VIRGIL: The
Environmental Protection Agency — Next Stop on a Guided Tour of the Deep
State’s Covert Resistance to Trump
by Virgil 10 Mar 2017
Everyone’s
talking about the Deep State now. The other day, Virgil searched
“deep state” and found, just in the Google News
section, no less than 3.86 million hits. Republican politicians
are using the phrase, and so are Democratic pols. In fact, one Democrat, Rep. Ted Lieu of California, chose to “own” the phrase,
tweeting, “We are #Deep State.” Translation: Trump, we are
coming for you.
Indeed, the Deep State hashtag is now
busy, used by both fans and foes of the DS. There are even a bunch of Twitter accounts
on the Deep State theme—which may or may not have any connection to
reality.
And there are even plays on the phrase, such as DeepStateGate,
which by now is familiar to Breitbart readers, and also “Shallow
State,” an anti-Republican coinage from David Rothkopf, an appointee
in the Clinton administration.
It was different back on December 12, when Virgil first started writing
about the Deep State; back then, references were scarce. Yet
today, if one goes to Google Trends and types in “deep state,” this is what one sees: a
recent sharp spike in usage. It’s fun to have company!
And speaking of company, I’ll hope you’ll continue to
join me on our tour of the Federal Triangle, the heartland of the Deep
State. We started our tour at the Department of Commerce,
and so next we’ll visit the federal bureaucracy in the next building over.
The Federal Triangle (Source: Wikimedia Commons)
That would be the Environmental Protection Agency, which fills
up, in fact, three different buildings, stretching from Constitution Avenue to
Pennsylvania Avenue, from 14th Street to 12th Street. (Plus, of course,
the EPA has myriad satellite offices all over the country; the total head-count
is more than 15,000, not counting contractors and grantees.)
Environmental Protection Agency Headquarters (Source:
Wikimedia Commons)
The EPA, of course, is right in the middle of the ongoing
DC power struggle, which has spilled into open bureaucratic revolt. On
February 16, for example, The New York Times reported
that EPA employees had brazenly been calling senators to urge them to vote
against Scott Pruitt, President Trump’s pick to head the agency. It was,
the Times’ Coral Davenport observed, “a remarkable display of activism
and defiance that presages turbulent times ahead for the EPA.”
Speaking of turbulence, the career staff at EPA is
feeling it. On March 7, Axios’ Jonathan Swan tweeted a picture of a sign
at EPA, offering counseling sessions to fearful careerists:
Feeling Pressured? Worried About Change at
EPA? The EPA’s Employee Counseling and Assistance Program presents a 45
min. seminar on “Dealing with Change.”
Yes, the delicate snowflakes at the agency need help—your
tax dollars at work.
Yet whether they have had counseling or not, EPA-ers seem
to be girded for battle. A rogue Twitter account, AltEPA, billing itself as the
“resistance,” has 382,000 followers—and there are many more such accounts in
existence. It’s possible, of course, that some, perhaps most, of these
accounts are fakes. But probably not all.
In the meantime, some EPA people, long ago, developed
their own “resistance strategies.” For instance, Lisa Jackson, the EPA
administrator in Barack Obama’s first term, had a nifty Deep State
tactic—she hid her identity, even with her own agency. As far back as 2009, Jackson
was using a fictitious name, “Richard Windsor,” for her e-mail, in a
seeming attempt to evade the requirements of the Freedom of Information Act and
other transparency laws. By some reckonings, such evasion might be
counted as a crime, but Jackson suffered no ill consequences. In fact,
she is now a
well-paid vice president at Apple.
Given that sort of no-penalty precedent, it’s little
wonder that a pervasive culture of clandestine operating still permeates
EPA. To illustrate, we might recall an EPA
inspector general’s report prepared at the behest of the House Republicans:
In 2014-2015, EPA employees sent or received 3.1 million text messages on
government-issued devices; of these, just 86 were archived for the federal
records. So what were all the rest of those 3-million-plus texts about?
Maybe they were all personal, or maybe they were leaks, or maybe they
were back-and-forths with Lisa Jackson—we’ll never know. And we can
underscore: that’s just on government equipment; who knows what’s been
happening on personal equipment, and on personal accounts.
So as we can see, secrecy is one weapon that EPA lifers
can deploy. Another weapon is complexity. The same Times
reporter on the environmental beat, Coral Davenport, recently interviewed
Jackson’s successor at EPA, Gina McCarthy, who served from 2013 to 2017.
