"President Trump's deregulatory boss is now seated on one of the most powerful courts in the nation, where she'll have lifetime tenure to influence environmental policy and other issues.

Neomi Rao will be sworn in this afternoon to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, a forum with broad authority to review regulations and federal agency decisions, among other things.

Rao is well-versed in the issues, having served as head of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs and as an administrative law professor before that.

In those roles, she's been vocal in her skepticism of what many conservatives consider an unrelenting expansion of power for federal agencies."

Ellen M. Gilmer and Niina Heikkinen report for Greenwire March 18, 2019. [2]