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Yahoo
30-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
100 days in, California is suing Trump at almost double the pace of his first term
This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters. In its first hundred days, through a series of executive orders, the Trump administration has reimagined this country's social contract with its citizens. The administration pledges more opportunities and fewer guarantees, less forgiveness and more consequences. Its 139 executive orders issued since Jan. 20 form an outline of American life as imagined by its most conservative residents, concentrating power in a unitary executive who can force changes as transformative as the New Deal. The deluge means California, usually the state suing to advance a progressive agenda, now finds itself fighting in court to preserve the status quo – playing defense, not offense. Instead of arguing for higher vehicle emissions standards or broadening the definition of a waterway, the state has filed or joined 16 lawsuits against the Trump administration since Jan. 20 on issues ranging from preserving birthright citizenship to restoring billions of dollars in health and medical grants. That effort continued on Tuesday with a lawsuit challenging the Trump administration's extensive cuts to AmeriCorps. 'We've had plenty of instances of California needing to play defense, going back to the Reagan administration,' said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the UC Berkeley School of Law. 'I think what's different from the first term is qualitatively, how much of a disregard they have for the Constitution and the law.' Attorney General Rob Bonta, who took office in 2021, said the difference between the first and second Trump administrations has been the speed and pure number of executive orders filed early in his tenure. 'The comparison with Trump 1.0 shows that it is high volume, high speed (this time),' Bonta said. 'We've brought a lawsuit more than once a week in the first hundred days, and during Trump 1.0 there were about 120 lawsuits over four years. 'We're gonna hit around 100 at this rate in two years, so it's almost double the pace.' States and organizations challenging Trump in his first term won close to 70% of their legal battles, albeit a number of them were abandoned when Trump left office in 2021. That encompassed 123 lawsuits over four years, at a cost of about $10 million per year. This time around, state legislators set aside $50 million to cover the state's legal bills. Bonta said he expects the pace of the lawsuits to continue. 'Any time and every time the Trump administration breaks the law, we will take them to court,' Bonta said. 'It's very not normal and also not acceptable that we have an administration that so blatantly, brazenly, frequently and consistently breaks the law.' The verbs used in the executive orders promise to 'unleash,' 'restore' and 'reform' various elements of American life, from oil and gas rights to dominion over the ocean. One order targets 'the Obama-Biden war on showers.' But the most far-reaching executive orders are the ones in California's sights, including tariffs, birthright citizenship and voting rights. Those at the forefront of conservative legal theory find the executive orders to be a vindication of a textualist, originalist read of the Constitution and an end to the 'administrative state' in which regulators and bureaucrats are politically and legally insulated from the decisions they make. One of the earliest defenses of the Trump administration's legal strategy was delivered by Catholic University of America law professor J. Joel Alicea at the conservative Heritage Foundation's Edwin Meese III Originalism Lecture in March. 'Over the last three months, we have seen President Trump directly challenge the delegation of power by Congress to administrative agencies and the insulation of power from presidential supervision,' Alicea said. 'Contrary to the press's depiction of such actions, they are hopeful developments for the rule of law.' The stakes are high, Alicea said, and the opportunity for constitutional originalists is now, after more than a century of progressivism. 'It required two progressive presidents of extraordinary determination and political skill — Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Delano Roosevelt — to create the administrative state and impose a progressive constitutional and political theory on our structure of government,' Alicea said. 'It stands to reason that it will require another president of extraordinary determination and political skill to undo what his predecessors accomplished.' The presidential administration California is fighting is not the one the state's lawyers first faced off with in 2017. This time, the Trump administration came better prepared, worked faster and had a more concrete vision for a legal framework, Chemerinsky said. 'I think that they were so much better prepared,' Chemerinsky said. 'And they really had the flood-the-zone mentality.' The difference between the first and second Trump administration's legal strategy is the 2025 version's contempt for due process and the rule of law, Chemerinsky said. 'He didn't try to end birthright citizenship in his first term,' Chemerinsky said. 'He didn't try to put people in a prison in El Salvador in his first term, he didn't claim the ability to refuse to spend money appropriated by federal statute in his first term, he didn't claim that he could fire anyone in the executive branch, even if there's a statute limiting it. 