Trump administration proposes to scale back environmental law News
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Trump administration proposes to scale back environmental law

The Trump administration on Thursday proposed scaling back an environmental law to reduce the time it takes to assess the environmental impact of major federal projects. The proposed rules would alter the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), which requires federal agencies to both assess public opinion in regards to major projects and assess the environmental impact of these projects.

In his press conference describing the proposed changes to the NEPA, President Donald Trump indicated, “We will not stop until our nation’s gleaming new infrastructure has made America the envy of the world again. It used to be the envy of the world and now we’re like a third-world country. It’s really sad.”

The proposed changes to the NEPA could have long-lasting effects on what constitutes a major federal action. This new interpretation could potentially make it easier to construct pipelines, which have been strongly opposed by environmental activists in the past. In addition, this new proposal would not only set deadlines and page limits for environmental reviews but also ensure that such reviews are complete within 2 years. As the current law stands, it takes three times as long to determine the environmental impact major potential projects have and these statements span hundreds of pages. Further, the new proposed rules would not analyze the entirety of the environmental impact a project may possess. The rules state, “effects should not be considered significant if they are remote in time. Geographically remote, or the product of a lengthy causal chain.”

If these proposed changes to the NEPA become law, many projects that are environmentally detrimental would not be subject to federal review.

THIS DAY @ LAW

Bank of England granted political independence

On May 6, 1997, British Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown announced that the Bank of England would be granted political independence for the first time in the three-hundred year history of the Bank. This policy was statutized in the subsequent Bank of England Act of 1998 gave the Bank independent control of British monetary policy effective June 1, 1998. Read the Bank of England Act of 1998.

Chinese Exclusion Act barred Chinese laborers from US

On May 6, 1882, President Chester A. Arthur signed the Chinese Exclusion Act, barring Chinese laborers from entering the United States and prohibiting courts from bestowing US citizenship on Chinese. Connecticut Senator Joseph Hawley spoke out against the Act in these words: Let the proposed statue be read 100 years hence, dug out of the dust of ages and forgotten as it will be except for a line of sneer by some historian, and ask the young man not well read in the history of this country what was the reason for excluding these men and he would not be able to find it in the law. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and its successors were abolished in 1943 at the insistence of President Franklin Roosevelt.