The president-elect has chosen as his chief Supreme Court advocate a lawyer who has legally challenged federal efforts to rein in planet-warming emissions.
D. John Sauer, whom Donald Trump tapped Thursday to serve as solicitor general, may be best-known for securing a landmark Supreme Court ruling earlier this year that granted the former president broad immunity from criminal liability for his official acts.
But Sauer — who served as solicitor general of Missouri from 2017 to 2023 — has also gone to bat in court against federal climate policies, such as a Biden-era estimate of the cost to society of emitting carbon dioxide.
In an August 2021 hearing before a federal judge in Missouri, Sauer argued that President Joe Biden illegally established an interagency working group to set a new social cost of carbon, a key metric that helps federal agencies justify the costs of robust climate rules.
