Court Prods EPA Authority, Questions Climate Rule’s Adequacy (1)

Federal judges grilled government lawyers Thursday on the Trump administration’s decision to replace an ambitious Obama-era climate program with an industry-friendly rule.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit heard hours of remote arguments on whether the Environmental Protection Agency blundered when it scrapped the sweeping Clean Power Plan in favor of more a modest effort to address greenhouse gas emissions from power plants.

The arguments stretched more than eight hours, with questions from the three-judge panel touching on statutory specifics, overarching legal questions of agency power, and even Electricity 101—from mining a single piece of ...