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Across the country, federal judges are calling out Department of Justice lawyers, questioning in unprecedented ways whether they can be trusted to tell the truth or uphold centuries-old legal norms.
From Washington, D.C., to Rhode Island to Oregon, federal judges nominated by presidents from both parties, including Donald Trump, have zeroed in on what’s called “the presumption of regularity.” It essentially means that judges must presume that the government — whether it be federal prosecutors, an IRS auditor or an FBI agent — did their jobs according to the rules and in good faith.
Until Trump’s second term, which has seen an exodus of veteran DOJ lawyers and a transformative shift in priorities from issues like enforcing civil rights to instead defending a mass deportation agenda, this foundational tenet had rarely been discussed in federal courtrooms, former judges, lawyers and scholars say. But as Trump’s DOJ exhibits behavior that judges have called “unlawful,” “unethical,” “unseemly” or otherwise dishonest, adherence to that bedrock standard is now being questioned.
ProPublica reviewed hundreds of cases since Trump retook the White House in which judges criticized the actions of DOJ lawyers and found more than 40 in which they explicitly referenced the presumption of regularity. In many cases, judges have expressed frustration that they can no longer take the government at its word.
“Judges simply don’t believe the representations that are being made by United States attorneys, assistant United States attorneys and the like,” said John E. Jones, a former federal judge for the District of Pennsylvania, appointed by President George W. Bush.
“I don’t think in the annals of the Department of Justice, in the history of jurisprudence in the United States, we’ve ever seen anything close to this.”
In Rhode Island in May, Trump-appointed federal Judge Mary McElroy rebuked federal prosecutors’ conduct — saying they withheld information and misrepresented facts — as she quashed their requests for a subpoena in their investigation into a hospital’s care of transgender children. The judge alleged the DOJ had inappropriately claimed its investigation was operating out of Texas to secure subpoenas targeting sensitive medical records of patients in another state and that it falsely claimed the Rhode Island hospital hadn’t communicated with the department.
“The discrepancy between the honorable conduct expected of federal prosecutors and DOJ’s tactics in this case is unsettling,” McElroy wrote. “The Court cannot help but share the sentiment that ‘[t]he presumption of regularity that has previously been extended to [DOJ] that it could be taken at its word — with little doubt about its intentions and stated purposes — no longer holds.’”
Judges have emitted a chorus of condemnations against the legal basis for some of Trump’s political agenda, including the mass firings of federal workers, an immigration dragnet that has imprisoned hundreds of U.S. citizens and retribution campaigns against the president’s political enemies.
In doing so, federal judges are imbuing forceful language into their orders in a way that scholars say signals to the Trump administration that the third branch of government is losing trust in the Justice Department.
“I don’t think in the annals of the Department of Justice, in the history of jurisprudence in the United States, we’ve ever seen anything close to this.”
Former federal Judge John E. Jones, a George W. Bush appointee
Federal judges rarely grant interviews, and none of the judges who criticized the Justice Department in their orders granted interviews to ProPublica.
In a statement, a spokesperson for the DOJ said its attorneys are “dedicated public servants who represent the United States with integrity, in accordance with their ethical obligations and the law.”
“The Department stands firmly behind the professionalism and good faith of its attorneys,” said spokesperson Kiersten Pels. The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
Federal judges have found that the government filed statements generated by artificial intelligence that referenced nonexistent case law, wrote briefs that ignored facts and filed declarations with inaccurate dates, the ProPublica review shows.
In one case, the government included documentation claiming a detainee had been convicted of marijuana possession in 2009. That detainee, the judge noted, citing what she called the government’s persistent “sloppiness,” would have been 4 years old.
“This Court will no longer blindly accept statements of fact from [the U.S. government] unless they are made under oath by an individual with personal knowledge,” Judge Christine O’Hearn, a President Joe Biden appointee, wrote in New Jersey while reviewing a writ of habeas corpus petition filed by a man who claimed he was unlawfully imprisoned by immigration officers. O’Hearn accused the government of defying her orders when, instead of releasing the man, Immigration and Customs Enforcement transferred him to a different facility in New York.
In Minnesota, the state’s top political leaders had publicly clashed with the administration following the violent ICE raids that led to the deaths of two U.S. citizens. Then the administration filed a flurry of subpoenas against them.
Last month, Judge Patrick J. Schiltz, who was appointed by George W. Bush and clerked for Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, slammed the government’s actions and “spurious claims,” saying the presumption of regularity was being abused.
“Initiating a criminal investigation in order to harass political opponents or to coerce them into taking official action — particularly official action that the federal government cannot directly require those political opponents to take — is a blatantly unlawful and unethical use [of] the grand-jury process,” the judge wrote.
“Breakdown” of a Presumption
The presumption of regularity creates a high bar for those suing the government or defending themselves against it in criminal cases. They often must provide evidence that the government willfully violated a policy or otherwise deviated from its charge — that is, did something irregular — to overcome the standard.
It’s a shield the government wields often, with little notice, and one that is almost always successful. But overcoming that presumption has become increasingly common under Trump’s second term, according to court watchers.
About half of the cases ProPublica identified as questioning the presumption come from districts, including D.C., Maryland and Virginia, where by proximity and jurisdiction many of Trump’s actions are challenged and often heard by Democratic-nominated judges. The Southern District of New York, which has issued repeated rebukes of Trump administration actions, and the Northern District of California, another Democratic stronghold, are other hotbeds of judicial scrutiny.
Last September, D.C. District Magistrate Judge Zia M. Faruqui accused the administration of working around the federal grand jury process, getting an indictment from a state court after prosecutors had failed to get one in his court, which he called “unseemly,” if not “unlawful.” He fired off one of the earliest signs that the presumption itself could come into question.
