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regulations
'Gift-Wrapped Favor to Big Tech': GOP Sneakily Pushes Ban on State AI Regulation
"This isn't leadership, it is surrendering to corporate overreach and abuse under the guise of 'protecting American innovation,'" said one consumer advocate.
May 13, 2025
A provision that U.S. House Republicans added to the budget reconciliation bill—unrelated to the GOP's goal of slashing Medicaid access in the legislation—represents, as one journalist said, "one of the most radical positions Republicans have taken" thus far on artificial intelligence and the regulations that experts have demanded in order to ensure the technology is used safely.
U.S. Rep. Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.) added the language Sunday night ahead of a markup session Tuesday, in what appeared to be an effort to stop state governments from enforcing existing and proposed laws to protect the public from AI systems.
"No state or political subdivision thereof may enforce any law or regulation regulating artificial intelligence models, artificial intelligence systems, or automated decision systems during the 10-year period beginning on the date of the enactment of this act," reads the provision.
With Congress "captured by Big Tech," saidAmerica 2.0 publisher and editor Dave Troy, "states are the only ones who can even try to regulate AI in the U.S."—but that would change under Guthrie's proposed ban.
"Now that state laws are finally starting to hold AI companies accountable for deepfake child pornography, election disinformation, AI companions targeting minors, and algorithmic abuse, Congress wants to slam the brakes?"
Under the law, state governments could be barred from using federal funds to develop oversight for AI or support any initiatives that differ from the Trump administration's stance on AI, which was on display earlier this year when President Donald Trump issued an order revoking the Biden administration's executive action to ensure the "safe, secure, and trustworthy development" of the technology.
Laws like one passed in New York in 2021 mandating bias audits for AI tools used in hiring decisions; a law in California requiring healthcare providers to disclose their use of generative AI; and another California measure that would require AI developers to document the data they use to create trainings—which could crack down on AI firms that hide their use of copyrighted material—could all be rendered unenforceable by Guthrie's proposal.
At 404 Media, Emanuel Maiberg wrote that "the AI industry has been sucking up to Trump since before he got into office," with tech mogul Elon Musk leading the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, Silicon Valley investor David Sacks appointed "AI czar," and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman appearing with Trump in January as he unveiled an AI data center development plan.
The inclusion of the AI provision in the budget reconciliation bill could limit debate on the proposal.
The House Committee on Energy and Commerce, which is chaired by Guthrie, held a full committee markup of the bill, including the AI language, on Tuesday. Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), who sits on the panel and is the ranking member of the Commerce, Manufacturing, and Trade Subcommittee, called the provision "a giant gift to Big Tech."
"This ban will allow AI companies to ignore consumer privacy protections, let deepfakes spread, and allow companies to profile and deceive consumers using AI," said Schakowsky.
The Tech Oversight Project called on Democratic lawmakers to "stand firm" against the "AI poison-pill spending bill."
Allowing the "unhinged, dangerous" measure to pass, said Public Citizen's Big Tech accountability advocate, JB Branch, would be "an outrageous abdication of congressional responsibility and a gift-wrapped favor to Big Tech that leaves consumers vulnerable to exploitation and abuse."
"States across the country, red and blue alike, have taken bold, bipartisan action to protect their citizens," said Branch. "Now that state laws are finally starting to hold AI companies accountable for deepfake child pornography, election disinformation, AI companions targeting minors, and algorithmic abuse, Congress wants to slam the brakes? This isn't leadership, it is surrendering to corporate overreach and abuse under the guise of 'protecting American innovation.'"
In the 2025 legislative session, lawmakers in at least 45 states and Puerto Rico have introduced at least 550 AI-related bills. In at least eight states proposals have focused on regulating high-risk AI systems and preventing discrimination by algorithms, and at least 19 state legislatures are considering legislation to stop corporate landlords from fixing rental prices via algorithm.
"Congress must ask itself: Will it stand with Big Tech lobbyists, or with the people it was elected to represent?" said Branch. "Because millions of constituents across the country are currently protected by state laws that would be gutted under this proposal. Public Citizen urges lawmakers to strike this reckless preemption language from the reconciliation bill and commit to advancing federal AI legislation that builds on, not bulldozes, state-level progress."
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The Extinction Order: Trump’s Executive Order 14270 Doesn’t Deregulate; It Dismantles
Henry David Thoreau once wrote, “In wildness is the preservation of the world.” But wildness cannot survive without protection, and protection is what this order destroys.
