Things You Could Have Told Me Yesterday
We're going to find out a lot of things we weren't supposed to know.
Federal court upends decades of environmental regulations
President Carter established a White House group called the Council on Environmental Quality. Its role is to issues rules and regulations to agencies of the US government regarding compliance with the National Environmental Policy Act, itself legislation that mandated environmental impact reviews when making decisions under their purview.
CEQ has been making up rules and regulations for decades. Their ability to issues rules and regulations does not stem from statute. It derives from Carter’s executive order.
Apparently, the court thinks that this is an arrogation of Congressional legislative power by the executive branch. Nothing in the NEPA confers this authority. This has continued for decades.
Watch out for the appeal to the Supreme Court.
The pendulum is starting to accelerate its swing back away from the Imperial Presidency.
Congress is getting its power back.
‘A federal appeals court determined that the White House does not have the authority to issue binding environmental regulations under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), upending several decades of the practice.
‘NEPA is a federal law that requires federal agencies to conduct a review of environmental impacts before making any decisions and then issue a "detailed statement" of the environmental review.
‘In a divided decision Tuesday, the D.C. District Court of Appeals ruled that the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), established to instruct agencies on NEPA compliance, does not have the power to issue regulations on other federal agencies as it has been for more than 40 years.’
US bank regulation under Trump: Basel in doubt, digital assets rise & consumer setbacks expected
Basel rules would have mandated higher capital requirements, tightening financial conditions permanently.
Trump is expected to reverse this momentum.
The Fed Chair will be too busy retaining his appointment to fight back on this issue.
‘“The Basel endgame rule could be completely dead,” Gene Ludwig, a former top bank regulator who advises financial institutions as CEO of Ludwig Advisors.
The article also talks about rolling back CFPB rules by using the Congressional Review Act.
Good news for financial institutions.
‘A client analysis from consulting firm PwC, said new regulatory leaders will likely impact the fate of the rule. “New agency leaders will also be able to modify or table rulemaking that has not been finalized before they take over, such as Basel III Endgame, which had a planned re-proposal that has not yet been issued and will likely go back to the drawing board for further relief.”’
Pete Hegseth Is a Disruptive Choice for Secretary of Defense. That’s a Good Thing
National Review endorses the selection of Pete Hegseth for Secretary of Defense.
If he succeeds, it may well be because young Turks within the Department surface to help him implement his agenda. He may turn out to be far more effective than his critics suggest.
‘Pete is an unconventional pick. He has spent his last few years as one of the co-hosts of Fox & Friends. As we speak, newsrooms across the country are preparing snide commentary that will highlight his time at the network rather than his time in uniform.
‘That is a mistake. Pete is a graduate of Princeton and Harvard and a combat veteran. Despite his Ivy League pedigree (the Ivies commission a pathetic number of military officers and for years banned ROTC), Pete saw the 9/11 attacks and responded by volunteering for the infantry. Anyone who knows him understands the guy has a deep and abiding love for America and her military, in particular the young men and women with steel in their hands and sand under their boots who put themselves in harm’s way in defense of the Constitution.
‘The secretary of defense role is a political appointment, and it is political in nature. To be successful is to understand politics and all the strange little levers and pulleys and gears that make Washington spin. He understands politics and has keen political instincts.
‘At 44, Pete will no doubt be accused of being too young for the role. But plenty of Americans have served well in the prime of their careers. One of our most effective service secretaries in history, John F. Lehman Jr., was only 38 when he was sworn in as secretary of the Navy under President Reagan. He went on to outfox much of the Pentagon bureaucracy who opposed him and is rightly lauded for being the architect of the 600-ship Navy.
‘There is a rot in the Pentagon that is deeply entrenched. It requires an unconventional pick, youthful energy, and a keen understanding of Congress and Washington to refocus itself back to the national defense of the United States.’
Will Trump’s antitrust enforcement return to the pre-Biden/Harris norm?
That, in itself, would be a massive boon to the private sector at every level. It is also consistent with a mercantilist tilt in favor of building concentrated national champions to dominate global markets.
‘On the enforcement front, Biden-Harris enforcers brought to trial four times as many billion-dollar merger challenges as Trump-Pence or Obama-Biden enforcers did. The Biden-Harris administration also filed two and a half times as many monopolization claims (Apple, Amazon, Meta, Live Nation/Ticketmaster, Google adtech) and won the first major monopolization claim against a Big Tech firm in a generation.’
