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TOM WHEELER:

Welcome to the Econews Report. I'm your host this week, Tom Wheeler, executive director of EPIC. And joining me is my friend and colleague, Matt Simmons, climate attorney at EPIC. And we are also joined by Colin Fiske, executive director of the Coalition for Responsible Transportation Priorities, or as I better call them, CRTP.

All right, so I think you can hear from the dour, sad tones of my two guests that the election probably didn't go the way that we were hoping, at least on the federal side. And I don't think that we should sugarcoat it. The next four years are going to be rough, particularly the next two. It appears at this point after the election that both houses of Congress are going to the Republicans as well as the presidency. So we have a unified government which should make it easier for them to pass legislation, for the Republican Party to pass legislation that is a priority to them. This will frankly mean a lot of direct attacks at federal environmental laws. It's also going to mean a lot of more sneaky attacks, defunding of agencies responsible for enforcement of environmental laws or funding changes that will deprioritize a robust application of federal environmental laws.

This is also going to mean a change in the administrative state, the regulatory state. We are likely to see new rules, new regulations be passed by the US Fish and Wildlife Service, the Forest Service, the National Marine Fishery Service, all of these agencies that regulate wild places or wildlife to deprioritize protection of wild places and wildlife and to incentivize or encourage oil and gas production, timber extraction, mining, grazing, our usual foes here on the Econews Report. I do think that there is not all hope is lost, right?

MATT SIMMONS:

I do want to add one more part of that, which is there's an international aspect to environmentalism, right? There's the Paris Climate Agreement. There's this idea that the United States could be a leader on climate change instead of actively fighting to increase it. And I think that will actually probably be the first thing that we see under a Trump administration is a reversion on those things.

WHEELER:

And this also reflects Trumpian economic policy. It's more isolationist -- America pulling away from the rest of the world -- when I don't think that that is what's in our best interest as a country.

COLIN FISKE

So just wanna throw in there from the CRTP perspective, just that we should expect a tax on public transit and on funding for bike and pedestrian infrastructure, on safety rules for vehicles, and a lot of the other things that we really care about in terms of safe and sustainable transportation as well.

WHEELER:

That's a wonderful point. Thank you. So I think folks who are scared, you absolutely have a right to be scared. And in particular, I know this is an environmental show, but I am, I am there in my, in my sympathy to all of the other folks who are going to be impacted by the next Trump administration in particular vulnerable communities, whether that is our gay trans community, whether that is immigrants in America, whether or not you are here legally or not, it doesn't seem to matter to the Trump fans administration. So if you're a refugee, all of these vulnerable people are also going to suffer and are going to be the target of political attacks. And so to the extent that I want to see a broad, big tent of environmentalism, we are standing here together with you as well.

FISKE

Yeah, I appreciate you saying that, Tom. And I also think it's important to acknowledge there is a connection in particular between refugees and migrants and climate. And we're gonna be seeing a lot more of that in the decades to come. And if this is the way we as a nation respond to that, then it's pretty disheartening.

WHEELER:

So that said, groups like EPIC, groups like CRTP, we exist for worst case scenarios. And we made it through four years of a previous Trump administration, one that was probably more constrained because Trump didn't fully understand how to be president for a good portion of that. And he had folks within his administration that were seemingly checks on his worst impulses. Those folks are likely gone and he has a better understanding of how to get things done so we can expect more aggressive action by a second Trump term.

But we made it through once and there are some things that we know are the likely response, our, our playbook here. The next two years are going to be the worst because it is possible that in the midterm elections in 2026 we can see a change in at least one house of Congress, which would provide more of a check on unfettered federal power or unfettered federal power on behalf of the Trump administration. So the thing that we will have the least ability to deal with is changes to federal environmental law coming from Congress. We're, we're hosed there. Congress can go back in a future legislative session and change that. And we can always go back and change the law back, but that's pretty difficult. So those are going to be some of the longest term harms. Another longterm harm is going to be judicial appointments. Matt.

SIMMONS:

Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, Endangered Species Act, National Environmental Policy Act, right, like all these all these fundamental bedrock laws that we use to try to protect the environment. On Colin's side, it's probably the funding bills and things going to road widenings and highways instead of public transit. I just, I want to give a better sense of it.

