Over the course of more than a century, serious statespeople came together to build the modern administrative state out of a shared commitment to redeeming their constitutional duty to form a more perfect union. The action today to rescind the 2009 EPA endangerment finding represents the single greatest defiance of that project yet by the Trump administration.
Our modern administrative state is built on four mutually reinforcing pillars: evidence-based decision-making, an independent professional civil service, economic analysis, and fidelity to the law. Its design was squarely arrayed to prevent such action as today’s rescission of the endangerment finding. This action isn’t just a travesty of climate justice and an insult against the urgent need to confront the impending existential crisis posed by climate change; it is a ringing alarm bell warning all of us of the extent to which this administration has succeeded in degrading our governing institutions in such a short period of time.
Reconstructing the administrative state will be one of the most urgent tasks facing this nation when we awaken from this authoritarian nightmare. In doing so, though, we must seize the unique opportunity to construct something even better: an administrative state that affirmatively promotes social justice and empowers all of us to pursue our full potential as human beings. That is how we can fulfill our own responsibilities as stewards of the U.S. democratic project.
