The Morning: Cutting red tape

February 17, 2025

Good morning. We’re covering a major policy challenge for Democrats — plus taxpayer records, Eric Adams and dangerous storms.

President Trump. Haiyun Jiang for The New York Times

Moving fast

President Trump has spent the first few weeks of his second term bulldozing through the federal bureaucracy. He says that the government and its rules are inefficient and, during his first term, got in the way of executing his agenda.

Democrats may not approve of Trump’s targets — foreign aid and consumer protection agencies — or the potential constitutional crisis he initiated when he tried to eliminate them. But some Democrats might envy the speed at which he cut through red tape. After all, liberal lawmakers have for years complained about bureaucracy that moved too slowly and rules that stifled their ambitions.

One such Democrat was Joe Biden. Toward the end of his term as president, he said his administration was too slow to roll out his infrastructure law. “Historians will talk about (how) great the impact was,” Biden told USA Today last month. “But it didn’t have any immediate impact on people’s lives.”

Similarly, Barack Obama promised “shovel-ready” projects to help revitalize the economy, but they were slow to get started. “Shovel-ready was not as shovel-ready as we expected,” Obama said in 2011. Gov. Gavin Newsom of California has criticized his state’s troubled high-speed rail project. “I watched as a mayor and then a lieutenant governor and now governor as years became decades,” he said in 2023. “People are losing trust and confidence in our ability to build big things.”

Democrats typically run for office promising to make government help people. But Democrats have also enacted rules to improve workplaces, stop unfair business practices and protect the environment. Even when those rules work well, they impose additional requirements on new public and private projects. Today’s newsletter explains why some Democrats were starting to rethink their approach even before Trump took office.

Getting permits

Building new things in America can be very hard.

Consider clean-energy projects. These are meant to create jobs — in solar, wind, nuclear and so on — and combat climate change. But passing a law that spends money on such projects is only the first step. The companies and agencies involved have to apply for permits and show they meet regulatory standards to start construction. The government takes time to assess those applications.

The process can last months or years before building begins. More than two years after Congress enacted $5 billion to electric vehicle charging stations, just two states — Ohio and New York — had opened any. After three years, the number of stations nationwide numbered in the mere dozens, out of thousands the program could eventually build.

Two cars parked by an electric vehicle charging station.

An E.V. charging station in London, Ohio. Maddie McGarvey for The New York Times

Sometimes, other problems get in the way. One project, known as the Grain Belt Express, would build electricity lines to connect turbines in windy Kansas to not-so-windy Missouri, Illinois and Indiana. Developers proposed the project in 2010. Fifteen years later, construction has not started. Why? Every jurisdiction in the path of the electrical lines needs to sign off. At one point or another, at least one agency has opposed the project.

Legal challenges have also blocked or delayed hundreds more clean-energy projects, according to the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law. Activists often use environmental laws to try to stop projects that they oppose, such as offshore wind turbines along the East Coast. (Yes, there is a certain irony in using environmental laws to block action on climate change.)

In some cases, opponents have real concerns. They might worry that giant power lines will ruin vistas that drive tourism or that a solar farm will damage local ecosystems. The question is if those drawbacks, however legitimate, outweigh the benefits — and how to balance competing goals.

The balancing act goes beyond clean energy. Environmental protections can stop water and air pollution, but they can also create new hurdles for road and rail projects. Labor rules can make workplaces safer and fairer, but they can also make it too expensive to open a factory for semiconductor chips. Zoning laws can help preserve the feel and look of a neighborhood, but they can also make it difficult to build housing.

Building trust

These issues can seem wonky and technical. The phrase “permitting reform” is not the sort of slogan that drives voters en masse to the polls. But it matters for Biden and other Democrats’ legacies.

When Biden took office in 2021, he promised to show that the government can help everyday Americans. “We have to prove democracy still works,” Biden said in his first address to Congress. “That our government still works — and we can deliver for our people.”

