what a Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement must include, she said.

  • Pruitt’s Delayed Chemical Plant Safety Rule Heads to Court

    Challenges to an EPA rule delaying a chemical safety regulation aimed at protecting emergency responders being argued March 16 could pose a test of the Trump administration’s push to roll back regulations. “Agencies need explicit statutory authority for their actions,” Bethany Davis Noll, litigation director at the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University School of Law.

  • John Kelly Was Right to Kill EPA’s ‘Red Team’ Climate Exercise

    EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt’s plan to organize a “red team-blue team” exercise about climate change, consisting of a public debate over whether and to what degree human activities are causing global warming, was reportedly halted by Gen. John Kelly, the White House chief of staff. Kelly should be applauded for putting an end to a terrible idea that would have undermined, rather than increased, public understanding of a critical issue.

  • Regulating Marketable Permits

    Although cap-and-trade programs for government permits to emit carbon dioxide occasionally make headline news, the average American may not realize that billions of dollars’ worth of government permits are auctioned or traded in a wide variety of industries, from broadcasting to construction to fishing.

  • ‘Sloppy and Careless’: Courts Call Out Trump Blitzkrieg on Environmental Rules

    A cascade of courtroom standoffs are beginning to slow, and even reverse, the EPA rollbacks thanks to the administration’s ‘disregard for the law.’ “The Trump administration has been sloppy and careless, they’ve shown significant disrespect for rule of law and courts have called them on it,” said Richard Revesz, a professor at the New York University school of Law.

  • The Keys to Our Coastal Kingdom

    The Trump administration’s new draft plan for offshore drilling represents a colossal shift in policy by proposing to make nearly all U.S. coastal waters available for oil and gas exploration. The administration has framed this proposal as a way to achieve “energy dominance,” but this claim doesn’t add up: The United States is already the world’s number one oil and natural gas producer. What is clear is that the administration’s approach entails major environmental and social risks and ignores basic economic facts, making it a terrible deal for the American public.

  • Rick Perry’s Proposed Coal Bailout Just Died an Unceremonious Death

    Late last year, Rick Perry’s Department of Energy issued a notice of proposed rulemaking asking the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to bail out beleaguered coal and nuclear plants.Yesterday, FERC officially responded: Thanks, but no thanks. “DOE’s bungling of this from the start (no coordination, proposal unlike a normal 206 proceeding, Perry’s performance at House Energy hearing) very likely hurt its ability to get near-term policy in the direction it wanted (even if less than cost-of-service),” Tweeted Avi Zevin, an attorney at the Institute for Policy Integrity.

  • Trump’s Plan to Open California Coastal Waters to New Oil and Gas Drilling Probably Won’t Go Far

    Michael Livermore, an environmental law professor at the University of Virginia, said that “based entirely on the Department of Interior’s own analysis, drilling off the coast of California is a terrible idea.” He cited a section of the leasing proposal that found waters off Central California did not meet the government threshold for benefits exceeding the costs of oil drilling.

  • Letters to the Editor: Guns and Domestic Violence

    Without a doubt, stronger limits on abusers’ ability to obtain guns are needed to save women’s lives. An equally critical step that Congress can take is to improve access to protective orders by increasing funding for the Legal Services Corporation. According to a recent report from the Institute for Policy Integrity, 83 percent of victims represented by an attorney successfully obtained a protective order, as compared with just 32 percent of victims without an attorney.