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On July 27th at 1PM EST, Merlin Chowkwanyun of Toxic Docs, Chris Sellers of the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative, and Elena Saxonhouse of the Sierra Club will publicly debut a cache of internal documents from the Trump administration detailing what it did to hamper the efficacy of the Environmental Protection Agency. It’s the latest addition to a project we’re calling EDGIFOIA, an initiative of EDGI, Toxic Docs, Sierra Club, and other environmental and open government groups to pool documents from Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests over the past few years into a single, easily searchable repository. The repository includes documents revealing behind-the-scenes maneuvering of Trump’s first EPA administrator, deliberations that led to the dismantling of the Clean Power Plan, and the many firms that took advantage of the agency’s receptiveness to industry.

Thursday, the Supreme Court ruled to limit the power of the Environmental Protection Agency to carry out and enforce the Clean Air Act. In West Virginia v. EPA, it ruled that the defunct Obama Administration Clean Power Plan exceeded the powers granted by the act, arguing the agency lacked “comparative expertise” to determine how the law should be executed without clear legislation from Congress. The ruling invoked a new “major questions doctrine” that agencies lack the ability to determine “major questions” without “clear” statutory authority. The doctrine likely opens a wide array of regulatory actions–by the EPA and other federal agencies–up to legal challenge.

Photo courtesy of Unsplash.  By Kelsey Breseman EDGI’s work on environmental data justice (EDJ) examines the intersectional areas of environmental justice and data justice: what are the assumptions behind the gathering and use of data for environmental governance? Who do those assumptions empower, and who do they marginalize? Control over data, especially data that touches … Read more

By EHAC Steering Committee On June 16 and 17, 33 scholars will come together in “The Climate Crisis: Early Americanists Respond,” a workshop organized by EHAC (an EDGI working group), the McNeil Center for Early American Studies, the Early Modern Studies Institute, and the Penn Program in Environmental Humanities. Why is the Environmental Historians Action … Read more