Trump Slashed a Major Environmental Rule. That's Just the Beginning.
On Wednesday, President Trump achieved a longstanding goal in weakening environmental protection: The administration significantly narrowed the 50-year-old National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), a law that requires the government to study the impact of federal projects on the communities and wild areas around them. By skipping steps and shortening deadlines, these changes help to fast-track fossil fuel infrastructure like pipelines and highways, a move that leaves out the voices of poor neighborhoods and people of color on the pollution in their communities.
This move is the latest in a litany of rollbacks: The presidents agencies have already weakened more than 100 regulations for power plants, cars, and oil and gas operationsthis spring, according to federal records, the EPA has completed 80 environmental regulations and rollbacks, many of them cutting climate pollution from cars, allowing more mercury and arsenic from coal-fired power plants, and limiting what waterways the federal government will regulate.
But the rest of this year will be unlike anything weve seen yet as the president pushes to deliver on his 2016 campaign pledge to essentially get rid of the Environmental Protection Agency.
https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2020/07/trump-is-rushing-to-slash-every-last-obama-era-environmental-rule/