May 11, 2025
On April 9, 2025, U.S. President Donald Trump signed Executive Order 14270, blandly titled “Zero-Based Regulatory Budgeting to Unleash American Energy.” Behind that bureaucratic name is a sweeping directive: Dismantle a century of environmental protections.
Every regulation related to the environment, natural resources, or energy, whether it safeguards air, water, species, or public lands, must be rewritten to serve polluters or vanish by default.
Some will claim this is just about efficiency. But no standard review process sets a mass expiration date for protections, regardless of science, impact, or legal mandate. This is not streamlining. It is a countdown to erasure.
While courts deliberate, rules will expire. Enforcement will be suspended. Polluters will act as if the rules are already gone.
The deadline is September 30, 2026. Any rule not revised and reauthorized by then will expire automatically.
What will remain will not be protection. It will not be science. It will not be law. It will be a hollow shell, stripped of enforcement and public purpose.
This is not reform. It is demolition. It is sabotage by executive order.
They Said It Couldn’t Happen
To everyone who said, “They’d never go that far,” they just did. And the collapse has already begun.
With Executive Order 14270, Donald Trump issued not a policy revision but a regulatory kill order.
The EO mandates that all regulations under energy-related authority—especially those administered by agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Departments of Interior and Energy—must be reviewed and either revised to align with the administration’s priorities or be automatically terminated by September 30, 2026. While for some agencies the EO does not name specific laws, many foundational protections fall within these agencies’ regulatory domains.
Some may argue this is simply a regulatory reset or a call for modernization. But this is not a review guided by science, need, or public interest. It is a mandate that requires rules to serve industry or disappear by default. There is no neutral path. There is no room for delay. If an agency fails to revise and reauthorize a rule in time, it expires. No matter how vital it is.
Legal experts and environmental attorneys have described similar regulatory strategies by the previous Trump administration as calculated attempts to dismantle environmental protections from within.
Even the rules that survive review will be rewritten, stripped of science and purpose, then repackaged as hollow compliance.
This is not a bureaucratic obstacle. It is a regulatory kill switch.
What that means in practice:
• Endangered Species Act—gone.
• Migratory Bird Treaty Act—gone.
• Marine Mammal Protection Act—one.
• Anadromous Fish Conservation Act—under threat.
• Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act—gone.
These aren’t just under review. They are all under attack.
Breadth and Scope of the Loss
The laws everyone recognizes, such as the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Endangered Species Act, are just the beginning.
Beneath them lie hundreds of foundational rules that safeguard public health, climate resilience, environmental justice, and disaster readiness. Under Executive Order 14270, they are all at risk.
Supporters may claim the order only targets outdated or burdensome regulations. But the text applies broadly and indiscriminately. It sets no exceptions for essential rules, no protections for high-impact safeguards, and no criteria for public benefit. Unless these rules are rewritten to meet the new standards and reauthorized by September 30, 2026, they will expire. Along with them goes the regulatory backbone of modern environmental protection.
This is not theoretical. These laws will fall unless actively rescued.
Key protections on the chopping block:
Air, Water, and Public Health
• Clean Air Act
• Clean Water Act
• Safe Drinking Water Act
• Toxic Substances Control Act
• Superfund cleanup authority
• Mercury and Air Toxics Standards
Land and Resource Protection
• Resource Conservation and Recovery Act
• Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act
• Wilderness Act
• Antiquities Act
• Wild and Scenic Rivers Act
• Federal Land Policy and Management Act
Energy and Climate
• Energy Policy Act of 2005
• Greenhouse gas endangerment finding
• Energy Star Program
• Oil Pollution Act of 1990
Each of these took years, sometimes decades, of organizing, science, and compromise to create. They were not handed down by elites. They were won by people who refused to accept poisoned air, burning rivers, and dead coastlines.
Now they are being erased in a single executive order. Not one by one. All at once. This is not a rollback. It is erasure.
The Hidden Collapse
Executive Order 14270 does not just target major environmental laws. It dismantles the infrastructure that makes those laws real.
Supporters may argue that the laws remain untouched. But behind every statute, like the Clean Water Act or Endangered Species Act, are thousands of rules, monitoring systems, enforcement protocols, and technical standards. Without them, laws are just words on paper.
Now, all of that must be rewritten to serve polluters. If not, it disappears permanently.
Thousands of environmental regulations administered by agencies such as the EPA and the Department of the Interior could be subject to review and potential termination under Executive Order 14270.
