What to Expect in 2018 from Trump's Administration

It’s just the beginning of year 2018. Wishing everyone good health, well-being and prosperity for the new year only seems right. And now, more than ever – necessary. We all know how positive thinking can work in your favor, lets try that on saving earth. Because Trump and his Administration seem hell bent on destroying the planet we live on and removing anyone of any color from the US. Socially and environmentally and politically, here is what we can look forward to in the coming year and just how it all may affect you and yours.

The United States has long guaranteed Native Americans access to healthcare, mostly through commitments the federal government. Budget cuts would put tribal healthcare at risk, including the care received by more than 290,000 American Indians and Alaska Natives through the Medicaid expansion. As well, he calls for more than $300 million in cuts to the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Indian Affairs budget. Trump wants to cut $64 million from education, $21 million from law enforcement and public safety, $23 million from human services and $50 million from housing programs. These programs represent more than money; they’re investments with which the federal government honors its treaties with tribal nations.

Socially

The US Congress is expected to begin work soon on the $140 billion farm bill, but there are concerns that some Republican conservatives are targeting nutrition programs for cuts.

Food programs such as SNAP, WIC and school lunches - “entitlement programs”,

are a big part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s budget, and advocates fear they could become a target of Congressional “deficit hawks.”

With the recently-passed tax bill, it is projected to result in a $1.5 trillion deficit in the federal budget over the next decade. Some of the same Republicans who voted for the tax bill are now looking to cut “entitlement” programs to shrink the deficit they created. And they will turn to cutting programs like SNAP.

SNAP - the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program - and other food-assistance plans make up about 70 percent of the USDA budget. Parents working two jobs on minimum or less than minimum wage would still need assistance to feed a family of four.

It’s critical for lawmakers to understand the value of SNAP and the people the program benefits. SNAP reaches into every community in America in a fundamentally important way, not only is SNAP profoundly important to the economy and the anti-hunger effort, but a lot of the stereotypes of who it is going to and broad information on how it affects communities should be shared.

Agriculture committees have reasonably broad, bipartisan support for leaving the SNAP program largely alone but not fixing the real problems, like benefits aren’t enough to get people through the month.

The Environment

President Trump’s proposed 2,200-mile border wall, for instance, is not merely ludicrous immigration policy and a massive waste of taxpayer money, it also shows profound disregard for the sovereign rights of Native Americans. Locally, Trump proposes to cut Superfund program by 30% sites are a worry to many, especially in the North Country with General Motors site.

Nationally - environmental groups say they’re bracing for another year of rollbacks of protections for public land, water and air in 2018, based on President Donald Trump’s first year in office. Trump also backed the U.S. out of the Paris Climate Accord, and shrank two national monuments - with eight more under review.

In South Carolina business groups are among many political and environmental groups speaking out against a new proposal to open up the majority of the Atlantic Coast to oil and gas leasing. The Trump administration released a draft five-year plan for offshore oil and gas leasing in the Atlantic, the Arctic and Pacific Oceans, as well as the Gulf of Mexico. This would give energy company’s access to leases off California for the first time in decades. The Republican tax bill also included a provision to open up Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling.

The proposal comes not long after the Obama administration had blocked new oil and gas leasing in federal waters off the Atlantic Coast, which Steve Mashuda the managing attorney for oceans at Earthjustice says was based on extensive scientific research and years of public comment. He adds that the amount of oil off the Atlantic amounts to just about a half-year supply for the U.S.

A new year-in-review report from the Western Watersheds Project notes that in 2017, the Trump administration rolled back regulations on clean water, pollution controls on coal-fired power plants, and rules to prevent air pollution from oil and gas wells.

Erik Molvar, executive director of the Idaho-based Western Watersheds Project, says the federal government is now saying it will ease safety regulations put in place after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010.

“Basically, the Trump administration wants what they’re calling ‘energy dominance,’ which means maximizing drilling, and minimizing safety and environmental safeguards that might slow that down,” Molvar points out.

While the plan puts the administration squarely on the side of the energy industry and against environmental groups, it also puts the White House at odds with a number of coastal states that oppose offshore drilling. Some of those states are led by Republicans, like Gov. Rick Scott of Florida, where the tourism industry was hit hard by the Deepwater Horizon rig disaster in 2010 that killed 11 people and spilled millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico.

The governors of New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, California, Oregon and Washington have all opposed offshore drilling plans.

The oil industry cheered the reversal.

On Monday, January 7, 2017, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) denied a rule proposed by Energy Secretary Rick Perry earlier this year to compensate coal and nuclear generation facilities over and above the compensation they currently receive if they kept 90 days’ worth of fuel on site. One of President Trump’s key campaign promises has been to revive the coal industry, which has suffered in the shadow of plentiful, cheap natural gas.

