The Trump administration’s rush to allow oil companies to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, one of the last unspoiled wildlands in the world, has, to no one’s surprise, become a complete fiasco.

The fossil-fuel lobbyists who run President Trump’s Interior Department have bullied government scientists, ignored public opposition and cut every imaginable corner to hold an auction – this year – that will threaten the largest concentration of polar bears in the United States, the calving grounds of the Porcupine caribou herd and a place of unparalleled natural beauty.

To add public insult to the injury of shameless self-dealing, Trump’s point man who was tasked with selling off the refuge to oil companies, Joe Balash, just took a top job at a foreign oil company that – no kidding – has reportedly been “weighing” a bid at the auction that Balash himself organized when he was at the Interior Department.

Investigations and court challenges are sure to come soon. Regardless, the Trump administration’s climate calamity in Alaska must be stopped.

Jennifer Rubin: A big loss in court for Trump

On Friday, a Second Circuit appeals court revived a lawsuit filed by businesses that claim President Trump’s unconstitutional receipt of foreign emoluments negatively impacted their business. This is the second emoluments lawsuit that is back on track, the other brought by more than two hundred members of Congress.[..]

The importance of the ruling is two-fold. First, it sets in motion a second court case in which plaintiffs might gain access to Trump’s financial records, including tax returns. Unless he can get the Supreme Court to stay the order, he’ll have to produce documents or defy legal subpoenas. Second, the ruling underscores the need for the House of Representatives to refocus impeachment hearings on Trump’s alleged financial improprieties – taking foreign money, self-dealing, directing the Air Force flights to Scotland so crews would patronize his hotel. Trump’s finances and his insatiable greed have always been his Achilles’ heel. His self-enrichment is exceedingly easy for anyone to understand and, if supported by evidence, would make it exceptionally hard even for Republicans to defend. The Judiciary Committee would be wise to put out a road map detailing potential financial improprieties, putting Trump and the country on notice that their president might be a crook.

Catherine Rampell: Trump’s plan for the economy: Make Drinking Water Dirty Again

The Trump administration recently revealed its grand plan for turbocharging economic growth: Make Drinking Water Dirty Again.

The talking heads who get trotted out to defend President Trump frequently tout his supposedly stellar economic record. He’s unleashing gangbusters growth, they claim. You might not like the tweets, but you can’t deny that his tax cuts and deregulation have jump-started the economy.

But those tax cuts, so far, have been a bust, never delivering the sustained surge in business investment that Trump surrogates promised. In fact, business investment shrank last quarter, and recent indicators suggest it could weaken further. That’s partly because of Trump’s trade wars, of course.

Major independent forecasters predict that the economy will grow about 2.2 percent in 2019. As I noted in a recent column, that means we added $2 trillion to federal deficits to get us to .?.?. the average growth rate we saw during President Barack Obama’s second term.

Well done, Mr. President.

Moreover, Trump surrogates have never provided actual evidence for the assumed straight line between the president’s deregulatory agenda and economic growth.

So let’s consider the kinds of federal regulations that Trump has been rolling back, the ones that are supposedly boosting the economy.

Christine Emba: American children are under attack – but not from flavored vapes

There have been 22 shootings at U.S. schools in 2019 alone. Active-shooter drills are a back-to-school activity. America’s children are under attack.

And President Trump has moved to protect them by banning … flavored vape pods?

Apparently, it’s a mint-flavored Juul that stands as the biggest threat to children today.

On Sept. 11, a day on which we memorialize lives lost to senseless violence, the administration announced plans to ban most flavored e-cigarettes after a rash of vaping-related lung illnesses claimed six lives. The exact cause of illness has yet to be pinpointed, but the looming threat apparently spooked the Trump administration into rapid action. As of this week, the Department of Health and Human Services is publicizing its intention to “clear the market” of flavored vapes, like those you can find from Smok tanks for vaping, hoping to finalize a plan in the next several weeks that would likely go into effect a month later. Many people would think this was absurd, especially if it was an off chance group of illnesses associated with vaping. Surely this wouldn’t outweigh the benefits and how they help people quit smoking; the real killer. Luckily, it hasn’t affected the abundance of Vape Shops that you can find on any street you walk down.[..}

It’s something of a shock, then, to remember that this administration and the Republicans that back it can’t even bring themselves to cast a sideways glance at a gun, even though firearms cause an average of 1,500 children’s deaths each year. According to the University of Michigan, middle- and high-school-age children are now more likely to die as the result of a firearm injury than from any other single cause of death. Every day an average of 100 Americans are killed by guns. What about the youths affected by that?