In Conversation
Not On Our Watch: Taking on the Trump Administration
“Just because it’s been said, doesn’t mean it’s legal or that it’s going to happen.”
On the heels of the inauguration of Donald Trump as the 47th President of the United States, Abigail Dillen, President of Earthjustice, discussed our plan for the first 100 days of the new administration and the actions we’re already taking to protect the health of frontline communities, wildlife, and our shared climate future.
Abigail was joined by Sam Sankar, Senior VP of Programs, Raúl García, VP of Policy & Legislation, and Robin Cooley, Deputy Managing Attorney of the Rocky Mountain Office, in a town hall with Earthjustice supporters. Read highlights of the discussion.
This conversation took place on Jan. 27, 2025.
President, Earthjustice
Our Take On the Administration So Far “They are certainly more emboldened than they were in 2017. They are more organized — and more organized around a more ambitious program.” Read more.
“In the environmental space, it is really all about repudiating the vision that President Biden and his administration had put forward. Jobs, justice, and climate were really a centerpiece of that campaign — they were a centerpiece of the Day One executive orders, and they remained a guiding force of the Biden administration throughout. There is a very concerted focus on tearing that down, as directly as possible.
“A scorched-earth approach to all things that bear on justice and not just the strengthening provisions that the Biden administration put forward, but going deeper, to all of the practices and commitments to justice that we've seen in federal administrations over time.
“There is a very concerted focus on rolling back the clock on climate ambition — and fossil fuels really take center stage.”
How lawless is this going to be? “I think we can see from what they're doing in other spaces, the immigration space, that they are not afraid of political theater — doing things that are unlikely to survive in the courts.” Read more.
“They may be taking the stance that just by trying, they will be advancing their agenda — win or lose. In the environmental space, I think we will see some of that.
“They are certainly trying to push the boundaries of long existing norms and what may be lawful but it is not as pronounced. At least yet.
“All of these executive orders are, for the most part, framed in ways that will require agencies to do something. In other words, they are directions to federal employees about what to do, what the priorities will be. They send us a very strong signal, but they do not create actions that we are able to challenge on Day One.”
Editor's Note: Earthjustice filed the first major environmental legal challenge against the new Trump administration on Feb. 19, suing to block the administration's Illegal ocean drilling plan. Subsequent lawsuits were filed on Feb. 24 against the USDA for erasing webpages vital to farmers and on Mar. 4 against the DOT for attempting to “terminate” New York’s Congestion Pricing Program.
The Biden Administration’s Week One and the Trump Administration’s Week One “I remember vividly what it was like after the first week of the Biden administration, where the strongest possible signal was being sent about everything the Biden administration was going to focus on.” Read more.
“For us, it was just extraordinary to see an all-of-the-government approach announced on climate action and on environmental justice.
“How successful were they in actually implementing that agenda? Very! They were not proposing things that are illegal. They were not proposing things that hurt people. They were, on the whole, extraordinary benefits that Americans hadn't seen from government in generations.
“As we now see the mirror image of that Day One in the Trump Week One, I think it's worth noting that these are the times where the administration sets the direction for the entire federal government. It is really important direction, and it matters what the government is directed to do by the president and political appointees.
“How much of the agenda is actually accomplished depends on so much more than what a president says. The places where we didn't make progress during the Biden administration were because there were political factors that intervened.
“When you have an agenda that isn't popular and where there is something to do in the courts, there is a real difference between what you say you're going to do and what you can do in real life.”
Senior VP of Programs
Dismantling Government & Personnel Purges “The federal civilian workforce, writ large, is about 2.3 million people in over 400 different agencies. Project 2025, and Trump himself on the campaign trail, promised to wage a huge war against that bureaucracy.” Read more.
“This shadowy Schedule F designation is this idea that we could take workers in the federal workforce who were normally protected by civil service protections that require ‘for cause’ firing, and move them into different categories if they were in policymaking roles, where they’d be more subject to political job decision making.
“That’s an area that the Trump administration signaled early on that it was something it was going to do, and the early Trump executive orders did say, 'We want to get back and revisit this idea of Schedule F.' The Biden administration had put in a bunch of regulations designed to make that more difficult. We'll see how that plays out.
“That’s a cardinal example of something where one of the executive orders is saying, ‘We’re going to do this,’ but it’s actually going to take time for the actions to take place, and they’ll be done by other folks in the government.
“There’s also some things that happened right away. There’s something called the Senior Executive Service (SES), which is a division of the civil service, in which people are granted higher pay and more authority over larger sections of the government. They’re still career officials but they are no longer given the same level of civil service protection. This is typically the place where senior policymaking officials in each of the agencies are, and these are the people who are at risk.