'He's taking executive power so much further than the first term, than any president ever has.' In its lawsuit against the Trump administration over its order that voters provide proof of citizenship, California's attorneys alleged that the executive order interferes with the state's right to govern itself and usurps Congress's power to legislate. 'It bears emphasizing: the President has no power to do any of this,' the lawsuit asserts. 'Neither the Constitution nor Congress has authorized the President to impose documentary proof of citizenship requirements or to modify State mail-ballot procedures.' Much of the fight over that order and the others challenged by California will take place under the shadow of a U.S. Supreme Court that has consistently voted 6-3 to uphold elements of the Trump agenda. 'I think that the (Supreme Court) ultimately is gonna rule in favor of Trump's ability to fire members of agencies,' Chemerinsky said. 'I think that there's others that Trump has done, like end birthright citizenship, put people in prison in El Salvador, where I don't think he's likely to succeed.' Chemerinsky said he's not sure where the Supreme Court could or would draw a line in the sand. 'I would've thought the line would be taking people, putting them in El Salvador and claiming that no court could provide release,' Chemerinsky said. 'I still think that's going to be the red line, but I don't think it's gonna be unanimous.' This article originally appeared on Palm Springs Desert Sun: California versus Trump administration
Yahoo
24-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Inside the Fight Over Trump's Foreign Policy
This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. If there's one thing people thought they knew about Donald Trump's second term, it was that he would take the fight to Iran. 'The Iran Deal was one of the worst and most one-sided transactions the United States has ever entered into,' he declared seven years ago, when he pulled America out of the nuclear accord and reimposed crippling sanctions on the regime. Less than two years later, Trump ordered the killing of Iran's top general, Qassem Soleimani. In return, Iran allegedly targeted former Trump officials and Trump himself for assassination. On the 2024 campaign trail, Trump and his allies argued that his 'maximum pressure' approach to Iran had prevented war in the Middle East, whereas sanctions relief provided by Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden had enabled the regime to flood its proxies with cash, leading to the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel. And yet, Trump has spent the past few months making nice with Iran. Although he has repeatedly threatened the country with military strikes, the president has made clear that he prefers to resolve differences diplomatically, and in the past month, the two sides have engaged in talks aimed at hammering out a new nuclear deal that appears similar to the original one. The approach has drawn unexpected praise from former Obama-Biden officials and alarm from many conservatives. 'This new deal will preserve Iran's latent nuclear weapons capabilities—centrifuges, scientific expertise, and unmonitored sites,' facilitating 'a simple reconstitution in the future,' warned the pro-Trump Middle East analyst Michael Doran, dubbing the proposed arrangement a return to 'Obamaland.' This turnaround is the product of a struggle for control over the administration's foreign policy that has been unfolding behind closed doors. Today, many of the big names who set the agenda for Trump's first term—his son-in-law Jared Kushner, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley, Director of Policy Planning Brian Hook, Middle East Envoy Jason Greenblatt, Israel Ambassador David Friedman—are conspicuously absent. Some have even had their security details revoked. Staffers who worked under them and elsewhere in the previous Trump administration have been kept out of the current administration; some Trump 1.0 staffers who made it in were fired. The reason for this shake-up is simple: In 2016, Trump didn't expect to win, wasn't prepared to govern, and didn't have a universe of professionals around him waiting to take power. This void allowed a small group of individuals in the president's orbit—some from the Republican establishment and others from Trump's personal life—to exercise outsize influence over his policy, including in the Middle East. They helped Trump make moves that upended the region, such as the Abraham Accords and the Soleimani assassination. In 2025, however, Trump entered office with a retinue of staffers divided into competing camps, each pulling the president's policy in different directions. These players include Middle East Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, Trump's personal Swiss Army knife, who has been dispatched to resolve conflicts in Ukraine, Gaza, and Iran. A real-estate developer with no diplomatic experience, Witkoff nonetheless holds the key to credibility with foreign leaders: the trust of his friend, the president. Adam Boehler, the administration's special envoy for hostage response, has also been elevated in authority. He recently negotiated directly with Hamas, a dramatic break with past U.S. policy that alarmed Israel, in an abortive attempt to free the American hostage Edan Alexander. These men operate independently, largely on the instructions of the president. At the same time, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, National Security Adviser Michael Waltz, and the Witkoff deputy Morgan Ortagus have represented traditional Republican foreign-policy priorities. They are deeply suspicious of the Iranian theocracy and its proxies, and inclined to amp up the pressure on them. These figures have been opposed by neo-isolationists within the administration, led by Vice President J. D. Vance, who seek American retrenchment from world affairs following decades of military misadventures overseas. Vance's internal allies in this endeavor include Donald Trump Jr. and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. Externally, Vance has been boosted by an array of far-right influencers, including the top conservative talker Tucker Carlson, who has sought to realign America against its traditional European allies and toward Vladimir Putin's Russia, and whose conspiratorial harangues against 'warmongers' and 'neocons' have shaded into coded attempts to blame Jewish actors for subverting the country against its national interest. Publicly, the administration's officials maintain the appearance of complete alignment on foreign policy. Privately, it is another story entirely. The Trump team's stark divides were evident in the Signal chat that inadvertently included The Atlantic's editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, in which Vance vocally opposed Trump-ordered air strikes on Yemen's Houthis, claiming that the group's attacks on international shipping should be Europe's problem. Indeed, once one understands that a subterranean struggle for influence is taking place within the Trump administration, many other odd developments begin to make more sense. On April 14, Witkoff told Fox News that the goal of his negotiations with Iran was to compel it to cap—but not eliminate—its enrichment of nuclear material, a position in line with the old Obama-era deal. One day later, however, he backtracked on social media, writing that Iran must 'eliminate its nuclear enrichment and weaponization program'—only to seemingly return to the more lenient position during this past Saturday's talks with Iran. These fluctuations reflect fundamental differences of opinion within the White House. The disagreements have spilled out onto Capitol Hill. Last month, when a group of Republican senators criticized Vance over his apparent reluctance to confront the Houthis, the vice president referred reporters to Donald Trump Jr., who retorted in a statement, 'These seven cowardly neocons attacking JD anonymously are genuine pussies.' This bizarre deployment of the president's son by Vance against GOP members of Congress seems somewhat less bizarre when one grasps that the two men are allied on foreign policy against the Republican establishment. The same dynamic also explains why former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has repeatedly voted against Trump's neo-isolationist nominees. Other fights over personnel have taken on an ideological valence. Last week, the Pentagon fired several top aides to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Subsequent reporting indicated that the three men, rather than having been removed over policy considerations, might be casualties of a leak investigation and internal rivalries in a chaotic Defense Department. (The three have denied wrongdoing.) But that didn't stop Carlson from interviewing one of them, Dan Caldwell, a longtime friend and colleague of Hegseth's, and dubiously insinuating that Caldwell had been fired due to a sinister 'warmonger' scheme to ignite conflict with Iran. The White House's factional infighting might seem dysfunctional, but it is actually quite normal. Most administrations are composed of competing camps attempting to persuade the president to steer the ship of state in their preferred direction. It was the concentration of power in the hands of a small number of like-minded individuals during the first Trump administration that was unusual—and unsustainable. Once people recognized that Trump was not a fluke but a force, they enlisted in his campaign in order to gain influence and power in any future administration. Now they are cashing in, sidelining previous Trump allies, altering past Trump policies, and attempting to turn the MAGA movement into a vehicle for advancing their own ideas. Related: Iran wants to talk. Iran's negotiating position gets worse and worse. Here are four new stories from The Atlantic: Tesla's remarkably bad quarter is even worse than it looks. Tim Walz is running for something. Trump's plan to sell out Ukraine to Russia The David Frum Show: The crises of due process Today's News President Donald Trump and Vice President J. D. Vance called for Ukraine to accept a cease-fire plan that strongly favors Russia's interests. The National Institutes of Health will draw from Americans' private health records as part of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s initiative to study autism. Elon Musk told Tesla investors yesterday that he will take a major step back from running DOGE next month and refocus on Tesla. The company's first-quarter earnings report for 2025 shows that profits dropped 71 percent from the same time last year. Evening Read Ryan Coogler Didn't Want to Hide Anymore By David Sims Sinners is Coogler's first entirely original work—a strange, heady piece of horror set in the Jim Crow Deep South over the course of a single evening. A pair of identical twins (both played by Michael B. Jordan) have returned home