Pruitt's signature kicks off a lengthy regulatory process and sets up another court fight for a rule that's already been at the center of some precedent-setting legal decisions. The move also becomes political fodder for friends and foes of the Trump administration's climate policies, and could potentially surface on the campaign trail in contests for Congress and the White House.
It'll all take a while to play out.
"I think this is the first step; I think the resolution of this whole package of issues is probably not going to come before the end of this presidential term," said Richard Revesz, director of the Institute for Policy Integrity at the New York University School of Law. The outcome will probably be determined by "whoever gets elected in the 2020 election," he added.
Here's a breakdown of the next battles:
The courts
Pruitt hasn't even signed his draft repeal yet, but top lawyers in blue states have already promised legal action.
"If and when the Trump Administration finalizes this repeal, I will sue," New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman (D) said in a statement yesterday after Pruitt announced his plans to sign the proposal.
Others followed suit. California Attorney General Xavier Becerra (D) said, "I will do everything in my power to defend the Clean Power Plan." Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey (D) piled on, saying, "[W]e will be suing to protect the Clean Power Plan from the climate change deniers in this administration who are trying to move us backwards."
Lawsuits over the final repeal plan and a possible replacement rule — which would likely be much narrower than the Obama regulation — are a given. Those could take months or even years to play out, though, since legal challenges likely won't be filed until after EPA's moves are finalized. Challengers of the Clean Power Plan — including Pruitt — attempted to thwart the Obama-era rule before it was final, but those efforts were rebuffed in court.
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Less certain than future litigation is what happens to the legal battle over the Obama rule. Judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit have put that rule on ice while the Trump administration decides how to proceed. The Supreme Court intervened last year and blocked the rule after the D.C. Circuit declined to do so.
Some lawyers expect the D.C. Circuit to indefinitely delay the lawsuit, but supporters of the climate rule are holding out hope that the court will issue an opinion.
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The Federal Register
The federal regulatory process is a lengthy one, with a host of bureaucratic steps agencies are required to take before finalizing rules.
Once EPA's repeal plans are published in the Federal Register, the agency will start receiving a deluge of comments expressing a wide range of views. The Obama EPA received more than 4.3 million comments on its draft Clean Power Plan. The agency is required to respond to those comments — although it can do so broadly — when it finalizes its plan
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Industry vs. industry
Meanwhile, the Trump administration is hearing competing views from industries about how to replace the rule — if at all.
That industry infighting could complicate the push to get a new policy out the door.
Some of Trump's allies in the energy world — including coal magnate Bob Murray, CEO of Murray Energy Corp. — are pushing the administration to obliterate the rule with no replacement.
Other industry groups — including some utilities, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and the National Association of Manufacturers — have pushed the administration for a dramatically scaled-back version of the Obama-era rule. A replacement is needed to give their industries certainty, they argue.
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Capitol Hill
Congressional Democrats have made it clear they're no fans of Pruitt's climate rollbacks, but their hands are largely tied by their minority status.
"There's very little if anything they can do at this point in time," said Jim Manley, former spokesman for then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.).
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Public opinion
Supporters of the Clean Power Plan are also hoping to make some gains with messaging campaigns.
"There's a battle in the court of public opinion and also in the legal courts," Doniger said.
He and others are pointing to the huge health benefits that EPA estimated the Clean Power Plan would bring. The Trump administration appears poised to argue that many of those benefits were wrongly counted.
Some early talking points by environmentalists accuse the Trump administration of allowing premature deaths by rescinding the rule.
Read more at Clean Power Plan: the Next Big Battlegrounds
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