“The Trump administration has moved very aggressively against SES personnel in some of the agencies and locations that they want to put the most pressure on. Last week, several key SES chiefs of the Department of Justice’s environment division were reassigned to the new Sanctuary Cities Program inside of the Department of Justice, where they’ll purportedly be assigned to be suing cities that refuse to implement Trump’s immigration agenda as quickly as he would like.
“This is important, because those senior career officials are the people who provide the moderating force on radical political changes inside agencies and administration. It’s something we’re watching very closely.
“The other thing that we’re going to be watching for that we haven't seen yet, is indications that they’re going to move agencies geographically, which would cause significant destabilization of those agencies. That happened in the last Trump administration to the Bureau of Land Management. They asked 176 staff to move from Washington, D.C., to Grand Junction, Colorado. Unsurprisingly, 75% of them quit.
“One last thing that we’ve seen is diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) staff across many federal agencies were put on leave and are being threatened with a reduction in force.
“What is Earthjustice going to do about this? Most of these personnel actions are specific to the employees who are affected. With rare exceptions, we’re not going to be able to play a part in defending those folks, and we’re coming up with some ideas to challenge some of the moves that might affect — by the removal of departments — some of our partners and clients. These are going to be difficult for us to be playing directly, although we’ll be active on the communications front.”
President, Earthjustice
Attacking Commitments to Environmental Justice “Many employees who had been working on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs are losing their jobs. There are executive orders that seek to erase every single thing that the federal government does to try to advance social justice, racial justice, environmental justice, and economic justice.” Read more.
“This is a scorched-earth strategy. It is specifically a hard pivot from what the Biden administration did, which was to create environmental justice offices within the Department of Justice and within agencies.
“I have to say, witnessing the last four years, we made unbelievably fast progress on public health — not only for the most burdened communities — but for everyone. This really matters in terms of public health and remedying longstanding disparities between your health in a wealthy, predominantly white community, and if you are living in a ZIP code that determines a different trajectory for you.
“This is about how the government works. It does not purport to, nor does it, strip away the substantive legal protections that we use to drive stronger health standards and their enforcement.
“We will be bringing many cases, and we are already in court defending the historic progress that we made during the Biden administration. And, we will be able to bring new cases on behalf of our clients who need federal protections or who are suffering from the lack of federal action.
“I don’t want to diminish the importance of what’s happened here. In addition to pulling back everything that the Biden administration had done to focus on environmental justice, they went all the way back to the Clinton-era to strip away the landmark environmental justice order that President Clinton put in place that has been an organizing force, administration over administration, since 1994. It directs the science; it directs how many agencies analyze problems; it directs how they work. I think we won't really understand what we've lost until we’ve been living without it in the years to come. Hopefully, we will be in a position to restore it as quickly as possible.
“The environmental justice movement and all the science behind it — all the work that’s been done to elucidate health disparities in our country — are what are going to help us continue to make progress.”
Reversing Climate Gains & Hyper-Boosting Fossil Fuels “Just as there is an attempt to erase every bit of progress toward justice, and environmental justice in particular, the same is true on the climate front.” Read more.
“We’re seeing it in terms of orders like ‘Putting America First in International Environmental Agreements.’ That's about exiting the Paris Agreement. It is about exiting all of our financial commitments to finance climate solutions and help countries that are bearing the burden of our pollution.
“Having the U.S. exit the international space is profoundly detrimental to what we need to be doing in the second half of this decade and beyond.
“Looking at what came out of the White House last week, it’s very difficult to track this desire to reverse climate ambition and otherwise advance this agenda because it happens in every single order. We're trying to synthesize all of this for you.
“Across the board, if there's ongoing science, if there’s ongoing financial risk and economic calculus of climate, whatever the federal government has been doing to track climate change — measure it, analyze it, and use that information to inform decisions — there is an attempt to roll all of that back.
“The most direct assault comes in the form of a ‘National Energy Emergency.’ We are seeing the demand for electricity grow. We are seeing climate disasters test our energy infrastructure more. There is a call to get more electricity online, to get more infrastructure transmission, etc., to get it where it needs to go. This is not what this 'emergency' is about.
“‘Energy’ is only defined to include what this administration wants to put forward, which is fossil fuels; to some extent, nuclear energy when it’s convenient; and a resurgence of mining being described as a critical minerals rush. There’s nothing about wind, solar, or batteries. In fact, the definition of energy resources that will be boosted by this 'national energy emergency' excludes wind, solar, batteries, and all of the other solutions to getting clean energy online. It doesn’t deal with transmission; it talks about pipelines. This is not an all-of-the-above strategy. It is a fossil-fuels dominant strategy. It is a mining resurgence strategy.