“This only deepens the growing mistrust of the actions of prosecutors,” the judge wrote. “That is a sentiment that was once unthinkable, but the irregular is now the regular.” While the case was largely managed by assistant U.S. attorney Caelainn Carney, according to court transcripts, Faruqui was aiming his frustration at her bosses, including senior prosecutor Jonathan R. Hornok, and the leadership at DOJ. Neither attorney responded to requests for comment.
Pels, the DOJ spokesperson, told ProPublica that Faruqui “was wrong on the law” and noted that after the government appealed to the district’s chief judge, his order was overruled. “Judge Faruqui has a long-standing documented pattern of editorializing from the bench beyond the scope of the cases before him,” Pels added.
But in recent months, skepticism about the presumption has also come from judges appointed by Republicans, such as McElroy, or in GOP strongholds.
In Indiana, Trump-appointed federal Judge James Patrick Hanlon ordered the release of Salah Sarsour, president of the Islamic Society of Milwaukee and a lawful U.S. resident, from ICE custody in March. Sarsour’s lawyers argued the government had targeted him to suppress his First Amendment right to free speech. The DOJ invoked the presumption of regularity and argued his arrest was part of an anti-terrorism dragnet, which the judge threw out.
In the Southern District of Ohio, Judge Michael R. Barrett, appointed by George W. Bush, ordered ICE to release a detainee after concluding the presumption had been overcome because the government hadn’t presented a reasonable argument that the man was a flight risk.
News outlets, including CNN, have documented federal judges’ ire with Trump’s DOJ, and some of the cases under question have been well-publicized, such as the government’s illegal deportation of Maryland resident Kilmar Abrego Garcia to El Salvador. In that case, Judge Paula Xinis, a President Barack Obama appointee, criticized the government, saying, “You have taken the presumption of regularity, and you’ve destroyed it.”
Many of the rulings challenged one of Trump’s hallmark efforts: immigration enforcement and deportations.
“The presumption of regularity and integrity previously and routinely afforded to the Executive branch and the United States Attorney’s Office has been undeniably eroded in this jurisdiction and across the country,” O’Hearn wrote in February, noting that the federal government had repeatedly violated court orders in her district and others related to immigration operations.
In another immigration detention case, this one in Washington state, Biden-appointed Judge Lauren King said, “[t]he ‘presumption of regularity’ is dislodged here by the numerous factual errors in Respondents’ filings and by their conflicting representations.”
Jeremy Fogel, executive director of the Berkeley Judicial Institute and a former federal judge from California, said what’s happening in the courts feels more like a “political conflict” than the normal ebb and flow of the justice system.
“It’s really one branch that is really sort of questioning the legitimacy of the other one,” Fogel said. “I think the judges are trying to stand up for the legitimacy of their branch.”
Just Security, an online law and policy journal, has been tracking cases in which federal judges have admonished Trump’s prosecutors, including those involving the presumption.
“We’re witnessing a breakdown in the ways in which any administration ordinarily carries out its responsibilities, through the Justice Department in particular,” said Ryan Goodman, Just Security’s co-editor-in-chief.
Erosion of Trust, Ethics Inquiries
The erosion of trust from the federal bench comes as Trump has profoundly shifted priorities at the DOJ to align with his political platform: ending civil rights and diversity programs, deporting immigrants and stripping away environmental protections.
Those who deal with DOJ lawyers have noticed the difference in court.
Mitch Bernard, chief counsel at the nonprofit Natural Resources Defense Council, has faced off on environmental issues with the DOJ many times. Although they may disagree, he said, he always expected his opponents to be “fair and above board.”
That dynamic is gone, he said.
“I would call it a transformation of the role of the Justice Department,” he said. “There are many different judges in different jurisdictions not only ruling against the government but calling the government out for dishonesty and dissembling, and that’s an extraordinary thing.”
The result, Bernard said, is that “the government will lose more cases as a result of the way the Justice Department is behaving.”
“There are many different judges in different jurisdictions not only ruling against the government but calling the government out for dishonesty and dissembling, and that’s an extraordinary thing.”
Mitch Bernard, chief counsel at the Natural Resources Defense Council
Meanwhile, groups such as his are benefitting from the government brain drain. “We hired 10 litigating attorneys last year,” he said. Of those, eight came from the DOJ.
Judges aren’t just losing faith in the DOJ. Some are pushing to sanction Justice Department lawyers.
This month, Miami federal Judge Kathleen M. Williams ruled that Trump’s lawsuit against the IRS was an improper exercise in self-enrichment, citing the president’s lawyers for a series of misstatements in the case.
The Obama appointee referred the lawyer who brought the president’s case against the IRS, Alejandro Brito, to the Florida Bar for potential disciplinary proceedings. She also forwarded her ruling to disciplinary officials in New York, who had earlier received an ethics complaint about acting Attorney General Todd Blanche.
A DOJ spokesperson called the Blanche case “nothing more than a politically motivated bar complaint, filed by partisan activists who disagree with this Administration’s policies.” Brito did not respond to a request for comment.
In Rhode Island, McElroy referred DOJ lawyers to a review board for possible discipline for their handling of the hospital investigation.
“As citizens, we trust that federal prosecutors, when wielding this awesome power against a state, a company, or certainly against vulnerable children, will play fair and be honest with its counterparts and the judiciary,” McElroy wrote. “DOJ has proven unworthy of this trust at every point in this case.”
an 7 26
Across the country, federal judges are calling out Department of Justice lawyers, questioning in unprecedented ways whether they can be trusted to tell the truth or uphold centuries-old legal norms.
