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Jenna Garland, Sierra Club, (404) 607-1262 x222, (404) 281-6398
Erin Fonken, Environmental Integrity Project, (512) 637-9474
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."
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"President Biden came into office committing to abolishing the federal death penalty because of its fundamental flaws. Commuting the federal row is the way he can honor that commitment," said one advocate.
For weeks, President Joe Biden has faced calls to use his clemency powers to save the lives of federal inmates on death row ahead of a transfer of power to President-elect Donald Trump, who has said he will expand the use of the death penalty.
Biden's inaction on the issue has drawn increased scrutiny following his pardon of his own son, Hunter Biden, clearing the younger Biden of wrongdoing in any federal crimes he committed or may have committed in the last 11 years.
Presidents have broad authority under Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution to grant pardons and reprieves for federal crimes. Biden recently pardoned two Thanksgiving turkeys as part of an annual tradition to highlight these constitutional powers, but he has not issued pardons for the 40 incarcerated men on federal death row. (He did, however, order a moratorium on carrying out federal death sentences in 2021).
"If Biden does not act, there is little doubt that Trump will aggressively schedule executions in his next term. Their blood will primarily be on Trump's hands, but, if Biden does not act to prevent it, his hands will be bloody too," wrote Matt Bruenig, president of the People's Policy Project think tank, reacting to the news of Hunter Biden's pardon.
"The death penalty is a morally-bankrupt and inescapably racist institution" —Yasmin Cader, ACLU deputy legal director
The pardoning of Hunter Biden, who was awaiting sentencing in two federal cases, also prompted scrutiny around pardon actions Biden could take that are not just focused on death row.
"This," wrote Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) in response to a post on X that contrasted Hunter Biden's pardon with the fact that tens of thousands of people are in federal custody for drug offenses.
In 2020, Biden pledged to work to abolish the federal death penalty but, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, "there has been little evidence of anything done in furtherance of this promise."
Pressure to issue clemency was building prior to the announcement of Hunter Biden's pardon.
On November 20, over 60 members of Congress sent a letter to Biden, encouraging him to use his "clemency powers to help broad classes of people and cases, including the elderly and chronically ill, those on death row, people with unjustified sentencing disparities, and women who were punished for defending themselves against their abusers."
During a press conference in November that featured House Democrats and anti-death penalty advocates, Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) said that "those on death row who are at risk of barbaric and inhumane murder at the hands of the Trump administration can have their death sentence commuted and be resentenced to a prison term," according to Oklahoma Voice.
"We're here today to ask him to take another step in that direction and to demonstrate, once again, a very positive consequence of his having been elected our 46th president, and to carry out his clemency powers in a very positive way," Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.) said.
Meanwhile, the ACLU has also urged Biden to use the lame duck session to commute federal death sentences—pointing out that Trump has vowed to expand the death penalty, including to non-homicide crimes such as drug-related offenses.
"The death penalty is a morally-bankrupt and inescapably racist institution. President Biden came into office committing to abolishing the federal death penalty because of its fundamental flaws. Commuting the federal row is the way he can honor that commitment, and prevent irreversible miscarriages of justice," said Yasmin Cader, ACLU deputy legal director and the director of the Trone Center for Justice and Equality.
While Biden so far has granted far fewer pardon and commutation petitions compared to former President Barack Obama, according to the Department of Justice's Office of the Pardon Attorney, he did in 2022 grant full and unconditional pardons to all U.S. citizens convicted of simple federal marijuana possession—a move that was cheered by advocates.
"President Joe Biden can—and must—act now to finish the death penalty reform work his administration began in 2020," the ACLU said last month. "He must commute the sentences of all people on federal death row to stymie Trump’s plans and to redress the racial injustice inherent to capital punishment."
"If legislators were trying to trap men in states where they couldn't get healthcare, we would never hear the end of it," said one advocate.
Nearly two years after it was first proposed by Republican lawmakers, an Idaho law that, as one rights advocate said, essentially "traps" people in the state to stop them from getting abortion care, was permitted to go into effect on Monday after a federal appeals court ruling.
The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Idaho can prohibit people from "harboring or transporting" a minor who needs to leave the state to obtain an abortion, which is still legal in the surrounding states of Oregon, Washington, and Montana.
The law, originally proposed as House Bill 242, makes the so-called crime of "abortion trafficking" punishable by two to five years in prison, even if the pregnant person obtains an abortion in a state where the procedure is legal.
The law was blocked in its entirety in late 2023 by a judge who found it violated First Amendment rights, because it also included a ban on "recruiting" teenagers to obtain abortion care across state lines.
The appeals court on Monday found that the "recruitment" portion of the law did violate the constitutional right to free speech because it could be applied to anything "from encouragement, counseling and emotional support; to education about available medical services and reproductive healthcare; to public advocacy promoting abortion care and abortion access."
