Republican-led states are following President Donald Trump’s lead and making it harder for their agencies to exceed federal environmental standards.
Lawmakers in Alabama, Tennessee, and Utah have enacted “sound science” laws that raise the threshold state regulators must clear before adopting certain environmental and public health protections.
Supporters cast the measures as a check on state agencies that adopt regulations without sufficient scientific justification, while opponents argue they could make it harder for states to respond independently to environmental and public health risks when Washington chooses not to act.
Lawmakers in other Republican-led states introduced similar legislation recently, though not ...