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For Immediate Release
May, 15 2012, 04:42pm EDT
Contact:
Jenna Garland, Sierra Club, (404) 607-1262 x222, (404) 281-6398
Erin Fonken, Environmental Integrity Project, (512) 637-9474
Las Brisas Power Plant Cannot Move Forward
Judge Finds Flaws in Air Permit, Deals Major Blow to Already Speculative Plant
AUSTIN
On May 14, Texas District Court Judge Stephen Yelenosky issued a letter announcing his intended ruling in a lawsuit seeking to reverse an air pollution permit authorizing the proposed 1,320 megawatt Las Brisas Energy Center. The air permit would allow massive new emissions of toxic pollutants into the air in Corpus Christi, Texas, near schools and residential neighborhoods. Sierra Club, the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), the local Clean Economy Coalition, and a coalition of Texas cities joined forces in 2009 to challenge the plant's air pollution permit, successfully arguing that the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) cut corners and failed to meet several federal Clean Air Act requirements.
Environmental Integrity Project attorney Erin Fonken, representing the Sierra Club in the lawsuit, said, "The court has announced that it intends to rule against the TCEQ because, in issuing the permit, TCEQ committed a number of critical legal errors. Among the legal errors are TCEQ's failure to require the new power plant to comply with the Clean Air Act's protective air toxics standards and the failure to adequately account for the millions of tons to petroleum coke that will be dumped and piled on site before it is burned in the power plant's main boilers."
The Court's announcement is the latest in a string of legal setbacks for the proposed power plant, which, if built, would emit approximately 12 million tons per year of greenhouse gases, as well as thousands of tons per year of dangerous pollutants that contribute to smog pollution and health impacts such as asthma attacks and heart disease. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is currently considering a separate permit application for the plant's greenhouse gas emissions, and that permit will also need to be issued, before the plant may start construction. The future of the proposed Las Brisas power plant remains unclear. Originally proposed in 2008, the plant currently lacks the required approvals under the federal Clean Air Act to begin construction. The plant faces strong local opposition from city officials, local business leaders, and residents of Corpus Christi's fence-line communities who live adjacent to industrial facilities that have a legacy of pollution.
"The Las Brisas proposal is still the wrong answer for Corpus Christi," said Flavia de la Fuente, with Sierra Club. "The city is taking such strong steps toward being a more livable, sustainable place. Proposals to further tie Corpus Christi to dirty coal and petroleum coke industries, like Las Brisas and potential coal export projects, are a step in the wrong direction. This court decision is great news for the leaders and residents who are working so hard to build a brighter future for Corpus Christi."
The Sierra Club is the most enduring and influential grassroots environmental organization in the United States. We amplify the power of our 3.8 million members and supporters to defend everyone's right to a healthy world.
(415) 977-5500LATEST NEWS
Millions Kicked Off Medicaid? 'Don't Eat Carrot Cake,' Says Administrator Oz
"Why don't you pry carrot cake out of my cold, dead hands and give us back Medicaid coverage for millions instead," replied Democratic Sen. Mark Warner.
Jul 14, 2025
U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz appeared on Fox Business on Monday, where he presented a carrot cake to celebrate Medicaid's 60th birthday and brushed aside concerns about the millions of Americans likely to lose their healthcare coverage under recently passed Republican legislation—by telling people to not eat carrot cake.
Oz—the multimillionaire erstwhile celebrity surgeon, purveyor of "miracle" cures, and failed U.S. Senate candidate—gave Fox Business host Stuart Varney what he called a "MAHA Medi-cake" before proceeding to extol the virtues of Medicaid, the program launched during then-President Lyndon B. Johnson's "Great Society" agenda that provides health insurance to more than 70 million lower-income Americans.
Medicaid "was a promise to the American people to take care of you if you are having problems financially or if you were having an issue because you're older and needed healthcare," Oz said. "And it changed the country in a good way for many reasons."
"But we're all in it together, Stuart," he added, "which means we'll be there for you, the American people, when you need help with Medicaid and Medicare, but you've got to stay healthy as well. Be healthy, do the most you can do to really live up to the potential, your God-given potential to live a full and healthy life, you know, don't eat carrot cake, eat real food."
17 million people are going to lose their health insurance because of the Trump administration.Dr. Oz's advice is “don’t eat carrot cake.”
