ryan jackson c o s
819 rename zombied sci supprr 2
kid killer
FORMALDEHYDE
ACC BECK DRAVIS
COOCH
Ryan Jackson, a native Oklahoman who worked for Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) for more than a decade and a half, has maintained a relatively low profile since becoming EPA's chief of staff in the early days of the Trump administration.
ROBT MURRAY?
SCHNARE E&E
MANDY GUNK
VITTER
ryanjackson819
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former Inhofe chief of staff, Ryan Jackson,
kid killer pending confirmed, rev dr to mining trade gp buffer
mtg 2x robt murray, roy bailey
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kid killer:
https://theintercept.com/2021/08/19/formaldehyde-leukemia-epa-trump-suppressed/
KOCH
intercept 921
Sharon Lerner
no lnx mANY DOC
a 2017 DRAFT assessment of formaldehyde that was suppressed by the Trump administration found that the chemical causes myeloid leukemia, according to several sources familiar with the document. The draft assessment concludes that 1 microgram of formaldehyde in a cubic meter of air increases the number of myeloid leukemia cases by roughly 3.5 in 100,000 people, more than three times the cancer risk in the assessment now in use. The EPA currently regulates formaldehyde using an outdated set of calculations, finalized in 1991, based on the risk of nasopharyngeal cancer. If the nasopharyngeal cancer and myeloid leukemia risks are combined, the cancer risk could be 4.5 times higher than the current value.
Although the suppressed assessment, produced by a division of the Environmental Protection Agency known as the Integrated Risk Information System, or IRIS, has grave implications for public health, Trump administration officials, including former EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler, refused to allow the agency to release the assessment, several sources told The Intercept.
If the Biden EPA permits IRIS to finalize the assessment, which is among the most controversial in the agency’s history, other branches of the EPA will likely set regulatory limits based on the new risk value. IRIS values are used to determine safety thresholds for the amounts of the chemical permitted in air and water, emissions caps from industrial facilities, and guidance for cleanups. Such thresholds also alert exposed people to the dangers they face.
“This is a big, big deal. It could trigger significant interest by the personal injury bar,” said Bob Sussman, who served as the senior policy counsel to the EPA administrator during the Obama administration and deputy EPA administrator under President Bill Clinton. “Even without including the leukemia, the risk is a significant one. With the leukemia, it’s certainly a very significant public health concern.”
Even using the much lower, outdated cancer risk number set in 1991, formaldehyde is already the greatest source of nationwide cancer risk from industrial air pollutants,estimated to cause roughly 18 of the 32 cancers in every 1 million people in the U.S. that are caused by toxic pollutants in the air, according to the EPA’s own data. If the risk values are increased by a factor of four or more, the reported cancer risk from formaldehyde will go up accordingly, revealing previously unrecognized cancer hot spots around the country.
Formaldehyde, mainly used to make plywood, particleboard, and glues, is also a hazard for millions of workers who are exposed to the chemical through the production of resins, wood composite and furniture production, plastics manufacturing, paper production, embalming, foundry work, fiberglass production, building construction, agriculture, firefighting, and the teaching of biology, among other occupations. The general public is exposed to formaldehyde through tobacco smoke, cosmetics, food and water, as well as “off-gassing” from consumer goods, construction materials, and furniture. In 2019, 662 facilities reported releasing 47.7 million pounds of formaldehyde.
In addition to looking at the chemical’s relationships to nasopharyngeal cancer and leukemia, the draft assessment also factored in evidence that formaldehyde causes decreased lung function, allergic conditions, reproductive and developmental toxicity, and sensory irritation.
In part because formaldehyde is so pervasive, a wide range of business interests have attempted to prevent the EPA from finalizing the assessment and publicly acknowledging the connection to leukemia. Until now, the EPA has kept the contents of its assessment under tight wraps. The leaked information provides a window into how the science and regulation around the chemical will finally be updated.
“Just knowing that the IRIS assessment acknowledges that formaldehyde causes myeloid leukemia is huge, regardless of what the value is,” Jennifer McPartland, a senior scientist at the Environmental Defense Fund, said after being told about the main findings of the draft assessment. “But the numbers tell you even more. They set the tone for how the agency will proceed with risk management.”
Assessment Was “Ready to Go”
While the EPA has claimed in court that the formaldehyde assessment did not exist in a form that allowed it to be shared — and used that argument to refuse to release it in response to a Freedom of Information Act request from the environmental whistleblower group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, or PEER — former EPA officials told The Intercept that the completed assessment not only existed but that it had also been prepared for release in early 2018.
“We had the document ready to go for review within the agency, but we were not allowed to proceed,” said Jennifer Orme-Zavaleta, former director of the EPA Office of Research and Development, who retired from the agency in July.“Political leadership did not want me to move it forward.”
Wheeler, the former EPA administrator, was among the Trump appointees who were involved in suppressing the calculation of the myeloid leukemia risk, according to one former agency official who worked on the assessment. “The administrator would not allow us to put out that number,” the former official said, going on to explain how members of the administrator’s office, particularly his chief of staff Ryan Jackson, kept an unusually close eye on the formaldehyde assessment.
“Normally when we’re doing an assessment, they [the staff of the administrator’s office] don’t have access to the guts of it, because it’s deliberative. But they would demand that we give them pieces of the assessment, including what literature we were looking at for dose responses,” the former official said, referring to the precise relationship between exposure and cancer risk. “Then they would share it with ACC,” an acronym for the American Chemistry Council. Although the former official provided no direct evidence of the administrator’s office sending out the segments of the assessment, they said the actions of the trade group made it clear that it had reviewed the unpublished material.
“All of a sudden, after we gave the information to Ryan Jackson, there would be all this targeted activity by ACC that would basically dismiss or disprove whatever mathematical methodology that we were going to be using even though it hadn’t been published yet,” said the former official. If the EPA did share the information with the trade group, the report would be subject to release under FOIA and would not be exempt under the “deliberative process privilege,” contrary to the agency’s claim in the PEER lawsuit.
WASHINGTON, DC - APRIL 26: Environmental Protection Agency Chief of Staff Ryan Jackson (R) listens to Administrator Scott Pruitt testify before the House Energy and Commerce Committee's Environment Subcommittee in the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill April 26, 2018 in Washington, DC. The focus of nearly a dozen federal inquiries into his travel expenses, security practices and other issues, Pruitt testified about his agency's FY2019 budget proposal. (]
Orme-Zavaleta confirmed that Jackson, who now works for the National Mining Association, played a key role in preventing the assessment from moving forward. “The ACC was in contact with Ryan a lot,” she said.
Asked about his role in the formaldehyde assessment, Jackson stated, “Following enactment of the Lautenberg Act, EPA placed formaldehyde though the risk evaluation required in that new law so formaldehyde could be directly regulated by EPA,” referring to the Trump administration’s decision to add formaldehyde to the list of chemicals to be evaluated under the Toxic Substances Control Act. That assessment has also yet to be completed or released. Jackson also stated that “I’m not contributing to anonymous rumors.”
Andrew Wheeler declined to comment. In an emailed statement, a spokesperson for the ACC wrote that the group “has never had access in any manner to unpublished findings from the formaldehyde draft IRIS assessment.”
Orme-Zavaleta also pointed to other Trump appointees who she said were apparently involved in suppression of the document. Among them was thedirector of the Office of Air and Radiation, Bill Wehrum, whose input Orme-Zavaleta needed to move the assessment forward. “A couple times we set up briefings for Bill Wehrum. But they canceled those briefings, and I was not given the OK to further the review within the agency.”
Dunlap Koch email to EPA
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David Dunlap, who served as deputy assistant administrator in the EPA’s Office of Research and Development, also helped suppress the assessment, said Orme-Zavaleta. “When we were in the process of coming up with the priority list for IRIS assessments, a lot of those discussions were held during ‘politicals-only’ meetings, so I wasn’t there. But [Dunlap] was, he was our representative. Formaldehyde was on the list of chemicals being considered. And in November, I got back a short list of the chemicals IRIS would assess, and formaldehyde was not part of it,” she said. Dunlap worked for Koch Industries and defended formaldehyde until shortly before he joined the Trump administration in 2018. Dunlap did eventually recuse himself from work on the assessment, though only after formaldehyde was removed from the list of chemicals IRIS would be allowed to assess, according to Orme-Zavaleta. “I only received a copy of his recusal letter after I got the list of chemicals.”
David Dunlap declined to comment on the matter.
“EPA lied to us. And they lied to the court.”
Presented with information from Orme-Zavaleta and others about the completion of the assessment in 2017,PEER attorney Kevin Bell expressed anger and frustration. Bell oversees 3-year-old litigation against the EPA over the group’s Freedom of Information Act request for the assessment. In that case, the agency has insisted that it didn’t have a completed version of the document that it could publicly release.
“EPA lied to us. And they lied to the court,” said Bell. “They said, ‘We just can’t give you anything like this, because it would be totally full of all sorts of irrelevant things, so that it would totally undermine the deliberative process,’ whereas in reality they had a fully drafted document that was all set to go.”
The EPA declined to comment on Bell’s statement but did provide a broader response, saying that “EPA is committed to ensuring that science is at the backbone of everything the Agency does to deliver on our public health and environmental protection mission, and that we operate in a transparent manner to ensure public trust.” Bill Wehrum did not respond to requests for comment.
Decades of Industry Influence
The suppression of the most recent draft assessment follows many years of interference with government science on formaldehyde. IRIS began updating its original assessment of the chemical in 1997 but almost immediately ran into resistance from industry, particularly around the link to leukemia. A group called the Formaldehyde Council, Inc., which represented companies that used the chemical, began challenging the numbers in the assessment and came up with a cancer risk that was thousands of times lower than the EPA’s. Political appointees in the George W. Bush administration also helped industry postpone the release of the updated document. A 2008 Government Accountability Office report documented those delays and lamented the public health implications of having to rely on an IRIS assessment that was then 18 years old.
Yet that first assessment, completed three decades ago, is still guiding regulation. In the intervening years, both the International Agency on Cancer Research, or IARC, and National Toxicology Program, whose chemical reviews don’t have the regulatory weight of IRIS assessments, classified formaldehyde as a known human carcinogen and recognized it as a cause of leukemia. In 2010, the EPA released a draft of the updated assessment, which also found that formaldehyde caused leukemia, but did not finalize it. The ACC was harshly critical of that draft, and the agency sent the report to the National Academy of Sciences for peer review. The external agency confirmed its finding that formaldehyde causes cancer and encouraged the agency to quickly rewrite and reissue its report. But the EPA didn’t complete that work until 2016.
