Trump signs order on undoing waters rule

He also moves black colleges initiative

WASHINGTON President Trump’s newest executive orders target a water- protection rule and elevate an initiative on historically black colleges and universities into the White House.

Trump signed the executive orders in back- to- back signing ceremonies at the White House on Tuesday. The first seeks to undo the Waters of the United States rule, an Obama administration regulation that sought to reinterpret the Clean Water Act to extend federal protections to smaller rivers and streams.

“It has truly run amok. It’s been a disaster,” Trump said in a Roosevelt Room ceremony. He said the rule extended federal regulations “to nearly every puddle, to every ditch on a farmer’s land, or anywhere else they decide, right? It was a massive power grab.”

Trump’s plan of attack is similar to his earlier order aimed at a consumer- protection regulation called the Fiduciary Duty rule. Because the rule was finalized in 2015, the Trump administration will have to start the regulatory process from the beginning to remove it from the books.

But the Waters rule has been blocked by a federal appeals court in Cincinnati.

A second executive order will move the federal initiative on Historically Black Colleges and Universities, or HBCUs, into the White House Domestic Policy Council from the Department of Education, where it was housed under the Obama administration.