Here is what that collapse looks like:
Public Health Protections
• Air monitoring rules vanish. No alerts for lead, benzene, or ozone.
• Radiation limits are lifted. Safety near nuclear sites erodes.
• Vehicle emissions testing ends. Smog returns to U.S. cities.
Water, Waste, and Pollution
• Stormwater runoff restrictions disappear. Waste floods rivers.
• Hazardous waste transport rules vanish. Disposal turns chaotic.
• Drilling oversight ends. Protected lands are opened to industry.
Climate and Disaster Response
• Energy efficiency rules are revoked. Electric bills rise.
• Fire mitigation programs are defunded. Wildfires grow deadlier.
• Fisheries protections vanish. Coastal economies are destabilized.
This is not just about forests or fish. It is about tap water, asthma medication, grocery prices, and cancer risks.
Betsy Southerland, former EPA director of science and technology for water, has warned that deregulatory approaches of this kind could lead to systemic breakdowns in public health protections.
This order does not trim fat. It guts the public architecture that keeps America safe, functional, and future-ready.
The Economic and Societal Cost
The damage from Executive Order 14270 will not stop with wildlife or wilderness. It will hammer the economy; threaten public health; and unravel industries that depend on clean air, safe water, and protected landscapes.
Some defenders will argue that environmental regulations stifle business, raise costs, or limit innovation. But environmental law in America was not born from ideology. It was forged in crisis, created to prevent economic collapse, mass illness, and ecological ruin. Many of these statutes were passed with overwhelming bipartisan support because Americans knew the cost of doing nothing was greater.
The Clean Air Act passed under former President Richard Nixon. The 1972 Clean Water Act was called “the most comprehensive and expensive environmental legislation in the nation’s history.” These laws did not just protect nature. They helped build the modern economy.
Many of the protections now targeted form the backbone of multibillion-dollar industries:
Wildlife and National Identity
• The Endangered Species Act saved the bald eagle, peregrine falcon, and California condor.
• The Migratory Bird Treaty Act protects ecosystems and supports rural economies across the country.
• The Marine Mammal Protection Act helped build a coastal tourism sector that generates billions.
• Fish conservation laws sustain sport fishing, a major driver in many regional economies.
Outdoor Economies
• Outdoor recreation supports $887 billion in consumer spending and 7.6 million jobs.
• Hiking, hunting, wildlife viewing, and camping all depend on healthy ecosystems.
• Without habitat protections, what is Yellowstone without wolves, or the coast without whales?
The law may speak of species and land. But the stakes are money, jobs, health, and identity.
This executive order guts the systems that protect them all.
The Human Toll and Environmental Injustice
The collapse will not hit everyone equally. It never does.
When environmental protections vanish, the first to suffer are the poor, the marginalized, and the politically powerless.
Some may argue that environmental burdens are shared evenly across society. But the data and history say otherwise. Environmental harm follows lines of poverty, race, and neglect. It hits those with the fewest resources, the least political power, and the highest exposure to toxins.
Without the Clean Water Act and Safe Drinking Water Act, vulnerable communities will lose safeguards against dumping, runoff, and lead contamination. New water crises will erupt in towns already on the edge.
Without the Clean Air Act, toxic smog will return to cities, especially in low-income and minority neighborhoods shaped by redlining and industrial zoning.
Without the National Environmental Policy Act, communities will have no voice in what gets built near their homes: pipelines, refineries, highways, landfills.
Without Superfund enforcement, the most toxic sites in America will be left to rot. Poison will seep into soil, water, and lives.
This is not theory. It is already happening:
• In Louisiana’s Cancer Alley, petrochemical plants poison Black neighborhoods. Cancer rates there are 50 times the national average.
• In West Virginia, abandoned coal towns face toxic water and respiratory illness.
• In Alaska and the Southwest, Indigenous communities still live beside Cold War-era uranium waste.
• Along the Pacific coast, salmon vanish and fishing economies unravel.
These are not isolated stories. They are previews.
The burden will fall hardest on those without lawyers, lobbyists, or local health departments—families already excluded from public hearings, ignored by regulators, and left behind by politics.
Executive Order 14270 turns temporary harm into permanent abandonment.
This is not just inequality. It is environmental apartheid..
Regulatory Collapse Is Guaranteed
This is not hypothetical. It is structural failure, built into the design.