WHEELER:

And so changes to laws are hard to, hard to challenge in court because Congress has a lot of power to determine what the law is. The only other check is the constitution. There's not a whole lot in the constitution that restrains Congress from weakening federal environmental laws. Then, as you say, Matt, budgetary decisions by this Congress are also going to be impactful, but those are going to inherently be somewhat time limited, right? We can cut funding for the US Fish and Wildlife Service, and that might be impactful for a couple of years, but the long tail effect of a Trump administration is less felt in, in things like that.

FISKE

I will say though, when it comes to something like, for example, a public transit system, we saw during the pandemic, many large public transit systems come close to collapsing and probably would have without substantial federal support. And if you really slash transit support, which is something that we know has historically been on the agenda for the Trump administration and folks in his orbit, and a transit system completely collapses, it is hard to come back from a budgetary decision like that.

WHEELER:

Fair, fair point.

SIMMONS:

Another sort of federal issue to talk about is staffing of all these agencies, right? Because I think under the first Trump administration, we saw what he would refer to as the deep state, but what I would refer to as like people with degrees who know what they're doing, right? Like pushing back on some of his policies and hampering things and slowing things down. I remember there was a, I can't remember exactly what their name was, but it was like resist national park employees who are doing all this stuff to resist Trump changes at national parks. If project 2025 is enacted the way that they're talking about, I think we'll see like mass layoffs and changes of who's actually working at all these agencies, which is another really negative. It's not just funding, right? It's like, who's actually there making the decisions day to day.

WHEELER:

Once you lose people from from civil service, it's hard to get them back into civil service. So that's a fair point. So there are going to be tales to the Trump administration, even in things that are reversible, in part. So, as I said, the next few years are likely going to be the hardest because we have an opportunity at the midterm to check this unified power, in particular, if we win back the Senate, if the Democrats take the Senate, then that will be a very substantial check on Trump's power, because one of the most long lasting impacts of the first Trump term and of the second Trump term are judicial appointments. These are lifetime appointments. So once you get somebody into an Article Three judgeship, they are there for a long time. And we have a whole conservative apparatus that finds, recruits, trains future right wing conservative judges.

So that that is a problem. That is a distinct problem and one that, again, we have an opportunity to lessen at the midterms, but until the midterms, it will be difficult. And the Democrats will attempt to slow things down as much as they can and limit the number of judicial appointments. But the Republicans are likely going to be ready for this and they have their eyes on the ball.

SIMMONS:

So a small silver lining on that issue is that Biden has actually been really good at appointing liberal judges. At the end of the Obama administration, there were all these vacancies because they had basically been held up from appointing any judges for the last two years of Obama's presidency. But Biden has not had that same issue. And so hopefully there will be fewer Trump appointees than we saw in 2016 and 2017.

WHEELER:

Another silver lining is that we have more than 60 days of, of the Biden term, and I'm sure his staff is going to be hard at work to finalize things in a way that will make it more difficult to unravel. They're going to prioritize completing whatever sort of judicial appointments are in the queue. And he will, I'm sure, issue some national monument proclamations and similar things on his way out the door, because that's what presidents do on their way out the door. If you're feeling depressed by this episode, I mean, you have a great right to be.

Matt pointed out one silver lining. I started down another, which is a likely consequence of a next Trump term is a change in the rules and regulations that interpret federal environmental laws. So each law has a whole lot of rules that define vague terms or, or set penalty fees or things like that. Right here, the Trump administration can attempt to change the law. They can attempt to rewrite rules and regulations that has to go through a formal process through the administrative procedures act, there's opportunity for the public to engage in that. And if we take Trump's first term as any sort of precedent, they weren't very good at following the process or, or doing this well. And so the environmental movement had a pretty stunning success record in overturning or undoing a lot of the bad rules that came from the first Trump term.

So I hope that this is true again, and this is where a lot of EPIC's work is likely to be in the next four years. We, for example, during the first Trump term took on issues with regulations under the Endangered Species Act and the National Environmental Policy Act. I'm sure we'll do the same in this next Trump term. So environmental groups, as I said before, we're, we're, we're built for this sort of work. I don't think any of us are looking forward to it or, or enjoy this. I think we were all kind of hoping for another Harris administration so that we can build on the progress made under the Biden administration, but alas, that's not going to come to pass. So we will be here and we will be in court to the extent that we are allowed to challenge bad, bad laws.

