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Former President Donald Trump hasn’t been at all secretive about plans for a possible second term. He has plans, big plans. So big, in fact, that they may collide with a conservative judicial rule called the major questions doctrine. Although the U.S. Supreme Court has mostly used the major questions doctrine to block initiatives by Democratic presidents, it would be more than fair to apply it to Trump. What’s sauce for the goose, after all, is sauce for the gander.

The main reason to control carbon is to protect the climate. But cleaning up the energy system has plenty of other benefits. Those benefits will flow to people in rural areas as well as urban ones, to national security and international development, and to nature itself.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s opinion in Sackett v. EPA dramatically curtails the permitting program covering wetlands. We urgently need to find strategies for saving the wetlands the Court left unprotected. We have a number of possible strategies and need to start work on implementing them immediately.

In the recent debt ceiling law, Congress extensively revamped the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), the law governing environmental impact statements. An obscure White House agency, the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), will have the first opportunity to shape the interpretation of the new language.

Shortly after President Joe Biden signed the new National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) rewrite as part of the debt ceiling law, I wrote a blog post about a major drafting glitch at the heart of the new provisions. Today, I’d like to follow up with more examples.

The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) was passed over 50 years ago. It created a new tool for environmental protection — the environmental impact statement. It also created the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), which issued guidelines for implementing NEPA in 1978. Lawyers will need to retool quickly because of recent changes. Here’s a roadmap to recent developments.

We’ve already started to hear claims that the Biden power plant rule falls under the major questions doctrine, which the U.S. Supreme Court used to strike down former President Obama’s Clean Power Plan. Are those claims plausible?

Although the U.S. Constitution does not say so directly, the U.S. Supreme Court has said there are implied limits on state regulations that interfere with interstate commerce. This is known as the dormant commerce clause doctrine. State clean energy laws have been bedeviled by challenges based on this doctrine. The Supreme Court has just made it easier for states to fend off those claims.

Ever since the Supreme Court decided West Virginia v. EPA, conservatives and industry interests have claimed that just about every new regulation violates the major question doctrine. When the Biden administration ramped up fuel efficiency requirements through 2026, ideologues such as the Heritage Foundation and states like Texas were quick to wheel out this attack. No doubt the same attack will be made on the administration's ambitious proposed post-2026 standard. Maybe Judge Kacsmaryk in Amarillo, crusader against abortion pills and all things liberal, would buy that argument. But opponents won’t be able to handpick their judge this time, and the chances that this argument will win in the D.C. Circuit are slim to none.