“It’s worth recognizing that it targets policies on the West Coast and in the Northeast. This is a grab bag of Project 2025. A kind of policy to really avoid leveling the playing field for clean energy and entrenching the influence and systematic advantages that fossil fuel energy has. It’s also a grab bag of political ideas about giving a poke in the eye to leader states like California and New York.”
Unleashing American Energy “The buffet of accommodations to the fossil fuel industry goes forward with an order called ‘Unleashing American Energy.’ This, in addition to the ‘national energy emergency,’ really gives them what they want. Both try to create a big end-run around law as we know it.” Read more.
“The emergency is all about supposedly wanting to suspend all kinds of laws. The Endangered Species Act is targeted over and over again as a special area where they would like to not be impeded. 'Unleashing American Energy' continues this:
- By ordering rollbacks of anything that burdens fossil fuels. That’s all of the suite of regulations that Earthjustice was successful in securing during the Biden administration.
- It’s really anything that gets in industry’s way. The direction is, ‘look at anything that’s getting in industry’s way, and try to roll it back.’
- It purports to rescind National Environmental Policy Act regulations.
- The permitting 'reform' drumbeat is strong here, but it’s not for transmission and clean energy, it’s for pipelines and fossil fuels infrastructure.
- It’s for getting LNG export going again.
- It’s for revisiting the endangerment finding. That is the core legal finding under the Clean Air Act that greenhouse gases are covered. The Supreme Court has let that finding be the linchpin — the legal predicate — of so much of the climate regulation that we've seen to date. This is a signal that this administration is going to be second guessing that and teeing it up for the Supreme Court. That will be a big fight.
- It’s for scrapping the social cost of carbon which is really inserting the economics of climate change into federal decision making.
“Throughout all of this, anything that goes along with climate — like the 30-by-30 initiative to counter the biodiversity crisis or the places where we’re trying to work on natural protection, conservation, and climate at once, for example, protecting forests — that’s all going by the wayside as well.”
Destroying Demand for Clean Energy “A lot of us are thinking about this as a redux of ‘drill, baby, drill’ but it’s more than that. It is an effort to really destroy demand for clean energy.” Read more.
“The last four years have been seeding a new, clean economy, creating consumer incentives so that there is more demand for clean energy and funding the ability of wind and solar developers and all kinds of industries to participate in a new economy. There’s a really concerted attack against that. Most of that has to be accomplished in Congress, so where you see the president talking about this, it's a lot of rhetoric, and it's a signal about what they're fighting against.
- There is no electric vehicle (EV) mandate. To the extent the president can do something, it's taking away California's ability to lead on this. We're going to have huge legal fights over their ability to take away California's ability to lead.
- EV Tax Credits: That's a lot about repealing the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).
- The pausing and the funding of IRA and IIJA: The good news is most of the money got out. You'll be interested to know it's not targeting all of the funds. It's only the funds that they label ‘Green New Deal’ funds that help clean energy.
- What we're going to see is a government that isn't working around organizing goals to reduce emissions by 2035, in the power sector by 2050, and economy-wide. It is to have an organizing principle of ‘get as much fossil fuels out there as you can’ and ‘focus on ‘mineral dominance.’
“This is a new world. The question is, how is it going to be politically salient for them, especially when 92% of these investments have gone into red and rural communities that are now feeling the advantages.
“They think that they still are at the cusp of a clean energy revolution that they can turn around, but the clean energy revolution is happening. And it's benefiting a lot of people in the reddest of the red places that Trump and his associates need.”
Senior VP of Programs
The War on Wind “The renewable energy revolution is already here. 10% of the country's energy already comes from wind — that's twice as much as we get from solar. ” Read more.
“There are 130,000 jobs in this country that depend on wind but that doesn't matter to Donald Trump. Nor does it matter that the Department of Energy (DOE) says we can get twice what this country needs in electricity production if we were to fully unleash the offshore wind energy that we've got available to us. Trump has done just the opposite of exploiting this. He actually froze federal permitting, loans, and supports for offshore and onshore wind.
“What does that mean?
- First of all, onshore wind — there's a fair amount of onshore wind activity that's already in place, and a lot of it happens on private land, so a lot of that sort of thing is, relatively speaking, insulated from federal action.
- We've already seen some actions to attack specific projects: there's a major project in Idaho that he's gone after.
- The biggest thing that we're going to see is that the uncertainty around permitting and federal action is going to inject fiscal uncertainty for a lot of these businesses and that kind of investment-based uncertainty can be really problematic. In fact, we've exploited that in many occasions to deal with petrochemical companies and oil and gas companies that have projects that may or may not be financially stable.
- One of the more striking examples of what he did was to withdraw the Outer Continental Shelf for wind leasing, using Section 12(a) of OCSLA, which is the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act. Lands two miles and more outside of our coasts are owned by and managed by the federal government pursuant to this statute. What the statute basically says is that the federal government can lease these areas for use by oil and gas companies, or in this case, wind companies.