Vincent Cogliano, who directed the IRIS program from 2010 to 2017, said the delays during those years weren’t due to political or industry pressure. “We were really trying to get a very objective assessment released,” said Cogliano, who attributed the slow progress on the assessment in that period to the heavy workload of the small program. While Cogliano characterized some of the science around formaldehyde as complex, he said that no one on the IRIS staff disagreed about the relationship between myeloid leukemia and formaldehyde. “When I left the IRIS program in January 2017, I thought that it was ready to be released,” he said.
And yet more than four years later, the EPA has yet to release the updated IRIS assessment.
“It’s very frustrating,” said Linda Birnbaum, who directed the National Toxicology Program from 2009 to 2019. “Here there is evidence that IARC said that formaldehyde was a known human carcinogen. And we said it was a known human carcinogen and that the data was clear. And more data has come out since then, especially from the National Cancer Institute, yet no word from EPA.”
Formaldehyde was added back on to the list of chemicals being assessed on the IRIS public calendar in March. According to an EPA spokesperson, the IRIS Program anticipates releasing the draft assessment of formaldehyde for public comment and external peer review by September 30, 2022. The agency is widely expected to ask the National Academy of Sciences to weigh in on how and whether the agency should combine the cancer risk estimates for myeloid leukemia and nasopharyngeal cancer.
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Orme-Zavaleta said that no one in the Biden EPA expressed hesitation about resuming work on it when she raised the issue in the first weeks of President Joe Biden’s tenure. “I asked them several times. I said, ‘I’m going to unsuspend formaldehyde, are you good with that?’ And every time, everybody said, ‘Fine, do it,’” she said. “It is moving!”
Despite the assurances, those intimately familiar with the history of formaldehyde remain guarded in their optimism that the EPA is finally about to update the assessment of one of the most significant and widespread carcinogens in the U.S.
“For decades, up to now, the industry has pretty much managed to put out all the fires,” said Sussman. “But perhaps something really significant might be about to happen.”
Update: August 19, 2021
This article has been updated with a comment from the American Chemistry Council.
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mofo
suppressed formaldehyde with yamada staffer
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politico
https://www.politico.com/news/2019/11/14/epa-jackson-watchdog-070993
An escalating fight between the Environmental Protection Agency's top political aide and its internal watchdog has forced a behind-the-scenes Washington operator into the spotlight.
Ryan Jackson, a native Oklahoman who worked for Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) for more than a decade and a half, has maintained a relatively low profile since becoming EPA's chief of staff in the early days of the Trump administration. He weathered the headline-grabbing scandals that brought down former Administrator Scott Pruitt and helped transition Pruitt's replacement, Andrew Wheeler, into the job.
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Now Jackson finds himself facing off with EPA's acting inspector general, who took the rare step last week of publicly accusing Jackson of stonewalling investigations into allegations made against him.
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Jackson has not yet agreed to an interview with the inspector general's office, which is investigating numerous allegations against the chief of staff, including that he attempted to pressure an independent scientist to change her testimony to Congress and that he oversaw destruction of documents related to probes of Pruitt's travel and other matters.
EPA has defended Jackson and accused the inspector general's office of overstepping its authority. The agency declined to make Jackson available for an interview.
The episode represents the latest run-in between the Trump administration's political appointees and the inspectors general who are meant to serve as a check on waste, fraud and abuse. And it shows that the EPA is still dealing with the aftereffects of Pruitt's tenure, nearly 18 months after he stepped down amid a series of investigations into his dealings with lobbyists and his personal use of agency resources.
It also illustrates that Jackson doesn’t necessarily care about being seen as playing nice with the IG's office, said one former top EPA official who requested anonymity to speak candidly.
"He doesn’t worry about getting himself in the middle of a fight like this,” the former official said. “Other chiefs of staff would be mortified, terrified of this happening around and about them. He’s not as worried about that as other people."
But Jackson's alleged behavior has come as a surprise even to some Democrats who respected him when he worked for Inhofe.
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Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.), whose staff worked closely with Jackson and other Inhofe staff on the 2016 overhaul of the Toxic Substances Control Act, said his staff “really enjoyed working” with Jackson but added it’s “very important” he cooperate in the IG investigation.
“The staff in that whole TSCA thing just worked really well together and he was one of the key players in that,” Udall told POLITICO. “I’m surprised that he’s not cooperating. He always seemed like a pretty straightforward guy.”
Jackson and Wheeler are among the approximately half a dozen former Inhofe aides — known loosely by some in Washington as the "Inhofe mafia" — that came to EPA during the Trump administration.
But as the inspector general’s inquiries into Pruitt piled up — first class flights, 24/7 bodyguards, big raises for his aides and allegations that Pruitt used his position to seek work for his wife — the tug of war between Jackson and EPA’s political leaders only intensified.
A former official in the inspector general's office, who requested anonymity to discuss internal matters, told POLITICO that Jackson "views the political agenda as the primary guide" to running the agency, rather than "the law."
“It was an ongoing issue with Jackson about whether he would deign to cooperate with the IG,” the former official said.
Jackson would get involved with any request regarding Pruitt made by the inspector general's office to low-level bureaucrats who routinely handle such information sharing. "Jackson would interpose himself and tell those units, ‘Don’t give it to them.’ So we would have to fight that fight," the former official said.
In one known example of that from fall 2017, Jackson delayed EPA’s finance office from handing over documents as part of an OIG audit into Pruitt’s travel back and forth to Oklahoma, as POLITICO reported last year. The matter was ultimately settled, but not before career officials had to set off alarm bells that Jackson and other political appointees were “close to impeding the audit.”
Tension between political appointees and agency watchdogs predates the Trump administration. For example, Obama administration officials spent years fighting with the inspector general about access to documents from EPA’s small homeland security office.
The latest flap with Jackson reached a new pinnacle last week, when acting Inspector General Charles Sheehan took the virtually unprecedented step of sending Wheeler a "seven-day letter" detailing Jackson's refusal to cooperate with investigators. Federal law requires agency leaders to share such complaints with Congress, but sending a such a letter has been compared to the "nuclear" option of federal oversight.
In response, Jackson and EPA’s other political leaders adopted some of the lessons from the president’s own oftentimes successful playbook — in particular, pushing back aggressively and making no apologies.
Wheeler was legally required to inform Congress of the OIG’s complaint against Jackson, but EPA went much further in defending Jackson's behavior. Wheeler issued his own criticisms of the OIG’s treatment of Jackson. EPA’s top attorney issued a memo questioning the legitimacy of the OIG probe and investigators’ authority.
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Jackson always made himself available to the OIG in the many audits and investigations the watchdog carries out, said Mandy Gunasekara, a former political official in EPA's air office who left EPA earlier this year to launch a pro-Trump advocacy group.
But he can't dedicate too much time to dealing with the OIG, she said. "You have to pick and choose at some point throughout the day to make sure you don’t get caught up working on things that don’t divert away from achieving larger priorities and larger goals."
Inhofe, who employed Jackson as one of his senior-most aides for nearly two decades, called Jackson “very reliable” and somebody who had “never done anything in terms of lying or bad behavior,” but added it would be “characteristic” for him to not speak with the inspector general if he didn’t know what information they’re seeking.
“If [the inspector general’s] not going to tell him — there’s some big secret and he won’t say why he wants to talk to him — he doesn’t have to talk to him,” Inhofe said in an interview. “I’d immediately be suspicious if he said I want to talk to you but I’m not going to say what I want to talk to you about.”
Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.), ranking member of the Environment and Public Works Committee, said his staff did not want to be a mediator of the dispute but encouraged the inspector general’s office to ask questions “with enough specificity that whoever is being questioned knows what’s being asked and can be responsive” to those inquiries.
Those that have worked with Jackson previously said his lack of cooperation with the probe struck them as out of character.
“It’s certainly not how he operated on the Hill and I don’t imagine it’s how he would have operated in any other professional setting,” said a Senate Democratic aide who had previously worked with Jackson. “He finds workarounds to rules. He’s not somebody who just breaks rules.”
Jackson’s ties to Inhofe date back to 1994 when he took his first job in politics for the Oklahoma Republican’s successful bid for the U.S. Senate. After graduating from the University of Oklahoma in 1998 and law school in 2001, Jackson spent all but a couple of the following 16 years working in various senior roles for Inhofe.
Jackson has described his approach to governmental service as one rooted in avoiding drama.
“The vast majority of people I have had the opportunity to work with are not there to play gotcha or contribute to drama,” he told POLITICO in December 2018. “It takes patience and sometimes quite a bit of patience, but it is still true that despite some amount of drama which happens throughout the day there is more time where a lot of people still simply want to contribute based on what they believe is the right thing to do.”
During his time as Inhofe’s chief of staff, Jackson won bipartisan praise for his efforts to complete work on major transportation and water resources legislation, as well as a landmark chemical safety overhaul.
At the same time, he was present for Inhofe’s most notorious stunts questioning the scientific consensus on climate change: the Oklahoma Republican’s snowball on the Senate floor, pressing the so-called Climategate scandal and publication of Inhofe’s 2012 book on climate change, titled “The Greatest Hoax.”
Daniel Lippman contributed to this report.
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https://www.politico.com/news/2019/11/07/epa-ryan-jackson-documents-investigation-067566
the Environmental Protection Agency’s inspector general is investigating whether chief of staff Ryan Jackson was involved in destroying internal documents that should have been retained, according to two people familiar with the matter.
The IG's office is asking witnesses whether Jackson has routinely destroyed politically sensitive documents, including schedules and letters from people like lobbyist Richard Smotkin, who helped arrange a trip for then-EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt to Morocco when he was in office, according to one of the sources, a former administration official who told investigators he has seen Jackson do that firsthand.
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The previously unreported allegations add to the controversy around Jackson, a former aide to Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) who has been at EPA since the early days of the Trump administration.EPA's internal watchdog accused Jackson earlier this week of refusing to cooperate with other ongoing investigations.
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Jackson was put on notice that the document destruction was improper, something the former official said he discussed earlier this year with an official from the IG’s office.
“They would scold us on a daily basis and Ryan would say, ‘Oh, I didn’t know, we’ll do better next time,’" the former official said.
Jackson told POLITICO he was “unaware” of the IG investigating him for destroying documents. He didn't respond to a further request for comment.
Michael Abboud, an EPA spokesperson, disputed the allegations, noting that a previous investigation had not found evidence of illegal document destruction at the agency.
