Day One is supposed to mark an auspicious beginning for Donald J. Trump, a man high on vindication and vendetta, who originally planned to sign the first handful of executive orders of his second term as president on his way up the Capitol steps after taking the oath of office.
With the Inaugural now moved inside, the drama may have to await Day Two. Whenever. Many Americans and fellow human beings across the planet are holding our breath. Because, unless—like so much else Trump says—his promises of a full crate of immediate executive orders are lies, we could see 50 or 100 such orders before he’s been in office 24 hours, according to Stephen Moore, senior economic adviser on the campaign.
How many of the ideas in these orders will have been put forth by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy is anybody’s guess. But when it take two billionaires to run the phantom Department of Government Efficiency, you can be sure that efficiency isn’t what they’ve got in mind. (Ramaswamy may not last long.)
As countless critics have noted, the potential damage ensuing from Trump’s executive orders could be broad. Several entirely different disasters are possible, to the economy, to democracy, to society, to the environment. But potential and possible don’t mean inevitable. Litigation, a narrow majority in Congress, internecine battles in the Republican Party, and a resistance reinvigorated by the awfulness of some of these orders could mean many of those pronounced on Day One or Day Two won’t take effect until Year Three or Four or never.
But some will.
Former North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, Donald Trump’s pick for Secretaary of the Interior
In the environmental realm, agencies already wounded by the Supreme Court’s ruling reversing the Chevron deference in a combination of judicial arrogance and imbecility may be further harmed. There are several candidates for action from Trump’s Sharpie. Moore told Scott Waldman at Climatewire (paywall), “I do anticipate many of them will be energy focused, because a lot of what Biden did was through executive order on energy. So a lot of them would be rescinding things like the EV mandate and some of the environmental rules will be softened and some of the funding of the green energy programs will be lifted.” Waldman writes:
Executive orders can be just as much a political message as they are an actual policy. Biden used an early flurry of executive orders to reorient the White House around addressing climate change — and to make it clear that boosting the clean energy industry and cutting carbon emissions would be among his top priorities in office.
Executive orders cannot change a law or regulation, but it seems likely that Trump will attempt to do so anyway, said David Hayes, who served as a senior climate adviser in the Biden White House and helped draft climate-related executive orders. Some of Trump’s initial executive orders may overstep their legal authority and get immediately bogged down in court, he said.
“The President doesn't have the authority to essentially ignore the legally required process that typically is involved in a major change in direction for an agency under its congressionally authorized and mandated mission,” Hayes said.
One change is almost certain: Torpedoing President Biden’s 4-year-old, multipart executive order that leads off with “Putting the Climate Crisis at the Center of United States Foreign Policy and National Security.” In Trump world, there is no climate crisis.
Below are a few other possible environmentally related targets Trump seems likely to trash or try to. There are no real surprises on this list to anybody who has been following such matters. But that doesn’t mean there won’t be any surprises amid Trump’s anti-environmental executive orders.
Withdrawing from the Paris Agreement (again). President Obama got us into the inadequate, non-binding but still influential agreement a decade ago, President Trump 1.0 got us out, President Biden got us back in, and it seems almost certain that Trump 2.0 will get us out again. Protocol requires a year after a nation announces its intent to leave the agreement before the departure formally takes effect. Withdrawing would end any climate-related pledges under the agreement by the world’s largest historical emitter of greenhouse gases. In December, Biden pledged a reduction of 61% to 66% of U.S. greenhouse gases by 2035 over the 2005 baseline. Very ambitious. It will be even more difficult to achieve if the current record-breaking U.S. oil and gas production rises even higher under Trump’s puerile call to “drill, baby, drill.”
Ditching the Pause on Liquefied Natural Gas Export Permits. The Biden administration paused the processing of new LNG export permits in order to conduct an economic and climate study of their impact. Before 2016, there were no U.S. natural gas exports. Currently, there are 15 billion cubic feet a day of LNG exports. Already-approved new projects will boost that to 49 billion cubic feet a day for a decade, even if not one new permit is granted. The Department of Energy assessment found that increased LNG exports would displace more wind, solar, and other renewable energy rather than coal.
