The NPR Politics Podcast - Supreme Court Curbs Environmental Protection Agency's Power To Protect Environment

Episode Date: June 30, 2022

The Supreme Court limited the ways in which the EPA could regulate greenhouse gas pollution from power plants, jeopardizing President Biden's goal for an emissions-free power sector by 2035.And the high court sided with the Biden administration in a case concerning the White House's decision to end the so-called "Remain in Mexico" policy. The Trump-era policy had required asylum seekers to either be detained in the U.S. or sent to Mexico where while they wait for months or years to have their asylum claims reviewed. Now, Biden will be allowed to end the policy.This episode: White House correspondent Scott Detrow, national political correspondent Mara Liasson, climate reporter Laura Benshoff, and immigration reporter Joel Rose.Support the show and unlock sponsor-free listening with a subscription to The NPR Politics Podcast Plus. Learn more at plus.npr.org/politics Connect:Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Find and support your local public radio station.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hi, this is Julia, and I am at the Temple of Apollo in Delphi, where ancient Greek politicians used to come to consult the Oracle. This podcast was recorded at... And podcasts were just people yelling in the square. It is two o'clock Eastern on Thursday, June 30th. Things may have changed by the time you hear it. But here's the show. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover the White House. I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. And the Supreme Court issued its final two opinions of the term today,

two big ones that we are going to talk about. One has to do with immigration, the other climate. And we will start with climate. Laura Benchoff is from NPR's climate team and has been covering this. Hey, Laura. Hey there. Laura, in short, the court put major limits on how the EPA can regulate greenhouse gases coming from power plants. What do we need to know about this ruling? You know, the conservative majority here was looking at the Obama administration's clean power plan, which had tried to do something pretty sweeping and had tried to put state level caps on how much carbon dioxide emissions, how much greenhouse gas emissions could come from power plants. And this report said that was too broad.

That essentially touched on this question that they like to bring up when they see an agency doing something they don't like called the major questions doctrine. And they said, by putting this cap, you're encouraging the power generation sector to switch from burning coal to burning natural gas or even renewables, and you don't have that authority EPA, you don't get to pick winners and losers between different forms of power generation. So, you know, they have some power going forward to continue to regulate the pollutants that they can regulate. And one of them is carbon dioxide from power plants, but they can't do it in the way that they, the Obama administration had tried to. Let's briefly touch on a weird factor here that this was a ruling all about a rule that never went into effect and was in fact

withdrawn years ago. So how does this apply to what the Biden administration is trying to do going forward? Because again, this is largely about an Obama era rule. This was not a rule that Biden was trying to put in place. Right. And the fact that the Supreme Court even took it up when it wasn't in effect and when the Biden administration said, look, we're not going to rely on that at all, they made that clear, was what I think gave a lot of environmental activists

and climate activists pause. It's like, well, why are they looking at this if it's not live right now? If that's the mystery, this isn't just confined to greenhouse gases out of power plants. This is a way that the Supreme Court can further its overarching project, the conservatives on the Supreme Court can further their overarching project of dismantling the administrative state. I mean, there's one project,

a short term one, Biden wants to do something about climate change. But the longer term goal of Neil Gorsuch and others on the court is to dismantle the regulatory state, to make it almost impossible for administration agencies, who they consider to be unelected, to regulate almost anything that corporations don't want regulated. for the various ways that Biden has been trying to reach that ambitious goal of major cuts in greenhouse gas emissions over the next decade. I mean, we've spent so much attention on the fact that the big legislative aims of that have been stalled in Congress. What else has the administration been doing? And how much will this hurt those efforts? I mean, the administration has been trying to rely on regulation regulation because Congress hasn't acted. And so, you know, this was a major tool. The Clean Air Act is one of the most powerful, you know, anti-pollution and climate change by default legislation that's out there, even though it is decades old and wasn't intended to be used this way.

