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On August 5, the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit decided Committee for a Better Arvin v. EPA, which is both a significant air pollution case and an interesting case study in how the U.S. Supreme Court has changed judicial review of agency actions. The case was brought by a group in Arvin, California, a small city near Bakersfield.

It’s August here in western Washington State, which means two things: (1) I’ll soon be packing up for my return to New Orleans (class starts soon), and (2) the smoke blowing in from regional wildfires is making my nose burn. Appropriately, the news here is full of stories about personal loss, evacuation routes, fire-suppression strategies, and the brave firefighters who put their lives on the line to keep us safe. But there’s a deeper story: Our broad approach to handling wildfire in the United States was designed for a climate that no longer exists. We must do better.

This is a hard moment for the work we care about. The rules that keep our air breathable, our water clean, our workplaces safe, and our government answerable to the people are under real pressure. Agencies are losing the authority to do their jobs. The idea that government should protect people when markets will not is being treated as if it were up for debate. And the communities that suffer most from pollution, unsafe work, and a warming climate are still the last ones invited into the rooms where the choices get made. I spent my childhood two blocks from a power plant grandfathered out of Clean Air Act protections in Texas and suffered from chronic bronchial infections while multiple family members and friends managed asthma. In law school, I learned to value the regulations and bureaucracy that could be made to protect people’s lives. So I am honored to join the Center’s work as executive director.

In this post and video, I discuss the 4th of July Clearwater incident in New York Harbor with Dan Farber, a law professor at UC-Berkeley, who specializes in constitutional and environmental law.

As the United States reaches the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, we at the Center for Progressive Reform find ourselves reflecting on a history that is both extraordinary and in progress. We also recognize that this anniversary carries different meanings for different people. Skye Perryman, President and CEO of Democracy Forward, puts it […]

PJM, the regional transmission organization (RTO) responsible for grid operations in all or part of 13 Eastern U.S. states and Washington, DC, just asked the federal Department of Energy (DOE) to issue an emergency order under the Federal Power Act. In its request, PJM asked to allow for “large loads” (functionally, although not limited to, data centers located in the PJM footprint) to run emergency backup power generation between July 1 and July 2. This is in preparation for the extreme multi-day heatwave that is forecast for the eastern part of the country through the July 4 holiday weekend.

For the pro-democracy crowd, the arrival of June each year brings a palpable sense of dread. We are keenly aware that it marks the end of the U.S. Supreme Court’s annual term, when the most controversial decisions are handed down. And each year, we are left to anticipate how exactly our oligarchs in black robes […]

Across the country, legislators are figuring out how to regulate the worst harms from data centers. In North Carolina, the latest bill to do so is Senate Bill 730. Unfortunately, SB 730 is not a step forward in protecting North Carolinians from the harms of data centers. Rather, it is a step sideways, evading needed regulations.

EPA has said it would no longer try to quantify the harms done by the two most serious, widespread air pollutants. Given that these are the most fully understood of all environmental impacts, it’s not clear what future regulations, if any, might still be subject to cost-benefit analysis. This didn’t come out of the blue. Rather, it is the culmination of a series of steps that began when President Donald Trump first took office in 2017.