- For Donald Trump to say, ‘We're not going to lease anywhere offshore for offshore wind,’ is kind of a direct rejection of his declaration that there's an energy emergency.
- It was also accompanied by a slew of misinformation about the harms of offshore wind. For anybody out there who read any of that and said, ‘It's a complicated case, maybe we should think about this,’ there are lots of fact sheets out there about how the claims, particularly claims about whales and fishing, are hugely overblown and characteristically simply untrue.
“In this area, we have to think about where the industry is. We don't necessarily have great legal claims on behalf of the industry, and Earthjustice doesn't necessarily sue on behalf of private entities. Our guess is that most of these companies are going to fight this out through lobbying and influence campaigns rather than litigating directly. I think they understand that directly assaulting the Trump administration when they are subject to its regulatory powers may not be the most productive thing.
“This area is going to be a watch-and-wait for us. We're going to be very thoughtful and very careful, especially since the offshore withdrawal may not actually have a lot of direct effect. Everybody knew that the Trump administration was going to be hostile to the permitting programs anyway so it's not necessarily a massive hit to the industry beyond the arrival of the Trump administration more generally.”
Offshore Drilling “The other thing you find a lot of besides wind offshore is oil.” Read more.
“That statute OCSLA also governs offshore oil leasing and similarly presidents can withdraw areas of the Offshore Continental Shelf from oil leasing or from any kind of leasing.
“We've had a bit of a political football around this area as Democratic presidents — President Obama and President Biden — have withdrawn areas from offshore oil leasing in order to protect them, or secondarily to try to limit offshore fossil fuel development.
“President Obama did this in a limited way in the Arctic. This was a major lawsuit for Earthjustice at the time. President Obama withdrew it, President Trump tried to undo the withdrawal and we argued based on the statute that while presidents can withdraw these areas, they're not allowed to reinstate them, only Congress can do that. That was based on the language of the law.
“It's a classic Earthjustice lawsuit where we say, ‘Here's what the law allows you to do and you've tried to do something the law doesn't allow. We're going to stop you from doing that.’ That lawsuit was successful insofar as we won our District Court case and we were able to prolong the litigation long enough that none of that drilling came into place before the Biden administration was there to reinstate that action.
“The Biden administration, in the last few weeks in office, withdrew a huge area, almost the entire area of the Offshore Continental Shelf Outside of the Gulf of Mexico from leasing — a much broader action than what the Obama administration did and that painted a very big target on that action. Sure enough, one of Trump’s first orders was to rescind that withdrawal.
“This may be our very first Trump lawsuit of this second administration. It would be to challenge that reversal of the withdrawal and this would build very much on the victory we had during the first Trump administration.
“We should all recognize that things are different in a couple of respects.
- First of all, we have a different judiciary in this respect.
- Second of all, because of the breadth of the action, the politics on this can be challenging.
“Also, we want to make sure that the defense by the oil industry and by hostile states doesn't necessarily challenge the president's basic authority to do this. We know with the Supreme Court that they've been interested in looking at the basic validity of some of these laws, and we would need to be very cautious in our legal claims to avoid doing more damage than we prevent. We think we've got ways to do that. It's going to take some sophisticated lawyering but that is what we do.”
Alaska “There's a specific order around Alaska, 'Unleashing Alaska's Extraordinary Resource Potential,' and this order does a whole slew of things — some of which are desired by the state of Alaska, some of which are really not.” Read more.
“For example, he's trying to change the name of Denali back to Mount McKinley, something that's being roundly criticized by folks like Senator Murkowski.
“More practically, the Alaska order prioritizes development of the Alaska LNG project. It restores plans to develop the Western Arctic, an area of huge biodiversity that is also, unfortunately, very rich in oil resources. And to some degree, also authorizes new drilling in Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR).
- The Western Arctic has a lot of oil, it's an area of intense focus for the oil industry. That's an area where things like the Willow project are things that we have actively been fighting all the way along.
- ANWR, has been more of a political move. There's been very little interest from the oil industry in actually doing that so when the Trump administration says, ‘We’re going to have new drilling in the ANWR,’ it's much less likely that that will actually happen.
- Another action is around forests. The Tongass National Forest is the largest temperate rainforest in the world at this point, and a huge reservoir of carbon and biodiversity. The major protection for that forest is in the form of rules prohibiting the creation of roads in there. This, again, has been a political football between Democratic and Republican administrations. The Trump administration has tried to remove those protections.
“All of these things here are subject to litigation, just not immediately. In most of these cases, as with so many other things, the Trump administration is saying, ‘We want the Interior Department to do this thing.’ But until the department does that thing, we can't sue. The tool that we are most often going to use to stop them is a statute called NEPA, the National Environmental Policy Act.”
