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Speaker 1: Welcome to the Bloomberg Law Podcast. I'm June Grosso. Every

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Speaker 1: day we bring you insight and analysis into the most

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Speaker 1: important legal news of the day. You can find more

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Speaker 1: episodes of the Bloomberg Law Podcast on Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud

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Speaker 1: and on Bloomberg dot com slash podcasts. President Trump's environmental

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Speaker 1: deregulation agenda has been largely unsuccessful for two years, as

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Speaker 1: one by one his climate proposals were crushed by legal

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Speaker 1: challengers with arguments that the administration cut corners and failed

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Speaker 1: to follow the rules. Is that changing? Joining me is

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Speaker 1: Cardike Marotra, Bloomberg News legal reporter. So Cardike start by

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Speaker 1: telling us how the Trump administration has been trying to

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Speaker 1: deregulate until now. Sure, So, for the last two years,

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Speaker 1: we've seen rule after rule on be it tracking or

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Speaker 1: royalties and valuations or waste rules that were revising and

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Speaker 1: loose thing the screws on regulations. And they were doing

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Speaker 1: it by simply trying to postpone enforcement of Obama era

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Speaker 1: rules that had just been enforced, or simply raising questions

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Speaker 1: about how those rules would be enforced. And they were

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Speaker 1: doing it sort of informally without going through the rules

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Speaker 1: set by the Administrative Procedures Act for rewriting environmental regulations,

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Speaker 1: and the key component of the APIA that they were

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Speaker 1: failing to abide by was a requirement for notice and comment.

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Speaker 1: This was effectively a transparency measure and an opportunity for

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Speaker 1: the public and companies and agencies at state levels to

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Speaker 1: to get involved in the rulemaking process. And they weren't

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Speaker 1: being given an opportunity. So when the e p A

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Speaker 1: or Bureau of Land Management came up with a revised rule,

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Speaker 1: they would be sued by state attorneys general or other

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Speaker 1: climate agencies Earth Justice of this yere club for failing

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Speaker 1: to comply with the a p A and almost universally

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Speaker 1: federal judges from California to Washington, d C. Rules that

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Speaker 1: the administration wasn't violation of the a p A and

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Speaker 1: and those rules were knocked back. So you write that

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Speaker 1: the Trump administration has a secret weapon now, and that

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Speaker 1: is they're going to actually start following the rules. That's right,

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Speaker 1: that's right. So two years have passed and the Trump

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Speaker 1: administration took power, and in that time it appears as

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Speaker 1: though these agencies, via the a p A or BLM,

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Speaker 1: have either figured out to comply with the rules or

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Speaker 1: have decided that it's worth their while in order to

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Speaker 1: pass final regulations, final rules to scale back Obama era norms.

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Speaker 1: And in the process, we mentioned a couple of examples

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Speaker 1: in this story, like methane waste rule that they envision

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Speaker 1: rolling back. They got more than two hundred thousand public

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Speaker 1: comments on this, and what that's allowed them to do

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Speaker 1: is push forward with the rulemaking process. So while they

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Speaker 1: couldn't simply roll it back eighteen months ago by saying so,

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Speaker 1: now they've gone through the administrative procedures, including the notice

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Speaker 1: and comment period, in order to scale it back. And

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Speaker 1: once they issue a final rule, that rule is the

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Speaker 1: rules till a federal court said otherwise. So in many cases,

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Speaker 1: with new clean power plan coming up or vehicle emission

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Speaker 1: standards coming down the pipeline, they're going to be the

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Speaker 1: rules until federal courts say otherwise. So federal courts say

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Speaker 1: other words, that brings us to what's going to be many,

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Speaker 1: many challenges to these and so explain how the shift

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Speaker 1: is now going to be from you know, the procedures

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Speaker 1: to the substance of his agenda exactly exactly. So the

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Speaker 1: next step in defending these final rules is effectively justifying

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Speaker 1: the regulation. Why was the previous rule flawed? And what

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Speaker 1: problem are you specifically solving with this new regulation. And

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Speaker 1: what the Trump administration has said broadly to courts and

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Speaker 1: in justifying these new rules is that the existing regulations

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Speaker 1: are unduly burdens them. And those two words have been

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Speaker 1: across many of these final regulations, and they're saying that

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Speaker 1: companies simply can't afford to or don't have the resources

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Speaker 1: to comply with these rules, to either pay higher royalties

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Speaker 1: to local and state governments or to really tighten the

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Speaker 1: screws almost literally on methane waste, for instance. And so

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Speaker 1: they need to justify the reason for these new rules,

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Speaker 1: and that includes getting into the economic data and the

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Speaker 1: science behind the initial regulations. And in many cases, those

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Speaker 1: rules were drafted over years, almost half a decade in

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Speaker 1: many cases, and to unravel them will require seemingly as

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Speaker 1: much time, but in many cases the Trump administration has

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Speaker 1: done in in less than two So you bring up

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Speaker 1: in your story one of the suits that the California

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Speaker 1: a G has brought challenging the Department of Interiors attempt

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Speaker 1: to repeal the valuation rule, where there is a question

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Speaker 1: about the substance right. So, the Trump administration had said

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Speaker 1: that these royalties that the federal government was asking coal,

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Speaker 1: oil and gas companies to pay were again unduly burdensome.

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Speaker 1: At the Obama administration had really stretched out these royalties

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Speaker 1: to a point where it was becoming unaffordable to conduct business.

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Speaker 1: And California's Attorney general jumped on that and so that

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Speaker 1: this justification is not substantial to roll back the policy.

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Speaker 1: And a federal judge in California agreed and told the

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Speaker 1: Trump administration and the Department of Interior that rolling back

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Speaker 1: those policies was still in contravention of the Administrative Procedures

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Speaker 1: Act and barred them from rolling it back. And so

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Speaker 1: the Obama administration rule is is still the rule of

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Speaker 1: the lamp. You spoke to Abigail Dillon, the president of

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Speaker 1: Earth Justice, who has brought many of these lasses, and

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Speaker 1: she said, this struck me. To unwind what Obama did,

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Speaker 1: You'll have to find some way to undermine tons of

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Speaker 1: science and facts that were put before agencies. So that

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Speaker 1: sounds like a really difficult task. It certainly does. It

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Speaker 1: certainly does. As I mentioned, the Obama administration spent in

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Speaker 1: many cases six years researching and conducting notice and comment

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Speaker 1: to come up with amended regulations for thirty year old

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Speaker 1: laws in many cases, and to do that, to unravel

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Speaker 1: those rules, you'll need to explain why the Obama administration's

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Speaker 1: data and science was flawed. That is a very tall task,

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Speaker 1: because a very tall tesk to do in two years

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Speaker 1: or even four years. And so the question here is

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Speaker 1: whether there is an intent by the Trump administration to

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Speaker 1: actually properly justify these regulations, or if there is an

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Speaker 1: interest in simply rolling out final rules as I mentioned,

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Speaker 1: so that they are in place ahead of polls. The

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Speaker 1: Trump administration can when political points for rolling back the

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Speaker 1: rules and leave it up to challengers like California Attorney

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Speaker 1: General to fight a legal fight that could take years.

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Speaker 1: It's just a fascinating article. Thank you so much, Cardik.

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Speaker 1: That's Carteke Marotra. He's a Bloomberg News legal reporter. Thanks

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Speaker 1: for listening to the Bloomberg Law Podcast. You can subscribe

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Speaker 1: and listen to the show on Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud and

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Speaker 1: on Bloomberg dot com slash podcast. I'm June Brosso. This

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Speaker 1: is Bloomberg yea