The leisurely pace of change means Americans may never see much of Biden’s proof. The Trump administration is trying to unilaterally take back some of Biden’s infrastructure and clean-energy spending. The Republican-controlled Congress has vowed to repeal much of it, too. If the Biden administration had already doled out the money, Trump and Congress could not easily claw it back. But because much of it was never spent, Republicans can stop projects before they even begin.

Related: Progressive lawmakers have erected barriers to their own policies, Marc Dunkelman writes in The Atlantic. His new book, “Why Nothing Works,” proposes solutions.

THE LATEST NEWS

Trump Administration

The Internal Revenue Service is preparing to give a team member working with Elon Musk access to sensitive taxpayer data.
The first test of Trump’s power to fire officials has reached the Supreme Court. Lawyers for Trump asked the justices to let him fire a government lawyer who leads a watchdog agency.
Trump fired some nuclear security workers. Then he asked them to come back.
Trump is targeting people he perceives as disloyal. It’s a campaign of retribution that has little analogue in history, Luke Broadwater writes.

American consumers are concerned about inflation. Trump’s plans for reciprocal tariffs on U.S. trading partners could mean higher costs.
The Trump administration has renamed the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America, but most of the body of water lies outside U.S. control. See a map.

Eric Adams

A man in a white shirt holds a microphone.

Eric Adams Dave Sanders for The New York Times

Federal prosecutors were divided after Trump’s team asked lawyers to dismiss corruption charges against Eric Adams. Read the inside story of their debate.
Adams resisted calls to resign: “I am going nowhere,” he said.

War in Ukraine

Volodymyr Zelensky said Ukraine would not accept a peace deal it did not help negotiate. Read a guide to how the war could end.
Keir Starmer, Britain’s prime minister, offered British troops to help guarantee Ukraine’s security in any peace deal.

More International News

A man speaks at a table full of other men.

Vice President JD Vance Matthias Schrader/Associated Press

After a European tour by Trump officials, one thing was clear to leaders on the continent: It is getting harder to depend on the U.S., David Sanger and Steven Erlanger write.
An Israeli military operation in the West Bank has displaced roughly 40,000 Palestinians from their homes. Experts say it is the biggest displacement of civilians in the territory since the Arab-Israeli war of 1967.
ISIS is still holding hundreds of women and girls captive. A network of amateur sleuths is trying to find them.

MORNING READS

A man with a microphone standing in a hall filled with people seated at long tables.

The Hamburg Hawks’ meat raffle. Malik Rainey for The New York Times

Like bingo, but with beef: For Midwestern communities, meat raffles are a fund-raising tool.

Most clicked yesterday: See S.N.L.’s greatest parodies of commercials.

Ask Vanessa: “Why don’t people dress up to go out anymore?”

Recovery: An effective treatment for opioid addiction exists. It is underprescribed.

Shop smarter: See the best Presidents’ Day sales.

Well: What is your outfit telling your therapist?

Metropolitan Diary: Bonus pickles.

Lives Lived: Yrjo Kukkapuro was a Finnish modernist furniture designer who devoted his creative energies to sedentary comfort, creating dozens of chairs that coddled sitters and lent flair to their surroundings. He died at 91.

SPORTS

N.B.A.

N.B.A.: Steph Curry hit a half-court shot in the first-ever All-Star tournament.

Dallas Mavericks: Police arrested assistant coach Darrell Armstrong on a charge of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.

N.F.L.: Seven more massage therapists accused Ravens kicker Justin Tucker of sexually inappropriate behavior, which brings the total number of accusers to 16.

Women’s college basketball: UConn beat South Carolina on the road to snap the Gamecocks’ 71-game home winning streak.

ARTS AND IDEAS

Two young women pose arm-in-arm, wearing vintage-look fur jackets.

In vintage furs. Dolly Faibyshev for The New York Times

At the Manhattan Vintage show this month, sellers filled racks with fox, mink and Mongolian furs. For years, wearing fur was considered taboo but the tide is turning — especially if the wearer asserts that the piece is “vintage.” Read about what happened to the stigma of wearing fur.