Broad Attack on NEPA “The National Environmental Policy Act is a law that Earthjustice uses constantly. The regulations which implement the law, for a long time — 40 years — stayed very stable. But, like so many other things in the environmental world, they became a political football.” Read more.
“The National Environmental Policy Act was signed into law by Richard Nixon, and the regulations which implement the law were created by a White House body called the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ).
“The Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations kept trying to change those regulations, to loosen or tighten them.
“That triggered a lot of ongoing litigation, a lot of which Earthjustice was involved in. In particular, when the first Trump administration tried to weaken the regulations, we challenged that. When the Biden administration tried to strengthen them, a lot of industry interests challenged the new regulations, and we were in there intervening to defend them.
“At the same time that we're involved in all of this litigation about the regulations, a D.C. Circuit judge decided that the whole idea that the Council on Environmental Quality had power to issue regulations was just false, and he struck those regulations down as invalid in a case where it wasn't even an issue.
“The parties in that case immediately called on Earthjustice and asked us to co-counsel and take the lead in further proceedings. We are in the midst of litigating that right now.
“Against that backdrop of active litigation, the Trump executive orders instruct CEQ to rescind all of its regulations and tell every agencies of the federal government to develop their own NEPA regulations — a tremendous amount of work and one that conflicts with the president's stated intention of demolishing the federal workforce.
“Like so many things, there's a paradox here. He wants to make a lot of changes; he's not going to have the personnel to do it.”
Deputy Managing Attorney, Rocky Mountain Office
Our Focus in the Rocky Mountain Office and Across the Organization “I'm here to assure you that we have fought the Trump administration before, and we did win. Our success rate in challenging Trump rollbacks in the courts the last time around was about 85%.” Read more.
“We know we face additional obstacles this time around. The courts are different and the Supreme Court is making our jobs more difficult as well.
“But we do feel confident that we can still have success against this administration. And part of that is because we have been working for years, and in some cases decades, with our partners on the frontlines to build these compelling scientific, legal, and policy records for progress on our issues. And there are still plenty of courts out there that are not going to ignore that evidence.
“In the Rocky Mountain office where I work, we were on the frontlines of the ‘drill, baby, drill’ agenda during the first Trump administration.
- “We faced attacks on public lands protections like the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase National Monuments.
- “We faced attempts to roll back at least three nationwide regulations that were targeted at protecting the climate and public lands from oil and gas development.
- “And, we faced attempts to ramp up fossil fuel leasing throughout the region.
“It felt dire at that time, but we had tremendous success and some really surprising victories, even in courts where we didn't think that we were going to prevail.
“We were able to hold the line in all of these areas and create space for the Biden administration, not just to restore protections, but in many cases, to actually go further and make regulations better.”
The Fight for Methane Pollution Safeguards During the First Trump Administration “Every time we would win a case, they would try a different tactic. But the good news is that we were able to stop them each and every time. We won four different cases involving these rules, and we won for two big reasons.” Read more.
“I wanted to highlight this fight that I personally worked on — preventing the rollback of national rules that required oil and gas companies to control their methane emissions. We focus on the oil and gas industry because it is the largest industrial source of methane pollution in the United States. And oil and gas companies waste roughly two billion dollars’ worth of methane gas every year through leaky equipment and intentional venting and flaring of gas.
“Methane gas is an extremely powerful greenhouse gas. It has more than 80 times the warming power of carbon dioxide over the first 20 years that it's in the atmosphere. It's also responsible for about a quarter of the global warming we're currently experiencing. Cutting methane pollution is one of the quickest and most cost-effective ways to really slow climate change in the near term.
“It isn't just methane that we're talking about being released, we're also looking at cancer-causing pollution that's harmful to public health. Some of our clients in this litigation are a group of Indigenous people living on the Fort Berthold Reservation in North Dakota. And they're really living in the heart of the oil and gas patch and experiencing firsthand what it's like to have drilling sites and flares completely surrounding their communities.
“After years of advocacy and record building, the Obama administration finalized two really important rules targeting this methane pollution from oil and gas for the first time ever. This was a really big deal. These rules became top targets for the first Trump administration, and they were relentless in trying to keep these rules from ever going into effect. Every time we would win a case, they would try a different tactic. But the good news is that we were able to stop them each and every time.
“We won four different cases involving these rules, and we won for two big reasons:
- The Trump administration tried to cut corners and avoid legally required procedures, and the courts didn't like that. We're likely to see those kinds of tactics again in this administration.
- We have the science and the economics on our side. The record is very clear that methane pollution from the oil and gas industry is a big problem, and there are commonsense fixes. That makes it very difficult for the Trump administration to try and say that this isn't a problem or that nothing needs to be done about it.