The study modeled five scenarios, and in every one, global greenhouse gases were projected to rise. So too was the price of domestic gas by 2050, a 31% rise. A 60-day comment period ends in late February, but Trump could make that moot. He has often said he wants to end the pause, although some of his advisers are advising patience because the courts might reject any quick moves on new permits in light of the DOE report. Critics like Senate Majority Leader John Thune have called the pause an example of Biden’s allegedly anti-energy policies. Actually, the United States became the world's largest LNG exporter with Biden in office. But, hey, facts.
Declaring a National Energy Emergency. Ironically, Trump may declare a national energy emergency, the approach that activists have been calling on President Biden to do about climate since he entered the White House. Trump declared last August that to rapidly reduce energy costs, he would ”declare a national emergency to allow us to dramatically increase energy production, generation and supply. Starting on day one, I will approve new drilling, new pipelines, new refineries, new power plants, new reactors and we will slash the red tape.” He repeated the promise just before Christmas. New reactors aside, if successful, Trump’s effort favoring his fossil fuel pals by circumventing environmental rules will definitely add to the need to declare a climate emergency. The courts may stop this or may enable it. Just how much extra authority Trump could actually squeeze out of an emergency declaration is uncertain. Of the 83 national emergencies the U.S. has declared, 42 are still in effect.
The Citadel in the Bears Ears National Monument
Repealing the Antiquities Act of 1906 and Downsizing National Monuments. In 2017, President Trump shrank by half the Grand Staircase Escalante national monument designated in 1996 by President Clinton and by 85% the Bears Ears National Monument designated by President Obama. President Biden restored most of the original acreage of both on his first day in office. A lawsuit that would have determined once and for all whether a president can shrink predecessors’ monument designations was dismissed as a consequence. Trump could buy into
Project 2025’s urging of fdhim to
spur Congress to repeal the Antiquities Act of 1906, the law that authorizes presidents designate monuments of outstanding scientific, historic, and natural locations. This fits in with a decades-long effort that began with the Sagebrush Rebellion of the 1970s, with Western states conservatives challenging continuing ownership of large swaths of land that they feel is underdeveloped, underdrilled, and otherwise generally underexploited.</p>
Drilling Public Lands Like Nobody Could Have Imagined. Given that “drill, baby, drill” is an alternate campaign slogan,
Trump can be counted on to boost oil and gas drilling on federal lands on- and off-shore. Although Biden has upset many environmental activists by allowing limited new oil and gas leasing, he’s also constrained it, upsetting the industry. And. in December, by executive order under the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act of 1953,
he put a stop to new oil and gas drilling on about 625 million acres of U.S. coastal waters, on the grounds of protecting the environment, public health, and coastal communities’ economies. This may be hard to reverse, but the Trump Department of Interior under a fossil fuel-friendly Doug Burgum will decide how much auctioning of federal land for drilling will take place. </p>
Targeting Electric Vehicles. Trump cannot, as Elon Musk might like, destroy the EV incentives in the Inflation Reduction Act on his first days in office although he has pledged to do so. That will take time, not least because any mucking around with the IRA that endangers some of the billions of dollars that have gone into building factories and creating green jobs in red states is going to run into difficulty among Republicans whose districts have benefited.
But Trump might focus on killing the Environmental Protection Agency’s new fuel economy car regulations, which were designed intentionally to push people toward buying EVs or plug-in hybrid vehicles. He could sign an executive order saying he’ll support legislation to make end the incentives. Although cutting EV incentives would cost Tesla, which sells
nearly as many electric cars in the United States as all other makers combined, it would hurt other makers even more. That is because they have made huge investments in new car and battery factories but have yet to see as strong a consumer market as they had hoped, although EV sales continued to rise in 2024, to about 10% of the new car market. </p>
Trump Hasn’t Gotten Over His Hate for Wind Energy. Trump has an obsession. At Mar-a-Lago Jan. 7, Trump said “we're going to try and have a policy where no windmills are being built.” I suspect the Aermotor Windmill Company of San Angelo, Texas, might have something to say about that. They’ve been making windmills for 137 years. There might be a few other objections since the 15,300 wind turbines spinning in Texas generate more electricity from wind than any other state, 119 terawatt-hours of it in 2023, which was 28.6% of the state's total generation. Since many wind farms are on private land, Trump will be limited in any anti-wind executive order he signs. But while he’s trying to open offshore sites for oil and gas drilling, perhaps he’ll get Burgum to close them for wind projects. </p>
Buckle up.