The critics repeated their sentiments today. John Moore, the Natural Resources Defense Council director of the Sustainable FERC Project coalition said in a statement “The law and common sense prevailed over special interests today... Secretary Perry’s plan would have subsidized coal and nuclear plants with a 90-day fuel supply, yet Perry never explained why those plants were inherently more reliable or resilient.”

Within New York State, NYS Attorney General, along with AG’s from California, Connecticut, Illinois, Kentucky, Maryland, Massachusetts, Nevada, North Carolina, Rhode Island, Texas, Virginia, as well as the Connecticut Office of Consumer Counsel, the Florida Office of Public Counsel, the Maine Office of the Public Advocate, the Nevada Bureau of Consumer Protection, the New Hampshire Office of the Consumer Advocate, the Rhode Island Division of Public Utilities and Carriers, and the Vermont Department of Public Service called on Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to take immediate steps to ensure that public utility companies do not receive a major windfall at the expense of their customers. 

In their letter, the coalition requested that an investigation be opened into whether the current rates for federally regulated utilities – including electric, natural gas, and oil companies – are justified following the recent passage of the new federal tax law that reduces the corporate tax rate from 35 to 21 percent and to ensure customer bills are reduced in line with the massive tax cut corporations are receiving. The letter requests that FERC act as quickly as possible to make any necessary changes to utilities’ rates to ensure that customers’ bills are reduced. The letter also calls on FERC to set an immediate date to refund utility customers for any over-collection resulting from delays.  

Politically

On January 11, 2018 Donald Trump will have been in office for 356 days.

With new twists daily, it’s hard to keep track of who is being kicked out of a country that was stolen from its original peoples - us. Here’s a quick snapshot of what’s happening now, and why you should be paying attention:

More than a million people are on the verge of losing protections that keep them from getting kicked out of the United States unless Congress and the President can agree on a solution.

And that’s just the beginning. The administration is also pushing its plans for a border wall that would cost between $10 to $22 million to build (not including maintenance), calling for a sweeping overhaul of legal immigration and looking for places to build more immigrant detention centers.

On Monday, January 8, 2018 the Trump administration dealt a devastating blow to more than a quarter of a million immigrants from El Salvador by terminating their provisional residency permits. After a series of earthquakes hit the Central American country in 2001, the US government gave this group “Temporary Protected Status.” Known as TPS, this shielded them from deportation and let them get work permits. Now, officials say that protection will end in September 2019.

Immigration hard-liners are swift to point out that “temporary” was always part of the deal. Immigrant rights groups say it’s unfair to uproot hundreds of thousands of people who’ve been obeying the law, paying taxes, working and raising families here.

While 2019 sounds like it’s a ways off, Salvadorans who are directly affected by the move say they’re shaken and unsure of what to do next. For nearly two decades, they had solid ground beneath their feet. Now it feels like quicksand.

And it’s not just the Salvadorans: The US government this fall also did away with similar protections for tens of thousands of Haitian, Sudanese and Nicaraguan, and later this year - Honduran immigrants.

With Salvadoran, Honduran, and Haitian workers with TPS removed from the labor force, the United States would lose $164 billion in gross domestic product (GDP) over the next decade. Furthermore, if TPS holders lost their work authorization, it would result in a $6.9 billion reduction to Social Security and Medicare contributions over a decade, as calculated by the Immigrant Legal Resource Center. Finally, if TPS holders could no longer work in their current jobs, employers would experience $967 million in turnover costs.

Their only hope: Congress could pass legislation giving them the opportunity to become legal residents. If that fails, and they can’t find another way to stay legally, they’ll either be forced to return to their home countries or face deportation.

DACA

The scenario for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) changes daily. As of January 10, 2018, a federal judge in California blocked Trump administration plans to phase out protections for so-called undocumented “dreamers”.

The order by U.S. District Judge William Alsup issued Tuesday says safeguards against deportation must remain in place for the nearly 690,000 immigrants in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program while a legal challenge to ending the Obama-era program proceeds.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced the decision to terminate the program on Sept. 5 and said no renewal applications would be accepted after Oct. 5. Under the Trump’s administration’s plan, permits that expired after March 5 could not be renewed.

But Alsup ruled that while the lawsuit is pending, anyone who had DACA status when the program was rescinded Sept. 5 can renew it, officials said.

The plaintiffs said the Trump administration failed to follow the law in rescinding DACA and would cause irreparable harm by forcing immigrants to leave jobs, drop out of school and potentially be deported.

Partial content provided on behalf of Earthjustice, the Western Watersheds Project, Immigrant Legal Resource Center and the Natural Resources Defense Council.