Donald Trump has spent most of the year on a war footing, and not just in Iran. He has repeatedly invoked the Defense Production Act, passed in 1950 at the outbreak of the Korean War, to advance his energy policy goals of elevating fossil fuels and sidelining clean technologies.

The latest example involves pushing New York state to take a new pipeline bringing natural gas from Pennsylvania to the northeast. Energy Secretary Chris Wright just announced up to $42 million of DPA funding for permitting and pre-construction work for the 125-mile Constitution Pipeline. Whether this meaningfully advances the project is open to question, but it certainly reflects the difficulties that high energy prices pose to Republicans — and adds another precedent that those same Republicans may come to rue in the years ahead.

Constitution was first proposed more than a decade ago but failed to secure permits from New York state over water-quality concerns. Having been abandoned in 2020, it was revived last year with Trump’s support and coincided with his pressure campaign against New York Governor Kathy Hochul, which took the form of blocking offshore wind-power projects. The pipeline project, which has drawn renewed opposition from environmental groups, awaits a decision from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on reissuing permits and, although this is yet to be determined, likely a new water permit or waiver from New York state authorities.

In that context, DPA funding for preliminary work is useful but hardly looks decisive to the project’s future.

It is, however, very useful as a political signal. Wright, along with Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, framed the funding as advancing a critical project that will reduce energy costs and enhance national security, thereby righting the wrongs of prior Democratic administrations and “blue states” that have sought to choke off abundant US gas supplies. The need to blame energy inflation on anything other than Trump’s war in Iran, and show that the White House is doing everything possible to alleviate prices, is paramount as November’s elections loom.

We have seen a flurry of such activity, encompassing everything from a supposed giant gas project in Alaska to waived sanctions in exchange for a mooted trickle of Russian diesel. Picture Trump’s various recent pronouncements on energy, none of which will do much for prices here and now, as so many eddies of water rapidly circling a giant drain marked ‘midterms.’It is no accident that Wright and Burgum announced the pipeline funding next to Representative Mike Lawler, a Republican locked in a tossup race to hold New York’s 17th district.

New England could use more natural gas, if only to displace the burning of even more carbon-intensive fuel oil for power during winter freezes. But the case isn’t clear-cut. For one thing, Constitution’s benefits appear to be weighted to diversifying supply rather than adding a lot of incremental new gas, according to ClearView Energy Partners, a Washington-based analysis firm. Moreover, the pipeline doesn’t seem to have yet secured contracts from customers, raising questions over whether it is genuinely needed, an important consideration for regulators.

Plus, let’s not forget that the same administration invoking emergency powers to push more gas on New England has done its utmost to ruin offshore wind projects that would mitigate the need for that same gas. This self-fulfilling energy emergency is perhaps the most pernicious aspect of Trump’s efforts. Apart from Democratic governors, however, this is a latent concern for all Americans, including those who back the White House’s aggressive use of executive authority.

Energy supply is, of course, central to national security. So, too, is constitutional order. Using the DPA to try to force through a marginal pipeline project lacking clear demand is another example of Trump attempting to end-run established processes and norms, as well as state powers, to advance his priorities.

There is no denying that the US urgently needs to reform permitting in order to speed up infrastructure projects. Reform is required to head off the legal strategies of delay employed by activists to block any and all fossil fuel projects as well as to head off the kind of retroactive meddling that Trump has employed to block green projects, or even transmission lines, that he doesn’t like. But guess what, an existing bipartisan permitting reform bill may yet be passed by Congress, albeit not likely before the lame-duck session at the earliest.

Trump’s resort to the DPA, again, and in such contentious circumstances, hardly fosters a spirit of comity. Even if the president is only using the DPA’s incentives, rather than its compulsion powers, he continues to accelerate an ongoing trend toward heavier, and increasingly capricious, intervention in energy markets by the government.

Republicans may well cheer when that is done to aid a gas pipeline or an offshore oil field. They may feel less enthusiastic when some future administration takes a leaf from Trump’s playbook, declares a climate emergency, and imposes solutions of a different nature.