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President Donald Trump’s attack on electric vehicles threatens not only the nation’s progress in fighting climate change, but torpedoes our ability to achieve healthy air. The Inauguration Day executive order on “Unleashing American Energy” calls for eliminating the “electric vehicle (EV) mandate” and “unfair subsidies and other ill-conceived government distortions that favor EVs ….” Slowing our transition to clean vehicles will have the worst consequences for vulnerable frontline communities living near highways, ports, and warehouses, communities that already experience a disproportionate share of environmental harms.

On January 20 — otherwise known as Day One of Trump 2.0 — the president signed a barrage of executive orders, including one declaring a national energy emergency. While it is unsurprising that his policy priorities will reflect his long-standing antipathy toward climate protections and renewables — not to mention the fossil fuel industry’s financial support during his campaign — his attempt to frame this policy by declaring a “national energy emergency” is beyond disingenuous. We have faced real threats to energy security in the past and have weathered them through democratic processes, not by executive fiat, and this isn’t one.

The second Trump administration’s disastrous early-term actions do nothing to address the economic inequality that our political classes have long ignored. In its first two weeks, the administration has withdrawn from the Paris Climate Accords, reversed federal initiatives on environmental justice, withheld public health information, frozen spending on environmental and climate mitigation programs, threatened to withhold federal disaster aid, and just recently threatened to fire more than 1,000 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) workers who focus on climate and environmental enforcement.

In recent days, President Donald Trump has said that he won’t provide relief for the Los Angeles fires unless California changes its voting laws and its water regulations. He also suggested that he’d like to abolish FEMA entirely. The first of Trump’s proposals is likely unconstitutional. The second one is both a terrible idea and beyond his legal authority.

A sleeper provision in one of President Donald Trump’s executive orders attempts to revolutionize the way the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) operates and cut environmental review to a minimum.

The U.S. Congress is back and the U.S. House of Representatives is already roiling, as exemplified by the lobbyists and pundits who trail members and staff through the halls and into their offices. Republicans are already desperate to regain momentum after tripping out of the starting gate, even astride their newly minted control of both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue—a “trifecta” in Washington lexicon. Many backroom negotiations are inevitable, and the idea that a massive legislative package will be easier to pass could run into the reality that members will want innumerable concessions to take tough votes. The process will bog down, and Republicans must find something else to do. Senator Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has already fingered the most promising possibility—killing Biden Administration rules under the Congressional Review Act (CRA). The CRA allows narrow majorities in Congress to pass “resolutions of disapproval” for recently issued final rules.

If there were any doubts about the policy priorities of the second Trump administration, these have been swiftly clarified after the first barrage of executive orders (EOs) aimed at deconstructing environmental, scientific, and democratic safeguards. One of the most extensive EOs is titled “Unleashing American Energy,” which contains a wide array of actions aimed at boosting “America’s affordable and reliable energy and natural resources.” This is merely coded language for doubling down on an extractive model of development poised to pump, mine, and log every possible inch of American public lands. Unsurprisingly, it is also aimed at “unleashing” only some types of energy resources: fossil fuels.

President-elect Donald Trump’s picks for office provide a strong hint of what the next year will look like. In Trump’s first term, government actions were often overturned by the courts. Agencies made basic mistakes: skipping mandatory procedural steps, ignoring important evidence, or failing to address opposing arguments. Many people thought he had learned his lesson and would pick competent, experienced administrators this time. They were mostly wrong.

They say that history never repeats itself, but it often rhymes. As in many sequels, there will be many things we’ve seen before. Much of that consisted of an all-out attack on environmental law. If you hated the original, you won’t enjoy watching the same thing the second time around. But there are a few additions to the cast and some new backdrops on the set. Today, I’m going to talk about some areas of continuity.