after years spent fighting in the German trenches and bootlegging in Chicago, only to be pitted against a coven of vampires. The film reimagines the time period as something seductively magical: when the blues that emerged from the Mississippi Delta was so culturally potent that it could even attract the attention of the undead. Read the full article. More From The Atlantic Why has America ignored its best addiction treatment? Trump is vulnerable on immigration. They dreamed of Hitler. The Supreme Court has no army. Progressive Christianity's bleak future Culture Break Read. Why do novelists love to imagine great historical figures as detectives? Talya Zax writes about how these murder-solving characters let readers glimpse the minds of geniuses. Take a sip. Organ meat is in some smoothies now. Here's how offal became a trendy food—in grocery stores and online, Valerie Trapp writes. Play our daily crossword. Stephanie Bai contributed to this newsletter. Explore all of our newsletters here. When you buy a book using a link in this newsletter, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting The Atlantic. Article originally published at The Atlantic
Atlantic
23-04-2025
- Politics
- Atlantic
Inside the Fight Over Trump's Foreign Policy
This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. If there's one thing people thought they knew about Donald Trump's second term, it was that he would take the fight to Iran. 'The Iran Deal was one of the worst and most one-sided transactions the United States has ever entered into,' he declared seven years ago, when he pulled America out of the nuclear accord and reimposed crippling sanctions on the regime. Less than two years later, Trump ordered the killing of Iran's top general, Qassem Soleimani. In return, Iran allegedly targeted former Trump officials and Trump himself for assassination. On the 2024 campaign trail, Trump and his allies argued that his 'maximum pressure' approach to Iran had prevented war in the Middle East, whereas sanctions relief provided by Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden had enabled the regime to flood its proxies with cash, leading to the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel. And yet, Trump has spent the past few months making nice with Iran. Although he has repeatedly threatened the country with military strikes, the president has made clear that he prefers to resolve differences diplomatically, and in the past month, the two sides have engaged in talks aimed at hammering out a new nuclear deal that appears similar to the original one. The approach has drawn unexpected praise from former Obama-Biden officials and alarm from many conservatives. 'This new deal will preserve Iran's latent nuclear weapons capabilities—centrifuges, scientific expertise, and unmonitored sites,' facilitating 'a simple reconstitution in the future,' warned the pro-Trump Middle East analyst Michael Doran, dubbing the proposed arrangement a return to 'Obamaland.' This turnaround is the product of a struggle for control over the administration's foreign policy that has been unfolding behind closed doors. Today, many of the big names who set the agenda for Trump's first term—his son-in-law Jared Kushner, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley, Director of Policy Planning Brian Hook, Middle East Envoy Jason Greenblatt, Israel Ambassador David Friedman—are conspicuously absent. Some have even had their security details revoked. Staffers who worked under them and elsewhere in the previous Trump administration have been kept out of the current administration; some Trump 1.0 staffers who made it in were fired. The reason for this shake-up is simple: In 2016, Trump didn't expect to win, wasn't prepared to govern, and didn't have a universe of professionals around him waiting to take power. This void allowed a small group of individuals in the president's orbit—some from the Republican establishment and others from Trump's personal life—to exercise outsize influence over his policy, including in the Middle East. They helped Trump make moves that upended the region, such as the Abraham Accords and the Soleimani assassination. In 2025, however, Trump entered office with a retinue of staffers divided into competing camps, each pulling the president's policy in different directions. These players include Middle East Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, Trump's personal Swiss Army knife, who has been dispatched to resolve conflicts in Ukraine, Gaza, and Iran. A real-estate developer with no diplomatic experience, Witkoff nonetheless holds the key to credibility with foreign leaders: the trust of his friend, the president. Adam Boehler, the administration's special envoy for hostage response, has also been elevated in authority. He recently negotiated directly with Hamas, a dramatic break with past U.S. policy that alarmed Israel, in an abortive attempt to free the American hostage Edan Alexander. These men operate independently, largely on the instructions of the president. At the same time, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, National Security Adviser Michael Waltz, and the Witkoff deputy Morgan Ortagus have represented traditional Republican foreign-policy priorities. They are deeply suspicious of the Iranian theocracy and its proxies, and inclined to amp up the pressure on them. These figures have been opposed by neo-isolationists within the administration, led by Vice President J. D. Vance, who seek American retrenchment from