The Complicated Status of Trump, Congress and Infrastructure

Politico’s Morning Transportation highlights CEI’s legal challenge of the Department of Transportation’s ban on electronic cigarette usage on airplanes. 

HOLY SMOKES: With the advent of electronic cigarettes, what exactly does it mean to smoke in 2017? A panel of three federal judges considered the issue Monday as part of a case challenging DOT’s ban on e-cigarette usage on planes.

In this corner: The libertarian Competitive Enterprise Institute argued that “DOT can’t demonstrate that vapor emitted from e-cigarettes harms people near the user, and that regulators arbitrarily attempted to redefine what ‘smoking’ entails,” Lauren reports for Pros.

And the other: Meanwhile, the Justice Department maintained that DOT was well within its authority to apply the federal smoking-in-flight ban to e-cigarettes, arguing that lawmakers didn’t “freeze” the conventional concept of smoking in the statute. Regulators had the authority to act under both that law and the requirement that DOT ensure “safe and adequate” domestic air transportation, DOJ attorney Tara Morrissey said.

Read the full article at Politico’s Morning Transportation.