And there are still a good number, as Matt pointed out, a good number of judges appointed by the Biden administration, by the Obama administration. We even still have Clinton appointees who are good and on the federal bench. So not all hope is lost there. One, one reflection, and this maybe gets to the second half of our show, which is a more positive half of our show, is that a lesson from the first Trump term is to embrace this idea of federalism, is to embrace the idea of state powers over environmental issues, to have a robust California as a bulwark against Trumpism. And already we can see that that process is in the works. Governor Newsom this morning called for a special legislative session to convene, to start passing legislation in anticipation of a second Trump term. So the organs of the state government are working in that respect.

We also are the, I think the fifth largest economy in the world, sixth largest economy in the world. So what California chooses to do has a lot of weight elsewhere. When we set health and safety standards for products, those products are going to be manufactured across the United States based on California standards. So when we have the ability to influence larger markets, that's good. California is going to continue to exercise powers like that. And that will be good. We also have the ability to, to raise our own monies, to do things that we want to do. Colin pointed out the risks that come from a loss of federal expenditures on good projects, right? Like how much, how much of transit funding comes from the fare box and how much comes from other support, Colin?

FISKE

So that depends a lot on the particular transit system.

WHEELER:

Yeah.

FISKE

So it depends on the route, actually. But I would say that in general, for smaller transit systems like we have in our region, the majority of the funding comes from federal and state sources, not from what people pay in fares.

WHEELER:

Again, on this idea of not all hope is lost and pick yourself up, dust off your shoulders and keep going, you are listening to the Econews Report. We are doing a rundown of results from the last election and what that means for the environment. We did have some good news here in our local election. So we had about Measure O, which was by the promises made by the Board of Supervisors to go to two different things, to improving rural roads, county-maintained roads, and also transit. Colin, can you talk about all the work that CRTP did to ensure that transit was going to be one of the things that was included and what this is going to mean in the face of potential cutbacks from the federal side of funding transit?

FISKE

Yeah, certainly CRTP was not alone in this, but we worked with our allies in the environmental movement and other folks to make sure that the plan for spending revenues from Measure O should it pass, which it now appears to have done, would not just go to roads, but would also go in part to supporting public transit. And the reason was that we knew, no matter what the outcome of the other elections, that there's a great need for ongoing local operational funding for transit.

Our local Humboldt Transit Authority has been really incredibly successful at winning state and federal grants to support their operations, but those grants almost entirely fund capital projects. They fund things like new buses, or new infrastructure for maintenance, or the transit center. They don't really fund, they don't pay for bus drivers' salaries, or for maintenance, or these ongoing expenses, which are really the biggest costs for running a transit system. So the Board of Supervisors did promise when they put Measure O on the ballot that a significant portion of that revenue would go to local public transit, and we're going to hold them to that.

WHEELER:

Absolutely. So measure O passed and it passed pretty considerably. I think it, we, again, this is Thursday after the election. So we only have a limited pool of data, but at the last I saw, it was about 60% of Humboldt County voters approved measure O. So a lot of Humboldt County voters want better transit, which is exciting for us, exciting for me, as someone who takes the bus that we could not only not see rollbacks in our transit service, but we could actually see improvements in our transit service. We could have shorter wait times between buses. That's awesome.

FISKE

We have the opportunity to really make a transformative investment in the transit system and looking forward to seeing that happen. And I would add too that funding for roads can also help improve bike and pedestrian safety if we prioritize that, which we should. And so when you're repaving a road, you can add bike lanes and crosswalks and things like that without much additional expense. And so that's another potential thing to look at as we consider the possibility of cuts to federal funding for those kinds of programs.

WHEELER:

So I know folks are probably concerned about climate change. I'm concerned about climate change. The first Trump administration pulled us out of the Paris climate accords. Luckily, the state of California has been an international actor itself. We have a number of bilateral agreements and multilateral agreements with foreign nations. We have compacts between other states, bipartisan agreement between red and blue states to continue to try to achieve global climate targets. Something that's going to be really important to do this is going to be public infrastructure improvements. And Matt, I imagine you're happy because California voters seemingly approved prop four. Can you tell us what prop four is and what that's going to mean for investments in California infrastructure?

