The New Climate Watchdogs: Democratic Attorneys General Take on Trump

A blue-state coalition filed nearly two dozen lawsuits in 2017 involving climate change, energy, and the environment.

Donald Trump was just hours from inauguration as the 45th president of the United States when a coalition of Democratic attorneys general went to court to defend EPA regulations limiting interstate air pollution.

It was a legal shot across the bow of the fossil fuel industry, and the start of a war of attrition the AGs waged throughout 2017 against the new administration and its coalition of red states and fossil fuel companies intent on weakening climate and other pollution rules.

The attorneys general filed a motion expressing support for the Environmental Protection Agency's Cross-State Air Pollution Update Rule, which required coal-fired power plants in 22 states to reduce smog pollution that blows into downwind states.  The rule had been challenged by coal companies, power generating corporations, and officials in five upwind states, including by Scott Pruitt, then attorney general of Oklahoma, who was Trump's choice to become head of the EPA.

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