Welcome to the first full day of the second Trump administration.

The White House website, at the time of this writing, lists 48 items under “presidential actions.” Among these are dozens of first day executive orders.

News reports say that Trump was planning to sign around 100 of them. So while we still wait for the rest, here I’ll review the main things that the executive orders released so far do, broken down by topic. I then go on to take a big picture perspective regarding what we have seen so far means for the future of the country and what we can expect from the Trump administration going forward.

War on NEPA

The most promising thing to happen on the American left over the last few years has been the emergence of the “abundance agenda,” which is going to be the subject of a book by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson coming out in March. Bronx Congressman Ritchie Torres recently declared himself a convert to the cause in a podcast with Matt Yglesias.

The idea is basically that there are too many government regulations that make it too difficult to build things society needs, with a particular focus on energy and housing. Now, you might be saying to yourself, we already have a political faction that thinks there are too many government regulations that restrict supply, and they’re called Republicans. On the right, you don’t even need a movement to make this case, as it is already baked into conservatives’ underlying model of how the world works. That being said, I’m glad someone is pushing the same ideas on the left, and that’s fine if they promote desirable policies even while they can’t identify with the right due to it being full of morons, conspiracy theorists, and bigots.

On this point, Trump just signed an executive order called “Unleashing American Energy”. The document instructs heads of agencies to review all existing regulations and policies “that impose an undue burden on the identification, development, or use of domestic energy resources — with particular attention to oil, natural gas, coal, hydropower, biofuels, critical mineral, and nuclear energy resources.”

There are few things that abundance agenda types hate more than National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) review, which requires mountains of paperwork and years of litigation before federal and federally-funded projects can be built if they are expected to substantially impact the environment. Here’s an article on just how bad things have gotten. Groups file lawsuits demanding more paperwork, even though they have no interest in what the resulting reports actually show. The entire point is delay and making building things more difficult and expensive.

The Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) was created to oversee NEPA and ensure agency compliance, coordinating efforts across the federal government. Section 5 of Trump’s main energy EO is called “Unleashing Energy Dominance,” in which the president instructs the CEQ to focus on revising NEPA regulations to expedite the permitting process. Agencies must emphasize speed and certainty in permitting over other considerations. They are also directed to limit environmental considerations to legislated requirements, removing additional elements that introduce delays. This is important, as most laws that get out of hand do not actually require all that much in the underlying legislation. Rather, their mandates end up expanding through actions taken by courts and the executive branch. The new executive order has the potential to scale back environmental review by narrowing the scope of impact assessments and accelerating timelines for project approvals.

As mentioned, NEPA review applies to all projects either undertaken by the federal government or funded by it. Although the EO is about energy, the change put forward here is much broader than that. For example, schools receive federal funding, so they are covered by NEPA.

It is actually an open question whether the decisions of the CEQ are binding on government agencies. Late last year, the DC Circuit decided that they were not. At the time, this was seen as a victory against NEPA, because the CEQ wanted higher standards of review than the agency in question. However, leftist judges could potentially now use such a decision to stand in the way of the Trump administration restricting and streamlining NEPA review across the federal government.

Regardless of how this all plays out, the administration at least recognizes environmental review regulations are too stringent, and with many on the left coming to the same conclusion, I think it’s likely that NEPA does a lot less damage going forward.

Trump has also made it national policy

to safeguard the American people’s freedom to choose from a variety of goods and appliances, including but not limited to lightbulbs, dishwashers, washing machines, gas stoves, water heaters, toilets, and shower heads, and to promote market competition and innovation with...