Two national monuments in Utah have been restored, but it isn’t over.
Read MoreDonald Trump
46, the 117th, and the New Math: 50 + 1 > 50
Fortunately, the Trump administration was generally so grossly incompetent at governing that most of the Trumpian rollbacks were, are being, or can be overturned through a combination of executive, judicial, and congressional actions.
Read MoreThe Presidency in 2020: To Be Decided by 538 Votes Cast in 51 Elections
The Presidency in 2020: To Be Decided by 538 Votes Cast in 51 Elections
We don’t have one national election for president in 2020. Rather we have fifty-one elections (in fifty states and the District of Columbia) that will decide the next president of the United States. Today, we can predict with certainty the total number of votes that will be cast for the presidency: 538.
That is 2 votes for each state (equaling the number of US senators), additional votes equaling the number of members of each state’s delegation to the House of Representatives (435 total), plus the 3 electoral votes cast by DC (which we can hope will someday be the state called Douglass Commonwealth).
What Does This Have to Do with Public Lands?
The US Constitution’s property clause (Article IV, Section 3, Clause 2) says:
The Congress shall have Power to dispose of and make all needful Rules and Regulations respecting the Territory or other Property belonging to the United States; . . .
Regarding the property clause, the Supreme Court has found that “[t]he power over the public land thus entrusted to Congress is without limitations” (United States v. Gratiot, 39 U. S. 526 [1840]). However, Congress has delegated much of its power over the public lands to either the president (for example, the power to establish national monuments and to proscribe oil and gas development in areas of the ocean), the secretary of agriculture (the National Forest System, administered by the USDA Forest Service), and—mainly—the secretary of the interior (the National Park System, the National Wildlife Refuge System, Bureau of Land Management holdings, and such).
Cabinet secretaries are nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate. With its current cabinet and their predilections, the Trump administration is an existential threat to public lands as we know and love them. This is mainly because Trump has blown through so many norms (“a standard or pattern, especially of social behavior, that is typical or expected of a group”). No previous president would even have considered trying many of the things Trump has gotten away with (for me, shrinking national monuments comes immediately to mind). Imagine him in a second term.
To protect the public lands for this and future generations, we must put the current administration out to pasture.
The Popular Vote Doesn’t Matter
Just ask Andrew Jackson (1824), Samuel Tilden (1876), Grover Cleveland (1888), Al Gore (2000), and Hillary Clinton (2016). They all received the most votes from voters but lost in the Electoral College vote.
Electoral votes in most states are winner-take-all, save for Maine (4) and Nebraska (5), which give two votes to the statewide winner and a vote to the winner of each congressional district. From an Electoral College standpoint, any popular vote above the 50 percent plus one vote required to win the Electoral College votes in the forty-eight states where a plurality win is good enough, is a vote that makes no difference. As Clinton showed, one can get millions more popular votes than her opponent, but if those extra votes are in blue states, they are for naught.
Unless one wins the Electoral College, one doesn’t get to govern, no matter how worthy and just the policy proposals. However, given the existential threat Trump poses to the public lands—or to [fill in the blank]—the consequences of winning (or losing) are just more important in 2020.
“Electability” Boils Down to the Ten States in Play
In 2020, electability will boil down to who wins the Electoral College votes in ten states. (See Figure 3.) The blue states will most likely vote Democratic (209 votes), while the red states will most likely vote Republican (204 votes). It is the toss-up gray (some prefer the resulting mix of purple) states that will decide who is the next president of the United States (125 votes).
In each of the ten toss-up states, the margin of victory for the winning presidential candidate in 2016 was less than 2 percent. Trump is defending six of these states he won in 2016: Arizona (11), Florida (29), Michigan (16), Pennsylvania (20), Wisconsin (10), and North Carolina (15), for a total of 101 votes. The Democratic nominee will be defending four states: Maine (4), Minnesota (10), New Hampshire (4), and Nevada (6), for a total of 24 votes (in 2016 Clinton received 23 of these votes because Trump won in Maine’s 2nd congressional district).
Is It Time for Reform Yet?
As some states continue to increase population faster than others, the likelihood that the winner of the popular vote and of the Electoral College vote will not be the same person will increase dramatically in the years to come. It’s only two of three modern data points, but two of the last three presidents were losers in the popular vote.