world affairs following decades of military misadventures overseas. Vance's internal allies in this endeavor include Donald Trump Jr. and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. Externally, Vance has been boosted by an array of far-right influencers, including the top conservative talker Tucker Carlson, who has sought to realign America against its traditional European allies and toward Vladimir Putin's Russia, and whose conspiratorial harangues against 'warmongers' and 'neocons' have shaded into coded attempts to blame Jewish actors for subverting the country against its national interest. Publicly, the administration's officials maintain the appearance of complete alignment on foreign policy. Privately, it is another story entirely. The Trump team's stark divides were evident in the Signal chat that inadvertently included The Atlantic 's editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, in which Vance vocally opposed Trump-ordered air strikes on Yemen's Houthis, claiming that the group's attacks on international shipping should be Europe's problem. Indeed, once one understands that a subterranean struggle for influence is taking place within the Trump administration, many other odd developments begin to make more sense. On April 14, Witkoff told Fox News that the goal of his negotiations with Iran was to compel it to cap—but not eliminate—its enrichment of nuclear material, a position in line with the old Obama-era deal. One day later, however, he backtracked on social media, writing that Iran must 'eliminate its nuclear enrichment and weaponization program'—only to seemingly return to the more lenient position during this past Saturday's talks with Iran. These fluctuations reflect fundamental differences of opinion within the White House. The disagreements have spilled out onto Capitol Hill. Last month, when a group of Republican senators criticized Vance over his apparent reluctance to confront the Houthis, the vice president referred reporters to Donald Trump Jr., who retorted in a statement, 'These seven cowardly neocons attacking JD anonymously are genuine pussies.' This bizarre deployment of the president's son by Vance against GOP members of Congress seems somewhat less bizarre when one grasps that the two men are allied on foreign policy against the Republican establishment. The same dynamic also explains why former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has repeatedly voted against Trump's neo-isolationist nominees. Other fights over personnel have taken on an ideological valence. Last week, the Pentagon fired several top aides to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Subsequent reporting indicated that the three men, rather than having been removed over policy considerations, might be casualties of a leak investigation and internal rivalries in a chaotic Defense Department. (The three have denied wrongdoing.) But that didn't stop Carlson from interviewing one of them, Dan Caldwell, a longtime friend and colleague of Hegseth's, and dubiously insinuating that Caldwell had been fired due to a sinister 'warmonger' scheme to ignite conflict with Iran. The White House's factional infighting might seem dysfunctional, but it is actually quite normal. Most administrations are composed of competing camps attempting to persuade the president to steer the ship of state in their preferred direction. It was the concentration of power in the hands of a small number of like-minded individuals during the first Trump administration that was unusual—and unsustainable. Once people recognized that Trump was not a fluke but a force, they enlisted in his campaign in order to gain influence and power in any future administration. Now they are cashing in, sidelining previous Trump allies, altering past Trump policies, and attempting to turn the MAGA movement into a vehicle for advancing their own ideas. Here are four new stories from The Atlantic: Today's News President Donald Trump and Vice President J. D. Vance called for Ukraine to accept a cease-fire plan that strongly favors Russia's interests. The National Institutes of Health will draw from Americans' private health records as part of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s initiative to study autism. Elon Musk told Tesla investors yesterday that he will take a major step back from running DOGE next month and refocus on Tesla. The company's first-quarter earnings report for 2025 shows that profits dropped 71 percent from the same time last year. Evening Read Ryan Coogler Didn't Want to Hide Anymore By David Sims Sinners is Coogler's first entirely original work—a strange, heady piece of horror set in the Jim Crow Deep South over the course of a single evening. A pair of identical twins (both played by Michael B. Jordan) have returned home after years spent fighting in the German trenches and bootlegging in Chicago, only to be pitted against a coven of vampires. The film reimagines the time period as something seductively magical: when the blues that emerged from the Mississippi Delta was so culturally potent that it could even attract the attention of the undead. More From The Atlantic Culture Break Read. Why do novelists love to imagine great historical figures as detectives? Talya Zax writes about how these murder-solving characters let readers glimpse the minds of geniuses. Take a sip. Organ meat is in some smoothies now. Here's how offal became a trendy food —in grocery stores and online, Valerie Trapp writes. Play our daily crossword. The Atlantic.
