The Trump administration just helped limit truck emissions and fossil fuel drilling. Wait—what?

Despite its typical deregulatory zeal, the Trump administration made two decisions this week that environmentalists...actually agree with. (We’re surprised, too.) The first is a proposal by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to decrease nitrogen oxide emissions from heavy-duty trucks. NOx pollution harms public health and contributes to climate change (two things the EPA doesn't seem to mind doing most days). NRDC clean vehicles expert Luke Tonachel says there’s still “ample room for skepticism” and that NRDC will be making sure “the agency follows through.” The second is the announcement by U.S. Department of the Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke that his department plans to appeal a court decision that would allow oil and gas drilling on sacred indigenous lands in Montana and Canada. "I have tremendous respect for the Blackfeet Nation,” Zinke says, “and strongly believe resource development in these most sacred of lands would be inappropriate.” Too bad he can’t apply the same logic to his shrinking of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments, which are also sacred to indigenous tribes. But, hey, even broken clocks are right twice a day.