"Encouragement, counseling and emotional support are plainly protected speech under Supreme Court precedent," wrote Judge M. Margaret McKeown, an appointee of former Democratic President Bill Clinton, in the majority opinion.
"Republicans want to scare anyone who might help teens access abortion—whether it's a beloved grandmother or a local abortion fund."
Wendy Heipt, an attorney representing the Northwest Abortion Access Fund and the Indigenous Idaho Alliance as well as a lawyer and advocate who sued the state over the law, said the portion of the ruling regarding "recruitment" was a "significant victory for the plaintiffs, as it frees Idahoans to talk with pregnant minors about abortion healthcare."
But Jessica Valenti, a writer and advocate who writes the Substack newsletter Abortion, Every Day, said efforts to establish traveling for abortion care as a crime should be "front page news every single day."
"If legislators were trying to trap men in states where they couldn't get healthcare, we would never hear the end of it," wrote Valenti.
Republicans in Idaho have pushed the law as one that would "stop adults from taking minors across state lines for abortions without parental permission," Valenti added. "In truth, the law criminalizes helping a teenager obtain an abortion in any capacity—anywhere."
She continued that the ban's "sweeping language... could send someone to prison as a 'trafficker' for lending a teen gas money."
"That's the point, of course: Republicans want to scare anyone who might help teens access abortion—whether it's a beloved grandmother or a local abortion fund," wrote Valenti. "They're targeting the helpers."
Tennessee Republicans have also passed an "abortion trafficking" law, but a court blocked it from being enforced in September, with U.S. District Judge Aleta Trauger writing that the state had "chosen to outlaw certain communications in furtherance of abortions that are, in fact, entirely legal."
"It is, therefore, a basic constitutional fact—which Tennessee has no choice but to accept—that as long as there are states in which abortion is permissible, then abortion will be potentially available to Tennesseans," added Trauger.
Republicans in Mississippi, Alabama, and Oklahoma have introduced similar legislation, while Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall has suggested states can restrict pregnant residents' travel.
Valenti wrote that Monday's ruling "is not just about Idaho" and that laws barring travel for abortion care will not "stop with teenagers."
"Young people are the canaries in the coal mine," she wrote. "What happens to them today comes for us all tomorrow."
"The window of opportunity to deliver assistance is now, today, not tomorrow," said the deputy director-general of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization.
A top official at the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization said Monday that food availability across Gaza has reached "an all-time low" under Israel's suffocating blockade, which has heavily restricted the entrance of lifesaving humanitarian assistance and plunged the enclave into famine.
"Food supply has sharply deteriorated," FAO Deputy Director-General Beth Bechdol said at a conference in Cairo, Egypt. "The window of opportunity to deliver assistance is now, today, not tomorrow. Food, medicine, and fuel are self-evident priorities, but we must also prioritize the ability to grow food locally where it is needed most to ensure survival."
Bechdol's grim assessment came weeks after the Biden administration pressured Israel to improve conditions on the ground in Gaza, which has been utterly devastated by more than a year of bombing.
Aid organizations say that far from improving, Gaza's humanitarian crisis has only gotten worse since the Biden administration threatened to cut off the supply of U.S. weapons to Israel. Last month, the U.S. effectively dropped its pressure campaign by concluding that Israel was not violating international law by blocking American humanitarian assistance.
Most of Gaza's population is currently experiencing "high levels of food insecurity," according to the latest Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) figures, and the "risk of Famine persists across the whole Gaza Strip."
"The catastrophe in Gaza is nothing short of a complete breakdown of our common humanity. The nightmare must stop."
In addition to obstructing aid deliveries, Israeli forces have decimated Gaza's agricultural infrastructure and cropland, repeatedly attacked aid workers, and facilitated the looting of humanitarian supplies, fueling desperation among Gaza's starving population. Last week, as The Associated Pressreported, "two children and a woman were crushed to death... as a crowd of Palestinians pushed to get bread at a bakery in the Gaza Strip amid a worsening food crisis in the war-ravaged territory."
Amina Mohammed, the U.N.'s deputy secretary-general, said at the Cairo conference on Monday that "conditions for Palestinians in Gaza are appalling and apocalyptic," with malnutrition running "rampant" and famine "imminent."
"In the past four months alone, nearly 19,000 children were hospitalized due to acute malnutrition—nearly double the cases in the first half of the year," Mohammed said. "In the face of the gigantic needs, humanitarian aid is—outrageously—being blocked. This flies in the face of the clear requirements under international humanitarian law to respect and to protect civilians and to ensure their essential needs are met."
"It's past time for an immediate cease-fire and the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages," she added. "The catastrophe in Gaza is nothing short of a complete breakdown of our common humanity. The nightmare must stop. We cannot continue to look away."