Coulter

“There’s a little bit of beef right now between Trump and the state,” said Maggie Coulter, a senior attorney with the Climate Law Institute at the nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity.

The order directs Bondi to seek out and prioritize state laws that address climate change, environmental justice, greenhouse gas emissions and carbon taxes, which is “kind of like a laundry list of all the things the oil-and-gas industry doesn’t like,” Coulter said.

It is similar to the legislation in New York and Vermont that Trump called out in his order, Coulter said.

Coulter, of the Climate Law Institute, said actually preventing states from enforcing their laws would be an illegal and unconstitutional overreach.

“It’s not really something that Trump or the attorney general can do,” Coulter said.