From Washington, D.C., to Rhode Island to Oregon, federal judges nominated by presidents from both parties, including Donald Trump, have zeroed in on what’s called “the presumption of regularity.” It essentially means that judges must presume that the government — whether it be federal prosecutors, an IRS auditor or an FBI agent — did their jobs according to the rules and in good faith.
Until Trump’s second term, which has seen an exodus of veteran DOJ lawyers and a transformative shift in priorities from issues like enforcing civil rights to instead defending a mass deportation agenda, this foundational tenet had rarely been discussed in federal courtrooms, former judges, lawyers and scholars say. But as Trump’s DOJ exhibits behavior that judges have called “unlawful,” “unethical,” “unseemly” or otherwise dishonest, adherence to that bedrock standard is now being questioned.
ProPublica reviewed hundreds of cases since Trump retook the White House in which judges criticized the actions of DOJ lawyers and found more than 40 in which they explicitly referenced the presumption of regularity. In many cases, judges have expressed frustration that they can no longer take the government at its word.
“Judges simply don’t believe the representations that are being made by United States attorneys, assistant United States attorneys and the like,” said John E. Jones, a former federal judge for the District of Pennsylvania, appointed by President George W. Bush.
“I don’t think in the annals of the Department of Justice, in the history of jurisprudence in the United States, we’ve ever seen anything close to this.”
In Rhode Island in May, Trump-appointed federal Judge Mary McElroy rebuked federal prosecutors’ conduct — saying they withheld information and misrepresented facts — as she quashed their requests for a subpoena in their investigation into a hospital’s care of transgender children. The judge alleged the DOJ had inappropriately claimed its investigation was operating out of Texas to secure subpoenas targeting sensitive medical records of patients in another state and that it falsely claimed the Rhode Island hospital hadn’t communicated with the department.
“The discrepancy between the honorable conduct expected of federal prosecutors and DOJ’s tactics in this case is unsettling,” McElroy wrote. “The Court cannot help but share the sentiment that ‘[t]he presumption of regularity that has previously been extended to [DOJ] that it could be taken at its word — with little doubt about its intentions and stated purposes — no longer holds.’”
Judges have emitted a chorus of condemnations against the legal basis for some of Trump’s political agenda, including the mass firings of federal workers, an immigration dragnet that has imprisoned hundreds of U.S. citizens and retribution campaigns against the president’s political enemies.
In doing so, federal judges are imbuing forceful language into their orders in a way that scholars say signals to the Trump administration that the third branch of government is losing trust in the Justice Department.
“I don’t think in the annals of the Department of Justice, in the history of jurisprudence in the United States, we’ve ever seen anything close to this.”
Former federal Judge John E. Jones, a George W. Bush appointee
Federal judges rarely grant interviews, and none of the judges who criticized the Justice Department in their orders granted interviews to ProPublica.
In a statement, a spokesperson for the DOJ said its attorneys are “dedicated public servants who represent the United States with integrity, in accordance with their ethical obligations and the law.”
“The Department stands firmly behind the professionalism and good faith of its attorneys,” said spokesperson Kiersten Pels. The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
Federal judges have found that the government filed statements generated by artificial intelligence that referenced nonexistent case law, wrote briefs that ignored facts and filed declarations with inaccurate dates, the ProPublica review shows.
In one case, the government included documentation claiming a detainee had been convicted of marijuana possession in 2009. That detainee, the judge noted, citing what she called the government’s persistent “sloppiness,” would have been 4 years old.
“This Court will no longer blindly accept statements of fact from [the U.S. government] unless they are made under oath by an individual with personal knowledge,” Judge Christine O’Hearn, a President Joe Biden appointee, wrote in New Jersey while reviewing a writ of habeas corpus petition filed by a man who claimed he was unlawfully imprisoned by immigration officers. O’Hearn accused the government of defying her orders when, instead of releasing the man, Immigration and Customs Enforcement transferred him to a different facility in New York.
In Minnesota, the state’s top political leaders had publicly clashed with the administration following the violent ICE raids that led to the deaths of two U.S. citizens. Then the administration filed a flurry of subpoenas against them.
Last month, Judge Patrick J. Schiltz, who was appointed by George W. Bush and clerked for Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, slammed the government’s actions and “spurious claims,” saying the presumption of regularity was being abused.
“Initiating a criminal investigation in order to harass political opponents or to coerce them into taking official action — particularly official action that the federal government cannot directly require those political opponents to take — is a blatantly unlawful and unethical use [of] the grand-jury process,” the judge wrote.
“Breakdown” of a Presumption
The presumption of regularity creates a high bar for those suing the government or defending themselves against it in criminal cases. They often must provide evidence that the government willfully violated a policy or otherwise deviated from its charge — that is, did something irregular — to overcome the standard.
It’s a shield the government wields often, with little notice, and one that is almost always successful. But overcoming that presumption has become increasingly common under Trump’s second term, according to court watchers.
About half of the cases ProPublica identified as questioning the presumption come from districts, including D.C., Maryland and Virginia, where by proximity and jurisdiction many of Trump’s actions are challenged and often heard by Democratic-nominated judges. The Southern District of New York, which has issued repeated rebukes of Trump administration actions, and the Northern District of California, another Democratic stronghold, are other hotbeds of judicial scrutiny.
Last September, D.C. District Magistrate Judge Zia M. Faruqui accused the administration of working around the federal grand jury process, getting an indictment from a state court after prosecutors had failed to get one in his court, which he called “unseemly,” if not “unlawful.” He fired off one of the earliest signs that the presumption itself could come into question.
