DAVID BLACKMON: DOJ Opens A New Front On Trump’s American Energy Dominance Agenda

The U.S. Department of Justice led by Attorney General Pam Bondi filed four court actions this week, opening a new battle front in support of the Trump American Energy Dominance Agenda.

The actions come as a response to a little-noticed April 8 executive order signed by President Donald Trump directing Bondi and her team to “take action to stop the enforcement of state laws that unreasonably burden domestic energy development so that energy will once again be reliable and affordable for all Americans.”

Noting that, “any States have enacted, or are in the process of enacting, burdensome and ideologically motivated ‘climate change’ or energy policies that threaten American energy dominance and our economic and national security,” Executive Order 14260 further states, “hese state laws and policies weaken our national security and devastate Americans by driving up energy costs for families coast-to-coast, despite some of these families not living or voting in States with these crippling policies.”

In seeking to fulfill the directives in this order, DOJ lawyers filed separate actions targeting lawfare-related actions by the states of Michigan and Hawaii, along with so-called “climate superfund laws” enacted by Vermont and New York.

The DOJ actions targeting Michigan and Hawaii seek to prevent the Democrat governors and attorneys general in those states from joining a long standing anti-oil and gas lawfare campaign funded by billionaire NGOs and coordinated by the San Francisco-based Sher Edling firm. Both filings argue that such lawsuits conflict with the federal government’s longstanding preeminence to regulate air emissions under the Clean Air Act, do harm to federal efforts to regulate interstate commerce, and reduce federal revenues by impeding energy development.