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— Elizabeth Warren (@warren.senate.gov) July 14, 2025 at 10:17 AM
Social media users roundly ridiculed Oz's remarks, with criticism centered around the estimated 17 million people who will be left uninsured under the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act signed by President Donald Trump earlier this month. The legislation contains the largest Medicaid cuts in history.
"Why don't you pry carrot cake out of my cold, dead hands and give us back Medicaid coverage for millions instead," Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) wrote on Bluesky.
Another Bluesky user wrote, "Carrot cake didn't give me cancer, dumbass."
Yet another said, "Um... your boss eats McDonald's every chance he gets and you are judging people eating carrot cake," a reference to Trump's legendary fondness for Big Macs, Filet-O-Fish sandwiches, and vanilla shakes.
Still another quipped, "First he came for my crudites, now my carrot cake."
"Carrot cake didn't give me cancer, dumbass."
Over on X, one account with over 130,000 followers said: "What an insensitive prick as he brings a piece of carrot cake to Stu Varney during the interview. Republicans seem so gleeful to be hurting Americans. This is why millionaires and billionaires should never be in Congress or the [White House]."
The Occupy Democrats X account also weighed in, posting, "It's not enough for them to take away our healthcare, Republicans want to blame us for getting sick."
"The idea that avoiding carrot cake in favor of healthier foods will somehow render Americans immune to health problems is insulting in the extreme," Occupy Democrats continued. "Rather than 'let them eat cake,' he's telling us 'do not eat cake,' but the sentiment is every bit as out of touch as Marie Antoinette's apocryphal quote."
"MAHA stands for 'Make America Healthy Again,' an Orwellian phrase deployed by an administration that is actively making Americans sicker by stripping away their healthcare," the account added. "This is what Republicans really think of the American people. They ram through policies making our lives worse in countless ways, then they laugh at us and spit in our faces. There has never been a more gleefully spiteful political movement."
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Trump Admin Announces $200 Million Contract for Musk's AI After Grok Hitler Incident
"Stop entertaining this man. Stop giving him money. It's really that simple," said one critic of Elon Musk, the richest man on Earth.
Jul 14, 2025
The U.S. government on Monday awarded a $200 million contract to Elon Musk's artificial intelligence company, despite the tech billionaire's ongoing spat with President Donald Trump and his AI chatbot's recent praise for Nazi leader Adolf Hitler.
The Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office announced contract awards to Anthropic, Google, OpenAI, and Musk's xAI "to accelerate Department of Defense (DOD) adoption of advanced AI capabilities to address critical national security challenges."
Last week, xAI garnered sweeping condemnation after Grok, the chatbot built into Musk's social media platform X—formerly known as Twitter—started spewing antisemitic content and calling itself "MechaHitler."
Meanwhile, Musk and Trump have been at odds since shortly after the richest man on Earth left the president's administration, in which he was the de facto leader of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency. Musk's involvement in the administration generated widespread concern, both because of DOGE's efforts to gut the federal government and because his various companies get so much money from federal contracts.
In a Monday statement about "Grok for Government," xAI not only confirmed the new DOD contract but also said that its products will be "available to purchase via the General Services Administration (GSA) schedule. This allows every federal government department, agency, or office, to access xAI's frontier AI products."
The Trump administration's new money for Musk drew intense criticism on various platforms, including X—where Congresswoman Becca Balint (D-Vt.) wrote that "despite the social media wars, the Trump-Elon corruption machine is alive and well."
Kat Abughazaleh, a progressive Democrat running in Illinois' 9th Congressional District, said: "Stop entertaining this man. Stop giving him money. It's really that simple."
Abughazaleh also pointed to her past with Musk—she was laid off from the nonprofit watchdog Media Matters for America as it faced financial strain from legal battles, including what the billionaire described as a "thermonuclear lawsuit."
"Elon Musk cost me my job, deposed me for being too mean to him online, and now he's responsible for tens of thousands of job losses while getting hundreds of millions of our tax dollars," she noted. "I'm running for Congress to stop men like him."
Nina Turner, a former progressive congressional candidate from Ohio, noted that "the Pentagon, which has failed seven straight audits, just gave $200,000,000 of our tax dollars to Elon Musk to use xAI. Meanwhile, funding for food banks [was] cut in the name of 'efficiency.'"
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Mamdani and Backers Ridicule Cuomo for Independent Run After Democratic Primary Defeat
"What we saw was New Yorkers' hunger for a new kind of politics," said Democratic candidate Zohran Mamdani of the primary race. "I understand that it is difficult for the former governor to come to terms with that."