“Our success in the courts paved the way for the Biden administration to finalize even stronger methane rules the second time around, and we expect that they will be under attack once again. But again, we will be there to hold this administration accountable.
“We've spent the entirety of the Biden administration building an even stronger record on this issue and many others.”
Moving Our Vision Forward “In our office that means things like pushing on Colorado's clean energy transition in the public utilities commission. The Colorado legislature has also adopted landmark, environmental justice legislation — we will be spending time making sure that that is implemented properly.” Read more.
“Something that was true for the first Trump administration, and I think is even more important now, and that is that we know we're going to be putting a lot of resources into Trump defense. That cannot and will not come at the expense of working to make progress and moving our vision forward everywhere that we can.
“A bit of good news that's happening right now, Colorado is undertaking a rulemaking that we're involved in that will ensure that these Biden methane rules that I've been talking about will go into effect early, before they're even required under federal law, and that they will stay in effect, even if the Trump administration tries to get rid of them at the national level.
“We're planning to hold the line on the Trump administration's attacks, but we're also making sure that we have capacity to continue moving our agenda forward in the states and the venues where we know that we can still make progress.”
VP of Policy & Legislation
Cabinet Nominees “The Attorney General, the Secretary of Interior, the Secretary of Energy, as well as the Environmental Protection Agency Administrator positions have to be confirmed through the Senate but who are the people who are being nominated to these?” Read more.
“Former Representative Zeldin is supposed to lead the EPA. He has virtually no voting record, and he has virtually no expertise on how to run the EPA. This is the one agency that's tasked with looking after our health and safety, making sure that toxics are not in our food, making sure that our air and water are safe to breathe and drink, and yet we can't tell what his record is. That's a huge lack of expertise on that front.
“Then we have Mr. Wright, who is tasked to lead the Department of Energy. This is a fracking executive who has made millions upon millions of dollars essentially catering to the industry that he's now supposed to regulate.
“And Vought, who's supposed to run the branch of the White House that controls all rulemakings. He's one of the chief architects of Project 2025, which has set the agenda for what the Trump administration wants to do over the course of the next four years.
“These are the folks that we have to fight.
“The makeup in the Senate and the House of Representatives is not favorable to us. You have 53 Republicans and 47 Democrats in the Senate, and the majority in the House lies with the Republicans. However, for the time being, their majority is down to one person.
“There are two special elections that need to happen in the next couple of months. When those folks are incorporated, if Republicans win both elections, at that point, they will have only a three person majority.
These majorities will be slimmer than what Trump had in his first term, so the legislating power is actually subtracted from a lot of what they want to do.
“It's very important that we cater to what is possible in this Congress and make sure that we use the political situation that is presented before us to the maximum extent possible to our advantage. What does that look like? Are we going to be able to knock down these nominees from being confirmed? Probably not. Unless they have a huge misstep in the process, which we're ready to capitalize on, these folks will probably go through.
“However, we can use our nomination process to do a couple of things. One is to paint them in a bad picture. A lot of these folks really want to get confirmed. They want to get Democratic support. To do that, they will make commitments about things that they say they want to do. We need to make sure that we're keeping track of those so that we are able to bring them up later. When they have a harmful action, we're able to say 'you either lied then or you're lying now.' Making sure that we're holding them accountable.
“It is important to note that Democrats in Congress, right now, particularly in the Senate, are looking to look, ‘reasonable.’ What that means is that some of them are already supporting these nominations. We have already seen Senator Heinrich, who leads the Energy and Natural Resources Committee in the Senate supporting Burgum, who is slated to run the Interior Department.
“It's very important that we pay attention to that. Making sure that we understand where the office is coming from and making sure that that same office who might be supporting now is ready to pounce when a harmful action is being taken later on.
“A lot of folks, particularly on the Democratic side, are really concerned about kitchen-table issues. What are folks talking about, and how is it making an important concrete difference in their daily lives? That means it's not okay for us to just talk about these laws that have been in the books for some time or about our priorities, in the sense of what is legally possible or not. We also have to think about how this is impacting real people in very concrete terms.
“This might run the gamut. How much are they paying for hospital bills, because their air quality is so poor, because of the asthma attacks? How many lives have we lost because of the pollution? How much are their energy bills skyrocketing, by virtue of the lack of wind energy in the not-too-distant future? All of that has to be part of the broader conversation.
“We need to find a way to bridge the gap between where senators are right now, in terms of their opinion and their political compass, and making sure that we bring them over to the rhetoric that we really want to see from these folks.
“A lot of work to do there. We are ready for that task, though.”