Just as we went to the direct election of senators in 1913 with the Seventeenth Amendment (previously senators were elected by their respective state legislatures), we need to amend the US Constitution to provide for the direct election of the president. Getting such an amendment through the Senate and ratified by three-quarters of the states is a heavy, if not impossible, lift, given the power of the small states (see above).
An alternative might be the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, which would bypass amending the Constitution in a creative use of the constitutional provision that says states have vast power to set the terms of federal elections in their states.
However, reform will not occur by the first Tuesday in November—er, I mean by December 20 (the day George Washington died), 2020, when the members of the 2020 Electoral College gather in their respective state capitals to officially elect the next president of the United States.
To Boot, the Gerrymandered Senate Is Likely to Worsen
They would do more if they could, but Oregon’s Democratic senators, Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley, are able to achieve less lasting congressional conservation for Oregon’s federal public lands because they are in the minority in the Senate.
In the 2018 election, Democrats running for the US Senate received twelve million more votes than Republicans running for the US Senate. The result is that Republicans hold fifty-three seats to the Democrats’ forty-seven.
For the US Senate, gerrymandering is baked into the US Constitution, and gerrymandering is likely to become more anti-Democratic Party over time. According to David Birdsell, dean of the Marxe School of Public and International Affairs at Baruch College, by 2040 it is likely that 70 percent of Americans will live in fifteen states. They will be represented by thirty senators. The other seventy senators will represent 30 percent of Americans. The red-blue / urban-rural / liberal-conservative / coast-flyover divides will increase.
Some kind of Senate reform should also be undertaken.
Who Am I Supporting for President?
In case you couldn’t tell, I will not be voting for Donald John Trump.
I also won’t be voting for a third-party candidate, because in the U.S. winner-take-all system, such a vote is effectively a vote for the major party candidate you most don’t want.
However, by the time I vote in the Oregon presidential primary on May 19, all but five presidential primaries or caucuses will already have been done, so my vote is not likely to be consequential.
So vote schmote, who am I supporting for the Democratic nomination for president? Earlier, I sent money to Washington governor Jay Inslee, wanting him to advance in the presidential debates to bring attention to the existential threat of the climate crisis. He is now seeking another term as governor. I’ve not yet given money to any other candidate, but I want the Democratic nominee to be the one most likely to garner at least 270 votes in the Electoral College.
While this election, like nearly all elections, is about turning out the base, this Electoral College election is all about swinging enough of the swing states to the Democratic column. This can be done by either a more massive turnout of base Democratic voters than base Republican voters in those swing states or appealing to enough “moderates” in those states that Donald Trump needs to go. These moderates include a significant number of Democrats who voted for Obama twice and Trump once. Such moderates also include Republicans who held their nose and voted for Trump, but more against Hillary Clinton. One can only hope that the Trump stench is so horrible and pervasive that it cannot be staunched by merely holding one’s nose. However, the Democrats must offer an alternative acceptable to these swing voters in the ten swing states.
Over a beer (perhaps we would need two), we could debate which Democratic candidate has the best chance of doing that. For the reasons stated herein, I will insist on limiting the discussion to the candidate’s electability in the ten states in play.
Trump Signs DeFazio-Walden-Wyden-Merkley Bill Giving Away 50 Square Miles of Federal Public Land in Oregon
A bill that gives away 32,261 acres of federal public land in Oregon has been signed into law by President Donald Trump. The new owners are expected to intensively log and road their new holdings.
Read MoreThe Other Half of the National Environmental Policy Act Is Under Threat
Only the half of NEPA that is procedural is enforceable in court against federal agencies that violate it. And now that half is under attack from the president and from Congress.
Read MoreAs the Courts Change, So Must Public Lands Conservation Look More to Congress (Part 1)
The courts, they are a-changin’. The public lands conservation community should not expect judicial victories in the future comparable to those of times past.
Read MoreTrump Pardons Abusers—Of Public Lands, Public Officials, and a Child
The Hammonds, Mr. President, are not persons of generally good character. “Devoted family men” do not abuse minor children in their family.
Read MoreUsing the Bundys for Good: Finding the Silver Lining for Public Lands
Don’t tell anyone, but the more the Bundys—especially the patriarch, Cliven—talk, the better off are America’s public lands. This is true even if Cliven doesn’t again go off-script and full-on racist...