McCarthy was eager to outline the torturous process that the Trump
administration would have to follow to undo Obama regulations:
If you want to do these executive orders that require a
whole rewrite of the rule, you have to get that right, legally. It took
years to do those rules. To now ask for those things to be undone with less
staff and low morale—how are they going to do it?
Yes, that’s standard Deep State stuff. As
bureaucrats like to say to the political appointees of any administration, “We
were here when you arrive, and we’ll still be here when you depart. In
fact, by the time you figure out how things really work, it’ll be time for you
to go!” In other words, the Deep State is eternal, and throughout that
eternity, Deepists have mastered the arcane procedures needed to make any sort
of change. So the message to interlopers is simple: Do it our way, or
else face frustration, or even failure.
Moreover, perhaps more than any other government agency,
the Deep Statists at EPA can call upon powerful outside allies—in the media, in
partisan politics, and in the realm of litigation activism.
Let’s take a look, starting with the media. On
March 8, that same Times reporter, Coral Davenport, printed the names of
five aides
that Scott Pruitt, having been confirmed for his post, now plans to bring with
him. Just a hunch: Davenport didn’t get those names from Pruitt; instead,
most likely, she got them from some EPA worker with inside access to his
doings. And so the Democratic war rooms, joined by so many others, can
get to work building their “oppo” dossiers on each new hire.
Meanwhile, other media outlets, too, are piling on. Thus
we get dozens of Pruitt/Trump administration-bashing headlines every day.
For example, here’s Slate: “Trump’s
EPA Plans Are ‘Just Racist.’” And MinnPost: “Trump’s
EPA cuts would undo local efforts to restore iconic places—like the Great Lakes.”
And Quartz: “Leaked
document details plan to starve an already malnourished EPA budget.”
Ah yes, there’s the “l” word again—“leaked.”
Indeed, it seems that back on March 3, the National Association of Clean Air
Agencies got its hands on a Trump
administration document calling for $2 billion in cuts at EPA, and
then shared it with various publications, including The Oregonian.
And then on the second bounce of that particular
leak-story, as reporters sought to give it “legs,” we saw headlines such as
this, in Science: “Trump
plan for 40% cut could cause EPA science office ‘to implode,’ official warns.”
The EPA official doing the warning, of course, was unnamed. Meanwhile,
the internal
communications at EPA have been leaking out in near real-time.
That’s how things work in DC, every day. Warning to Trumpsters at EPA:
You’re going to be parachuting in far behind enemy lines, and they know where
to find you.
Now we come to a second ally of the permanent regime at
EPA, the increasingly greened Democratic Party. Yes, it’s the Democrats
who put the wind beneath the wings of the environmental- (anti) industrial
complex.
We can recall that it was not always this way: As
recently as the 1960s, the Democrats cared cared more about growing the economy
than greening the environment. That is, Democrats worried about workers
and their wages, and to that end, they focused on the development—the word
often used back then was “reclamation”—of natural resources.
For example, the 1960 Democratic platform,
the one that helped elect John F. Kennedy, was emphatic:
The new Democratic Administration will develop a
comprehensive national water resource policy. In cooperation with state
and local governments, and interested private groups, the Democratic
Administration will develop a balanced, multiple-purpose plan for each major
river basin.
Indeed, in those days, the Democrats attacked the
outgoing Eisenhower administration for its alleged cheapness when it came to
funding new projects:
We will erase the Republican slogan of “no new starts”
and will begin again to build multiple-purpose dams, hydroelectric facilities,
flood-control works, navigation facilities, and reclamation projects to meet
mounting and urgent needs.
By contrast, the 2016 Democratic platform
offered a much different worldview: workers and wages were an afterthought,
well behind penguins and polar bears. In fact, the old concept of
“reclamation” never appears at all; instead, we get 16 paragraphs, for
instance, on “climate change.”
Of course, at this precise moment, in 2017, the Democrats
lack the political power fully to protect their friends at EPA, although they’ll
certainly always be trying.
And now to a third ally of Deep EPA: the activist
litigators.
As every conservative knows, the left has been far more
effective, in recent decades, at winning in the courts than winning at the
ballot box. And yet on many issues, a win is a win: If a judge orders the
government to take action of a certain kind, well, oftentimes that’s it—that’s
the ballgame. No wonder the left is so tight with the lawyers!
And as a sign of the anti-Trump eco-litigation flood to
come, on March 8, nearly three
dozen green groups filed a formal legal
petition with EPA, demanding that the agency tighten the regulations
on concentrated animal-feeding operations (CAFO), also known as “factory
farms.” As the lead plaintiff, Wenonah Hauter, executive director of Food & Water Watch,
declared,
This petition paves the way for EPA to finally regulate
CAFOs as required under the Clean Water Act, and explains that allowing CAFO
pollution to continue unabated by maintaining the woefully inadequate status
quo would violate federal law.