SIMMONS:

Yeah, so Prop 4 was a $10 billion bond with funding for clean water projects, climate projects, climate mitigation. So both environmental adaptation and then also building clean energy projects, some wildfire prevention money, which is going to be logging, but you take all that $10 billion and there's a lot of good things in there for the climate. And it means that California can pay for things itself without having to ask the federal government for money in some respects, which is going to be really good and really important for the next four years.

To take just one example that I'm thinking about, there was funding in there for development of offshore wind port infrastructure. We're going to need new port infrastructure to support the offshore wind industry. And there was funding in Prop 4 set aside for that infrastructure. And so even if the federal government is less enthusiastic about renewable energy under a Trump administration, that's putting it incredibly mildly, California is still going to keep moving ahead and trying to shift our energy to cleaner sources.

WHEELER:

Well, speaking of renewable energy, again, trying to paint a rosier picture, trying to cheer folks up, something that was important in the last decade has been the falling price of renewables. They are competitive now with, with natural gas, which is the cheapest form of fossil fuel energy. So in States like Texas, right. Deep red Republican, Texas have seen just massive investments in wind and in solar. And it's improving their grid reliability.

And so to some extent, the, the, the theme of the Kamala Harris campaign was, we're not going back. We're not going back when it comes to renewables, in some sense, the market is going to continue to emphasize these as a part of our grid mix. It's going to, if we have a bad administration, it's going to impact it. Undoubtedly, but we will see naturally to the extent that the Trump administration allows the markets to work, we're going to continue to see investment in things like this.

SIMMONS:

Yeah, and just to add on to that, so a big part of the Inflation Reduction Act, which was the big Biden climate bill, was tax credits for renewable energy projects and funding for renewable energy projects. But I literally was just looking at an analysis a couple of weeks ago that it looked at how the majority of that money and the majority of that funding actually went to red counties and rural areas of the country. And politicians, even Republican politicians, don't like giving money back that they've already received. And so even though Trump is running on, oh, it's a green new scam, and oh, we shouldn't be spending all this money, it'll be interesting to see whether or not he actually follows through on that, given how much this money has benefited Trump voting parts of the country.

WHEELER:

Yeah. Kind of like the affordable care act was such a success in so many ways that it made it very difficult for the Trump administration to repeal it. And so they failed to repeal it. And so we still have the affordable care act. Well, at least for now, at least there were, there was some other good news locally. And again, this is Californians taking control of their destiny. And that was measure F in Eureka. Colin, remind us what the heck was measure F.

FISKE

What the heck was Measure F? Measure F was this ballot measure funded almost entirely by Rob Arkley in Eureka to block the city of Eureka's long-term plans to build affordable housing on underutilized city-owned parking lots downtown. And among those projects, not just housing, but also a big transit center, the Earth Center, which would have housing above it. And essentially, the measure was designed to block those by requiring the preservation of all of that existing parking, plus the building of new parking to serve any new housing, which would have made the projects just financially inviolable. And Measure F, despite astounding amount of money spent to support it... 1.6 million dollars. Yeah, in Eureka. Just in Eureka. Anyway, despite that, the voters resoundingly rejected it. They saw right through that nonsense and it makes one proud, I think. Totally.

WHEELER:

Yeah. So again, it's, it's Thursday. Not all the votes are in, but with the current number of votes in favor of measure F votes that he paid for, Rob Arkley has an investment of about $900 per vote. That's that, that, that absolutely trounces the previous like kind of like most worst run campaign of Anthony Mantova, which was about a hundred dollars per vote, if I remember correctly. So I think that Eureka has, has one refused this like popular notion that elections can be bought. Elections can't be bought in Eureka. There was a grassroots campaign, spent about $20,000 in opposition to this 20,000 compared to 1.6 million that defeated it. So good, good work keeping money out of local elections. I think.

FISKE

Well, we didn't keep the money out, but we ignored it. We ignored it.