“This only deepens the growing mistrust of the actions of prosecutors,” the judge wrote. “That is a sentiment that was once unthinkable, but the irregular is now the regular.” While the case was largely managed by assistant U.S. attorney Caelainn Carney, according to court transcripts, Faruqui was aiming his frustration at her bosses, including senior prosecutor Jonathan R. Hornok, and the leadership at DOJ. Neither attorney responded to requests for comment.
Pels, the DOJ spokesperson, told ProPublica that Faruqui “was wrong on the law” and noted that after the government appealed to the district’s chief judge, his order was overruled. “Judge Faruqui has a long-standing documented pattern of editorializing from the bench beyond the scope of the cases before him,” Pels added.
But in recent months, skepticism about the presumption has also come from judges appointed by Republicans, such as McElroy, or in GOP strongholds.
In Indiana, Trump-appointed federal Judge James Patrick Hanlon ordered the release of Salah Sarsour, president of the Islamic Society of Milwaukee and a lawful U.S. resident, from ICE custody in March. Sarsour’s lawyers argued the government had targeted him to suppress his First Amendment right to free speech. The DOJ invoked the presumption of regularity and argued his arrest was part of an anti-terrorism dragnet, which the judge threw out.
In the Southern District of Ohio, Judge Michael R. Barrett, appointed by George W. Bush, ordered ICE to release a detainee after concluding the presumption had been overcome because the government hadn’t presented a reasonable argument that the man was a flight risk.
News outlets, including CNN, have documented federal judges’ ire with Trump’s DOJ, and some of the cases under question have been well-publicized, such as the government’s illegal deportation of Maryland resident Kilmar Abrego Garcia to El Salvador. In that case, Judge Paula Xinis, a President Barack Obama appointee, criticized the government, saying, “You have taken the presumption of regularity, and you’ve destroyed it.”
Many of the rulings challenged one of Trump’s hallmark efforts: immigration enforcement and deportations.
“The presumption of regularity and integrity previously and routinely afforded to the Executive branch and the United States Attorney’s Office has been undeniably eroded in this jurisdiction and across the country,” O’Hearn wrote in February, noting that the federal government had repeatedly violated court orders in her district and others related to immigration operations.
In another immigration detention case, this one in Washington state, Biden-appointed Judge Lauren King said, “[t]he ‘presumption of regularity’ is dislodged here by the numerous factual errors in Respondents’ filings and by their conflicting representations.”
Jeremy Fogel, executive director of the Berkeley Judicial Institute and a former federal judge from California, said what’s happening in the courts feels more like a “political conflict” than the normal ebb and flow of the justice system.
“It’s really one branch that is really sort of questioning the legitimacy of the other one,” Fogel said. “I think the judges are trying to stand up for the legitimacy of their branch.”
Just Security, an online law and policy journal, has been tracking cases in which federal judges have admonished Trump’s prosecutors, including those involving the presumption.
“We’re witnessing a breakdown in the ways in which any administration ordinarily carries out its responsibilities, through the Justice Department in particular,” said Ryan Goodman, Just Security’s co-editor-in-chief.
Erosion of Trust, Ethics Inquiries
The erosion of trust from the federal bench comes as Trump has profoundly shifted priorities at the DOJ to align with his political platform: ending civil rights and diversity programs, deporting immigrants and stripping away environmental protections.
Those who deal with DOJ lawyers have noticed the difference in court.
Mitch Bernard, chief counsel at the nonprofit Natural Resources Defense Council, has faced off on environmental issues with the DOJ many times. Although they may disagree, he said, he always expected his opponents to be “fair and above board.”
That dynamic is gone, he said.
“I would call it a transformation of the role of the Justice Department,” he said. “There are many different judges in different jurisdictions not only ruling against the government but calling the government out for dishonesty and dissembling, and that’s an extraordinary thing.”
The result, Bernard said, is that “the government will lose more cases as a result of the way the Justice Department is behaving.”
“There are many different judges in different jurisdictions not only ruling against the government but calling the government out for dishonesty and dissembling, and that’s an extraordinary thing.”
Mitch Bernard, chief counsel at the Natural Resources Defense Council
Meanwhile, groups such as his are benefitting from the government brain drain. “We hired 10 litigating attorneys last year,” he said. Of those, eight came from the DOJ.
Judges aren’t just losing faith in the DOJ. Some are pushing to sanction Justice Department lawyers.
This month, Miami federal Judge Kathleen M. Williams ruled that Trump’s lawsuit against the IRS was an improper exercise in self-enrichment, citing the president’s lawyers for a series of misstatements in the case.
The Obama appointee referred the lawyer who brought the president’s case against the IRS, Alejandro Brito, to the Florida Bar for potential disciplinary proceedings. She also forwarded her ruling to disciplinary officials in New York, who had earlier received an ethics complaint about acting Attorney General Todd Blanche.
A DOJ spokesperson called the Blanche case “nothing more than a politically motivated bar complaint, filed by partisan activists who disagree with this Administration’s policies.” Brito did not respond to a request for comment.
In Rhode Island, McElroy referred DOJ lawyers to a review board for possible discipline for their handling of the hospital investigation.
“As citizens, we trust that federal prosecutors, when wielding this awesome power against a state, a company, or certainly against vulnerable children, will play fair and be honest with its counterparts and the judiciary,” McElroy wrote. “DOJ has proven unworthy of this trust at every point in this case.”
Chatham House Study Debunks Biomass Carbon Neutrality
The Chatham House report is the capstone to a growing body of peer-reviewed scientific analyses—including the UK government's own modeling —that show forest biomass is not carbon neutral. It...
2010 list?