Reconciliation and Congressional Review Act Resolutions “For the majority of laws that get passed in Congress, you need a 60-vote threshold in the Senate. You need 60 Senators to vote for the measure with a few exceptions: reconciliation and Congressional Review Act resolutions.” Read more.
“It's a big question if Republicans remain united. Speaker Johnson, for example, has had a very tough time keeping his caucus united in the last Congress, even though he had the majority in the House. These two exceptions provide significant opportunities for Republicans to make a lot of harm and push a lot of the Trump agenda forward.
“Anything done in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which was also passed through reconciliation, can be undone. So we need to make sure that we're stopping that. As much as possible, we need to make sure that we're keeping Democrats united against these measures, then we're also pulling off a couple of Republicans in the process.
“We have had some success here. I can point to letters that Republicans have sent Speaker Johnson, saying, ‘You cannot repeal this part of the IRA, because it is useful in my home district.’ These kitchen-table issues are what we really need to focus on. The fight will be big. We need to focus on education. We need to tell folks how the IRA, and all of the bedrock environmental protections that could be in danger through this process, are ultimately doing good things inside their district for their constituents, so that they put their allegiance to the constituency above their allegiance to the president.
“The second big piece is the Congressional Review Act resolutions. This is a problem, because this is a process that Congress can use to undo any regulation that the last administration put out after August 16.
“The good news is that there aren't a ton of those at this stage. We are worried about two or three of them that Republicans can attack. We know that they are coming after, for example, the Lead and Copper Rule, which regulates the replacement and the content of water pipes going into our homes.
“The problem is that if these resolutions were to pass, they prohibit the agency from doing anything substantially similar in the future. It's not just that you're taking away the Biden rule, you're also taking away the power of the agency to do this in the future.
“How do we tackle this? Again, it's about education. It's making sure that when an attack comes, whether it's legislation or whether it's in one of these two funky shortcuts that Republicans can take, that our staff are educating Congress people so that when an emergency comes and we have to lobby, we can focus on lobbying. We don't have to explain to them how the National Environmental Policy Act works, they already know that.
“We are not going to change the conscience of all members of Congress. We need to meet them where they are. For that, we need to work really hard on our data. Making sure that this is all science-backed. Making sure that we can lead legislators through a simple cognitive process that leads from our position to the outcome that they want. We have a lot of work ongoing on this in the next couple of weeks, and Congress will tell us a lot about how these processes will develop. In fact, right now, Republicans are meeting in their retreat to figure this out. But we are in good shape, and taking the fight to them on our terms.”
Q&A Session
President, Earthjustice
Q: On the impact of Trump judicial appointments “There are many fair judges who respect science and the law and who will be amenable to cases on behalf of people who are really hurting. ” Read more.
“The Biden administration got 235 judges appointed. The Trump administration got 234. The universe of judicial seats, where a second Trump administration can make appointments is smaller than it was in 2017. A lot depends on whether senior-status judges retire.
“It is not a picture that I would like to be seeing, but I want to assure you that all around the country there are good judges, and there are still circuits, including the D.C. Circuit, where the mix is fine and fair for us.”
Senior VP of Programs
Q: What will Earthjustice do about these issues? What will we focus on? “We recognize that we’re playing on different terrain in 2025 than we were in 2017. But if we’re talking about these issues, you can know we are prioritizing them.” Read more.
“To balance affirmative work in the states, to mount the strongest possible defense — that is exactly what we're going to do.
“We have enormous ability, for example, to force clean energy forward as we did during the first Trump administration. We have enormous ability not only to attack a lawless emergency order, that standing alone, tests the boundaries of executive authority, but, as applied, is amenable to suit.
“Know that Earthjustice has 220+ active litigators, many more communicators, many more people working both on Capitol Hill and in statehouses, who are going to be working across this whole scope of work.”
President, Earthjustice
Q: This seems to be really focused on drilling. Aren't there other issues?
“There are so many other issues.
“The reason why we took a special focus on drilling is that those issues are among the very few that are ripe for litigation right now. If you're looking for the Month One, Week Two and Three litigation, those ones are coming soon. Where you can drill is more within presidential authority and won't have to go through the same kind of process that a lot of the other rollbacks that we'll see coming.”
Editor's Note: Earthjustice filed the first major environmental legal challenge against the new Trump administration on Feb. 19, suing to block the administration's Illegal ocean drilling plan. Subsequent lawsuits were filed on Feb. 24 against the USDA for erasing webpages vital to farmers and on Mar. 4 against the DOT for attempting to “terminate” New York’s Congestion Pricing Program.
Senior VP of Programs
Q: What can we do to work with progressive states, and what can they do? How can we support progressive state efforts? “That's a major focus of what we'll be doing. If you look at the evolution of our overall profile of our work, we've done a lot over the last 10 years, and particularly in the last five, to shift a lot of our advocacy efforts towards states because we know that the federal government is subject to these political whipsaws.” Read more.