And it really limits the power that the EPA will have to try to direct power plants to emit less. It didn't strip it away entirely, though, and I think some people were expecting this to be a lot worse, that there could be more explicit limits put on the power that the EPA has to change how electricity is generated. But what this does is it says you can't do it the way the Obama administration tried, but we're not going to give you a lot of indication about what else we don't want to see. You know, they left the door open to cap and trade. They left the door open to regulating carbon

dioxide directly from individual power plants. You know, they gave the EPA some options. They have a menu of things to choose from, but they're not quite sure where the line is. And so I think it just means agencies going forward are going to have to be pretty conservative in how they read the statutes that they're relying on if they want to get something that'll hold up in front of this court. Yeah. And what's interesting to me is if, as we all learned in high school and college about the titanic struggle in American history between the government, which is supposed to represent the people, and corporations, which represent their profit incentives. We have seen almost a total swing back, you know, from the kind of height of the New Deal to now a real pro-corporate agenda, and the Supreme Court is leading that. And it's going to be very hard, I think, for

Democratic administrations to regulate almost anything that private industry does. And as we have underscored, in many different ways over the past week, this 6-3 majority shows no signs of eroding anytime soon and shows no signs of slowing down the momentum it has picked up in carrying that out. And you know, this is the hardest decision to understand because it's technical. It's about the EPA. But if you look at where the Supreme Court is on guns, climate, and abortion, and where the majority public opinion is on those issues, the Supreme Court is at odds with majority public opinion, especially on abortion. Second,

I would say guns. So this is one of those, there have been other periods of American history where the Supreme Court is at odds with public opinion. And we don't know exactly where that's going to lead. But when we get some polling after this court session is over, of how people think about the court, I think the court's image in Americans' minds is going to really have suffered. So Laura, you know, as we've talked a lot about, Biden made enormous promises on the climate front. He has had more roadblocks than I think he envisioned. But in his statement today decrying this ruling, argued his administration is still going to do everything it can to lower greenhouse gas emissions. That's something we will keep talking to you about. And I appreciate you joining us today. Yep, I will be following along. Thank

you for having me. All right, time for a quick break. When we come back, even in this climate, the Supreme Court gave the Biden administration a win in a ruling on immigration. We'll talk about that in a moment. And now we're back with Joel Rose rose who reports on immigration for npr hey joel hey scott so this is the other big ruling today the the court handed the biden administration a victory of sorts allowing it to rescind the trump era remain in mexico policy it was a 5-4 ruling with an interesting combination of five justices. You had Chief Justice John Roberts writing the opinion, joined by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, and the court's three liberal justices. So before we get into the ruling, remind us what the Remain in Mexico policy was. Sure. This policy, officially known as the Migrant Protection Protocols, but more widely known as Remain in Mexico,

forced migrants to wait outside of the U.S. for their hearings in U.S. immigration courts. It was created by the Trump administration. An immigrant advocate said from the beginning that the policy was going to put many of those migrants and asylum seekers in danger in these border towns and squalid camps. President Biden on the campaign trail called the policy inhumane. His administration tried very quickly to end Remain in Mexico, but the states of Texas and Missouri sued. They blocked that from happening. With a record number of border apprehensions last year, the states argued that the policy was important and necessary to deter migrants from coming. And a judge sided with the states

and ordered the administration to reinstate the policy. So what did today's ruling say? The majority really rejected the argument that was put forward by the states of Texas and Missouri. They tried to argue that the Biden administration had only two choices under immigration law, that it either has to detain migrants who cross the border illegally, or if there's not enough detention capacity to detain them all, which, you know, there isn't, then the administration had to return at least some of them to Mexico. And the Biden administration pushed back on that. They said no administration had ever interpreted immigration law that way, not even the Trump administration. And, you know,

the majority here rejected that argument. They sided with the Biden administration. They said the administration has discretion to set its own policies, particularly with regard to foreign policy and relations with Mexico, right, which were implicated in this policy. So, Mara, to put it mildly, immigration is a hot button political issue. to do a few things to fully get rid of all of the Trump era policies that angered so many Democrats and also to deal with an increase in the number of migrants looking to enter the country. What do you think this means for the administration? And are there any possible political downsides of this ruling? I don't really see how this ruling changes the big political picture for this issue. Immigration is an issue that the

