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Sparks

Trump Promises ‘Fully Expedited’ Permitting in Exchange for $1 Billion of Investment

But ... how?

Donald Trump.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

President-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday rocked the energy world when he promised “fully expedited approvals and permits, including, but in no way limited to, all Environmental approvals” for “Any person or company investing ONE BILLION DOLLARS, OR MORE, in the United States of America,” in a post on Truth Social Tuesday.

“GET READY TO ROCK!!!” he added.

Trump has frequently derided regulatory barriers to development, including in his announcements of various economic and policy roles in his upcoming administration. His designee for Secretary of the Interior, Doug Burgum, for instance, will also head a National Energy Council that will “oversee the path to U.S. ENERGY DOMINANCE by cutting red tape … by focusing on INNOVATION over longstanding, but totally unnecessary, regulation.”

When Trump announced his nomination of Lee Zeldin to head the Environmental Protection Agency, he said Zeldin would “ensure fair and swift deregulatory decisions that will be enacted in a way to unleash the power of American business.”

Current interpretations of existing laws dictate that any project constituting a major federal action (e.g. one that uses public lands) must be reviewed under the National Environmental Policy Act, the country’s signature permitting law. Federal courts are often asked in litigation to sign off on whether that review process — although not the outcome — was sufficient.

Regardless of any changes Trump may make to the federal regulatory system as president, that infrastructure is already in flux. The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals recently issued a ruling that throws into doubt decades of NEPA enforcement. Also on Tuesday, the Supreme Court heard a separate case on the limits of NEPA as it relates to aproposed rail line expansion to transport oil from Utah’s Uinta Basin to refineries on the Gulf of Mexico. Although the court is unlikely to issue a decision until next year, its current membership has shown itself plenty willing to scrap longstanding precedent in the name of cutting the regulatory state down to size.

Trump did not support his announcement with any additional materials laying out the legal authorities he plans to exercise to exempt these projects from regulation or proposed legislation, but it already attracted criticism from environmentalists, with the Sierra Club describing it as a “plan to sell out communities and environment to the highest bidder.It’s also unclear whether Trump was referring to foreign direct investment in the United States, of which there was $177 billion in 2022,according to the Department of Commerce.

Trump’s appointed co-deregulator-in-chief, for one, approved of his message today. “This is awesome 🚀🇺🇸,” Elon Musk wrote on X in response.

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Sparks

One Reason Trump Wants Greenland: Critical Minerals

The island is home to one of the richest rare earth deposits in the world.

Donald Trump.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

A top aide to incoming President Donald Trump is claiming the president-elect wants the U.S. to acquire Greenland to acquire more rare minerals.

“This is about critical minerals. This is about natural resources,” Trump’s soon-to-be national security advisor Michael Waltz told Fox News host Jesse Watters Thursday night, adding: “You can call it Monroe Doctrine 2.0, but it’s all part of the America First agenda.”

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An Insurance Startup Faces a Major Test in Los Angeles

Kettle offers parametric insurance and says that it can cover just about any home — as long as the owner can afford the premium.

Los Angeles fire destruction.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Los Angeles is on fire, and it’s possible that much of the city could burn to the ground. This would be a disaster for California’s already wobbly home insurance market and the residents who rely on it. Kettle Insurance, a fintech startup focused on wildfire insurance for Californians, thinks that it can offer a better solution.

The company, founded in 2020, has thousands of customers across California, and L.A. County is its largest market. These huge fires will, in some sense, “be a good test, not just for the industry, but for the Kettle model,” Brian Espie, the company’s chief underwriting officer, told me. What it’s offering is known as “parametric” insurance and reinsurance (essentially insurance for the insurers themselves.) While traditional insurance claims can take years to fully resolve — as some victims of the devastating 2018 Camp Fire know all too well — Kettle gives policyholders 60 days to submit a notice of loss, after which the company has 15 days to validate the claim and issue payment. There is no deductible.

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What the L.A. Fires Are Doing to the City’s Air

The Santa Ana winds are carrying some of the smoke out to sea.

Los Angeles during wildfires.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Wildfires have been raging across Los Angeles County since Tuesday morning, but only in the past 24 hours or so has the city’s air quality begun to suffer.

That’s because of the classic path of the Santa Ana winds, Alistair Hayden, a public health professor at Cornell who studies how wildfire smoke affects human health, told me. “Yesterday, it looked like the plumes [from the Palisades fire] were all blowing out to sea, which I think makes sense with the Santa Ana wind patterns blowing to the southwest,” Hayden said.

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