Who’s Behind the Smears
Alliance for Energy and Economic Growth
American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity
American Council for Capital Formation
American Energy Alliance
American Enterprise Institute
Americans for Prosperity
American Legislative Exchange Council
American Solutions for Winning the Future
Atlas Economic Research Foundation
Capital Research Center
The Cato Institute
Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change
CO2isGreen
Coalition for Affordable American Energy
Competitive Enterprise Institute
Congress of Racial Equality
Energy Citizen
Fraser Institutes
FreedomWorks
Foundation for Research on Energy and Environment
Frontiers of Freedom
George C. Marshall Institute
The Heartland Institute
The Heritage Foundation
Independent Women's Forum
Institute for Energy Research
Koch Industries
Mackinac Center for Public Policy
The Manhattan Institute
National Black Chamber of Commerce
National Center for Policy Analysis
National Center for Public Policy Research
Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy
Property and Environment Research Center
The Reason Foundation
The Tax Foundation
Texas Public Policy Foundation
U.S. Chamber of Commerce
Washington Legal Foundation
Young America's Foundation
==
https://www.alternet.org/2020/07/deregulations-deadly-consequences-report-breaks-down-how-trumps-assault-on-government-exacerbated-pandemic/
Trump’s ongoing efforts to roll back regulations designed to protect the environment, workers, and public health likely played a significant role in the spread of Covid-19 in the United States.
That’s according to a new report released Tuesday by New York University School of Law’s Institute for Policy Integrity (IPI), a nonpartisan policy think tank.
The 45-page report titled “Weakening Our Defenses” (pdf) details how Trump’s far-reaching deregulatory push has exacerbated several major risk factors for contracting and spreading Covid-19, such as high levels of air pollution, hazardous working conditions, and lack of adequate health insurance.
“President Trump’s deregulatory agenda has affected all those factors, and, therefore, the disproportionate racial and economic justice impacts of deregulation are now most likely compounding in deadly ways in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic,” the report says.
“Even before the pandemic,” the report continues, “those regulatory decisions collectively were already causing dire consequences for public health and safety, the environment, and economic conditions—but we now know that those regulatory decisions have likely also increased our collective susceptibility to Covid-19."
[twt]
the report cites the Trump administration’s rollback of restrictions on nearly 2,000 forms of hazardous air pollution in 2018, weakening of the Clean Power Plan, and gutting of vehicle fuel efficiency standards in 2020 as examples of environmental deregulatory actions that left the U.S. more vulnerable to Covid-19. The U.S. currently has the most confirmed coronavirus cases and deaths in the world.
“These rollbacks have put all of us—especially low-income communities, Black people, and people of color, and essential workers—at higher risk of contracting and dying from Covid-19,” saidGina McCarthy, former Environmental Protection Agency administrator and current president of the Natural Resources Defense Council.
The report also points to the Trump administration’s weakening of workplace safety standards at meatpacking plants, which have become major Covid-19 hotspots.**According to**the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 16,200 meat and poultry processing workers have contracted Covid-19 at 239 facilities in the U.S.
“In October 2019, the Trump administration’s Department of Agriculture finalized a rule to ‘modernize’ swine slaughter inspections,” IPI’s report says. “The new program, which pig processing plants may opt into, reduces the number of food safety inspectors in plants and removes caps on pig slaughter line speeds.”
By forcing workers to perform their jobs in close proximity to one another, the report notes, the prioritization of speed over safety forces “likely puts meat processing workers at greater risk for Covid-19.”
The Trump administration’s efforts to undermine the Affordable Care and limit Medicaid eligibility by approving state-level work requirements also may have contributed to the spread of Covid-19, according to the new report.
“Though some of these state requirements have since been invalidated by the courts, other state programs could yet be implemented, and even the temporary loss of coverage in some states could be significant—particularly during a pandemic,” the report says.
Dr. Kathleen Rest, executive director of the Union of Concerned Scientists, said in a statement that the Trump administration’s “failure to listen to and act on the best available science is irresponsible and dangerous.”
“From day one, the Trump administration has attempted to roll back not only existing public health protections, but the scientific basis on which all public health protections are based,” said Rest. “That’s short-sighted and foolish at the best of times, but they have continued to dismantle safeguards even as the country faces the threat of Covid-19, one of the biggest public health crises in our history.”
https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/trumps-epa-moves-jettison-any-regulation-of-a-chemical-linked-to-child-brain-damage-report/
no lnx
trump’s EPA moves jettison any regulation of a chemical linked to child brain damage: report
[ June 3, 2019: Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Andrew Wheeler speaks at the National Press Club.
Written by Julia Conley / Common Dreams May 15, 2020
Environmental campaigners vowed to fight President Donald Trump’s EPA Thursday after the agency said it would propose that the rocket-fuel chemical perchlorate does not need to be regulated, despite its links to cognitive damage in fetal and child development.
According to the New York Times, the EPA plans to tell the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) that it is “not in the public interest” to regulate the chemical at all,a year after the agency recommended the allowable amount in drinking water be limited to 56 parts per billion (ppb).
The 2019 proposal was already 10 to 50 times higher than what water safety experts recommend, the Times reported.
The new recommendation defies a court order, the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) said, which was issued in 2018 after the group sued over the Obama administration’s inaction on regulating perchlorate.
“EPA’s cynical decision to defy a court order and the law, and to ignore the science that, as the American Academy of Pediatrics has said, dictates a strong perchlorate standard to protect vulnerable kids, is a deeply disturbing violation of the agency’s mission,” Erik Olson of the NRDC told The Hill.
“We will fight this,” the organization added on Twitter.
NRDC ????
@NRDC
BREAKING: @EPAAWheeler & Trump’s @EPA are choosing NOT to regulate #perchlorate, a dangerous chemical linked to fetal & infant brain damage and found in the tap water of millions of Americans. This decision ignores science and the law. We will fight this. https://on.nrdc.org/2WyYvgV
Andrew Wheeler, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, on Capitol Hill in March.