WHEELER:

We didn't let it influence us. Actually, I think it had the opposite effect, right? I think a lot of Eureka voters got mailer after mailer, after mailer, after mailer, and it didn't prove their point. It made it seem more like a scam, the scam that it was.

FISKE

I think, though, when you look more broadly at election results in Eureka and Arcata as well, you see who folks voted for for city council also.

WHEELER:

Scott Bauer and Katie Moulton both won in Eureka.

FISKE

And in Arcata, the incumbents are currently ahead. It looks pretty sure that Sarah Schaefer and Stacey Atkins-Salazar will be reelected. And in third place currently is the other incumbent Alex Stillman. And then relatively close behind her is Genevieve Serna. And so you have the three incumbents ahead and Genevieve Serna and all four of them have been in support of things like the Gateway Plan and other infill development and more walkable development, public transit, all these kinds of things that we talk about all the time and are so important for the climate and other environmental work. And so I think like looking overall at who is being elected in Arcata and Eureka and also the ballot measures, it's reassuring that locally people really do seem to support this direction that we're heading, despite sometimes hearing some loud opposition at meetings.

WHEELER:

And let me focus just briefly on our kid of results too. So as you said, the three incumbents, Stacey, Alex, and Sarah, were all supportive of the gateway. The next closest person was very, very much in favor of the gateway. She ran entirely or almost entirely on a pro housing platform, and she nearly picked off a very strong incumbent who has huge name recognition. And we had two candidates who ran frankly, as like lefty NIMBYs in Arcata, who did not do well. And so I think that this is clarifying because often at public meetings, what we'll see is you'll get a bunch of folks in a room who are angry, who will say the people are against this thing. Now we have clear election results that show, look, no, actually in Eureka, the folks are in favor of affordable housing. We're in favor of having more neighbors and treating people kindly in Arcata. We're in favor of things like the Gateway. We're in favor of making this a welcoming place. We're in favor of more housing and more neighbors and more community. And as a housing advocate myself, that's really exciting.

SIMMONS:

So we should talk about, Tom, yeah?

WHEELER:

You know, y'all are listening to the most popular politician in Humboldt County right now. Admittedly, I, so I was elected to the Humboldt Bay Municipal Water District. I try not to talk about it here on the show because that seems like a conflict or whatever, but I was elected. I was appointed to the seat previously and I was retained in my seat, even though I only was there for like two months as the appointed incumbent. But yeah, thanks Matt.

SIMMONS:

So what are some environmental policies that you're gonna try to enact?

WHEELER:

You know, it's not even that I'm going to try and enact it. It's the things that the district are already working on, which I'm excited about, which is retaining in-stream flows in the Mad River. We control the Mad River basically as a water district because we control the dam at Ruth Lake, Matthew's dam. So the amount of water that you see in the river is like a human decision. And so we have a habitat conservation plan related to that. And we're trying to preserve in stream flows so that no one can come in and steal our water and ship it to grape growers somewhere else in California.

So I'm excited about that. I'm also excited to try to keep prices for water low, right? I don't like the idea of charging for a basic human necessity. And so water prices are always going to be somewhat regressive. And so it's important that we have good, clean, nice water that tastes good, that you want to drink coming out of your tap, that's affordable. And so, yeah, that's my policy platform, doing good things. Excellent. All right. Well, I hope everyone out there in the listening audiences is doing all right. It's okay to also not do all right, but eventually pick yourself up, dust yourself off, eat a taco, drink some water, go for a walk, you'll feel better. And also do, do the work. This has been something that has long been my mantra about how to deal with situations like this is engage more deeply, right? Engage in your local community, support each other, love each other, support mutual aid, ensure that the folks around you are doing well, and then engage in national politics when you can.

FISKE

Well, and I think the fact that as we've been talking about, there was such validation for progressive, environmentally friendly policies here in our local election results, just emphasizes that in our local communities, there are a lot of like-minded folks and we are going to now more than ever need to pull together as a community based with a hostile environment at the national level and looking forward to continuing to work with all of my friends and neighbors and colleagues in the next four.

WHEELER:

Well, I'm grateful to have you and to have Matt as my co-conspirators during the next four years. So let's keep the band together and let's keep playing. Amen. All right. This has been another episode of the Econews Report. Join us again next week for more environmental news from the North Coast of California.