Vivek Ramaswamy Returns to Push His Plans to Slash the Government
Ramaswamy has been thinking about the bureaucratic reform plan for years.
His opponents haven’t.
It’s almost not a fair fight. Which means that opposition to the plan is going to be entirely political. Administratively, his opponents should prepared to be run over. Instead, they discount it as unfeasible, the kind of polished bluster that is his hallmark.
Lightning strike, not trench warfare.
‘He has said the president has the power to eliminate the Department of Education, F.B.I., I.R.S., Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Day 1, by presidential fiat. And he maintains that the Supreme Court’s decision in June to sweep aside a longstanding legal precedent and reduce the regulatory power of federal agencies has given the incoming president the power to reduce regulations by more than half.
‘Beyond his assertions of power, Mr. Ramaswamy is given to citing a blizzard of federal legal codes to back his bluster.
‘For instance, he says one remote corner of federal law gives the president the power to conduct mass layoffs without regard to civil service protections. Small-scale reductions in force might run into a dizzying array of civil service protections, but by going big those can be swept away, he says. The president need only give a 60-day notice and explain the order of the firings, for instance, whether seniority or veterans’ service will grant some protection.
‘Mr. Ramaswamy particularly loves an obscure 1977 law passed by President Jimmy Carter, the Reorganization Act, which states that “the president shall from time to time examine the organization of all agencies and determine what changes are necessary to carry forth the policies in this statute.”’
How much low-hanging fruit is there?
It’s natural to be skeptical about DOGE’s future success. If they only cut $500 billion or $1 trillion in costs, they will be ridiculed as failures.
‘The new administration already has a lot of options to make the government better. In fact, it has roughly 5,372 options. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has published thousands of recommendations over the years to improve efficiency, accountability, and transparency across federal agencies. As it currently stands, more than 5,000 recommendations are currently open and 499 are priority recommendations. By the GAO’s own estimates, implementing these recommendations could save between $106 billion and $208 billion. Additionally, the inspectors general have put forward 14,000 more suggestions to boost government efficiency. DOGE should think of ways to clear this backlog of recommendations. ‘
New Senate majority leader ‘excited’ to ‘dismantle federal bureaucracy’
Contrasting the different conditions and benefits of working for the government with those in the private sector is going to be one way to sell the bureaucratic reforms.
This is going to get ugly.
‘Thune, who previously served as Senate GOP whip, also in the Fox News interview criticized teleworking feds, pointing to an April 2024 Federal News Network survey of approximately 6,300 federal employees that found only 6% work entirely in-person.
‘“If that’s true, there ought to be some real opportunities to achieve some savings, and frankly, for that matter, why do we have all these agencies and departments here in Washington, D.C.?” Thune said. “They could be other places around the country because people aren’t showing up at the office anyway.”
‘However, an Office of Management and Budget report found that, as of May 2024, 54% of federal employees worked entirely in-person.
‘Trump also has called for moving federal agencies out of Washington, D.C., and attempted to do so during his first term.’
Behind the Curtain: The wrecking-ball theory
Amidst all the skepticism about the Department of Government Efficiency, here’s one intriguing possibility.
AI and, more importantly, crowd-sourcing could be two tools to highlight the fat to cut.
Sizing the problem may not be as difficult as the nattering nabobs assume.
Then look for ask-for-forgiveness-rather-than-permission approach from the administration in execution.
‘Sources tell us Musk wants to use AI and crowd-sourcing to hunt for waste, fraud and abuse. But DOGE isn't actually a government department: We're told Musk and Ramaswamy plan to set up a nongovernmental entity to try to pull off the entrepreneurial approach to government that Trump envisions.’
Cutting bureaucrats isn’t going to meaningfully shrink the government deficit or government spending just from budget cuts.
Nobody ever said it would.
The broader objective is to reduce the footprint, the overreach.
‘The total payroll of the federal government is about $110 billion a year https://buff.ly/3CnrMCx
‘Federal government spending was $6.1 trillion https://buff.ly/3YLb0Vf
‘You cannot meaningfully shrink the federal government by firing “unelected bureaucrats”’