E.P.A. Opts Against Limits on Water Contaminant Tied to Fetal Damage
A new E.P.A. policy on perchlorate, which is used in rocket fuel, would revoke a 2011 finding that the chemical should be regulated.
nytimes.com
135
9:56 AM - May 14, 2020
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The Obama administration proposed limiting perchlorate, which can interfere with the thyroid gland and hormone production necessary for development, to 15 ppb in 2011. The EPA revealed that same year that between five million and 16 million people in at least 26 states were exposed to toxic levels of perchlorate. People who live near military facilities where the chemical is used in rocket fuel are especially at risk.
The Department of Defense and military contractors including Northrup Grumman and Lockheed Martin, which have worked closely with the Trump administration, have spent years fighting regulation of the substance.
When former President Barack Obama’s EPA still had not released official regulations on the chemical by 2016, the NRDC filed a lawsuit, resulting in the court order requiring the agency to announce limits by June 2020. The order left the responsibility to regulate perchlorate in the hands of President Donald Trump and EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler.
Some states have taken matters into their own hands during the delay, limiting perchlorate in drinking water to as low as 2 ppb. The action by states is being used by Trump’s EPA to argue that the chemical now poses little health risk.
The agency’s new draft policy states that monitoring and limiting perchlorate “does not present a meaningful opportunity for health risk reduction for persons served by public water systems.”
Food and Water Watch called the EPA’s refusal to regulate the chemical “yet another abdication of duty by those that are entrusted with protecting Americans from needless and preventable harm.”
“It’s also yet another example of Trump and his cronies prioritizing corporate profit above all else—even the health and safety of children,” the group’s media relations director, Seth Gladstone, told Common Dreams. “Shameful does not even begin to describe this president and this administration.”
==
BUFFER
https://www.ecowatch.com/trump-national-monuments-2645060606.html
The Trump administration finalized plans Thursday to open public lands in Utah to the fossil fuel industry.
The move completes a process begun in 2017 when the administration announced the largest rollback of land protection in U,S. history: It shrank Utah's Bears Ears National Monument by 85 percent and its Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument by nearly half. Now, the Interior Department is releasing a land-use blueprint that would allow oil, gas and coal companies to lease land for drilling and mining on around 861,974 acres that were once part of Grand Staircase-Escalante, The New York Times reported.
"These plans are atrocious, and entirely predictable," Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) Senior Director for Lands Sharon Buccino said in a statement emailed to EcoWatch. "They are the latest in a series of insults to these magnificent lands by the Trump administration that began when Trump illegally dismantled Bears Ears and Grand Staircase at the behest of corporate interests two years ago."
...
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"While our world is burning, President Trump is adding fuel to the fire by taking away our right to be informed and to protect ourselves from irreparable harm," saidGina McCarthy, the new president and CEO of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).McCarthy, who served as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency in the Obama administration, added: "We will use every tool in our toolbox to stop this dangerous move and safeguard our children's future."
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https://www.nrdc.org/experts/david-doniger/pruitt-emails-natural-gas-ventriloquism-act
https://www.nrdc.org/experts/david-doniger/pruitt-emails-natural-gas-ventriloquism-acthttps://www.nrdc.org/experts/david-doniger/pruitt-emails-natural-gas-ventriloquism-acthttps://www.nrdc.org/experts/david-doniger/pruitt-emails-natural-gas-ventriloquism-acthttps://www.nrdc.org/experts/david-doniger/pruitt-emails-natural-gas-ventriloquism-actThe Pruitt Emails: A Natural Gas Ventriloquism Act | NRDC
https://www.nrdc.org › experts › david-doniger › pruitt-emails-natural-gas...
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https://www.google.com/search?q=related:https://www.nrdc.org/experts/david-doniger/pruitt-emails-natural-gas-ventriloquism-act+raga+2014+ag+head&tbo=1&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiJ96Px5YvmAhVFY6wKHUN7CggQHzAQegQICRAGhttps://www.google.com/search?q=related:https://www.nrdc.org/experts/david-doniger/pruitt-emails-natural-gas-ventriloquism-act+raga+2014+ag+head&tbo=1&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiJ96Px5YvmAhVFY6wKHUN7CggQHzAQegQICRAG:{Mar 21, 2017 -The :{AG's:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: staff responds that he's willing but needs help to bring him up to speed on the issue. ... The :{2014:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: New York Times article revealed the early phases of .... Pruitt served as :{Chairman:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: of :{RAGA:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: from November 2011 to ...:(style="overflow-wrap:break-word"):}:
"The proposed work connects multiple types of information that are not related to CPP but are relevant to the interest of EPA and states," Fine said in oneemail.
"The work unrelated to CPP is the vast majority of the proposed work and would support Agency and Administration goals related to clean air, clean water reliable energy production, and Cooperative Federalism," Fine added.
Konkus was not convinced by Fine's argument.
"This is not going to be funded and we would kindly ask you to alert the organization in the morning that the award will not be granted," he replied.
But Konkus was later informed that the grant recipient in question had sent in a revised cover letter to better address its work. That sparked a softer response from him.
"FYI this is how most grant discussions end up, the program and grantee work on a solution together to make the grant work better reflect the priorities of the Administration," he said in an email.
Memo now rescinded
The grants review attracted scrutiny after E&E News reported last August thatKonkus, a political appointee, was overseeing the process, which had been typically managed by career officials(*Greenwire*, Aug. 17, 2017).An EPA spokesman told E&E News that the Trump administration wanted to be "good stewards" of taxpayer money.
