This is the first in a two- part series.
The Center for Progressive Reform was founded during the George W. Bush era when Republicans won the White House and controlled both houses of Congress. As a candidate, Bush threatened to put in the crosshairs the nation’s social safety net, public protections, and the government’s role to protect civil rights, consumer rights, the environment, and the common good.
The circumstances were similar to those we currently find ourselves in. Then, as now, our job was to secure the system of rules and regulations critical to protecting people from harm and the environment from degradation.
We had some notable wins to hold the line against these damaging attacks. These included efforts to issue air toxic standards that were so weak that they violated the law and a proposal to make cost-benefit analysis even more anti-regulatory by applying a “senior death discount” to reduce the value of protecting the lives of elderly members of our society.
Still, we now face challenges that are entirely new. There remains little of the Bush-type conservatism in the current form of Trumpism as the new administration prepares to take power in 2025. While he’ll likely try to shrink the size of government in some places and eviscerate regulations he and his cronies don’t like, Trump will also seek to weaponize government in other ways to pursue enemies and skew other regulations to reward his corporate friends and ideological allies. As my colleague James Goodwin recently wrote in The Regulatory Review:
The expansive administrative state that Project 2025 seeks to build is one that fits a distinctly authoritarian model. That means first and foremost a consolidation of political power in the President by eliminating the political insulation that independent agencies have long enjoyed and ending the Justice Department’s tradition of independence from the president. [It guts]… congressional oversight through abuses of the Federal Vacancies Reform Act and the politicization of disaster aid to states. It thrives on the further privatization of essential government services, such veterans’ healthcare, primary education of children, and weather forecasts and alerts…
The most crucial element of all—the essential DNA of Project 2025, you might say—is its hostile disposition toward the rule of law.
The bursting-at-its-seams agenda of Project 2025 seeks to drastically overhaul the civil service to replace tens of thousands of career public employees with political loyalists; eliminate the Department of Education and dismantle the public interest mission of every agency; revoke the independent judgment of the Department of Justice and use investigatory powers to attack political opponents; use the military and police forces to deport millions of undocumented people and even their relatives who are U.S. citizens.
Trumpism will likely overreach. Political corruption, self-dealing in the inner circle, and overriding fealty to the ego of Trump will start to corrode the populist veneer. Erosion of environmental, consumer, and financial regulations will create enormous harm for those who counted on the government to ensure basic protections, and Trump’s base will fray. There will be ample opportunities to expose the contradictions and re-steer the populist narrative to a genuine common good.
What, then, does Trump 2.0 mean for the Center for Progressive Reform? As one of the country’s leading voices for fairness and equity in the administrative state and regulatory system, how should we respond?
With the nation’s leading administrative and environmental law scholars in our network and a staff of policy analysts, advocates, and communicators, here is our strategy broadly speaking.
We will resist the Trump administration’s attacks on our system of public protections and the harms they will cause to our health, safety, climate, and environment, as well as holding the administration accountable for its actions. In those moments when the common good is upheld, we will applaud that. We will continue to highlight the role of government to protect communities and the environment from harm and defend the regulations that achieve that. And we will create a bank of progressive policies in waiting that the next administration can draw on.
More specifically, we are seeing immediate opportunities, including:
- Watchdogging the Congressional Review Act
Depending on the “lookback” date for the Congressional Review Act (CRA) to apply, key environmental and climate regulations can be rolled back and largely blocked in the future. Potentially in the balance are the Inflation Reduction Act’s methane fees, lead in drinking water, toxic chemical protections for workers, and more. We are experts on the CRA and have argued for its repeal, even when the law served the Democrats. We will offer policy intel, track rules under threat, inform sympathetic members of Congress, publicize developments, and offer support to allies and advocates. - Defending the administrative state against Project 2025
We were among the first groups to expose the multitude of threats inherent in Project 2025 — from political loyalty tests of the civil service, to vengeance seeking of the DOJ, to its authoritarian takeover of the administrative state. In June, we convened national advocates and scholars to strategize on how to expose its most nefarious aspects, and we have continually worked with progressive allies to prepare a response to its implementation. In this work, our niche is the defense against the assault on the administrative and regulatory state as a system.
During the first 180 days of the Trump administration, we will expose how Project 2025 undermines the administrative and regulatory state in real time. This includes executive orders, key appointments, transition team activities, and regulatory changes within the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Department of Energy (DOE), and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). We have already started Tracking Trump 2.0 here. - Promoting a progressive vision of the administrative state and regulatory system
The point of this vision is to lay the groundwork for a new administration in 2029. We have a first step with A Statement of Principles for a Progressive Administrative State. Its vision is robust, responsive, and inclusive and, per James’ piece in The Regulatory Review, “calls on the administrative state to act as a custodian and agent of the rule of law and as a guardian against excessive concentrations of private political and economic power that threaten to destabilize our economy and democracy.”
We’re engaging good government allies as well as those directly impacted by these draconian policies to build this vision and create a roadmap to make it happen.
We stand at a historic crossroads between demagoguery and authoritarianism on one hand and the pursuit of democracy and a more perfect union on the other. Our collective actions over the next four years will be a fight, and its outcome will shape our country for decades to come.
My next post will seek out those spaces where positive developments over the next four years are possible: state policies on climate and environmental justice and energy transitions are one set of opportunities and deserve our support.