Republicans are using pretty effectively against the Biden administration. They're saying he has an open border policy, which isn't true. But as you said, what the Biden administration wanted to do was to have a humane policy on the border while also somehow stopping a huge influx of migrants coming over. So they wanted to break with the Trump administration, but they still wanted to have an orderly border process and asylum process. And in a perfect world, they would have liked to have passed comprehensive immigration reform, or at least continue protection for people who were brought here as minors, the DACA kids. But I don't really see how this changes things for Biden, as long as there are huge numbers of people coming over.

And I think as Joel can explain to us, all the push and pull factors are still there. I don't think this ruling changes that. Immigration is still an issue that in this midterm cycle is a negative for the Democrats. And Joel, you know, as just a reminder, there was that horrible news a few days ago out of San Antonio of more than 50 people dying in the back of a tractor trailer as they tried to migrate to the U.S. Do you have any sense, generally speaking, big policy like changes like this, does that make a difference in terms of the raw numbers of people that we see try to get into the country? Well, first of all, I mean, that tragedy in San Antonio, sadly, you know, it's not the first incident like this that we've seen involving tractor trailers, although the number of fatalities in this case is kind of more than we've seen in previous cases. Yeah, and I think it just has added fuel to the political fires on this issue. You know, Texas Governor Greg Abbott, for example, was very quick to tweet that those deaths are on President Biden, arguing that rolling back policies like Remain in Mexico,

you know, he's encouraged migrants to make this dangerous journey. Immigrant advocates dispute that and say, you know, if the border were truly open, as Abbott contends, why would anyone pay thousands of dollars and risk their life to get into the U.S. in the back of a tractor trailer? So, yeah, but I mean, this, you know, this event in San Antonio, I don't think is leading to any sort of cooler conversation about immigration. And I don't think that the remain in Mexico ruling, you know, as Mara alluded to before, I don't think it makes a huge difference on the ground. I mean, for a couple of reasons. One, the reinstated version of Remain in Mexico is pretty small. The Biden administration has enrolled several thousand people in it, but that's nothing like the 70,000 that the Trump administration enrolled in the first edition of Remain in Mexico. So the numbers are small. And just sort of more broadly, you know, the dynamics at the border are really not going to change that much. You've still got Title 42, which is this public health order that allows immigration authorities to quickly expel migrants. That's still in place. and COVID disruptions in economies in Central America and increasingly, you know, beyond in places like Venezuela and Nicaragua, Cuba, you know, none of that is going to be affected

dramatically, I don't think, by this remain in Mexico ruling. That's a good point to end on. I mean, Title 42 has gotten so much attention, you know, even as the Biden administration acts in all other ways, like it's back to normal life when it comes to the pandemic, it has not tried to remove that restriction, which was pandemic related. That's right. That's right. You know, and immigrant advocates would like to see the Biden administration go fight harder in court to end Title 42 than they have. You know, I guess this ruling might give some optimism to immigrant advocates that it could provide sort of a legal rationale for the administration to go fight some of the other cases brought by Texas and other states

that are trying to limit the Biden administration's immigration policies. But the legal experts I'm talking to today don't seem convinced that this Supreme Court ruling has a lot of legs in that area. All right. Well, we have certainly talked a lot about the U.S. Supreme Court on the podcast lately. I should note in the end that Judge Katonji Brown-Jackson is now Justice Katonji Brown-Jackson. She was sworn in today when the term ended and Breyer's retirement became effective. Joel, thanks for joining us. Oh, you're welcome. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover the White House.

I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. Thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.