“California, New York, Colorado, the Pacific Northwest — these are where we've been able to make substantial change both through utility commissions and in state legislation — in movement building at the state-level. We've hired lobbyists in states, something that the Earthjustice of a decade ago probably would not have done, and that means that we can do a lot to drive progress.
“Those states have power, in part, because they have a lot of regulatory authority over things like housing codes, and in many cases like California, over vehicles. They are also big market drivers so if the states change the rules and create markets for companies, that can really drive change elsewhere.
“When it comes to attacks by industries or the federal government on those things, we can ally with those states to help defend them. The states are often the ones who, very aggressively, are defending their own policies and their attorneys general, and so on, are taking the lead in that. But we also intervene, and we participate to make sure that the perspectives of consumers, average folks, and ratepayers are seen by the courts — so the courts are also understanding how important those regulations or laws are to protect people.”
President, Earthjustice
Q: Can Earthjustice really handle what’s coming? “Many of you have been beside us through the last administration, and the last Trump administration, and you know that we have built our capacity very considerably. As of Day One, we are not overwhelmed.” Read more.
“For example, there is a full-on assault on Alaska, but we have a relatively large team who's been working on those issues for years, and they are ready.
“Across issues of public health, climate and energy, and lands, wildlife, and oceans, we have people who are ready to receive these attacks because they're not new, for the most part. Many of them are reversals from issues, where we're already defending against attacks from attorneys general and industry.
“Know that we're already at work, but I do want to sound a note of, ‘Please help,’ because the tenor of litigation is just different than it used to be.
“What the Supreme Court has done to destabilize the law is increasing forum shopping. It's increasing aggressive strategies and it's increasing trips up and down from the Supreme Court.
“The kinds of litigation that we used to do against, for example, the George W. Bush administration, and even the first term of the Trump administration, is now so much more resource intensive than it used to be.
“And, the deadlines that we're facing for our planet are weighing on us. We're living in a world right now, where there are so many threats to so many important things. But we also can't lose time on the climate, on the biodiversity crisis, and on people's health. We have a health crisis in the United States that is solvable if we continue to build on what we got done in the Biden administration.
“So, in answer to the questions:
- ‘Are we lost? Are we overwhelmed?’ No.
- ‘Do we need more capacity?’ Yes.
- ‘Are there incredible people who are coming off the sidelines from the private sector and out of government?’ Yes.
- ‘Are we trying to find a home for them?’ Yes.
“To the many questions about defending government employees who are being summarily dismissed, placed on administrative leave, redeployed, or reassigned to the wrong kinds of jobs. The unions are very much involved and there are many groups like PEER and others who are serving that purpose.
“We are looking for areas where, with our skill set, we can do the most possible so that we aren't overwhelmed. We are working to know that others are filling the gaps that we're seeing.
“I want to give you all some hope that there are many groups who are swinging into action as never before. People have seen the crisis coming, and they are working on it.”
Senior VP of Programs
Q: On the courts “I’m glad people recognize that there’s a war going on in the federal courts and on the integrity of the judiciary through the appointments process — particularly through Donald Trump’s last term.” Read more.
“The impact of the Biden administration over the last four years is a tremendous number of high quality judges appointed to the bench.
“What we're watching very carefully is prior appointees from prior Republican presidents. Let's see how many of those folks are willing to step down now that they've seen what their colleagues from the Trump administration are actually doing.
“I know that many of those judges, I've talked to some of them, are actually kind of horrified by the judges who are showing up next to them on the bench, and maybe taking a little bit pause.
“The other thing to look at is that there are many circuits, in particular, of the critical D.C. Circuit, where we continue to do pretty well. The courts are tougher, but they are by no means lost to us.
“Thanks for those of you who have been paying attention and do recognize that we're well aware of the threats. We're working not only to win in court, but to win on the courts.”
President, Earthjustice
“Mounting a powerful defense but also forcing progress forward in the states — that’s what we’re going to do in all of our 14 offices around the country, and that’s what we’re doing with our incredible group of colleagues who are working internationally as well.
“To the questions of ‘Is this legal?’ No.
“A lot of where the rubber will hit the road is when a 'national emergency' or when an order is applied in real life. Then we can know that it’s ripe for legal challenge — we can go to court, and we can make the best case that it is illegal. Just because it’s been said, doesn’t mean it’s legal or that it’s going to happen.
“I hope that we’ve given you a sense of what the landscape looks like now that we’ve seen the first week of the Trump administration. Thank you for all of your support, not only financial, but also moral.
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“Thank you for being part of our Earthjustice family. We need each other now more than ever.”
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This text is edited and condensed from an audio recording. It may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future.