Executive Order 14270 sets an impossible mandate: Every environmental regulation must be reviewed, revised, and reauthorized by September 30, 2026. If not, it will expire automatically.
Some will claim that with enough willpower and coordination, agencies can meet the deadline. But that is a myth. There are not enough staff. There is not enough time. And there is no intention to make it work. The order was built to break the system, not to improve it.
Environmental watchdogs and legal analysts suggest that only a small percentage of rules could realistically be reviewed and reissued before the deadline.
This is not deregulation. It is planned demolition.
Here is what that guarantees:
• Legal protections for ecosystems will collapse.
• Clean air and water rules will disappear.
• Ecotourism and outdoor recreation will suffer.
• Climate policy will be paralyzed.
• Inequality will worsen as states scramble to fill the void.
• Courts will be overwhelmed by lawsuits and confusion.
• Irreversible environmental damage will be locked in for generations.
Even if a future administration tries to reverse the damage, it could take years or even decades to rebuild what was destroyed.
Some things will not survive that long: species, coastlines, forests, ecosystems.
This is not a policy failure. It is policy used as a weapon.
The extinction of environmental protections is not a side effect. It is the goal.
Can This EO Actually Be Enforced?
Technically, yes. Executive Order 14270 can be enforced. But legally and practically, it is a minefield for all concerned.
Agencies can initiate rule reviews and assign expiration dates, especially when leadership supports the administration’s anti-regulatory agenda. But that does not make it lawful.
Under the Administrative Procedure Act, agencies must follow strict procedures before repealing or replacing rules. They must issue public notices, allow comment periods, hold hearings, and provide justifications. They cannot simply say, “The president told us to.”
Some defenders may argue the president has broad authority to manage agencies. But the law is clear: Regulatory repeal must follow legal process. Many of the protections targeted by this order were enacted by Congress. Agencies do not have the authority to let them quietly expire or gut them without breaking the law.
That is why lawsuits are already being filed. Legal challenges will come from environmental groups, state attorneys general, and public interest organizations.
But here is the catch: the damage will not wait.
While courts deliberate, rules will expire. Enforcement will be suspended. Polluters will act as if the rules are already gone.
Even if a judge rules against the administration, the harm will be done:
• Toxic waste released.
• Forests cleared.
• Communities exposed.
And if the White House refuses to comply? There is no enforcement arm of the Administrative Procedure Act. No agency exists to compel federal departments to enforce their own rules.
The only option is to sue, repeatedly, rule by rule, across jurisdictions.
As one Earthjustice attorney put it, “The law doesn’t enforce itself. And this administration knows it.”
Litigation takes money, time, expertise, and legal standing. These are resources many frontline communities do not have.
Environmental lawyers and watchdogs saw this coming. They are already planning for fights across dozens of fronts: air quality, pipelines, species protection, data suppression, and executive action.
But how many lawsuits will it take? 10? 50? 100?
Each one will be slow. Expensive. Uncertain.
This is not incompetence. It is sabotage, carried out with full intent.
And What About the Planet
This executive order is not just a domestic disaster.It is a climate change nuclear bomb.
Executive Order 14270 erases the foundation of nearly every federal climate policy:
• It nullifies the greenhouse gas endangerment finding, the legal trigger for regulating carbon emissions.
• It dismantles efficiency standards for appliances, buildings, and vehicles.
• It undermines the Energy Star Program and other clean energy incentives.
• It guts methane rules, fuel economy standards, and oil spill safeguards.
Some will argue that climate progress can continue without federal policy, through state action or private innovation. But without national coordination, incentives, and legal authority, that progress will slow, fragmented, and ultimately fall short. Federal policy drives investment, enforces accountability, and sets the global tone.
With these tools gone, the United States cannot meet its climate goals. Not nationally. Not globally.
We will miss our Paris agreement targets. We will exceed the 1.5°C warming threshold. And we will pull other nations backward with us.
The damage is not just about emissions. It is about lost leadership. Lost credibility. And a green light to polluters everywhere.
This is not a pause. It is a reversal.
Climate collapse is no longer a distant danger. It is a scheduled event, signed into law by the president.
The Heart of It
This executive order does not repeal environmental laws. It kills the systems that make those laws work.
The Clean Air Act will still exist. But if EPA regulations expire, there will be no enforcement.
The Endangered Species Act will remain on paper. But without specific protections and triggers, no species will be protected.
This is the method: Dismantle implementation. Remove enforcement. Let the law collapse from the inside out.
