"A new ALEC working group is promoting long-shot tactics like nullification and a constitutional convention."
"Republican efforts to stall President Joe Biden’s climate agenda are slowly beginning to take shape. In March, a coalition of 12 Republican state attorneys general filed a lawsuit challenging Biden’s executive order creating a working group to establish a metric for the “social cost of carbon.” Led by Missouri’s attorney general, Eric Schmitt, the lawsuit charges that the order is an “enormous expansion of federal regulatory power” and that such cost calculations are “inherently speculative, policy-laden, and indeterminate” and should instead be undertaken by Congress.
In a similar vein, 21 Republican-controlled states, led by Texas and Montana, have sued the Biden administration over its decision to revoke a permit for the Keystone XL pipeline, calling it an unconstitutional overuse of executive power that would diminish the states’ economies and tax revenue. Both lawsuits are pending in federal courts. Separately, in response to Biden’s alleged “hostility to the energy industry,” Texas Governor Greg Abbott issued an executive order in January directing state agencies to “use all lawful powers” to challenge federal policies that disadvantage oil and gas operators. (Texas state agencies with the ability to loosen environmental regulations on the oil and gas industry largely do not appear to have changed policies in response to the order.)
Ultimately, many of these actions may amount to little more than grandstanding, and it’s difficult to discern whether or not a broad, deliberate strategy is at work. But behind the scenes, call records obtained by Grist show that the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC, has formed a new working group to build upon these efforts."
Naveena Sadasivam reports for Grist Staff Writer Apr 12, 2021.
Advertisement 