Read MoreSelling More Heroin to Pay for Methadone: Oil Drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge: Part 2
As part of the tax bill recently signed into law by President Trump, at the behest Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Congress opened up Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for oil drilling. The next battle over drilling the in the refuge is about to commence. For the caribou and nature, each battle must be won or at least a draw. For the forces of darkness, they must only win once.
Read MoreEnergy Exploitation on Federal Public Lands? Not!
Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke and I don’t agree on most public lands issues, including greater sage-grouse, national monuments, fossil fuel energy exploitation, and endangered species to name a few. But we do agree on at least one matter: Solar panels don’t belong on public lands.... While photovoltaic panels can happily and profitably live on roofs in town, bighorn sheep, desert tortoises, and sage-grouse cannot.
Read MorePrecedent for Secretary Zinke’s Gut-Job on the National Monuments
The Trump administration is moving ahead with its intention to review and rescind national monument designations for some public lands. Now a leaked memorandum from Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke shows that he will be pointing to unproclamations of portions of national monuments by previous presidents as precedent.... None of the unproclamations were ever litigated, so there has never been a judicial determination of whether those reputable legal scholars are indeed correct. Now, however, if President Trump acts on Secretary Zinke’s recommendations, the time will come for such a test.
Read MoreClosing the Mining Loophole for Wild and Scenic Rivers
The federal public lands along more than half of the stream mileage in the National Wild and Scenic Rivers System (NWSRS) can be mined, notwithstanding its congressional “protection” in wild and scenic rivers (WSRs). This is because the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act of 1968 (WSRA) established three different classifications for WSR segments—wild, scenic, and recreational—and banned mining or not based on the classifications. The WSRA needs fixing to offer uniform protection against mining in the NWSRS.
Read MoreOwyhee Canyonlands: Faux Conservation and Pork Barrel Development
The Owyhee Canyonlands in Oregon are worthy of inclusion in the National Park System, administered by the National Park Service. Now that would be local economic development! The Owyhee Canyonlands are worthy of designation by Congress as an overarching national conservation area with underlying wilderness and wild and scenic rivers where appropriate. The Owyhee Canyonlands are not deserving of a half-assed mineral withdrawal that locks in other harmful uses.
Read MoreTheodore Roosevelt: The First and Greatest Public Lands Conservationist
This least outdoors-loving American president makes me appreciate the most outdoors-loving president, Theodore Roosevelt. TR spent many a night outside of a bed under the open stars, including three nights in the Sierra with John Muir. Before TR left office in 1909, he had established, sometimes with Congress and sometimes without: 51 bird reservation, four national game reserves, five national parks, 18 national monuments, and 150 national forests. I fear the losses to be toted up when Trump leaves office.
Read MoreWill Trump Dump National Monuments?
President Trump signed an executive order on April 26, 2017, that directs Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke to review sixty-two of the last three presidents’ national monument proclamations, dating back to 1996. The review will result in a final report in four months that “shall include recommendations, Presidential actions, legislative proposals, or other actions consistent with law.”
The administration is interested in either totally abolishing, reducing in size, and/or weakening the protections for national monuments. Those prerogatives belong to Congress. If Trump tries, he’ll get a multitude of tweets saying, “See you in court!”
Read MoreA Congressional Conservation Agenda for the Twenty-First Century
With President-elect Trump having won the Electoral College and the Republicans being in the majority of both houses of the coming 115th (2017-2018) Congress, the public lands conservation community is going to be on defense like never before.
It was either the Prussian general Carl von Clausewitz (1780–1831) or the Manassa Mauler, William Harrison "Jack" Dempsey (1895–1983) who famously said that the best defense is a good offense. The conservation community needs to be for good things while we are opposing bad things.
Though we’ve burned through one-sixth of the current century, Congress has yet to enact any sweeping and bold public lands conservation legislation in the new millennium. There’s still time though, and a crying need.
You may be questioning my grip on reality at this moment, given the recent election. While I am quite cognizant of the dark times that await us, I’m equally aware that it often takes several Congresses (two-year terms) to enact sweeping and bold legislation into law....
There is no time like the present to begin to change political reality.
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Federal Public Lands Under Trump or Clinton
Presidents matter for federal public lands. Let’s examine the policy positions, party platforms and statements of the two major party candidates....
Now more than ever, one has to rise above principle and do the right thing for the Earth and its human and non-human inhabitants by voting for Hillary Clinton.
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