“Even the National Archives have publicly stated these claims are ‘unsubstantiated,'" Abboud said in a statement. "Politico choosing to run this story on the baseless claims of one disgruntled former employee does not make it true. EPA takes record retention seriously and trains all employees (career and political) on proper protocols and will continue to follow them.”
The interest in whether Jackson destroyed records may indicate renewed interest in allegations that Pruitt kept a "secret calendar" to hide controversial meetings with Republican donors or industry officials. In July 2018, CNN reported that Pruitt aides would regularly "scrub" his calendar, but a subsequent investigation by the National Archives and Records Administration ended in January and found no evidence of wrongdoing.
However, since NARA concluded its investigation, EPA's inspector general has been investigating the allegations. A second source familiar with the matter told POLITICO that investigators with EPA's inspector general questioned a witness roughly six months ago about Jackson's alleged role in destroying documents.
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EPA's Inspector General's Office has launched numerous probes into Pruitt and Jackson, but it is not clear which of those inquiries involves alleged document destruction.
Jackson is also facing allegations of stonewalling the internal watchdog.
This week, acting Inspector General Charles Sheehan accused Jackson of defying investigators by refusing to fully cooperate with two probes. One instance detailed by Sheehan involves an attempt to find out how and where Jackson obtained the testimony of Deborah Swackhamer, the former chairman of EPA’s Board of Scientific Counselors. She had alleged that she felt “bullied” by Jackson's attempt to get her to stick to pro-Trump administration talking points at a congressional hearing.
A spokesperson for the IG declined to comment on the subject of ongoing investigations.
As POLITICO was reporting this story, a number of people close to Jackson reached out unprompted to say they had never seen him destroy documents, but would only speak on condition of anonymity.
"Having worked with Ryan on a near daily basis, I never witnessed or heard of any of these allegations and it would be uncharacteristic of him to do," said a Trump administration official.
A former senior EPA official also said: “Ryan Jackson has spent his entire career in public service, managing hundreds of staff over more than two decades. To suggest that Ryan Jackson is anything other than a professional and esteemed public servant who is committed to his staff and the Agency’s mission is pure slander."
"There’s nobody who’s more meticulous in his record keeping and in his notes and in his checklists," another senior EPA official said. "Everybody on day 1 had records training and to the extent that somebody deviated from that, that’s on them for themselves because they all signed that paperwork and they all had to certify that training.
Officials who are found guilty of “willfully and unlawfully” violating the Federal Records Act and unlawfully destroying federal documents can be fined and face a jail sentence of up to three years. The IG can’t prosecute any criminal violations of the law but can refer matters to the Justice Department. Jackson has not been accused of breaking any laws.
"If you destroy documents with the intent of deceiving the public, it can be a violation of the Federal Records Act," said Larry Noble, a former general counsel at the Federal Election Commission. "If you decide these documents may be embarrassing and you don't want the public to see them and therefore you destroy them, you could be violating the Federal Records Act."
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Sheehan sent a letter to EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler calling stonewalling of investigations a “serious or flagrant problem.” Jackson said he has regular interaction with the IG and his staff.
Swackhamer, a retired environmental chemist at the University of Minnesota, said two years ago that she felt pressured by Jackson to downplay Pruitt’s decision not to reappoint many members of Board of Scientific Counselors when she was appearing before the House Science Committee. Pruitt later removed her as chair of the board, which provides advice to the EPA on its research and development work.
Jackson defended his decision to reach out to Swackhamer before she testified, saying in a letter to Wheeler this week that he wanted to ensure she was "fully informed" about the status of board appointments.
Alex Guillén contributed to this report
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see pruitt 3 for lnx
https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2017/11/9/16619988/scott-pruitt-epa-dysfunction-staff
11/17 2x?
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt doesn’t hide his contempt for how the agency has been run, but he does profess to care about one of its key programs: Superfund, which oversees the cleanup of the nation’s worst toxic waste sites. In April, he toured a site in East Chicago, Indiana, contaminated with lead and arsenic, and told residents, “We are going to get this right.”
The following month, Pruitt — Oklahoma’s attorney general before he joined the EPA — tapped one of his former donors, banker Albert “Kell” Kelly, to find ways to accelerate and improve Superfund cleanups. Kelly started by consulting career staff members — often knowledgeable officials who work at the agency regardless of who holds the White House. But then Kelly closed off the process, conferring with Pruitt to produce a final plan that altered or excluded many of the staffers’ suggestions. Gone, for example, was the idea that EPA officials be identified early on to lead discussions with communities on how contaminated land should be used after cleanup.
“We’re missing a huge opportunity to do something new and different with Superfund,” said one of two EPA employees who described the process to the Center for Public Integrity on the condition of anonymity.
What happened with Superfund is hardly an anomaly. Today’s EPA is wracked with internal conflict and industry influence and is struggling to fulfill its mission, according to more than two dozen current and former agency employees.
A few dozen political appointees brought in under the Trump administration are driving policy. At least 16 of the 45 appointees worked for industries such as oil, coal and chemicals, as this CIP graphic shows.
Four of these people — and another 21 — worked for, or donated to, politicians who have questioned established climate science, such as Pruitt and Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK).
Career staff members — lawyers, scientists, analysts — are largely being frozen out of decision-making, current and former agency employees say. These staffers rarely get face time with Pruitt and frequently receive top-down orders from political appointees with little room for debate. They must sometimes force their way into conversations about subjects in which they have expertise.
RELATED
Meet the fossil fuel all-stars Trump has appointed to his administration]
And that is a big mistake, said one of Pruitt’s predecessors.
Career employees are “very dedicated to protecting human health and the environment, and they will change their ways of how they do that if they’re convinced you really want to accomplish that aim,” said Christine Todd Whitman, EPA administrator under President George W. Bush.
One such employee agreed. “I think it’s the fact that we’re not following regular procedures; we’re not sure of what the legal justification is for some of the things they’re asking us to do. We’re just kind of being told, ‘Do the opposite thing you did 18 months ago.’ That’s hard to swallow.”
The EPA staffers who spoke to the center say the isolation of Pruitt’s top staff from the rest of the agency limits the perspectives the administrator is exposed to before making decisions.
Two appointment calendars, covering a six-month period beginning in March, show that Pruitt hears overwhelmingly from industry. He was scheduled to meet 154 times during the period with officials from companies such as Exxon Mobil and trade associations such as the American Petroleum Institute, the oil industry’s biggest lobby group. API was among at least 17 donors to Pruitt when he ran for state or federal office or led theRepublican Attorneys General Association that have met with him as EPA administrator. Those same calendars indicate he saw only three groups representing environmental or public health interests, though an EPA press release says he met with two others.
EPA spokesperson Liz Bowman disputed claims that the roughly 15,000-person agency is riven with discord. Career employees are “vital” to the EPA’s work and meet regularly with political appointees and the administrator, she said, citing ongoing deliberations on a water pollution rule as an example. (Two career employees who spoke to the center at Bowman’s request confirmed that they routinely work with political appointees and did so on the water rule.)
“We talk to people throughout the regions, the states, the career staff, and a variety of different perspectives prior to making decisions,” Bowman said, adding in an email that “we follow the Administrative Procedure Act in our regulatory process, meaning taking into consideration comments submitted by ALL commenters, including environmental NGOs, the public, and other commenters.”
For the public, much is at stake. Under Pruitt, who sued the EPA 14 times as Oklahoma’s attorney general, the agency has already declined to ban a pesticide linked to neurological damage in children, frozen requirements to reduce water pollution from coal-fired power plants, and opened the door to loosening limits on toxic coal waste. The EPA most recently proposed eliminating the Clean Power Plan, an Obama administration rule aimed at reducing carbon emissions in the power sector.
“These rules [being rolled back] aren’t perfect by any stretch of the imagination. There are ways to improve things,” said Gordon Binder, who served as chief of staff for then-EPA Administrator William Reilly under President George H.W. Bush. "But Pruitt’s come in with a fly swatter and is slapping them down instead of laying out the problems with a rule and saying, ‘How can we fix it?’”
Who’s running the EPA?
There’s a striking absence of high-level leadership at the EPA. Only one of 13 positions requiring Senate confirmation — Pruitt’s — is filled. These positions — higher-ranking than those held by the 45 political appointees — include leaders of key agency offices that oversee air, water, and other programs. Six people have been nominated for the 12 open slots and are awaiting confirmation (although two of them have joined the EPA in the meantime as senior advisers).
Most major decisions are made on the third floor of the William Jefferson Clinton South Building on Pennsylvania Avenue, where Pruitt and his handful of confidants have their offices. Among those who most prominently have Pruitt’s ear: EPA Chief of Staff Ryan Jackson, who previously held the same position with Inhofe, and Samantha Dravis, who worked with Pruitt at the Republican Attorneys General Association and now leads the EPA’s Office of Policy.
Dravis, widely seen as Pruitt’s closest adviser, came to the agency with a background in law and politics but little environmental experience. That’s a departure from her two immediate predecessors, who were already at the EPA when they were tapped to lead the policy office.
RELATED The EPA is taking unprecedented steps to oust scientists who receive its grants]
Jackson helped Inhofe negotiate major bipartisan deals in the Senate, such as the passage of federal chemical policy reform. Still, emails released under the Freedom of Information Act to the New York Times show that Jackson directed career staff to deny a petition seeking to ban chlorpyrifos, a pesticide suspected of harming children’s brains, directly contradicting the recommendations of EPA scientists.
Bowman said in an email that career staff were “instrumental” in drafting the denial. The former acting head of the EPA’s chemicals office, a career employee who left the agency last month, told the Times she opposed the decision, even as she followed Jackson’s instructions.
Other influential political appointees include Sarah Greenwalt, senior adviser to the Office of the Administrator, who worked for Pruitt when he was Oklahoma’s attorney general; Bowman, head of public affairs, who came from the American Chemistry Council, a chemical industry trade group; and Mandy Gunasekara, a senior policy adviser who worked on the Republican staff of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.
Nine career staff members told the center their opinions seem to hold little weight. They are excluded from meetings, they say, and their advice on agency operations is often disregarded. Some believe this is because of the flurry of leaks that have come from inside the agency since Pruitt took office. Political appointees have lashed out at suspected leakers and relieved them of work assignments, even in the absence of proof, career employees said.
RELATED
Why the head of the EPA built himself a secret phone booth]
“They are terrified of career staff leaking,” one said. “And once they get an idea in their head [about] someone, they won’t change it.”
Bowman said, “Those concerns have not been brought to our attention. And if they are, we will do everything we can to address them.”
Pruitt has broken with tradition by forgoing many introductory briefings with career staff designed to help new administrators set priorities, several current and former employees said. Instead, he’s worked to roll back EPA rules, an effort that also diverges from common practice.
Political appointees are taking more of a hands-on role in tasks career employees previously would have handled. Take, for example, a recent notice announcing that the EPA plans to reconsider whether certain vehicle emission standards for greenhouse gases were too strict. Career staff had drafted a concise version of the notice, but appointees expanded the number of vehicles affected by the review and made the Department of Transportation the lead agency on the decision, despite the EPA’s legal obligations to control planet-warming emissions under the Clean Air Act.
“This was a much more major rewrite” than would have happened under previous administrations, said an EPA employee familiar with the matter. “At least one plausible outcome of this process,” the employee said, “is that the EPA would unilaterally abdicate its [legal] responsibility.”
“It looked like he was kind of checking the box to meet with us”
On the rare occasions when career employees are asked to brief Pruitt, he seems unwilling to change his anti-regulatory posture on major industry priorities, according to some career employees. Betsy Southerland, who headed an office within the EPA’s water program until August, said her team met with Pruitt twice about a rule designed to limit wastewater discharges from power plants as he considered weakening parts of it.
The team told Pruitt that industry arguments against the rule had already been considered and were found to be inaccurate. They offered more nuanced actions the administrator could take to address concerns expressed by the Small Business Administration, a separate federal agency; and the Utility Water Act Group, a lobbying organization. Pruitt was unmoved, she said. In August, the EPA announced it would reconsider key parts of the rule.
“You get the feeling that his mind was made up before we started the briefing process,” Southerland said. “It looked like he was kind of checking the box to meet with us.” The Times found similar behavior by Pruitt when the EPA declined to ban chlorpyrifos. Pruitt didn’t follow agency scientists’ advice, having “promised farming industry executives who wanted to keep using the pesticide that it is ‘a new day and a new future,’” the Times reported.
These episodes could simply reflect inexperience — appointees struggling to figure out the agency they lead. They also could reflect pressure placed on the EPA by executive orders and presidential memoranda to act quickly on big-ticket issues like the Clean Power Plan.
But Pruitt’s pro-industry bent has convinced some current and former employees that he and his like-minded advisers are aiming to destroy the EPA from the inside.
“Look, I think he does not support what the agency has been trying to do for 40 years,” said William Ruckelshaus, EPA administrator under Presidents Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. “He wants to dismantle — not improve or reform — the regulatory system for protecting public health and the environment.”
Rachel Leven is a reporter on the environment and workers' rights team at the Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit investigative news organization in Washington, DC.
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https://yyy.theguardian.com/environment/2019/nov/08/top-epa-officials-impeding-investigation-chief-of-staff-ryan-jackson
Top officials at Trump's EPA impeding inquiry into chief of staff ...
https://www.theguardian.com › environment › nov › top-epa-officials-imp...
Nov 8, 2019 - The investigation into the EPA's chief of staff, Ryan Jackson, ... who was appointed chief of staff under Wheeler's predecessor, Scott Pruitt, ... Jackson previously was chief of staff to the Oklahoma senator James Inhofe, who ...
no lnx
top officials at Trump's EPA impeding inquiry into chief of staff, watchdog says
Andrew Wheeler’s top agency lawyer argues political staffers have leeway to decide what information to provide to investigation
Emily Holden in Washington
Fri 8 Nov 2019
EPA head Andrew Wheeler walks from Air Force One at Andrews Air Force Base, Maryland on 23 October 2019. ]
The EPA administrator, Andrew Wheeler, walks from Air Force One at Andrews air force base, Maryland, on 23 October 2019. Photograph: Kevin Wolf/AP
Top political appointees at Donald Trump’s environment agency are hindering an investigation into the agency’s chief of staff, who pressured a prominent scientist to alter her congressional testimony to make it more favorable for the agency, according to an ethics watchdog.
In the latest development of the fight, the inspector general of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has forced the agency’s head, Andrew Wheeler to explain his position in a letter to Congress. Wheeler’s top agency lawyer is arguing that political staffers have leeway to decide what information to provide to the watchdog, while investigators are warning that agency leaders are trying to subvert their legally mandated independence.
The latest major Trump resignations and firings]
The saga is a striking demonstration of how the Trump administration’s defiance of oversight extends past the impeachment inquiry to include agency watchdogs whose non-partisan reputation has historically put them above the political fray.
Trump’s EPA has removed dozens of science experts from committees meant to offer advice to the government, in some cases replacing them with scientists from conservative states and industry and in others disbanding the groups.
The investigation into the EPA’s chief of staff, Ryan Jackson, revolves around an episode in May 2017, when the agency dismissed the members of the Board of Scientific Counselors, which advises EPA on its research programs.
Deborah Swackhamer, an environmental chemist and retired University of Minnesota professor who led the group, was scheduled to testify to the House science committee on the role of the states in environmental policy two weeks after those dismissals.
But before she could, Jackson obtained her pre-written testimony and asked her to stick to agency “talking points” and play down the dismissals, according to emails reviewed by the New York Times.
Across the federal government, whistleblowers and scientists have said they have been sidelined and silenced by the administration, as Trump seeks to mold science to support his industry-friendly rollbacks of environment and health protections.
The EPA inspector general is now investigating Jackson’s interference in Swackhamer’s testimony, at the request of US lawmakers. In US government, the inspector general office is an independent wing of an agency charged with ensuring against waste, fraud and abuse.
According to emails released by the watchdog, Jackson has refused to say who gave him a copy of Swackhamer’s remarks. For months, he has refused to attend meetings with investigators, who first interviewed him on 24 July. Jackson reportedly left that initial interview before it was complete. He has recently relented and agreed to sit with investigators.
Jackson, who was appointed chief of staff under Wheeler’s predecessor, Scott Pruitt, has been at the center of other agency controversies. Polluters have sought his help when facing fines, according to reporting by E&E News. Under Pruitt’s leadership, Jackson took responsibility for large raises given to Pruitt’s top aides without the consent of Congress.
Jackson previously was chief of staff to the Oklahoma senator James Inhofe, who has vehemently denied climate science, once bringing a snowball to the Senate floor in an attempt to disprove global heating.
In emails with the inspector general’s staff, Jackson has said investigators showed up to his office unannounced and demanded to speak with him. He has criticized them for declining to tell him what specifically they want to discuss.
“The fact that you cannot and will not provide the subject of what you want to meet with me about is unprofessional, and I’m not participating. Unless you have further substantive information, do not contact me further,” Jackson said in an 9 October email.
On 15 October, a top investigator escalated the issue to Wheeler, his deputy and the agency’s top lawyer.
“I am bringing to your attention a matter of deep concern,” said Helina Wong. “As you see from the attached, Chief of Staff Ryan Jackson has – first with delay and now in absolute and final terms – refused to submit to an interview in an ongoing [inspector general] investigation.”
On 21 October, Jackson told another top investigator, Craig Ulmer, that he would only schedule an appointment with him once he knew the topic and had an opportunity to prepare.
“Frankly, I have already met with your staff for an hour. If you would like a second interview send me your questions in writing, and I will respond in writing,” Jackson said.
Finally, on 29 October, the inspector general sent a “seven-day letter”, which is used to report “particularly serious or flagrant problems, abuses or deficiencies”. The letter obligates the agency administrator to send a letter to Congress explaining the situation within a week.
In that letter to Congress, Wheeler said the agency has attempted to “provide reasonable accommodations” to the inspector general. And he backed Jackson’s decision not to identify the person who gave him Swackhamer’s testimony, referring to “constitutional concerns that are ultimately for the Agency and the [inspector general] to resolve”.
But EPA’s top lawyer, Matthew Leopold, has defended Jackson’s previous refusals, saying in a 5 November letter that “it is ultimately the administrator that maintains control of the information sought and decides what constitutes an adequate accommodation by the agency of an OIG request in so far as it is practicable”.
In response, the inspector general’s office says the agency is violating its independence and right to agency information.
In a letter on Thursday, the office said Leopold, “offers free rein to agency staff to refuse [inspector general requests for information”.
Wheeler has maintained that his staffers have done nothing wrong.
“Since the day I joined the agency, it has been my intent to provide [inspector general] with assistance and access to agency information necessary for it to complete its important work, in a manner consistent with the constitution and applicable law,” he said in the letter to Congress. “I believe the agency has provided such assistance in this instance.”
==
Search Results
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EPA chief of staff under investigation in document destruction ...
https://www.politico.com › news › 2019/11/07 › epa-ryan-jackson-docum...
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EPA bulldog stares down agency watchdog - POLITICO
https://www.politico.com › 2019/11/14 › epa-jackson-watchdog-070993
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EPA: Pruitt picks Inhofe aide as chief of staff -- Monday ...
https://www.eenews.net › stories
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EPA: Pruitt's chief of staff eyes exit — source -- Thursday, April ...
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E.P.A. Watchdog, Citing 'Open Defiance' of Inquiries, Rebukes ...
https://www.nytimes.com › climate › epa-watchdog-chief-of-staff
Nov 6, 2019 - Ryan Jackson, right, on Capitol Hill last year with Scott Pruitt, who was the ... Andrew Wheeler, that his chief of staff, Ryan Jackson, was in “open defiance” of ... He has also worked as a senior aide to Senator James Inhofe, ...
Even Scott Pruitt's friends have given up on him | Grist
https://grist.org › article › even-scott-pruitts-friends-have-given-up-on-him
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How James Inhofe Snowballed the EPA | The New Republic
https://newrepublic.com › article › james-inhofe-snowballed-epa
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“Do the opposite thing you did 18 months ago”: EPA staffers ...
https://www.vox.com › 2017/11 › scott-pruitt-epa-dysfunction-staff
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Reports: Before Confirmed, Scott Pruitt Wanted EPA Office ...
https://www.ewg.org › release › reports-confirmed-scott-pruitt-wanted-epa...
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https://www.epa.gov/foia/chief-staff-ryan-jacksons-calendar
https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2019-05/documents/jackson_calendar_start-jun13.2018.pdf
Brennan, Thomas Required Elkins, Arthur Required Allen, Reginald Required 2017Regionfirstassistants <2017Regionfirstassistants@epa.gov> Required Slotkin, Ron Required EPAVTC Required Kenny, Shannon Optional Flynn, MikeOptional Heard, Anne Optional Shapiro, Mike Optional Chu, Ed
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The head of an Environmental Protection Agency office in charge of protecting children’s health was put on leave this week, a move she says is part of a Trump administration effort to “disappear” her office.
The New York Times first reported that Ruth Etzel, a renowned pediatrician and head of the Office of Children’s Health Protection, was removed from her post. And since then, a leaked email from Etzel suggested the worst fears of children’s health advocates may be true.
“I appear to be the ‘fall guy’ for their plan to ‘disappear’ the office of children’s health,” Etzel wrote Tuesday in an email obtained by BuzzFeed. “It had been apparent for about 5 months that the top EPA leaders were conducting ‘guerrilla warfare’ against me as the leader of OCHP, but now it’s clearly official.”
Perhaps you’ve never heard of Etzel or her office. It’s small, with a $2 million budget and only 15 full-time employees. But it has the huge responsibility of protecting the youngest people from environmental hazards. And pushing out the boss, a 30-year career employee, rang alarm bells for children’s health professionals.
“Dr. Etzel is a well-respected giant in the field of pediatric environmental health,” Mona Hanna-Attisha, associate professor of pediatrics at Michigan State University, told Vox. “Her role is critical to ensuring that children — who are disproportionately impacted by environmental burdens — are protected.” Removing her, Hanna-Attisha added, may be seen as “a threat to today’s children and generations of children who will bear the brunt of this anti-science and shortsighted disinvestment.”
Vox reached out to the EPA for comment about Etzel’s removal, and in an email, Donna Vizian, principal deputy assistant administrator of the Office of Administration and Resources Management, said, “We do not comment on personnel matters.”
Kevin Bogardus at E&E News reported Friday that the agency put Etzel on leave to review concerns about her leadership of the office[ twt]
[Kevin Bogardus
@KevinBogardus
.@EPA confirms Ruth Etzel, head of its Office of Children’s Health Protection, was placed on leave.
Why? To review “allegations” about her leadership of the office.
Statement from Chief of Staff Ryan Jackson below]
But Etzel’s ouster also appears to be part of a pattern across the Trump administration to repeal, dial back, or stall environmental regulations that were designed to protect kids’ health. Those moves come alongside other administration policies, on issues like immigration and public welfare, that stand to have severe health consequences for children.
There’s a reason the government has regulations in place specifically to protect kids. Little ones are more vulnerable to environmental toxicants; their bodies and brains are developing, and early exposures to harmful substances can have lasting impacts. As the EPA itself notes on its website, children are not little adults. Young people can also suffer lasting health problems from disruptions to nutrition, housing, health care, and family life.
Policymakers have historically recognized this, crafting rules to protect children from toxic chemicals, malnutrition, and abuse. The Trump administration’s attempts to soften or roll back these protections is especially jarring considering we live in a country where kids are already more likely to die before adulthood compared those in other high-income countries.
Here’s a quick rundown of what’s been happening, and four areas to watch.
1) Reversing a ban on a pesticide EPA’s own analysis finds is particularly harmful to children
In August, the Ninth Circuit ordered the EPA to ban the pesticide chlorpyrifos. But the Department of Justice this week tried to fight the ban and filed an appeal of the decision.
The pesticide is used to kill insects in nearly 100 countries across 8.5 million crop acres per year, making it the most widely used pesticide in agriculture. However, studies have found that chlorpyrifos causes brain damage in children. Researchers reported that its effects take root in utero and manifest when the child is older as lower intelligence and other neurological defects.
Health campaigners petitioned the EPA to determine that there is no safe exposure level for the chlorpyrifos, paving the way for a total ban.
Last year, then-EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt denied the petition, even though the agency’sown assessment stated the “EPA cannot find that any current tolerances are safe and is therefore proposing to revoke all chlorpyrifos tolerances.”
If the legal fight continues, the Supreme Court will have to weigh in on the chlorpyrifos ban.
2) Attempting to delay new lead safety standards for children
Lead is a naturally occurring heavy metal found in mineral deposits in the Earth’s crust. It’s also a poisonous substance for humans. Inside the body, lead can slip into human cells easily and wreak havoc. In children, particularly those under the age of 10 or babies in the womb, the metal can pass through the blood-brain barrier and kill off brain cells. Children absorb up to five times as much lead as adults, and with their smaller bodies and developing nervous systems, it doesn’t take much to sicken them.
That’s why federal and local environmental policies have focused on reducing lead in our environment, and especially protecting children. It’s also why agencies like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have recently determined there’s actually no known safe blood concentration for children.
In 2017, the EPA asked for a six-year delay to update 17-year-old regulations on lead in paint and dust, including determining new standards on safe lead levels of lead exposure for children. In December, an appeals court forced the agency to finalize its updated standard within a year.
3) Using immigration policy to limit access to social services
It’s not just trauma of separating children from their asylum-seeking parents at the border: Trump’s proposed immigration rules will harm the health of children of would-be green card holders, too — and the administration knows it.
On Saturday, the Department of Homeland security unveiled a draft regulation that would change how the government evaluates new green card holders, making it possible to deny entry to anyone who is likely to become “public charge.” As Vox’s Dara Lind explained, this could “change the face of legal immigration” in this country, depending on how the document, if finalized, is interpreted.
Lind writes: “the way the regulation is laid out, as long as an immigrant not reliant on social services, not making enough money doesn’t in itself count against an immigrant — she just doesn’t get points in her favor.”
Buried in the document is DHS’s own acknowledgment that the change will harm children. In a list of potential “follow-on effects” from the new policy, the document reads: “Worse health outcomes, including increased prevalence of obesity and malnutrition, especially for pregnant or breastfeeding women, infants, or children, and reduced prescription adherence.”
That’s because, as Lind explains, the new policy would send the “message that immigrants can be punished for using public benefits — and so they should play it safe and un-enroll, or not enroll at all.”
4) Lifting controls on toxic air pollution
Of course, many of the things that harm adults also harm children, so the long list of environmental regulation rollbacks under the Trump administration also pose risks for kids, even when the rules aren’t specifically meant to protect the young.
Air pollution, for example, is particularly hazardous to children, exacerbating infant mortality, asthma, and developmental delays. Earlier this year, the EPA took steps toward deregulating major sources of toxic air pollution. The agency is also relaxing emissions and fuel economy standards for cars, one of the largest sources of air pollution.
Many of these proposals haven’t taken effect, and some have been shot down in the courts as environmental groups, states, and activists have challenged the federal government’s rollbacks of environmental protections. But the administration remains dogged in its deregulatory agenda, so expect more attempts to relax rules that protect the health of the youngest Americans.
==
...But her confidence in the E.P.A.’s resolve was fragile, and it had been shaken by other actions, including the order Ms. Hamnett received to reverse course on banning the pesticide chlorpyrifos.
The order came before Dr. Beck’s arrival at the agency, but Ms. Hamnett saw the industry’s fingerprints all over it. Mr. Pruitt’s chief of staff, Ryan Jackson, instructed Ms. Hamnett to ignore the recommendation of agency scientists, she said.
The scientists had called for a ban based on research suggesting the pesticide might cause developmental disabilities in children.
Photo Farm workers in a field picking berries. Chlorpyrifos, a pesticide blamed for developmental disabilities in children, is still widely used in agriculture. In March, Mr. Pruitt overrode agency scientists’ recommendation to ban it. Credit Jim Wilson/The New York Times]
To keep the pesticide on the market, under E.P.A. guidelines, the agency needed to have a “reasonable certainty” that no harm was being caused.
:{:{}:
}:
“The science and the law tell us this is the way to go,” Ms. Hamnett said of a ban.
:{:{}:
}:
But the reaction from her superiors was not about the science or the law, she said. Instead, they queried her about Dow Chemical, the pesticide’s largest manufacturer, which had been lobbying against a ban.
The clash is recorded in Ms. Hamnett notebook as well as in emails among Mr. Pruitt’s top political aides, which were obtained by The Times.
“They are trying to strong arm us,” Mr. Jackson wrote after meeting with Ms. Hamnett, who presented him with a draft petition to ban the pesticide.
Mr. Jackson, Ms. Hamnett’s notebook shows, then asked her to come up with alternatives to a ban. He asserted, her notes show, that he did not want to be “forced into a box” by the petition.
Photo Ms. Hamnett recorded Mr. Jackson’s reaction to a pesticide ban in her notebook.]
“I scared them,” Mr. Jackson wrote in an email to a colleague about his demands on Ms. Hamnett and her team.
As a possible compromise, Ms. Hamnett’s team had been talking to Dow about perhaps phasing out the pesticide instead of imposing an immediate ban. But Dow, after Mr. Trump’s election, was suddenly in no mood to compromise, Ms. Hamnett recalled. Dow did not respond to requests for comment.
She now knew, she said, that the effort to ban the pesticide had been lost, something Mr. Jackson’s emails celebrated.
“They know where this is headed,” Mr. Jackson wrote.
Just over a week later, Ms. Hamnett submitted a draft order that would deny the request for a ban.
“It was hard, very hard,” she said, worrying that the pesticide would continue to harm children of farmworkers. “That was not one of my best days.”
The episode is one reason she worries the E.P.A. will defer to the chemical industry as it begins to evaluate toxic chemicals under the standards created by the new law. She became particularly concerned because of a more recent exchange with Dr. Beck over methylene chloride, which is used in paint removers.
...
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boasts about:
Grassroots and Grasstops
To pass legislation in Washington, grass-roots campaigners from the hinterland need the insider known-how of the"grasstops" lobbying organizations in D.C.-- in this instance, NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council), EWG (the Environmental Working Group), and EDF (Environmental Defense Fund). For their part, the grasstops lobbyists in D.C. need grass-roots groups all across the country to pressure key legislators at crucial times in the legislative sausage-making process.
Sometimes the grasstops in D.C. forget that they can't win without support of a broad grass-roots base. There's no better example of this than the inside-the-beltway campaign in 2009 to pass "cap-and-trade" legislation [11] to curb emissions of carbon dioxide. The grasstops groups, led by Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), imagined that they could play David to the fossil fuel industry's Goliath (oil, coal, natural gas, and electric utilities) without engaging grass-roots campaigners nationwide. Predictably, Goliath slew David handily.
Just as cap and trade was going down to embarrassing defeat, the grasstops took a different tack for TSCA reform -- they helped launch a large national grass-roots coalition now known as Safer Chemicals Healthy Families [12] (SCHF), today comprising some 450 groups with perhaps 11 million total members. From the beginning, the coalition was partly staffed by grasstops: the coalition's web site lists its two "issue exerts" as Sarah Jensen, a physician with NRDC, and Richard Denison, a scientist employed by EDF. Indeed, the press release announcing the formation of the coalition [13] August 4, 2009 listed Richard Denison of EDF as the first of two spokespeople for the coalition.