That petition, we might note, is 58 pages of closely
argued legalese, boasting 294 footnotes. And there’s a clear call to
action in the document’s conclusion; as it reads, “Petitioners believe that EPA
has an obligation pursuant to its [Clean Water Act] duties to [take new action
against CAFOs] without further delay.”
In other words, it’s a serious legal demand, aimed at
forcing EPA to take additional regulatory action. Or, failing that, to
persuade a judge somewhere to order such additional regulation into
existence.
So now Virgil wonders: Who among Team Trump at EPA is
actually going to have time to read this petition, let alone develop an
appropriate legal counter-strategy?
And so what might happen if the Trump people choose to
delegate the handling of this case to the EPA career staff? Well, we know
what could easily happen: The Deep Statists at EPA could consult with their
like-minded friends, neighbors, and former law-school classmates—quite
possibly, including the very people who filed the CAFO case—and come up with a
nice green answer.
That is, it’s easy to see EPA Deep Statists communicating
with their friends—perhaps even their spouses—in the activist legal
world. Suppose, for example, that two grocery shoppers at the Whole Foods in Northwest DC’s
Tenleytown neighborhood just happen to have a friendly ex parte
conversation? You know, about maybe, legal strategy in the CAFO
case? What would be the policy upshot of such a chat?
As an answer, here’s one scenario that we’ve seen many
times before: The career legal staff tells the thin layer of political
appointees at an agency that the plaintiffs have a strong case, and so it’s
best to settle. That is, except for maybe a few face-saving tweaks, give
the plaintiffs what they want. After all, the careerist could be saying
to the politicals, if you choose to fight, it could get really messy, and, in
the end, you’d likely still lose. So why not do it the easy way?
Why not do it our way?
That’s the pitch that’s been heard a million times within
the Deep State. And while it doesn’t always work, since it’s the path of
least resistance, it’s a familiar course of action. And so we see how the
Deep State so often wins.
So now the Deep State stands ready to welcome Scott
Pruitt and the rest of the Trump contingent to their humble outpost at 1200
Pennsylvania Avenue. Well, okay, maybe “welcome” isn’t quite the right
word.
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
Carol M. Browner
was an administrator for the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the energy czar for the Barack Obama administration, a director
at the Climate Reality Project, and
is a director at the Center for American
Progress.
Note: Foundation
to Promote Open Society was a funder for the Climate Reality Project, the Center
for American Progress, the ClimateWorks
Foundation, the Aspen Institute (think
tank), and the New America
Foundation.
George Soros
was the chairman for the Foundation to Promote Open Society, a supporter
for the Center for American Progress,
is the founder & chairman for the Open
Society Foundations, and Jonathan
Soros’s father.
Open
Society Foundations was a funder for the Center for American Progress.
Albert A. Gore Jr.
is the chairman for
the Climate Reality Project, and a
friend of Orin S. Kramer.
Orin S. Kramer is
a friend of Albert A. Gore Jr., a
director at the Climate Reality Project,
and an administrator for the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
Lee M. Thomas was a
director at the Climate Reality Project,
and an administrator for the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
William K. Reilly
is the chairman emeritus for the ClimateWorks
Foundation, and was an administrator for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
William A. Nitze
is a trustee at the Aspen Institute (think
tank), and an assistant administrator the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
Jonathan Soros is
George Soros’s son, and a director
at the New America Foundation.
Terry Tamminen was
a senior fellow & climate policy director for the New America Foundation, the secretary for the California Environmental Protection Agency, and is a board member
for the Waterkeeper Alliance.
Eric E. Schmidt is the chairman emeritus for the
New America Foundation, the
chairman for the Google Inc., and was a 2008 Bilderberg conference
participant (think tank).
Wendy M. Abrams
is a board member for the Waterkeeper
Alliance, and a director at the Center
for American Progress Action Fund.
Google Inc. was a funder
for the Center for American Progress
Action Fund.
Center
for American Progress Action Fund is an affiliated advocacy group with the Center for American Progress.
Carol M. Browner
is a director at the Center for American
Progress, was the energy czar for the
Barack Obama administration, a director at the Climate Reality Project, and was an administrator for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
Melody C. Barnes
was an EVP for the Center for American
Progress, a domestic policy council, director for the Barack Obama administration, and is Barack Obama’s golf partner.
Center
for American Progress calls for heightened “Gun Safety, Gun Control”
for guns.
Google Inc. was a funder
for the Center for American Progress
Action Fund.
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