"EPA awards about $4 billion in grants annually, and the Trump EPA is committed to being good stewards of the taxpayers' huge investment in our agency by reviewing every grant award and solicitation," said the spokesman.
EPA issued a memo on Aug. 8 last year directing its Office of Public Affairs to review and approve all grant solicitations.
EPA's grants process, however, has changed again.
The agency shared with E&E News an email sent last month, which rescinded the Aug. 8 memo. Instead, regional administrators and assistant administrators at EPA now have to approve "solicitation issuance" for grants.
"Now that all of our Regional Administrators and most of our program AAs are in place, we have shifted the responsibility to these leaders to review and manage the grants that flow through their respective offices," said the EPA spokesman.
Konkus' grants review may have begun even before the memo was issued last August. In an email to EPA Chief of Staff Ryan Jackson, the public affairs aide described marking a grant from earlier in the year.
"This response is from July when I first flagged this grant," Konkus said.
Several of the EPA emails show Konkus inquiring for more information about grants. In one, he asked if the agency had "a position on human testing."
"See this proposed grant," Konkus said.
In other messages, he prodded EPA to release funds to those who needed it most.
"There are a lot of Puerto Rico grants in these files. I would love to get that money out to them!" Konkus said in one email sent last September after Hurricane Maria had devastated the U.S. island territory.
Other Trump political appointees were asked to help with the grants review at EPA. Jackson said in an email, "I could use your help with grant solicitations," with several appointees copied on the message.
"These need to be reviewed by OPA (John Konkus) before they go live," Jackson said.
In replying to Jackson, Konkus noted that EPA program offices were using guidance that included "a reliance on the 2014-2018 strategic plan which was implemented by the past administration."
Konkus sought other appointees' advice, as well.
"These seem fine to me," Nancy Beck, the deputy assistant administrator in EPA's chemicals office, said in an email to Konkus, who also asked her to review a pesticide cooperative agreement.
"No concerns from my end," said Mandy Gunasekara, a senior EPA adviser on air issues, when asked about certain grants in another email to Konkus.
'No to this please'
Konkus flagged several grants that included climate change in their descriptions or linked to environmental organizations. He even recommended some to be pulled back.
In one list, he noted a grant obligated toNRDCto perform energy efficiency work, saying he and Gunasekara would "need a briefing on this one." The green group has been a staunch critic of the Trump administration.
Konkus also said, "No to this please," on a grant for climate change research.
Other grants for an integrated assessment of greenhouse gases as well as a study on air pollution meteorology andparticulate matter also received a "No to this one please" message from Konkus.
It's not clear from the email if their EPA funding was withdrawn in the end. At least one group has confirmed that its agency grant was rescinded.
The Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves, a public-private partnership launched in 2010 by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, aims to reduce indoor air pollution. Its EPA grant would have been spent on a project intended in part to develop "an integrated and robust communications and outreach program," accompanied by biogas promotion activities, according to an EPA summary.
"This grant should NOT move forward. Thank you," Konkus said in one email about the project.
The actual amount of the rescinded grant is not clear. Kip Patrick, an Alliance spokesman, referred questions this morning to a statement issued last August by the organization expressing surprise at EPA's decision to rescind the money.
"EPA's previous support of clean cooking has provided a model of how the U.S. can lead on innovative solutions to global issues in ways that have bipartisan support, that benefit Americans directly, and that help drive increased investment from the private sector and other partners," the statement said.
In recent years, the Alliance, hosted by the U.N. Foundation, had received a total of $1.4 million in EPA money, along with more than $70 million in funding from other governments and the private sector, according to the statement.
Winrock International, based in Little Rock, Ark., takes its name from the late Winthrop Rockefeller, a Republican who served as Arkansas' governor from 1967 to 1971. The nonprofit group's EPA grant was also geared to reducing indoor air pollution, according to the agency.
"This grant should not move forward," Konkus said in an email about the funds.
A Winrock spokesman did not immediately reply to emailed queries this morning to confirm the actual dollar amount of the grant and whether the funding was in fact withdrawn.
When EPA funding was pulled from a group's grant, Konkus recommended that "a courtesy email or call" be made to them.
"It does not have to be complicated, just a courtesy so that they hear from us first," he said in an email.
Konkus did not respond this morning to a message left on his cellphone by E&E News seeking more information on his reasons for flagging the grants.
Twitter: @KevinBogardus Email: kbogardus@eenews.net
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Thirteen months ago, we made some guesses about what a replacement for the Clean Power Plan might look like. We speculated the new rule would be the sort of “inside the fenceline” policy preferred by the industry–one where coal plants are only required to make marginal improvements, basically just upgrading existing plants to run more efficiently.
Such an approach, which makes coal plants more profitable to run and would keep them running for longer, would ultimately lead to even higher levels of pollution than if there was no policy at all.
A couple weeks later we looked at the shady math used to justify repealing the CPP, and how that played into Bob Murray’s plans (the coal baron for whom Andrew Wheeler lobbied.)
And back in March, we pointed to legal experts who explained how the EPA will need to do better than the inside-the-fenceline approach if it wants to survive a legal challenge.
This is all just to say that if you’ve been paying close attention here, you won’t be at all surprised byEmily Holden’s scoop in Politico based on the soon-to-be-published draft CPP replacement plan that itself admits it will lead to more pollution. As we expected, the administration plans on pursuing the fenceline approach that allows for only barely cleaner coal plants to continue polluting for years to come.
Also as we expected, they’re not going to consider the international impacts of reducing emissions and plan to cook the books by changing the discount rate so as to downplay the CPP’s benefits for future Americans and ignore the dangers of dirty air by removing the co-benefits of reducing PM2.5 pollution.
