WASHINGTON (AP) —
Amid the turmoil over staff shake-ups, blocked travel bans and the Russia cloud
hanging overhead, President Donald Trump is steadily plugging away at a major
piece of his agenda: Undoing Obama.
From abortion to energy to climate change and personal investments,
Trump is keeping his promises in methodically overturning regulations and
policies adopted when Barack Obama was president.
It hasn't all been smooth sailing.
Trump recently failed to fulfill his pledge to repeal and replace
the Affordable Care Act, which continues to stand as Obama's most recognizable
domestic policy achievement. Trump and House Speaker Paul Ryan couldn't
persuade enough fellow Republicans to back new health care legislation last
month. Ryan pulled the measure just before a scheduled House vote.
Trump has had better outcomes in other areas.
CLIMATE CHANGE
Trump signed an executive order last week to deliver on his pledge
to unravel Obama's efforts to curb global warming. The order launched a review
of the Clean Power Plan, Obama's chief effort to curb carbon emissions by
restricting greenhouse gas emissions at coal-fired power plants. Trump also
lifted a 14-month-old halt on new coal leases on federal lands. The Obama
administration had imposed a three-year freeze on such leases in January of
last year.
The executive order covers a range of other Obama-era rules,
including requirements to factor the "social cost" of carbon
emissions into all regulatory actions and to crack down on methane emissions at
oil and gas wells. Business groups had complained to Trump, himself a
businessman, that the rules were intrusive and expensive.
INTERNET PRIVACY
Trump is expected to sign a measure soon to block online privacy
regulations the Federal Communications Commission issued during Obama's final
months in office. It's a first step toward allowing internet providers to sell
information about their customers' browsing habits. The FCC rule was designed
to give consumers more control over how companies like Comcast, AT&T and
Verizon share information. Critics complained that the rule would have
increased costs, stifled innovation and picked winners and losers among
internet companies.
White House spokesman Sean Spicer says the rule represents the
type of "federal overreach" that Trump pledged as a candidate to
reverse.
ABORTION/FAMILY PLANNING
Trump is expected to sign legislation erasing another Obama rule,
one that barred states from withholding federal family planning funds from
Planned Parenthood affiliates and other clinics that provide abortions. The
rule was finalized shortly before Obama left office in January.
The measure cleared the Senate last week with Vice President Mike
Pence, who is also president of the Senate, casting the tie-breaking 51st vote
in the 100-member chamber.
KEYSTONE XL OIL PIPELINE
Trump greenlighted the long-delayed project on March 24, reversing
Obama's decision less than 18 months earlier. After Trump invited TransCanada,
the Canadian company building the $8 billion pipeline, to resubmit its
application, the State Department approved the project, saying it would advance
U.S. national interests. Obama had said the project would not.
Approval came nearly a decade after TransCanada applied to
complete the 1,700-mile (2,735 kilometers) pipeline to carry oil from tar sands
in Alberta, Canada, to refineries along the Texas Gulf Coast.
Trump says the project will reduce costs and reliance on foreign
oil, and create thousands of jobs. Obama had said it would undercut U.S.
credibility in international efforts to tackle climate change.
DAKOTA ACCESS PIPELINE
Under Obama, the Army Corps of Engineers had declined in December
to allow pipeline construction under South Dakota's Lake Oahe on grounds that
alternate routes needed to be considered. Native American tribes had sued to
block construction, arguing that the pipeline threatened their water supply and
cultural sites.
The project has moved forward again under Trump, who acted shortly
after taking office. In February, the Army Corps of Engineers abandoned further
study and granted an easement that was needed to complete the pipeline. Energy
Transfer Partners immediately began drilling under the lake.
FUEL EFFICIENCY STANDARDS
The Trump administration is re-examining federal requirements
governing the fuel efficiency of cars and trucks. In 2012, the Obama
administration set fuel economy regulations for model years 2017-2025 and
agreed to complete a midterm evaluation by next year. Then, days before Obama
left office, the Environmental Protection Agency decided to keep stringent
requirements it had set in place for model years 2022-2025.
The auto industry balked. Trump announced in Michigan that he's
putting the midterm review back on track. His decision has no immediate effect
but requires the EPA to determine no later than April 2018 whether the
2022-2025 standards are appropriate.
TRANS-PACIFIC PARTNERSHIP
Obama was his administration's biggest cheerleader for the
sweeping agreement involving the U.S. and 11 other Pacific Rim nations. But the
Senate needed to ratify it, and bipartisan opposition basically doomed it
before he left office.
As a candidate, Trump railed against this agreement and pledged to
withdraw from it, saying he was a better negotiator and could strike better
deals. Shortly after taking office, he directed the U.S. trade representative
to withdraw and said he would pursue individual deals with the other countries.
ABORTION/MEXICO CITY POLICY
Trump reinstated a ban on providing federal money to international
groups that perform abortions or provide information about them. Obama had
lifted the ban when he took office in 2009.
Known as the "Mexico City Policy" or, by critics, as the
"global gag rule," the regulation has been a political volleyball,
instituted by Republican administrations and rescinded by Democratic ones since
1984. Trump signed it one day after the 44th anniversary of the Supreme Court's
1973 Roe vs. Wade decision that legalized abortion in the United States. The
policy also prohibits taxpayer funding for groups that lobby to legalize abortion
or promote it as a family planning method.
PERSONAL FINANCE
Trump has instructed the Department of Labor to delay an Obama-era
rule that would require financial professionals who charge commissions to put
their clients' best interests first when advising them on retirement
investments. The "fiduciary rule" was aimed at blocking consultants
from steering clients toward investments with higher commissions and fees that
can eat away at retirement savings. The rule was to take effect this month. The
financial services industry argued that the rule would limit retirees'
investment choices by forcing asset managers to steer them to low-risk options.
Undoing the rule was part of a promised assault by Trump on
banking rules enacted after the Great Recession. He has directed the Treasury
secretary to review the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial oversight law, which he has
said is a disaster. The law's aim was to keep banks from repeating practices
that many blamed for the financial meltdown.
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