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President Trump hasn’t begun to build a wall. He has not repealed or replaced Obamacare. He hasn’t revised NAFTA. He hasn’t even crafted a framework for a tax bill -- his administration's next legislative priority.
But if there is one policy area in which Trump has kept his campaign promises so far, it's been on rolling back environmental regulations.
On Tuesday afternoon, Trump is scheduled to sign a new executive order that will serve as the biggest reversal yet on President Obama’s actions to curb climate change. The sweeping order not only addresses how current environmental laws will be enforced, but also alters the government’s approach to rising sea levels and temperatures.
Specifically, the executive order is expected to roll back six of Obama’s executive orders on climate change and regulating carbon emissions.
But when it comes to the environment, this executive order is only the most recent campaign promise he's fulfilled. He picked an EPA administrator, Scott Pruitt, who has a reputation for suing the agency over which he now presides. Trump slashed funds for the EPA by 31 percent in his proposed budget. And one of the first things that Trump’s EPA administrator did was tell oil and gas companies not to worry about an inquiry into their methane emissions.
What's more, these changes go beyond the country's borders. The state of the global environment represents perhaps the greatest policy difference between Obama’s last secretary of state, John Kerry, and Trump’s pick for Secretary of State, former ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson.