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On Thursday, President Donald Trump claimed to have pardoned an ally serving a prison sentence related to his efforts to contest the 2020 election results, in a move Colorado Democrats called "meaningless" due to his lack of authority. Now, her lawyer has backed the use of military forces to help get his client out of prison, per a report from The Independent.
Tina Peters, 70, is a former Colorado election official currently serving out a 9-year prison sentence on state-level charges, having been convicted by a Mesa County jury in August 2024. Peters was found guilty of facilitating a security breach after she let prominent election denier and MyPillow salesman, Mike Lindell, enter a secure room and download data containing Colorado's 2020 election results, as part of his effort to find evidence of fraud and contest Joe Biden's defeat of Trump.
Following a series of federal pardons and dropped cases, Peters is now the only person serving prison time for actions related to Trump's denial of the 2020 election results. Despite Trump claiming to have pardoned her this week, the president is only capable of commuting federal charges, and Colorado officials have dismissed the possibility of releasing Peters from custody at his command. Appearing on Steve Bannon's War Room podcast, her lawyer, Peter Ticktin, agreed with Bannon's assertion that Trump should dispatch the 101st Airborne Division to free Peters from prison.
“Do I think it should be done? For who I am, yeah – I’d love to see that happen," Ticktin said.
Ticktin had previously issued pleas for Trump to pardon his client, despite the president lacking the necessary authority. In response to the earlier pleas, Phil Weiser, the Democratic Attorney General for Colorado, said any attempt by Trump to pardon Peters “will not hold up.”
“One of the most basic principles of our constitution is that states have independent sovereignty and manage our own criminal justice systems without interference from the federal government,” Weiser said.
Shad Murib, chair of the Colorado Democratic Party, also said that Trump “has no legal authority” to facilitate Peters' release from prison, and called the notion of a pardon from him "meaningless."
“We’re not surprised by President Trump shouting into the wind and issuing a meaningless pardon for his friend and fellow election denier Tina Peters,” Murib said.
Though some state governors lack complete pardon powers for state-level charges, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, a Democrat, does have complete pardon power, and has not indicated that he has any intention to pardon Peters.
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California Tries ‘Trump-Proofing’ Its Climate Policies
A second Trump administration would be expected to shred climate policies. California officials are devising ways to insulate its environmental regulations.
By Coral Davenport
Published Oct. 12, 2024
Updated Oct. 15, 2024
California officials have been working for months on a plan to “Trump proof” the state’s leading edge environmental and climate policies, in the event that former President Donald J. Trump returns to the White House and follows through on his promise to gut them.
Whether California succeeds could affect more than a dozen other states that follow its emissions rules, and could have global impact because the state’s market muscle compels auto makers and other companies to conform to California standards.
The strategy now being crafted in Sacramento includes lawsuits designed to reach wide-ranging settlements with industries that generate greenhouse gases, and new rules and laws that rely on state authority and would be beyond the reach of the administration.
Mr. Trump, who considers climate change a “hoax,” has promised to weaken every major federal climate regulation, as he did in his first term.
But he is also expected to try to blow up California’s climate policies, which have set the pace for the rest of the nation and the world. The state is requiring about three-quarters of new trucks sold there after 2035 to be zero emissions. And in a request that is pending, California wants permission from the Biden administration to enact one of the most ambitious climate rules of any nation: a ban on the sale of new gas-powered passenger vehicles in the state after 2035.
Both rules are far tougher than federal policy and could have influence beyond the United States, given California’s standing as the world’s fifth-largest economy. China and the European Union have already adopted parts of California’s car and truck tailpipe emissions reduction programs.
The Democratic-controlled state legislature has also passed a first-in-the-nation law requiring major companies to disclose their greenhouse emissions. And it has strengthened the authority of local governments to shut down oil and gas projects in their communities. Next month, Californians will be asked to approve a ballot measure to create a $10 billion “climate bond” to pay for climate and environmental projects.
The California State Capitol in Sacramento.Credit...Juliana Yamada/Associated Press
Under a provision of the 1970 Clean Air Act, the Environmental Protection Agency has for decades given California a waiver that allows it to enact pollution controls that are stricter than federal regulations. Federal law also allows other states under certain circumstances to adopt California’s standards as their own.
Sixteen states have pledged to follow the California car rule and 10 states have adopted the truck rule, meaning that the California regulations would apply to about 40 percent the United States auto market.
Mr. Trump has promised to revoke the waiver. “California has imposed the most ridiculous car regulations anywhere in the world, with mandates to move to all electric cars,” Mr. Trump has said. “I will terminate that.”
At the same time, the legality of the waiver is being challenged by 17 Republican attorneys general and several oil groups in a lawsuit that may head to the United States Supreme Court.
On the campaign trail, Mr. Trump has continued his long-running feud with California’s Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom. Mr. Trump has called him an “environmental maniac” who is “crushing our great automakers in Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina, crushing them under his leadership.”
A spokeswoman for the Trump campaign, Karoline Leavitt, declined to comment on California’s plans.
Mr. Newsom, who is seen as having White House ambitions of his own, has made clear that he intends to forge ahead on environmental regulation regardless of whether Mr. Trump returns to the presidency.
“California has long led the nation in pioneering climate policies and innovation,” said Mr. Newsom in a statement. “Those efforts will continue for years to come. That includes partnerships with private companies, such as automakers, and agreements with other countries — everywhere from China to Norway to Canada — to combat the climate crisis together.”
Mr. Trump has called Gavin Newsom, the California governor, an “environmental maniac” on the campaign trail.Credit...Graham Dickie/The New York Times
Other top Democrats in the state, including Attorney General Rob Bonta, are working with the state’s climate regulator, the California Air Resources Board, on the “Trump-proofing” strategy. Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas said the state legislature will be ready to meet in a special session after the November election if necessary.
When Mr. Trump became president in 2017, California officials were caught flat-footed, said Mary Nichols, who was the state’s top climate regulator from 2007 to 2020 and now informally advises state policymakers. “It came as a shock,” she said.
As the Trump administration dismantled Obama-era environmental rules and then took aim at California’s policies, the state fought back, Ms. Nichols said. California filed more than 70 climate and environmental lawsuits against the Trump administration, prevailing in more than half of them.
That kind of record is not assured in the future, in part because Mr. Trump reshaped the nation’s courts, appointing more than 200 federal judges. Those appointments include three Supreme Court justices, who helped form a conservative supermajority that delivered decisions to restrict the government’s authority to regulate climate, air and water pollution. As soon as January, the court could hear the case that is challenging California’s waiver under the Clean Air Act.
Gavin Newsom Wants to Export California’s Climate Laws to the World
Oct. 23, 2023
State officials and lawmakers are working to try to protect California’s policies even if it loses its waiver.
They plan to build upon their most successful legal gambit during Mr. Trump’s first term. In 2019, the Trump administration revoked California’s waiver — the first time the federal government had done so since the Clean Air Act was passed in 1970. The Biden administration would later restore it, but the lapse had limited impact because California had secretly struck legal agreements with four of the world’s largest automakers — Ford, Volkswagen, Honda and BMW — to reduce their tailpipe emissions according to limits set by the state.
The move blindsided and enraged Mr. Trump, and his administration in turn threatened to withhold federal highway funds from California, unsuccessfully sued the state for partnering with Quebec on its emissions reduction program, and opened an antitrust investigation into the automakers that signed on to the deal.
But the deal with automakers, which expires in 2026, endured and grew: Volvo and Stellantis have since signed on. California regulators are now talking to the companies about even stricter emissions limits, and expanding the agreement to include other automakers and possibly other states.
“We are going to fight back hard,” said Phil Weiser, the Democratic attorney general of Colorado. “We are going to coordinate.”
Ms. Nichols, the architect of the automaker deal, also said that “back channel” conversations are happening about ways to forge legal agreements to reduce emissions from other industries, including electric utilities, oil companies and global corporations that have business in California.
The state is betting that companies would prefer to enter into a legal agreement that requires them to cut emissions or pay for environmental remediation rather than gamble on a court decision that could result in much higher sums. Many companies would also like to avoid the uncertainty of federal rules that change with each administration.
“When you have a settlement with private industry, it doesn’t matter if there is a change in administration,” said Paul Nolette, a professor of political science at Marquette University who is familiar with California’s strategy.
Mr. Nolette and others said the $206 billion settlement reached in 1998 between 46 states and tobacco companies offered lessons for how a climate deal between several states and industries could be structured.
The California attorney general’s office hopes to create a foundation for such deals following its lawsuit last year accusing five of the world’s largest oil companies of knowingly contributing to climate damage, and its lawsuit last month alleging that Exxon Mobil misled consumers into believing that many plastic products were recyclable when they were not.
The discovery documents and financial disclosures emerging from those complaints could lead to settlements under which companies might agree to emissions reductions, said Ms. Nichols and Mr. Nolette.
Legal settlements would likely be just one part of the state’s “Trump-proofing.”
“California has lots of other tools, including the power of the purse — particularly when it comes to procurement,” said Craig Segall, the former assistant chief counsel at the California Air Resources Board, who is now senior vice president at Evergreen Action, an environmental advocacy group.
For example, during the Trump administration, California banned the purchase of state vehicles made by companies that backed Mr. Trump’s efforts to roll back the state’s fuel-efficiency rules, including General Motors and Fiat Chrysler, which later became Stellantis. Eventually, those companies reversed course and sided with California.
Other leverage is under consideration, said Mr. Segall and others familiar with the planning.
State regulators could impose penalties on the use or purchase of vehicles that burn gasoline while California lawmakers could require that the resulting revenue be used to subsidize the purchase of electric vehicles.
Regulators could also limit emissions stemming from vehicles that are linked to enormous facilities like warehouses that are a hub for diesel trucks. A similar rule recently took effect in Los Angeles.
“Any state can have that,” said Mr. Segall. “It doesn’t need the federal waiver. These kinds of things are not popular, but in a world where there is destruction of the other climate tools, states can take these defensive measures.”
More than a decade ago, California launched a “climate diplomacy” relationship with China that endures. Delegations of Chinese officials have met multiple times with California Air Resources Board officials to share information and research. The meetings have borne fruit: China essentially cut-and-pasted portions of the California clean car rules — a policy move that helped drive China to the cutting edge of electric vehicle development.
California’s outreach to other countries will continue, state officials said. In addition to China, the state has influenced the European Union, which is mandating EV-only auto sales after 2035 and truck sales after 2040.
The state has served as co-chair of the International Carbon Action Partnership, an organization of economies that have established “cap-and-trade” programs, in which industrial polluters buy and sell emissions credits. Among those economies is Quebec, which has linked its carbon dioxide cap-and-trade market with California’s.
The Canadian province has used revenues of the program to help pay for incentives and chargers for electric vehicles, which now make up nearly 30 percent of new car sales in the region, compared with 8 percent in the U.S.
“Without the carbon market and the linkage with California, we wouldn’t be able to achieve this in Quebec,” said Benoit Charette, Quebec’s environment minister. “No matter the result of the federal election, California is our partner.”
Coral Davenport covers energy and environment policy, with a focus on climate change, for The Times. More about Coral Davenport
A version of this article appears in print on Oct. 14, 2024,
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https://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/417416-suing-americas-manufacturers-calling-them-a-public-nuisance-wont/
Across the country, the jobs of manufacturing workers are being threatened by trial attorneys and politicians targeting manufacturers with baseless lawsuits based on the legal theory of “public nuisance,” attempting to hold manufacturers responsible for harms that are often far outside of their control. While trial lawyers have pursued such lawsuits for years, there has been a dramatic increase over the past year, as lawyers team up with states, cities and counties to sue manufacturers over climate change. This is why, one year ago, the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) launched the Manufacturers’ Accountability Project (MAP) to help bring attention to the coordinated campaign behind these lawsuits and has made it clear that they will do nothing to improve the environment but could do serious damage to our legal system and our manufacturing industry.
California Manufacturers and Technology AssociationPresident Dorothy Rothrock has said the law firms are in it for the money. Indeed, the private attorneys representing the municipalities stand to earn hundreds of millions of dollars if they get a favorable ruling in court.
To date, 14 municipalities and one state have filed such litigation against dozens of energy manufacturers.{mosads}
So far, each lawsuit that has been considered in federal court has been dismissed, with the judges finding several flaws in the municipalities’ arguments. In dismissing the cases brought by San Francisco and Oakland, U.S. District Judge William Alsup rightly told the plaintiffs that the court is not the proper branch of government to address the issue of climate change:
“The problem deserves a solution on a more vast scale than can be supplied by a district judge or jury in a public nuisance case,” Judge Alsup wrote in his opinion. “The Court will stay its hand in favor of solutions by the legislative and executive branches.”
U.S. District Judge John Keenan agreed with Judge Alsup’s logic, dismissing New York City’s climate lawsuit against five of the country’s largest energy companies in July. Another fatal flaw in New York City’s argument, Keenan found, was that the plaintiff was attempting to hold only manufacturers accountable for climate change when it is a problem to which everyone contributes. “Aren’t the plaintiffs using the product?” Judge Keenan asked the city’s outside counsel. “Does the city have clean hands?”
These dismissals are an encouraging sign that the outstanding lawsuits against manufacturers — filed by Rhode Island, Baltimore, Boulder and others — will face a similar fate in the coming months.
It is also encouraging that a growing number of public officials are speaking out against the litigation. For example, in Colorado, the state’s newly elected attorney general Phil Weiser recently criticized the climate lawsuit filed by three municipalities in his state, saying he is “uncomfortable with the litigation because the case for it hasn’t been made.”
Oklahoma Attorney General Mike Hunterhas also commented on the lawsuits, saying, “In short, the courts are no place to determine national environmental policy. And public nuisance is not a theory the judges should employ in these kind of cases.”
Louisiana Solicitor General Liz Murrill said these suits “commandeer the rightful role of Congress to pass policy for the nation and are improper in terms of trying to legislate extraterritorial economic policy from the states in which they originate.”
We will continue to fight on behalf of manufacturing workers whose jobs are at stake. Manufacturing is too critical to the American economy to allow this threat to go unanswered.
NOTE: This post has been updated from the original to correct Judge Keenan’s first name and to clarify the lawsuits that have been dismissed.
Lindsey de la Torre is the Executive Director of the Manufacturers’ Accountability Project, a project of the National Association of Manufacturers’ Center for Legal Action. She previously served in the office of Presidential Personnel in the George W. Bush White House and in the Office of Associate Attorney General at the U.S. Dept. of Justice.
TAGS ABUSE OF THE LEGAL SYSTEMCLIMATE CHANGELAWSUITSNUISANCE
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Colorado's outgoing Republican Attorney General Cynthia Coffman had joined other states in challenging the Clean Power Plan, and 2018 GOP candidate George Brauchler also opposed the greenhouse gas restrictions and pledged not to challenge the Trump administration's actions. Brauchler favored the White House's "Affordable Clean Energy Rule" to replace the Clean Power Plan, while Democratic candidate Phil Weiser supported the restrictions and called attention to Brauchler's "pro-industry approach to energy extraction."
RAGA spent over $5.1 million backing Brauchler through Colorado Freedom, a RAGA state affiliate set up by RAGA's chief financial officer, Lee Russell. Weiser, who won the race, criticized Colorado Freedom for being a "dark money" group funded, via RAGA, by "mostly out-of-state corporations" including Koch Industries.
Some of the same fossil fuel companies that financed RAGA including Anadarko Petroleum, Extraction Oil and Gas, Noble Energy, and PDC Energy also gave millions of dollars to another outside group, Protect Colorado, which spent a massive $40 million advocating the oil and gas industry's interests around two ballot measures.
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https://www.climateliabilitynews.org/2018/11/19/democratic-ag-midterm-climate-change/
Nearly lost in the sometimes breathless coverage of the massive Democratic gains in the House of Representatives and state legislatures was a political sea change in the recent midterm election: for the first time in years, Democrats gained control over the levers of environmental law in four critical states.
In four formerly reliably Republican states—Michigan, Colorado, Wisconsin and Nevada—GOP attorneys general were ousted by Democratic challengers.It is a development, observers say, that represents a stunning defeat for the oil and gas industry, which poured millions of dollars into those campaigns. And it could alter the landscape for several high-profile cases that seek to hold the industry accountable for the ravages of climate change.
“Democratic AGs now hold 27 offices,” said Lizzie Ulmer, communications director for the Democratic Attorneys General Association. “That puts us in the majority.”
The Democrats’ gains on Nov. 6 give them precisely the slim majority the Republicans used to hold. Among the ousted were some staunch supporters of the fossil fuel industry.
The question is whether this new coalition of Democratic attorneys general will act en masse, launching investigations and filing suits as a coordinated bloc, as their Republican predecessors did.
Throughout most of the Obama administration, the GOP attorneys general formed a united front. They challenged the Democratic administration on a host of issues, from health care to critical environmental issues like the Clean Power Plan, which sought to leverage market forces to cut carbon emissions, and the Waters of United States rule that gives federal regulators a larger role in regulating tributaries to major navigable waterways, which previously had been beyond federal reach.
“They were very coordinated in their efforts to be a bloc and to be obstructionist during the Obama administration,” Ulmer said. As Texas Gov. Greg Abbott once described his former job as the state’s attorney general: “I go into the office, I sue the federal government and I go home.”
Even when they were in the minority, however, Democratic attorneys general have been active, especially since the beginning of the Trump administration. They have, either separately or as a team, sued the administration 38 times, with some, like California’s recently re-elected Xavier Becerra, proving particularly litigious. Becerra was involved in 24 of those cases and has won 14 of them.
Those lawsuits are likely to continue, and the new crop of Democratic attorney generals could bolster their ranks and file a few more of their own.
That’s particularly likely in a place like Michigan, where Democrat Dana Nessel easily defeated Tom Leonard, the heir apparent to Republican Bill Schuette, who unsuccessfully ran for governor. Under Schuette, Michigan was among the most ferocious states in its support of the oil and gas industry, filing an amicus brief, for example, backing Exxon against a landmark lawsuit filed by New York State alleging that the company defrauded investors by hiding the risks of climate change. In the brief, Schuette declared climate change to be “unsettled science.”
Many expect Michigan will do an about-face, said Lisa Wozniak, executive director for the Michigan League of Conservation Voters. In a state that is still coping with the fallout from the catastrophic lead contamination of Flint’s water supply, Nessel ran on an aggressive environmental platform. A cornerstone of her campaign was a pledge to use the full force of the office to decommission the 65-year-old Enbridge 5 pipeline, which carries tar sands oil from Canada under the environmentally sensitive Straits of Mackinac connecting Lake Michigan and Lake Huron. “It’s been deemed one of the most serious threats to the Great Lakes and our drinking water,” Wozniak said, “but I’d also say that it’s intimately linked to climate since it is carrying tar sands.”
A larger questions is whether Nessel would consider joining New York and Rhode Island in their liability suits against the industry. “I know she cares deeply about energy policy and climate change,” Wozniak said. “And while she has not specifically said that she’s going to be joining those cases I would not be surprised if she did.” Nessel declined to comment for this story.:{
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In neighboring Wisconsin, Josh Kaul unseated another of Exxon’s chief allies, Republican Brad Schimel. That gave the party dominance in the upper Midwest because in Minnesota, Rep. Keith Ellison will replace fellow Democrat Lori Swanson and Illinois also replaced its incumbent with another Democrat, Kwame Raoul. :{
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}:The oil and gas industry also lost an ally in Nevada, where outgoing Republican Attorney General Adam Laxalt had emerged as a key foe of New York’s lawsuit against Exxon. Nevada voters rejected both Laxalt’s bid for governor and elected Aaron Ford, a Democrat, over Laxalt’s hand-picked successor, Wes Duncan.
Democrats also picked up a seat in the gas-rich state of Colorado, where Democrat Phil Weiser defeated Republican George Brauchler. Weiser has not made clear how aggressively he intends to pursue climate-related cases and investigations. Weiser’s office did not immediately respond to a request for an interview, but in the past, the University of Colorado Law School professor has expressed skepticism about the suits filed against oil and gas producers. Three Colorado communities, including the City and County of Boulder,have filed liability suits against Exxon and Suncor.:{
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}:And it remains unclear whether the ever-litigious Becerra, who in the two years since he succeeded Kamala Harris as California’s AG, will join lawsuits against Exxon and other oil producers. He has remained noncommittal on that topic, so it remains to be seen whether that changes now that he has a mandate from the voters.
What is clear is that the new class of attorneys general is taking office at a time when their colleagues have already begun the spade work on some novel approaches to holding fossil fuel producers accountable for the effects of climate change.
In addition to the New York suit, which relies on a 1921 anti-fraud act aimed at curbing Wall Street excesses, and a suit by Rhode Island, which uses its anti-nuisance laws to hold 14 oil and gas companies liable for pollution, Massachusetts is using consumer protection laws to argue that the industry’s failure to alert the public to the long-term risks of its products amounted to false and unfair advertising.
“One thing that’s really interesting in working with Democratic attorneys general across the country is that every office is a little bit different in how it’s structured, what powers they’ve been given, what their budgets are, what sort of authority they have,” Ulmer said. “When it comes to issue-specific questions, it truly is going to depend on the state.
“But I can tell you a number of these candidates have talked about the importance of climate change, protecting the environment, protecting natural resources, making sure that the citizens of their states have clean water and really clean air and protecting the future during their campaigns. We know that’s something they’re going to continue…once they’re fully transitioned into office.”
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