Yahoo
17-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Trump wants to make America's appliances inefficient again
President Donald Trump has a lot of problems in the bathroom, and he isn't shy about sharing them. Faucets? 'You want to wash your hands. You turn on the water and it goes drip, drip. The soap, you can't get it off your hand.' Toilets? 'People are flushing toilets 10 times, 15 times, as opposed to once.' Showers? 'I have to stand under the shower for 15 minutes till [my hair] gets wet. It comes out drip, drip, drip. It's ridiculous.' Trump may be the most powerful man in the world, but his every visit to the loo is apparently an exercise in disappointment and frustration. So in between attacking America's universities and sending people to be tortured in a Salvadoran prison, Trump has addressed this urgent bathroom crisis with bold action. He signed an executive order last week 'to end the Obama-Biden war on water pressure and make America's showers great again,' with this inspiring promise: 'No longer will showerheads be weak and worthless.' In this Passover season, Americans can rejoice, because, like the Jews arriving in the Promised Land after wandering the Sinai for 40 years, we will at last be delivered from our exile in the parched low-flow desert. Trump is right about one thing: There were laws and regulations passed under previous administrations concerning the amount of water used by showers and toilets. Where he goes wrong is his believing this has made things worse. To the contrary, these kinds of regulations have spurred private-sector innovation and left consumers, and the country, much better off. Consider the toilet. Back in 1992, President George H.W. Bush signed a law that, in addition to mandating that most faucets flow at less than 2.2 gallons per minute, mandated that toilets use just 1.6 gallons of water per flush. That was a reduction from the 3.5 gallons that most toilets used then. For a time, manufacturers simply reduced the amount of water in toilets but didn't alter their basic design, which did indeed make them work poorly. This period three decades ago appears to be where the president's memory is stuck. Faced with dissatisfaction from consumers, the manufacturers updated their designs, and today's toilets not only use less water (some less than 1 gallon per flush), but they also work better than the old water-hungry ones did. If you replaced an old toilet in the last few years, you were probably amazed at how much more effectively even modestly priced modern toilets work, even as they use less water. The result of the law was better toilets, happier consumers and significantly less water used — a win for everyone. It's exactly what government regulation of consumer products is supposed to accomplish. Or think of another recent home product about which we had a political conflict: incandescent lights. Here, too, the transition away from the old design began with a president named Bush. In 2007, George W. Bush signed a law setting new standards for light bulb efficiency; by the time it took effect under President Barack Obama, Republicans were incandescent with rage over this supposed assault on our freedom. Rep. Michele Bachmann — the Marjorie Taylor Greene of her day — made preserving inefficient incandescents her personal crusade, claiming that Democrats and 'globalists' were robbing us of our God-given light bulb liberty. Running for the 2012 GOP presidential nomination, she vowed that 'President Bachmann will allow you to buy any light bulb you want.' And what happened? We transitioned fairly quickly from incandescents to compact fluorescents (one day you'll tell your grandkids about those funny spiral bulbs) and then to the now-ubiquitous LEDs. Prices steadily dropped, and today there are more choices on the market than anyone could need; the 'LED bulbs' section of the Home Depot website lists 2,459 products. Here, too, Trump is living in the past: In his first term he complained that LED lighting 'doesn't make you look as good,' and 'being a vain person that's very important to me.' But in fact, this was another case study in successful regulation: The government set a rule, the market responded, and now we're all better off. We use less electricity for lighting, which saves us all money and reduces climate emissions from generating power. Today's bulbs are affordable and perform well, and there are more to choose from than ever before. As for the showerheads that give Trump so much trouble, those, too, have come a long way; there are innumerable ones on the market that use less water but provide the strong pressure the president says he yearns for. I recently bought a $17 showerhead that could strip the paint off a car fender. The Environmental Protection Agency even has a labeling program called WaterSense that can help you find efficient, high-performing models. It's fine to be skeptical of government regulation of consumer products; there will be times when those regulations fail to achieve the goals that drove them or produce unintended consequences. But the story told by the rules for toilets, showers and light bulbs is one of successful cooperation between the government and industry that resulted in gains for both consumers and the planet. So if President Trump is still tormented by his bathroom, his exasperated cries echoing through the halls of Mar-a-Lago, perhaps he should have his staff update the fixtures. He'll be glad he did. This article was originally published on
Yahoo
11-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Trump signs order to 'Make Showers Great Again': What to know in Tennessee
President Trump issued an executive order targeting water pressure in America. According to the White House, Trump signed the order to "end the Obama-Biden war on water pressure and make America's showers great again." The order intends to reverse the "overregulation" of showerheads on American people. Trump intends to return to the straightforward meaning of showerhead from the 1992 energy law that mandates the production of more than 2.5 gallons of water per minute. Here's what to know about the order. Under the Obama and Biden administrations, showerheads were regulated by the amount of water discharged per minute. If a showerhead released more than 2.5 gallons of water per minute, it was outlawed under the two administrations. Under the Obama administration, these limitations were applied to showers with multiple nozzles, as the total production and not per-nozzle production. Biden returned this regulation after Trump rescinded it in his first term. Trump's executive order intends to get rid of these regulations. In his order, Trump calls the move by Obama and Biden "overly complicated" and part of a "radical green agenda that made life worse for everyday Americans." In 2023, the Biden administration proposed 30 regulations affecting refrigerators and freezers, gas stoves and furnaces, fans and blowers. The regulations were a part of Biden's goal to reduce carbon emissions. The Department of Energy announced it postponed these efforts in February. The order directs the Secretary of Energy to rescind the regulations from Obama and Biden immediately This article originally appeared on Memphis Commercial Appeal: Trump's executive order on showers: What to know in Tennessee