It is a bureaucratic kill switch, designed to erase a century of environmental progress without ever repealing a statute.
Legal on paper. Lethal in practice.
Once the rules disappear, the laws become theater:
• No enforcement.
• No funding.
• No consequences.
They will still be on the books, but they will no longer matter.
Empty laws. Empty air. Empty rivers. Empty promises.
How We Fight, and Why We Must
There is no silver-bullet lawsuit. No single agency. No shortcut.
This executive order will not be stopped by one clever court challenge. It will take dozens, perhaps hundreds, of battles—rule by rule, agency by agency, ecosystem by ecosystem.
Some will ask, why not file one big lawsuit to stop it all? Because Executive Order 14270 does not repeal a single law. It sets a countdown clock for thousands of regulations to vanish unless reauthorized. That makes it nearly lawsuit-proof by design. Each rule must be challenged individually, and only after harm has occurred. Courts cannot force agencies to act unless Congress explicitly mandates it. And even then, litigation takes time. By the time a ruling arrives, the damage may already be done. The law does not enforce itself. And this executive order exploits that fact.
There is no cavalry. Only us.
So we fight, everywhere:
• File lawsuits, fast and often: Legal action is the first and last line of defense. Every expired rule must be challenged. Every unlawful revision must be contested. Rapid-response legal teams must be ready to sue the EPA, Department of the Interior, and Department of Energy across multiple jurisdictions. Delay means destruction.
• Support legal and watchdog organizations: Groups like Earthjustice, Natural Resources Defense Council, and the Center for Biological Diversity are already fighting. But they are underfunded and overwhelmed. They need staff, experts, and resources. Every donation matters. Every volunteer strengthens the line.
• Pressure elected officials at every level: Demand public hearings. Demand oversight. Call your governor. Write your city council. Make it politically toxic to support this executive order.
• Act locally: States and cities can pass their own clean air and water laws. They can fund conservation, restrict drilling, and sue federal agencies. Join local groups. Attend zoning meetings. Run for water boards and planning commissions. Build resistance into local government.
• Refuse to normalize this: Speak out. Disrupt. Document. This is not politics as usual. Say so. Organize protests. Submit op-eds. Flood comment periods. Call out silence. Expose polluters. Make the truth visible.
• Demand media coverage: Executive Order 14270 should be a daily headline. If it is not, make it one. Share stories. Elevate frontline voices. Hold media outlets accountable. If national media fails, local and independent voices must rise.
This is a regulatory blitz.And resistance must be relentless.
The strategy is simple: flood the system, fracture it, and exhaust the opposition.
While we scramble to save species, lands, and laws, they bulldoze everything else.
This is not a warning. It is a dispatch from the front lines.
They are not debating whether to dismantle environmental protections. They are dismantling them, right now.
If you ever said, “They would never go that far,” They just did.
This is not just bad policy. It is a deliberate attempt to cripple the government’s ability to protect the air we breathe, the water we drink, the climate we depend on, and the living world we love.
It is not a mistake. It is the plan.
The question is no longer what they will do. The question is what we will do about it.
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Instead of ‘Abundance,’ Let’s Have a Conversation About ‘Shared Prosperity’
“Abundance” without an eye for who the abundance serves runs the risk of exacerbating the problem at the core of our economic challenges—the hoarding of power and wealth by the people that already have a lot.
May 09, 2025
Those of us who care about building a healthy, thriving, and prosperous future are reeling. The Trump administration’s attacks on our people and our planet plus the outright evisceration of government by Elon Musk and his corporate army are forcing us to reflect on how we got here and to ponder how we move forward.
As believers in the government’s ability—and in fact responsibility—to do good, we are having to face the extremely uncomfortable fact that the government does not work for the majority of people. So, it makes sense that many are talking about how government can work better to create “abundance”—and the recent release of Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson’s book of the same name—as the solution to our despair. Klein and Thompson argue that America’s inability to build and the reason why liberals are losing is the result of excessive red tape, deliberate policy decisions, and bureaucratic inertia, which must be eliminated.
For over a decade I have worked to craft, implement, and evaluate strategies that leverage private, public, and philanthropic investments to deliver tangible and substantial benefits to formerly “redlined” communities. In plain terms, I’ve been fighting like hell to get resources—actual dollars—back into communities of color. And I’ve borne witness to the growing frustration with the perceived inability of all levels of government to deliver results. All too often, regulations have become the scapegoat that some argue drive up the cost or slow the development of essential infrastructure like housing, renewable energy, and transportation networks.