Jul 14, 2025
Speaking at an event with a major local musicians union Monday after receiving its endorsement in the New York City mayoral race, Democratic candidate Zohran Mamdani offered his perspective on why former Gov. Andrew Cuomo had just announced the launch of an independent bid for mayor nearly three weeks after a stunning loss to his progressive rival.
"I think he's struggling to come to terms with what Tuesday meant," said Mamdani, referring to the June 24 Democratic primary. "We spent an entire campaign being told that it was inevitable for Andrew Cuomo to become the next mayor. And he believed that himself. And what we saw was New Yorkers' hunger for a new kind of politics... I understand that it is difficult for the former governor to come to terms with that because it is a repudiation of the kind of politics that he has practiced."
Progressives on Monday said Cuomo, who was forced to resign from office in 2021 after an investigation found he had sexually harassed at least 11 women, was showing disregard for the clear results of last month's election, in which Mamdani shocked the Democratic establishment by winning the most votes of any primary candidate in New York City's history. The democratic socialist won the election by nearly 13 percentage points in the final round of ranked choice voting.
Numerous critics, including one of Cuomo's accusers, alluded to his history of sexual misconduct in their responses to his announcement.
"True to form, Andrew Cuomo once again refuses to accept that no means no," said New York state Assemblymember Phara Souffrant Forrest (D-57).
On the social media platform X, Cuomo posted a video announcing his independent run—which Mamdani took as an opportunity to post his own campaign donation link, immediately garnering far more engagement from social media users than Cuomo's announcement did.
Cuomo said in the video that "the fight to save our city isn't over," and warned that Mamdani offers "slick slogans but no solutions" even as he appeared to copy the democratic socialist's recent campaign videos, which have shown Mamdani engaging with New Yorkers eager to shake his hand.
Some posited that Cuomo was likely "miserable" about having to participate in the type of retail politics Mamdani has excelled in, alluding to a quote from one of the candidate's most vocal backers after he lost the primary.
"All of us have a blind spot," former Gov. David Paterson told The New York Times. "His blind spot is that he doesn't really connect particularly well with, just, people."
Mamdani also poked fun at Cuomo for "making man-on-the-street videos with a guy in Carhartt" and joked that the former governor is likely to pander to New York City's Arab population.
"By next week, he'll be sipping adeni chai and eating khaliat al nahl," he said.
The Times reported that Cuomo launched his campaign after making a deal with Mamdani's other challengers, including Republican Curtis Sliwa and independent candidates Mayor Eric Adams and attorney Jim Walden. Cuomo has said he will drop out of the race if he not the front-running challenger by early September, and will encourage the other candidates to do the same.
As Nia Prater wrote at New York magazine on Monday, the strategy "appears to be acknowledging an unavoidable reality of the race: that having multiple candidates vying for the same bloc of moderate and conservative voters will likely favor Mamdani's candidacy."
In a recent Data for Progress poll, Mamdani was shown to have the support of 40% of respondents, with Cuomo in second at 24%. Adams had 15%, while Sliwa had 14% and Walden was in last place with 1%.
"In addition, the poll found that Democratic voters preferred Mamdani by 52% compared to 32% for Cuomo and 8% for Adams," reported Prater. "Voters also appeared to have low opinions of both Cuomo and Adams. Seventy percent of respondents said they had an unfavorable opinion of Adams compared to 29% favorable, while 59% viewed Cuomo unfavorably compared to 39% who said they had a favorable opinion of the former governor."
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who endorsed Mamdani in the primary, said the poll was a good sign for the progressive candidate.
"But don't kid yourself," he said. "The billionaires will spend endlessly to defeat him. This is an election of national significance. Either we develop a strong progressive working-class movement, or we end up with oligarchy and authoritarianism."
Along with ridiculing Cuomo's attempt to wrest control of the nation's largest city from a candidate who has focused his campaign on making life more affordable for working families, Mamdani's campaign also condemned Cuomo for taking millions of dollars in donations from Republican billionaires and supporters of President Donald Trump.
"While Andrew Cuomo and Eric Adams are tripping over themselves to cut backroom deals with billionaires and Republicans, Zohran Mamdani is focused on making this city more affordable for New Yorkers," campaign spokesperson Jeffrey Lerner told the Times. "That's the choice this November."
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