Thus, it all seemed to be working the way it was supposed to. Except that Congress was not cooperating. The petrochemical industry has a phenomenally deep pocket, and it was not about to roll over for a few green lobbyists, even if they had the backing of 11 million supporters in places like Boise and Little Rock. According to Common Cause, between 2005 and 2012 the chemical industry spent$375 million lobbying [14] to prevent meaningful TSCA reform. That's more than $700,000 for each of the 535 members of Congress.
As time passed, Senator Lautenberg continually watered down his Kid-Safe proposal, each new version weaker than the last. In April of this year Lautenberg and Kristin Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) once again re-introduced a "Safe Chemicals Act." By now, the precautionary approach was long gone, as was the goal of protecting vulnerable populations like babies.
Senator Lautenberg evidently knew that even this compromised bill wasn't going anywhere because one month later -- May 22, 12 days before he died -- he introduced an even more industry-friendly version, "The Chemical Safety Improvement Act" or CSIA. This time his co-sponsor was Sen. David Vitter, conservative Republican from Louisiana and loyal servant of the petrochemical industry.
To say that Lautenberg-Vitter is industry-friendly understates the case. The chemical industry is salivating over the CSIA.
Here's a short list of industry groups that have endorsed [15] the Lautenberg-Vitter bill: Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, Association of Global Automakers, Automotive Aftermarket Industry Association, California Building Industry Association, California Chamber of Commerce, California Manufacturers & Technology Association, Consumer Electronics Association, Information Technology Industry Council, Motor & Equipment Manufacturers Association, National Electrical Manufacturers Association, and the Outdoor Power Equipment Institute.
The heaviest hitters supporting CSIA include the U.S. Chamber of Commerce [16], the Vinyl Institute [17], and, heaviest of all, the American Chemistry Council [18], trade association of the chemical manufacturers.
CSIA: "Somewhere between a rout and a retreat"
The position of the Safer Chemicals Healthy Families coalition is crystal clear [19]: "We do not support the legislation in its current form." Ken Cook, president of EWG in D.C. doesn't mince words: "If you look at the bill Lautenberg was pushing last year, I don't know if this is a retreat or a rout, but it's somewhere in that range," he says of the CSIA.
Objections to the Lautenberg-Vitter CSIA bill include these:
- EPA must decide that "no unreasonable risk of harm to human health or the environment will result from exposure to a chemical." To determine what's "unreasonable," EPA must do a cost-benefit analysis -- weighing the dollar value of the chemical against the dollar value of the cancers, birth defects, attention deficits, and other diseases it may cause over the years. In such studies, the commercial value of the chemical can be estimated, but the dollar value of the harms is not easily quantified. In the past, after losing too many such duels with industry, EPA has refused to engage, allowing chemicals onto the market unchallenged. CSIA seems unlikely to change that pattern.
- Once EPA determines that a chemical presents "no unreasonable risk of harm" (for example, by refusing to challenge it in a cost-benefit duel) federal and state courts would not be allowed to accept new evidence in toxic tort lawsuits. Whatever evidence was available to EPA at the time of its decision would be the only information that a judge or jury could hear. New scientific studies would beexcluded from courtrooms [20].
- Lautenberg-Vitter contains sweeping language that preempts states [20] from enforcing existing laws, or adopting new ones, designed to supplement federal law. So California's "Prop 65" labeling requirements would be illegal under Lautenberg-Vitter. Washington state's current restrictions on flame retardants would be nullified. Maine's goal of eliminating toxic mercury from products would be set aside.
The California attorney general's office [21] says Lautenberg-Vitter, as currently drafted, "cripples the police powers that California relies upon to protect public health... and, in addition, severely compromises California's authority to supplement and complement federal efforts to regulate the safety of chemicals."
Greens have universally condemned the Lautenberg-Vitter bill, with one exception: EDF supports the bill [22] and Richard Denison has been lobbying for it on capitol hill.
This is not really a surprise. EDF has long been known as "a home for business-friendly [23] environmentalism." People who engage with EDF generally do so knowing that it's often on the opposite side of issues that matter to grass-roots pollution-fighters.
In this instance, EDF's position on CSIA creates a real conundrum for the Safer Chemicals Healthy Family Coalition, where EDF's Denison is both a scientific adviser and a coalition spokesperson yet is employed by an organization lobbying against the coalition's position..
Now, during intense jockeying in the senate, no one can be quite sure who they're talking to when Richard Denison comes knocking. Is he representing EDF, which supports CSIA, or the Safer Chemicals coalition, which opposes it?
The EDF web site is no help in sorting out this question. To a naive viewer, the site could even give the impression that the Safer Chemicals Healthy Families coalition supports EDF's pro-CSIA position, which it emphatically does not. The "Chemicals Policy" page on EDF's site [24], urging passage of Lautenberg-Vitter, says, "EDF is a founding member of the Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families campaign, a broad coalition of state and national environmental groups, associations of health professionals, advocates for health-affected individuals and environmental justice organizations. The group has launched a broad effort to achieve comprehensive reform of TSCA. The campaign is advocating for a set of legislative proposals in Congress summarized in its platform [PDF [25]]."
Nowhere does the EDF web site clarify that the Safer Chemicals Healthy Families coalition opposes Lautenberg-Vitter, which EDF supports.
The value of EDF's stance to the chemical industry cannot be overstated. With EDF on its side, the Chemical Industry Council's chief lobbyist, Calvin M. Dooley, can tell senators that "reasonable" environmentalists support Lautenberg-Vitter. Only green extremists oppose it.
For its part, EDF management may be feeling a bit desperate to back a winner. With an annual budget of $105 million, and egg on its face from the cap-and-trade fiasco of 2009-2010, EDF perhaps needs to claim a victory after years invested in TSCA reform. Faced with the disastrous Lautenberg-Vitter bill, perhaps siding with the chemical industry against its 450 grass-roots allies in the Safer Chemicals coalition will prove to be a wise financial decision for EDF going forward.
For the Safer Chemicals coalition, on the other hand, Lautenberg-Vitter portends hard times ahead not only for chemicals policy but for the politics of reform more generally. Not only must future coalitions dissect what went wrong this time, but they must try anew to figure out how to discern in advance who are their real friends, and who's likely to sell them out at the last minute.
One thing's for sure: divide and conquer is still industry's most powerful tactic. "We're delighted there's a path forward," says Calvin Dooley of the Chemical Industry Council, "and we're eager to capitalize on it."...
==
off bs
Jackson serves as the Chief of Staff of the EPA. His responsibilities include serving as a key advisor to Acting EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler, managing daily operations of the EPA, coordinating the Administrator’s strategic initiatives, and serving as the principal liaison with the White House.
Mr. Jackson joined EPA after nearly 20 years working in the U.S. Senate, first as counsel to the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, and later as chief of staff to U.S. Senator James Inhofe (R-Oklahoma). As the staff director of the Committee, he coordinated a legislative and oversight plan for Chairman Inhofe that resulted in:
- the first long-term reauthorization of the nation’s surface transportation infrastructure in 10 years,
- the enactment of the Frank R Lautenberg Chemical Safety Act for the 21st Century (the first major federal environmental statute rewrite in 20 years), and
- a new Water Resources Development Act that prioritized funding for national ports and water infrastructure.
In all, his leadership contributed to the enactment of over 60 statutes. While working in Congress, Mr. Jackson also worked closely with EPA on new state permitting for coal ash disposal and regulation, and on the reauthorization of the Brownfields program to promote beneficial use and new economic development for these areas.
Previously, Mr. Jackson was an assistant district attorney in Oklahoma's 14th Judicial District, which covers Tulsa and Pawnee counties. A native of Oklahoma City, Mr. Jackson received his B.A. in public administration and political science from the University of Oklahoma, and his law degree from Oklahoma City University.
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https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/26/us/politics/epa-official-pressured-scientist-on-congressional-testimony-emails-show.html
cf trms intrview
The Environmental Protection Agency’s chief of staff pressured the top scientist on the agency’s scientific review board to alter her congressional testimony and play down the dismissal of expert advisers, his emails show.
Deborah Swackhamer, an environmental chemist who leads the E.P.A.’s Board of Scientific Counselors, was to testify on May 23 before the House Science Committee on the role of states in environmental policy whenRyan Jackson, the E.P.A.’s chief of staff, asked her to stick to the agency’s “talking points” on the dismissals of several members of the scientific board.
“I was stunned that he was pushing me to ‘correct’ something in my testimony,” said Dr. Swackhamer, a retired University of Minnesota professor. “I was factual, and he was not. I felt bullied.”
Dr. Swackhamer’s testimony came two weeks after the dismissals, which were met with fierce pushback from a scientific community that saw it as evidence that the Trump administration is seeking to weaken the role of academic science in environmental policy. That criticism has sharpened in recent weeks, after the E.P.A. administrator, Scott Pruitt, and the energy secretary, Rick Perry, openly questioned the established science of human-caused climate change, and as the E.P.A. has taken down websites about climate change. Scientists have also expressed concern that Mr. Pruitt has staffed his senior offices with several former senior staff members of Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma, a prominent denier of human-caused climate change. Mr. Jackson also came from Mr. Inhofe’s staff.
Among other requests in his May 22 emails, Mr. Jackson asked Dr. Swackhamer to note that “a decision had not yet been made” about whether to dismiss her colleagues on the agency’s scientific review board. However, at that time, several scientists on the board had already received notices that their terms would not be renewed. Since that testimony, the E.P.A. has sent out dozens more notices to academic scientists that their terms on the board will not be renewed.
“The Board of Scientific Counselors had 68 members two months ago. It will have 11come Sept. 1,” Dr. Swackhamer said. “They’ve essentially suspended scientific activities by ending these terms. We have no meetings scheduled, no bodies to do the work.”
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James Thurber, the founder and former director of the Center for Congressional Studies at American University, said he had never heard of an administration pressuring a witness, particularly a scientist, to alter testimony already submitted for the official record.
“It’s shocking and insulting to be told before you go in to alter your testimony to what the administration wants,” he said. “This just shows a certain amount of amateurishness about how these hearings work. They’re supposed to be places where you get objective views. You don’t go around telling people what to say.”
Mr. Jackson and the E.P.A. communications office did not respond to emailed questions about Mr. Jackson’s communications with Dr. Swackhamer.
