Republican Pres. Donald Trump isn’t letting any grass grow under his feet when it comes to promulgating policies, by executive orders or simple agency policy changes, that will have a significant impact in Louisiana.
Upon taking office, Trump signaled one immediately that would have a huge impact on the state – abolishing a moratorium on permits for facilities exporting liquified natural gas. Since then, others have come rapidly.
One cuts off federal funding to jurisdictions that don’t cooperate with the federal government in illegal immigration enforcement actions. That imperils both the Orleans Parish Sheriff’s Office in its refusal to detain most illegal aliens – which it legally does not have to follow – and New Orleans, which has a similar policy by choice. That puts at risk nearly $6 million or 8 percent of the sheriff’s revenues and New Orleans receives over $47 million in intergovernmental money or about 5 percent of its revenues, although this figure includes state revenues.
While these two entities could suffer if they don’t change their ways, some jurisdictions with ties to detention of illegal aliens could see benefits. With Trump promising a ramping up of deportations, more space will be needed for detentions and Louisiana has a number of facilities, most private but at least one public (Allen Parish) that take detainees. More local governments may take on detainees if the federal government makes the price right, as it seems to already have started doing.
Some other Trump actions will have modest, if not negligible, impacts on Louisiana. His lifting of a ban on energy exploration around America’s coasts will touch the state lightly, as the only area not under the ban had been the western Gulf of Mexico. Still, the ban further east would have decreased somewhat Louisiana’s offshore business enterprises, which supply and build and operate transport from land to sea. Legal questions surround the effort whether he can do this unilaterally in the entire areas affected, but with the help of the GOP Congress and the budget reconciliation process it will happen sooner rather than later.
His creating a ban on wind farms off America’s coast will impact the state little, since Louisiana has none and just one potential area under development. The offshore ban, which may not be permanent, will depress demand for support services, although since no such farms exist in the Gulf of Mexico that impact, if any, is speculative. The onshore ban also has little practical impact in Louisiana since only one facility is on the drawing board.
(As to whether Louisianans someday soon who head to Grand Isle will splash around in the “Gulf of America,” as Trump would like the Gulf’s moniker to be, maybe it will take on that name for domestic purposes, but probably not a lot of other entities will go along.)
Finally, Trump issued an order aligning the concept of gender with chromosomal sex. This largely follows Louisiana state law and policy, but will erase some potential conflicts. For example, a recent attempted interpretation of the Civil Rights Act, struck down by the judiciary, would have put the state and federal government at loggerheads over, for example, whether Louisiana’s law that school personnel must refer to students by birth names or nicknames derived from that unless parents wanted otherwise would be legal or disqualify schools from receiving federal funds.
The president promises more to come, but it seems his first work week has produced the bulk of actions that have the potential to affect Louisiana’s government and economy.
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