NRDC’s David Doniger put up a great post Monday explaining how this replacement is actually a Dirty Power Plan. One interesting twist Doinger highlights is that the expected policy will not only allow states to set pollution limits, breaking with the existing precedent, but will also allow them to simply opt out of setting standards all together.
Doniger notes that in the advance notice of proposed rulemaking published issued late last year, states will be able to exempt coal plants from further regulation for their “remaining useful life.”
It’s interesting that this administration seems okay with throwing states’ rights out when it comes to California’s clean car standards, but gives deference to states when it comes to the Dirty Power Plan. That may sound like a contradiction, but it’s actually indicative of the only discernible element of consistency in the Trump administration.
Despite record high staff turnover under a President who changes his mind more often than his flunkies have to change their cover stories, the administration remains remarkably consistent on one thing: putting polluter profits before public health.
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~ offshore drill
buffet coal nevada; ISP places side bets/hedge but gets beat? ~nrdc
https://kpfa.org/episode/upfront-june-26-2018/ antonia j
https://consumerwatchdog.org/betting-against-house-how-californias-leaders-could-gamble-away-our-energy-future-western-power
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3. The Failure: Delaying State Reports on Smog Standards
In 2015, the Obama administration tightened the national standard for ground-level ozone, a pollutant that causes serious health problems, bringing it down to 70 parts per billion from 75 ppb. States had until Oct. 1 of this year to submit their air-quality data, but EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt attempted to delay that deadline. Maybe he thought that no one would notice? Fat chance. After 16 attorneys general sued, Pruitt reversed course, stating, "We take deadlines seriously."
But Oct. 1 has come and gone, and (surprise!) the EPA has yet to declare which parts of the country are not in compliance with the new rule. So in December, the lawsuits came again to force the agency into action, this time from 10 health and environmental groups including NRDC.
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https://www.ecowatch.com/elephants-lions-trump-2511386998.html
Lawsuit Challenges Trump Administration Over New Elephant and Lion Trophy Policies, Still in Effect Despite Trump's Tweets
The Center for Biological Diversity and Natural Resources Defense Council sued the Trump administration Monday for allowing U.S. hunters to import elephant and lion trophies from Zimbabwe. The lawsuit aims to protect animals and resolve confusion created by the administration's contradictory announcements in recent days.
The suit comes days after the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service abruptly reversed an Obama-era ban on elephant trophy imports based on catastrophic elephant population declines. Fish and Wildlife also recently greenlighted lion trophy imports from Zimbabwe, despite the controversial killing of Cecil the Lion in Zimbabwe in 2015.
After massive public outcry, including from established Republican politicians and pundits, President Trump and Interior Sec. Ryan Zinke announced a "hold" on issuing elephant trophy import permits late Friday night. President Trump suggested on Twitter that a new big-game trophy decision would be forthcoming. Unfortunately, the new federal policies allowing imports of elephant and lion trophies—referred to as "positive enhancement findings" under the U.S. Endangered Species Act—remain in effect.
"The Trump administration must clearly and permanently halt imports of lion and elephant trophies to protect these amazing animals from extinction," said Tanya Sanerib, a senior attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity. "Trump's abrupt backpedaling after public outcry, while appreciated, shows how arbitrary this deplorable decision was. These incredibly imperiled creatures need a lot more than vague promises."...
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gearing up to fight trump in ct:
http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/11/29/503742840/environmentalists-gird-for-battle-with-a-trump-administration
BS
Richard Ayres, an experienced environmental attorney,
suggested that the RICO Act, which had been used effectively against the
tobacco industry, could similarly be used to bring a lawsuit against
carbon producers.
Richard Ayres isno slouch. A prominent environmental lawyer, he is co-founder of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).
Ayres knew starting lawsuits against productive companies wouldn’t look good. They needed to be spun:
It has to be something positive
How? By dressing it up as injury ‘compensation’
“Even if your ultimate goal might
be to shut down a company, you still might be wise to start out by
asking for compensation for injured parties.”
The suggestions appeared to grow outlandish at every turn. Richard Heede, one of CAI’s members, had come up with a system for blaming individual companies:
Heede is working to derive the proportion of the planet’s
atmospheric carbon load that is traceable to the fossil fuels produced
and marketed by each of these companies
Heede’s bizarre formulas, we learn, were received ‘positively’ by
‘most of the workshop’s participants’. One UCS participant felt that ‘it
could potentially be useful as part of a coordinated campaign to
identify key climate “wrongdoers.” Another felt it was useful in blaming
faceless corporate entities instead of countries thereby bypassing
provoking patriotic impulses in international negotiations.
Heede’s work was funded by Greenpeace. Of note, Greenpeace counsel Jasper Teulings was present at the meeting.
An inspired Oreskes then appears to have proposed blaming sea level rise on corporations:
Picking up on this notion, Naomi Oreskes suggested that
some portion of sea level rise could be attributed to the emissions
caused by a single carbon-producing company
The oil company Exxon made its appearance in her example:
She suggested, “You might be able to say, ‘Here’s Exxon’s contribution to what’s happening to Key West or Venice.’”
This was a strategy Glantz liked:
…Stanton Glantz expressed some enthusiasm about such a
strategy, based on his experience with tobacco litigation. As he put it,
“I would be surprised if the industry chose to attack the calculation
that one foot of flooding in Key West could be attributed to ExxonMobil.
The conspiratorial tide did not recede. Former computer scientist
John Mashey claimed collusion between ‘climate change deniers’ and
fossil fuel companies:
[Mashey] presented a brief overview of some of his
research, which traces funding, personnel, and messaging connections
between roughly 600 individuals …
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