Representative Lamar Smith of Texas, the chairman of the committee, dismissed the accusations.
“It’s disappointing that the minority is politicizing what seems to be nothing more than a federal agency making sure that information provided to Congress is accurate,” he said in a statement. “Dr. Swackhamer and the Minority have repeatedly stated that she was testifying in her personal capacity and not in connection with her role as chair of the E.P.A. Board of Scientific Counselors. However, it is clear that the Minority invited her in an attempt to hijack the stated purpose of the Committee’s hearing on states’ role in E.P.A. rulemaking and shift the focus to recent E.P.A. actions involving the” Board of Scientific Counselors.
“Any attempt by E.P.A. to ensure that what Congress heard in testimony about official E.P.A. matters included the full breadth of information seems entirely appropriate,” Mr. Smith continued. “Unfortunately, the Minority has made the choice to waste taxpayer dollars as part of a politically motivatedagenda.”
Dr. Swackhamer said she had already submitted her testimony to the congressional committee by the time she received Mr. Jackson’s email. She had also told the Science Committee and the E.P.A. that she planned to speak in her role as an independent scientist rather than an E.P.A. employee, and that she would make this plain at the outset of her testimony.
Dr. Swackhamer made her emails with Mr. Jackson available to the committee’s Democrats. On Monday, the panel’s Democrats, led by the ranking member, Eddie Bernice Johnson of Texas, sent a letter to Mr. Pruitt expressing concern that Mr. Jackson’s attempt to shape Dr. Swackhamer’s testimony may have been improper or even illegal. The Democrats requested that the agency’s inspector general investigate the matter.
“We contend that Mr. Jackson, and perhaps other senior E.P.A. employees, attempted to interfere with the testimony of an independent scientist to the Science Committee and may have sought to mislead Congress,” they wrote
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E.P.A. Official Pressured Scientist on Congressional Testimony ...
https://www.nytimes.com › 2017/06/26 › politics › epa-official-pressured-sci...
Jun 26, 2017 - Emails between Ryan Jackson, the Environmental Protection Agency's ... is seeking to weaken the role of academic science in environmental policy. ... of the Center for Congressional Studies at American University, said he ...
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EPA's Chief of Staff | About EPA | US EPA
https://www.epa.gov › aboutepa › epas-chief-staff
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Missing: america's future energy
White House, EPA headed off chemical pollution study - POLITICO
https://www.politico.com › story › 2018/05/14 › emails-white-house-interf...
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EPA Administrator Says Culprit for Racist Messages Was 'Held ...
https://www.govexec.com › management › 2019/08 › epa-administrator-sa...
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Missing: future | Must include:future
An EPA health official says Trump wants to “disappear” her office - Vox
https://www.vox.com › trump-children-health-epa-immigration
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The Energy 202: Three senior Scott Pruitt aides resigned from the EPA ...
https://www.washingtonpost.com › paloma › the-energy-202 › 2018/05/04
May 4, 2018 - Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt attends the ... and deep, respect for the public servants who serve the American people, day in and ... thanked EPAchief of staff Ryan Jackson for his "commitment to furthering the ... Yet Bowman sought to remove herself from the push to challenge ...
Deregulatory Task Force Members | Trump Town | ProPublica
https://projects.propublica.org › trump-town › staffers › category › taskforce
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E.P.A. Head Stacks Agency With Climate Change Skeptics - The New ...
https://www.nytimes.com › scott-pruitt-environmental-protection-agency
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E.P.A. Official Pressured Scientist on Congressional Testimony ...
https://www.nytimes.com › 2017/06/26 › politics › epa-official-pressured-sci...
Jun 26, 2017 - Emails between Ryan Jackson, the Environmental Protection Agency's ... is seeking to weaken the role of academic science in environmental policy. ... of the Center for Congressional Studies at American University, said he ...
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E.P.A. Head Stacks Agency With Climate Change Skeptics - The New ...
https://www.nytimes.com › scott-pruitt-environmental-protection-agency
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Mar 7, 2017 - Scott Pruitt, the Environmental Protection Agency administrator, last month. ... A former Inhofe chief of staff, Ryan Jackson, will be Mr. Pruitt's chief of staff. ... and gridlock at the federal agency tasked to keep safe the nation's clean air ... a senior research fellow in energy economics and climate change at the ...
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ryanjackson819
mofo
suppressed formaldehyde with yamada staffer
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calendar foia'd
https://www.epa.gov/foia/chief-staff-ryan-jacksons-calendar
https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2019-05/documents/jackson_calendar_start-jun13.2018.pdf
Brennan, Thomas Required Elkins, Arthur Required Allen, Reginald Required 2017Regionfirstassistants <2017Regionfirstassistants@epa.gov> Required Slotkin, Ron Required EPAVTC Required Kenny, Shannon Optional Flynn, Mike Optional Heard, Anne Optional Shapiro, Mike Optional Chu, Ed
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...But her confidence in the E.P.A.’s resolve was fragile, and it had been shaken by other actions, including the order Ms. Hamnett received to reverse course on banning the pesticide chlorpyrifos.
The order came before Dr. Beck’s arrival at the agency, but Ms. Hamnett saw the industry’s fingerprints all over it. Mr. Pruitt’s chief of staff, Ryan Jackson, instructed Ms. Hamnett to ignore the recommendation of agency scientists, she said.
The scientists had called for a ban based on research suggesting the pesticide might cause developmental disabilities in children.
Photo Farm workers in a field picking berries. Chlorpyrifos, a pesticide blamed for developmental disabilities in children, is still widely used in agriculture. In March, Mr. Pruitt overrode agency scientists’ recommendation to ban it. Credit Jim Wilson/The New York Times]
To keep the pesticide on the market, under E.P.A. guidelines, the agency needed to have a “reasonable certainty” that no harm was being caused.
“The science and the law tell us this is the way to go,” Ms. Hamnett said of a ban.
But the reaction from her superiors was not about the science or the law, she said. Instead, they queried her about Dow Chemical, the pesticide’s largest manufacturer, which had been lobbying against a ban.
The clash is recorded in Ms. Hamnett notebook as well as in emails among Mr. Pruitt’s top political aides, which were obtained by The Times.
“They are trying to strong arm us,” Mr. Jackson wrote after meeting with Ms. Hamnett, who presented him with a draft petition to ban the pesticide.
Mr. Jackson, Ms. Hamnett’s notebook shows, then asked her to come up with alternatives to a ban. He asserted, her notes show, that he did not want to be “forced into a box” by the petition.
Photo Ms. Hamnett recorded Mr. Jackson’s reaction to a pesticide ban in her notebook.]
“I scared them,” Mr. Jackson wrote in an email to a colleague about his demands on Ms. Hamnett and her team.
As a possible compromise, Ms. Hamnett’s team had been talking to Dow about perhaps phasing out the pesticide instead of imposing an immediate ban. But Dow, after Mr. Trump’s election, was suddenly in no mood to compromise, Ms. Hamnett recalled. Dow did not respond to requests for comment.
She now knew, she said, that the effort to ban the pesticide had been lost, something Mr. Jackson’s emails celebrated.
“They know where this is headed,” Mr. Jackson wrote.
Just over a week later, Ms. Hamnett submitted a draft order that would deny the request for a ban.
“It was hard, very hard,” she said, worrying that the pesticide would continue to harm children of farmworkers. “That was not one of my best days.”
The episode is one reason she worries the E.P.A. will defer to the chemical industry as it begins to evaluate toxic chemicals under the standards created by the new law. She became particularly concerned because of a more recent exchange with Dr. Beck over methylene chloride, which is used in paint removers.
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boasts about:
Grassroots and Grasstops
To pass legislation in Washington, grass-roots campaigners from the hinterland need the insider known-how of the "grasstops" lobbying organizations in D.C. -- in this instance, NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council), EWG (the Environmental Working Group), and EDF (Environmental Defense Fund). For their part, the grasstops lobbyists in D.C. need grass-roots groups all across the country to pressure key legislators at crucial times in the legislative sausage-making process.
Sometimes the grasstops in D.C. forget that they can't win without support of a broad grass-roots base. There's no better example of this than the inside-the-beltway campaign in 2009 to pass "cap-and-trade" legislation [11] to curb emissions of carbon dioxide. The grasstops groups, led by Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), imagined that they could play David to the fossil fuel industry's Goliath (oil, coal, natural gas, and electric utilities) without engaging grass-roots campaigners nationwide. Predictably, Goliath slew David handily.
Just as cap and trade was going down to embarrassing defeat, the grasstops took a different tack for TSCA reform -- they helped launch a large national grass-roots coalition now known as Safer Chemicals Healthy Families [12] (SCHF), today comprising some 450 groups with perhaps 11 million total members. From the beginning, the coalition was partly staffed by grasstops: the coalition's web site lists its two "issue exerts" as Sarah Jensen, a physician with NRDC, and Richard Denison, a scientist employed by EDF. Indeed, the press release announcing the formation of the coalition [13] August 4, 2009 listed Richard Denison of EDF as the first of two spokespeople for the coalition.
Thus, it all seemed to be working the way it was supposed to. Except that Congress was not cooperating. The petrochemical industry has a phenomenally deep pocket, and it was not about to roll over for a few green lobbyists, even if they had the backing of 11 million supporters in places like Boise and Little Rock. According to Common Cause, between 2005 and 2012 the chemical industry spent$375 million lobbying [14] to prevent meaningful TSCA reform. That's more than $700,000 for each of the 535 members of Congress.
As time passed, Senator Lautenberg continually watered down his Kid-Safe proposal, each new version weaker than the last. In April of this year Lautenberg and Kristin Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) once again re-introduced a "Safe Chemicals Act." By now, the precautionary approach was long gone, as was the goal of protecting vulnerable populations like babies.
Senator Lautenberg evidently knew that even this compromised bill wasn't going anywhere because one month later -- May 22, 12 days before he died -- he introduced an even more industry-friendly version, "The Chemical Safety Improvement Act" or CSIA. This time his co-sponsor was Sen. David Vitter, conservative Republican from Louisiana and loyal servant of the petrochemical industry.
To say that Lautenberg-Vitter is industry-friendly understates the case. The chemical industry is salivating over the CSIA.
Here's a short list of industry groups that have endorsed [15] the Lautenberg-Vitter bill: Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, Association of Global Automakers, Automotive Aftermarket Industry Association, California Building Industry Association, California Chamber of Commerce, California Manufacturers & Technology Association, Consumer Electronics Association, Information Technology Industry Council, Motor & Equipment Manufacturers Association, National Electrical Manufacturers Association, and the Outdoor Power Equipment Institute.