What shared prosperity requires is a shift away from profit maximization and toward affordability.
Don’t get me wrong, I completely agree that we have to urgently build more housing, transportation networks, and clean energy—the ingredients that people need to live healthy and prosperous lives. But just building more by eliminating regulations is not the silver bullet. “Abundance” without an eye for who the abundance serves runs the risk of exacerbating the problem at the core of our economic challenges—the hoarding of power and wealth by the people that already have a lot of, well, abundance.
Just building more—“abundance” as a goal in and of itself—will not allow us to deliver solutions to the thorniest and extremely interconnected challenges we face, like climate change, a widening racial wealth gap, extremely low levels of confidence in the public sector, eroding governance structures, and dwindling public financing due to rising costs and constraints on raising new revenue.
These problems were not created because we don’t build things; rather, they are the outcomes of an economic system built on fabricated scarcity and the doctrine of maximizing profit, exploiting communities of color, and concentrating political and economic power.
It's our inability to share in abundance, our over consumption, and the belief that in order to have more abundance you need to hoard as much of it as possible that truly hurts our planet and our people.
Take this example. Several years ago, California’s investor-owned utilities were planning to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in charging infrastructure to support the state’s transition to electric vehicles. But the majority of the investment was planned for wealthy communities where electric vehicles were already being used. The utilities claimed that low-income families would not use the chargers because they didn’t own electric vehicles, but we argued that investments in charging infrastructure at multifamily housing and in low-income communities were essential to creating the conditions for families to consider switching to clean vehicles. In the end, the utilities agreed that a percentage of chargers should be deployed to low-income communities and over the years those percentages have continued to increase as the stigma that low-income communities would not use chargers was dispelled.
And this lesson is replicable. By focusing on who the benefits of vehicle charging stations were going to, we were able to scale the clean energy transition even faster by opening the option up to more Californians—not just those who already had access.
And so, I propose that to really tackle our complex challenges we must not work toward “abundance,” but instead work toward the goal of “shared prosperity,” of which abundance is a key strategy to achieving that goal.
Shared prosperity first and foremost is rooted in people, not markets, and meets the needs of all people, including those who have suffered the most under our current paradigm, creating an economy in which all communities can thrive. It ultimately recognizes that we are part of an interconnected system and that we are only as strong as our ability to care for the most vulnerable among us.
What shared prosperity requires is a shift away from profit maximization and toward affordability. By definition, it’s prosperous for all, meaning that jobs with good benefits and worker protections are ubiquitous, and so are opportunities to build generational wealth and community resilience to climate, social, health, and economic crises.
The most vulnerable among us need to know that they can count on being able to bounce back. And to do so, our governments, our community-based organizations, and our people must have the capacity and resources to meet the call for support when needed.
Reading Abundance I get the sense that the authors think that people are often the obstacle to progress. Government, community leaders, environmental justice advocates, and environmentalists are not antagonists toward a healthy and prosperous future; they are the force that will ultimately help us achieve it.
Let me give an example of how a pivot from an “abundance” to a “shared prosperity” paradigm can function.
Take the Transformative Climate Communities (TCC) Program, a California state program which has delivered 400 units of affordable housing, planted 13,000 trees, installed over 600 solar panels on homes, deployed 26 electric buses, and placed people into approximately 800 jobs—all thanks to the vision and voices of the communities and their local governments who have been at the center of decision-making that impacts their daily lives. The eight communities—notably formerly redlined communities—where this work is taking place previously had an “abundance” mindset, they just needed the right support and government interventions. TCC is successful precisely because it shifted from this abundance mindset and toward a shared prosperity mindset, putting communities in the driver’s seat to determine how best to build thriving neighborhoods, fight climate change, and determine their own economic futures.
The challenge before us is to design a government that has new and better tools to scale our progress, from financing mechanisms that generate the revenue necessary to do this work, to governance practices to steer our progress, to, yes, revisiting the laws and regulations that govern our built environment to eliminate those that no longer fit our moment and to update those that require retooling.
Above all, we must focus our attention on building abundance and prosperity where it is hardest to achieve, where decades of disinvestment and a legacy of injustice have locked in poverty and pollution. Otherwise, “abundance” is just a new version of trickle-down economics, which not only never trickled-down but continued the grotesque hoarding of wealth and power among the people that already had it to begin with.
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