Trump’s anti-environmental legacy looms over Biden
Though Republicans are no longer in power, the legacy of Trump and anti-environment politics will continue to haunt Biden’s agenda.
The anti-environmental stain of former President Donald Trump still looms large.
In one of his first moves as president, Joe Biden suspended oil and gas leasing on public lands and waters. But last week, a Trump-appointed federal judge ruled in favor of 13 red states and blocked the ban.
The reversal is just the latest of what could be years-long court battles over some of Biden’s most ambitious climate moves. And it’s a warning for Biden and progressives: Though Republicans are no longer in power, the legacy of Trump appointees and anti-environment politics will continue to haunt Biden’s agenda.
Trump made reshaping the court system a key priority during his term — he appointed more than 200 judges, compared to Obama’s eight. Trump also appointed three Supreme Court justices, all of which are conservative and way more likely to shoot down climate action than defend it.
Amy Coney Barrett, for example, has a father who worked for Shell for 29 years; despite these ties, in a recent court decision concerning Shell, Barrett refused to recuse herself from the case.
But it’s not just the court system in Biden’s way. In addition to completely transforming the transportation, industry, and energy sectors, the administration must reverse Trump’s last-minute environmental rollbacks.
That’s proving both costly and difficult, as Republicans try to paint Biden’s efforts as radical (though Trump’s rollbacks were radical in their own sense — reducing protections for wildlife, shrinking national monuments, and easing pollution and emissions controls were all dramatically more ambitious than his conservative predecessors).
Speaking of Republicans, they are acting as obstructionist as in the Obama era.
“One hundred percent of my focus is standing up to this administration,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) told reporters in May, echoing a stance he maintained a month earlier, when he said he would fight Dems “every step of the way” on Biden’s infrastructure plan.
Despite this, Biden seems keen to court at least some Republicans for his instructure plan, the signature climate legislation of his first year (and perhaps his presidency). A bipartisan committee on the matter recently ballooned to 21 Senators.
A compromise, however, could irk Dems, especially if it means dropping climate provisions. Sens. Ed Markey (D-MA) and Jeff Merkley (D-OR) have urged Biden to keep climate at the center of any infrastructure deal, or risk losing progressive votes.
“If there is no climate, there is no deal,” said Sen. Merkley.
Biden is in a tough position, pushing more climate action than any predecessor while attempting to work with a Republican party shaped by a man with no interest in defending the environment.
Much of his success — and the future of climate action in the U.S. — will hinge on how his administration can push through this obstructionism and move past the long shadow of Trump’s anti-environmental legacy.