The heaviest hitters supporting CSIA include the U.S. Chamber of Commerce [16], the Vinyl Institute [17], and, heaviest of all, the American Chemistry Council [18], trade association of the chemical manufacturers.
CSIA: "Somewhere between a rout and a retreat"
The position of the Safer Chemicals Healthy Families coalition is crystal clear [19]: "We do not support the legislation in its current form." Ken Cook, president of EWG in D.C. doesn't mince words: "If you look at the bill Lautenberg was pushing last year, I don't know if this is a retreat or a rout, but it's somewhere in that range," he says of the CSIA.
Objections to the Lautenberg-Vitter CSIA bill include these:
- EPA must decide that "no unreasonable risk of harm to human health or the environment will result from exposure to a chemical." To determine what's "unreasonable," EPA must do a cost-benefit analysis -- weighing the dollar value of the chemical against the dollar value of the cancers, birth defects, attention deficits, and other diseases it may cause over the years. In such studies, the commercial value of the chemical can be estimated, but the dollar value of the harms is not easily quantified. In the past, after losing too many such duels with industry, EPA has refused to engage, allowing chemicals onto the market unchallenged. CSIA seems unlikely to change that pattern.
- Once EPA determines that a chemical presents "no unreasonable risk of harm" (for example, by refusing to challenge it in a cost-benefit duel) federal and state courts would not be allowed to accept new evidence in toxic tort lawsuits. Whatever evidence was available to EPA at the time of its decision would be the only information that a judge or jury could hear. New scientific studies would beexcluded from courtrooms [20].
- Lautenberg-Vitter contains sweeping language that preempts states [20] from enforcing existing laws, or adopting new ones, designed to supplement federal law. So California's "Prop 65" labeling requirements would be illegal under Lautenberg-Vitter. Washington state's current restrictions on flame retardants would be nullified. Maine's goal of eliminating toxic mercury from products would be set aside.
The California attorney general's office [21] says Lautenberg-Vitter, as currently drafted, "cripples the police powers that California relies upon to protect public health... and, in addition, severely compromises California's authority to supplement and complement federal efforts to regulate the safety of chemicals."
Greens have universally condemned the Lautenberg-Vitter bill, with one exception: EDF supports the bill [22] and Richard Denison has been lobbying for it on capitol hill.
This is not really a surprise. EDF has long been known as "a home for business-friendly [23] environmentalism." People who engage with EDF generally do so knowing that it's often on the opposite side of issues that matter to grass-roots pollution-fighters.
In this instance, EDF's position on CSIA creates a real conundrum for the Safer Chemicals Healthy Family Coalition, where EDF's Denison is both a scientific adviser and a coalition spokesperson yet is employed by an organization lobbying against the coalition's position..
Now, during intense jockeying in the senate, no one can be quite sure who they're talking to when Richard Denison comes knocking. Is he representing EDF, which supports CSIA, or the Safer Chemicals coalition, which opposes it?
The EDF web site is no help in sorting out this question. To a naive viewer, the site could even give the impression that the Safer Chemicals Healthy Families coalition supports EDF's pro-CSIA position, which it emphatically does not. The "Chemicals Policy" page on EDF's site [24], urging passage of Lautenberg-Vitter, says, "EDF is a founding member of the Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families campaign, a broad coalition of state and national environmental groups, associations of health professionals, advocates for health-affected individuals and environmental justice organizations. The group has launched a broad effort to achieve comprehensive reform of TSCA. The campaign is advocating for a set of legislative proposals in Congress summarized in its platform [PDF [25]]."
Nowhere does the EDF web site clarify that the Safer Chemicals Healthy Families coalition opposes Lautenberg-Vitter, which EDF supports.
The value of EDF's stance to the chemical industry cannot be overstated. With EDF on its side, the Chemical Industry Council's chief lobbyist, Calvin M. Dooley, can tell senators that "reasonable" environmentalists support Lautenberg-Vitter. Only green extremists oppose it.
For its part, EDF management may be feeling a bit desperate to back a winner. With an annual budget of $105 million, and egg on its face from the cap-and-trade fiasco of 2009-2010, EDF perhaps needs to claim a victory after years invested in TSCA reform. Faced with the disastrous Lautenberg-Vitter bill, perhaps siding with the chemical industry against its 450 grass-roots allies in the Safer Chemicals coalition will prove to be a wise financial decision for EDF going forward.
For the Safer Chemicals coalition, on the other hand, Lautenberg-Vitter portends hard times ahead not only for chemicals policy but for the politics of reform more generally. Not only must future coalitions dissect what went wrong this time, but they must try anew to figure out how to discern in advance who are their real friends, and who's likely to sell them out at the last minute.
One thing's for sure: divide and conquer is still industry's most powerful tactic. "We're delighted there's a path forward," says Calvin Dooley of the Chemical Industry Council, "and we're eager to capitalize on it."...
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off bs
Jackson serves as the Chief of Staff of the EPA. His responsibilities include serving as a key advisor to Acting EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler, managing daily operations of the EPA, coordinating the Administrator’s strategic initiatives, and serving as the principal liaison with the White House.
Mr. Jackson joined EPA after nearly 20 years working in the U.S. Senate, first as counsel to the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, and later as chief of staff to U.S. Senator James Inhofe (R-Oklahoma). As the staff director of the Committee, he coordinated a legislative and oversight plan for Chairman Inhofe that resulted in:
the first long-term reauthorization of the nation’s surface transportation infrastructure in 10 years,
the enactment of the Frank R Lautenberg Chemical Safety Act for the 21st Century (the first major federal environmental statute rewrite in 20 years), and
a new Water Resources Development Act that prioritized funding for national ports and water infrastructure.
In all, his leadership contributed to the enactment of over 60 statutes. While working in Congress, Mr. Jackson also worked closely with EPA on new state permitting for coal ash disposal and regulation, and on the reauthorization of the Brownfields program to promote beneficial use and new economic development for these areas.
Previously, Mr. Jackson was an assistant district attorney in Oklahoma's 14th Judicial District, which covers Tulsa and Pawnee counties. A native of Oklahoma City, Mr. Jackson received his B.A. in public administration and political science from the University of Oklahoma, and his law degree from Oklahoma City University.
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https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/26/us/politics/epa-official-pressured-scientist-on-congressional-testimony-emails-show.html
cf trms intrview
The Environmental Protection Agency’s chief of staff pressured the top scientist on the agency’s scientific review board to alter her congressional testimony and play down the dismissal of expert advisers, his emails show.
Deborah Swackhamer, an environmental chemist who leads the E.P.A.’s Board of Scientific Counselors, was to testify on May 23 before the House Science Committee on the role of states in environmental policy when Ryan Jackson, the E.P.A.’s chief of staff, asked her to stick to the agency’s “talking points” on the dismissals of several members of the scientific board.
“I was stunned that he was pushing me to ‘correct’ something in my testimony,” said Dr. Swackhamer, a retired University of Minnesota professor. “I was factual, and he was not. I felt bullied.”
Dr. Swackhamer’s testimony came two weeks after the dismissals, which were met with fierce pushback from a scientific community that saw it as evidence that the Trump administration is seeking to weaken the role of academic science in environmental policy. That criticism has sharpened in recent weeks, after the E.P.A. administrator, Scott Pruitt, and the energy secretary, Rick Perry, openly questioned the established science of human-caused climate change, and as the E.P.A. has taken down websites about climate change. Scientists have also expressed concern that Mr. Pruitt has staffed his senior offices with several former senior staff members of Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma, a prominent denier of human-caused climate change. Mr. Jackson also came from Mr. Inhofe’s staff.
Among other requests in his May 22 emails, Mr. Jackson asked Dr. Swackhamer to note that “a decision had not yet been made” about whether to dismiss her colleagues on the agency’s scientific review board. However, at that time, several scientists on the board had already received notices that their terms would not be renewed. Since that testimony, the E.P.A. has sent out dozens more notices to academic scientists that their terms on the board will not be renewed.
“The Board of Scientific Counselors had 68 members two months ago. It will have 11 come Sept. 1,” Dr. Swackhamer said. “They’ve essentially suspended scientific activities by ending these terms. We have no meetings scheduled, no bodies to do the work.”
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James Thurber, the founder and former director of the Center for Congressional Studies at American University, said he had never heard of an administration pressuring a witness, particularly a scientist, to alter testimony already submitted for the official record.
“It’s shocking and insulting to be told before you go in to alter your testimony to what the administration wants,” he said. “This just shows a certain amount of amateurishness about how these hearings work. They’re supposed to be places where you get objective views. You don’t go around telling people what to say.”
Mr. Jackson and the E.P.A. communications office did not respond to emailed questions about Mr. Jackson’s communications with Dr. Swackhamer.
Representative Lamar Smith of Texas, the chairman of the committee, dismissed the accusations.
“It’s disappointing that the minority is politicizing what seems to be nothing more than a federal agency making sure that information provided to Congress is accurate,” he said in a statement. “Dr. Swackhamer and the Minority have repeatedly stated that she was testifying in her personal capacity and not in connection with her role as chair of the E.P.A. Board of Scientific Counselors. However, it is clear that the Minority invited her in an attempt to hijack the stated purpose of the Committee’s hearing on states’ role in E.P.A. rulemaking and shift the focus to recent E.P.A. actions involving the” Board of Scientific Counselors.
“Any attempt by E.P.A. to ensure that what Congress heard in testimony about official E.P.A. matters included the full breadth of information seems entirely appropriate,” Mr. Smith continued. “Unfortunately, the Minority has made the choice to waste taxpayer dollars as part of a politically motivated agenda.”
Dr. Swackhamer said she had already submitted her testimony to the congressional committee by the time she received Mr. Jackson’s email. She had also told the Science Committee and the E.P.A. that she planned to speak in her role as an independent scientist rather than an E.P.A. employee, and that she would make this plain at the outset of her testimony.
Dr. Swackhamer made her emails with Mr. Jackson available to the committee’s Democrats. On Monday, the panel’s Democrats, led by the ranking member, Eddie Bernice Johnson of Texas, sent a letter to Mr. Pruitt expressing concern that Mr. Jackson’s attempt to shape Dr. Swackhamer’s testimony may have been improper or even illegal. The Democrats requested that the agency’s inspector general investigate the matter.
“We contend that Mr. Jackson, and perhaps other senior E.P.A. employees, attempted to interfere with the testimony of an independent scientist to the Science Committee and may have sought to mislead Congress,” they wrote
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