Trump should immediately rescind it.
Yes. I hope he spends his first week doing nothing except reversing all these unlawful unconstitutional executive orders.
[Friday-afternoon update]
Obama’s midnight-regulation express:
Any action that is rushed is likely to be shoddy, especially if it’s from the federal government. The point is for Mr. Obama to have his way and to swamp the Trump administration with a dizzying array of new rules to have to undo. That diverts manpower from bigger and better priorities.
President Obama is hoping this work will prove too much and his rules will stand. He’d be making a good bet. George W. Bush promised to undo last-minute Clinton regulations. Yet a paper done in 2005 by Jason M. Loring and Liam R. Roth in Wake Forest Law Review found that a whopping 82% were left to stand.
Then again, a Republican Congress seems ready and willing to invoke the Congressional Review Act, which allows legislators to reject rule-making. More important, Mr. Trump and his team seem to understand that Americans are angry at Mr. Obama’s tendency to rule like an autocrat. They also surely know how damaging many of these Obama parting gifts (particularly energy rules) will prove to their own agenda.
A Trump administration could send a powerful message to future presidents and build public support by highlighting the “midnight regulation” phenomenon and then making it a priority to ax every final Obama order. Single them out. Make a public list. Celebrate every repeal. That would be as profound a rebuke to the Obama legacy—a legacy based on abuse of power—as any other.
Also a reminder that the Bush administration was terrible on regulations and small government. I don’t see why undoing all those would require much “manpower.” Getting rid of them would be a good start to “draining the swamp.”
The reason these EO are written is not to protect the environment, but rather to create a point of contention when it is ultimately reversed. Those on the left will say, “Trump (and the right) don’t care about the environment. All they care about is Big Oil.” The left will then play this reversal of Os EO as anti environment and pro big oil (two dog whistles to the brainwashed left) to continue to smear the right as evil.
And the thing is, Obama’s action here doesn’t hurt Big Oil. It does the opposite. It makes their current reserves more valuable.
That is a well thought-out and sourced piece.
The only issue I see is the left surely will attempt to challenge a Trump cancellation of the drilling ban, and do so in court, citing the lack of a provision allowing him to reinstate. I agree with the article’s reasoning on that, but if the left gets an agreeable judge, a restraining order might well follow.
One of the things that makes this time-critical is the Alaska pipeline. It’s approaching minimum flow rates, and as I understand it, due to temperature issues can’t be shut down temporarily for any significant length of time (the oil gets too thick if left standing in the cold). So, via delaying, they can kill the Alaska Pipeline forever, which I believe is Obama’s intent.
I do agree with Rand; I think Trump should go on a repeal binge after taking office, rescinding Obama’s numerous executive orders and directives. And when Democrats object, I will cheer loudly if Trump responds “I’ve got my pen and my phone”.
I hope Congress joins in and makes good use of the CPA.
Trump can follow Obama’s dense pack precedent. The more things he repeals, the harder it is for Democrats to focus on any one of them. From a lawfare pov, this means they will have to expend more money that they wont be able to use for other causes.
He probably can repeal them in a single blow too. If he repeals hundreds of executive orders and memorandum at once, then what do you protest?
You protest general themes:
Trump wants dirty air and water
Trump destroys the planet through fossil fuel use
Trump doesn’t care about the old and children.
Like they always do.
That might have worked, twenty years ago when people still listened to the Dinosaur Media. Not today, when everyone knows the media is rabidly anti-Trump
Like they always do.
And like they will regardless of what actually happens.
They’d do that anyway so the marginal cost isn’t different. It’ll certainly neuter the court approach since they won’t have the resources to protest everything in court.
He doesn’t have to do them as a single order. He can do them in batches and sign 255 documents, each a mixed bag of vetoes. Then challenging any of Trump’s means addressing everything in the mixed bag.
In addition, we’re getting to pardon time. It’ll be interesting to see who gets pardoned and for what. In particular, given Obama’s penchant for massively stretched interpretations of law, I wonder if we’ll see pardons that are classified, extremely broadly or vaguely worded, etc.
Can you imagine the mess from issuing a blanket pardon for all prisoners of federal drug offenses who satisfy some hard to determine criteria?
Since Obama apparently thinks he’s God’s Annointed here on Earth, maybe he’ll pardon his dead and his Uncle Frank to get them out of Commie Hell.
With Trump taking up so much of the spotlight acting as if he is already President Obama is sneaking things through. The media has let us know about a couple things, like the thing with Israel, but what is Obama doing that we won’t find out about until 6 months into Trump’s term?
Obama never does anything that comes back to bite us mere months later. Decades later, sure.
Congress only has 60 legislative days under the Congressional Review Act. It better be paying close attention now if it wants to stop any of the new regulations. Doing that would be the most legally effective approach.
I’ve seen a lot of talk about how Trump should just order regulations not to be enforced. There’s a couple problems with that. First, the Supreme Court has repeatedly said that an agency must follow its own rules so a lawsuit against the agency by the beneficiaries/advocates of the suspended rule could succeed. Second, the regulations will sit there lying in wait because they’ll be on the books for a later administration. Getting rid of new regulations (not executive orders), takes 3 to 5 years of notice and comment rulemaking. Congress may have the best shot at doing something effective immediately.