Trump’s Latest Order Reversing Obama Is Government by Whiplash.
During Donald Trump’s first hundred days in office, the president has issued over 60 executive orders, mostly reversing Obama-era rules on immigration, labor law, and the environment.
Tuesday, Trump issued yet another executive reversal, this time instructing the Department of the Interior to review President Obama’s designations of national monuments.
“Trump¹s executive order is an unprecedented attack on America¹s public lands, the diverse heritage our national monuments conserve, and the $887 billion recreation industry they sustain,” Ryan Bidwell, Senior Director of Conservation at the Conservation Lands Foundation, told The Daily Beast.
The answer is that President Obama governed this way too, issuing executive orders from the White House and regulations from administrative agencies.
“President Obama took major strides,” said Bidwell, “at a time when a historically gridlocked Congress was unable to pass even universally supported legislation that had been languishing for years.” But because those strides were executive actions, not laws, it’s likely that Trump’s reversals will mostly prevail.
First, it orders the Interior Department to review all designations from the last 21 years.
Second, the order threads the needle on the 1906 Antiquities Act, which allows presidents to designate monuments but does not say whether they may un-designate them.
When it comes to actually scaling back the monuments in question, they’re going to have a fight on their hands.
As the Trump administration’s environmental rollbacks are challenged in court, it may be the court of public opinion that matters the most.