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True
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But here’s the truth: we can only do this with your support. We refuse corporate ads and keep our site free for everyone because access to critical news should never depend on ability to pay. That means our survival depends on readers like you. Please donate today and help us reach our goal of raising $100,000 by November 1.
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Public review of new guidance to industry consultants on toxic cleanups
TRENTON, NJ
Without public notice, the Christie administration has rolled back public health protections against seepage of deadly gases into homes, schools and businesses, according to Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). Effective immediately, new state "Guidance" relaxes cleanup levels for dozens of hazardous chemicals.
In a January 17 email to private consultants, called "Licensed Site Remediation Professionals," the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) unveiled new standards governing how much of an array of toxic chemicals may remain in indoor air, soil and groundwater following cleanup of a residential or commercial site. DEP provided no independently derived scientific basis for the changes. As the changes did not go through any rule-making process, the public had no opportunity to review them.
DEP claims that the revisions are based on various federal guidance values, which were then recalculated to reflect New Jersey's statutory 1 in a million cancer risk standard. Nonetheless, the changes would dramatically weaken previous allowable levels for a number of known toxic chemicals, including --
The indoor residential limits for tetrachloroethene (PCE) were tripled from 3 ug/m3 (micrograms per cubic meter) to 9 ug/m3. At the same time, the groundwater screening level for PCE jumped from 1 part per billion to 31 parts per billion;
The allowable soil levels for MTBE (commonly due to leaking gas station tanks) was more than tripled from 2 ug/m3 to 9 ug.m3; and
Ground water allowances were moved upwards across the board to reflect risks in drinking water rather than the tighter limits for vapor intrusion risks.
"This is an objectionable stealth rule-making where public health protection got dealt away in the backroom," stated New Jersey PEER Director Bill Wolfe, a former long-time DEP analyst, noting that the Christie administration has yet to back a single strengthening of environmental regulations. "The maximum limits for toxic chemicals we are inhaling or ingesting in schools, homes, hospitals or any structure within the plume of past industrial pollution should be the product of a transparent process where science independent of the affected industry is brought to bear.
Vapor intrusion is a major public health problem in New Jersey, the nation's most densely populated state, where more than 6,500 sites have groundwater contamination which in hundreds of cases is seeping into nearby homes and buildings. Some communities, such as Pompton Lakes, have been plagued by dangerous vapor intrusion problems for decades.
"The state's privatized system of toxic cleanup creates dangerous incentives to cut corners and allow hidden hazards to fester," Wolfe added. "Residents would be well advised not to breathe too deeply around reclaimed industrial sites in New Jersey."
PEER protects public employees who protect our environment. We are a service organization for environmental and public health professionals, land managers, scientists, enforcement officers, and other civil servants dedicated to upholding environmental laws and values. We work with current and former federal, state, local, and tribal employees.
"I didn't see anybody do anything that justified, for instance, taking my 70-year-old neighbor to the ground," said a former prosecutor who lives in a neighborhood that was tear-gassed.
A former Cook County prosecutor said he had collected a tear gas canister from his own front lawn in a residential Chicago neighborhood and submitted it to a law firm that is preparing a lawsuit over immigration officers' persistent use of tear gas against residents who object to their raids across the city—including in Old Irving Park this past weekend, where parents and children were getting ready for a Halloween parade when agents wreaked havoc on the neighborhood.
The Chicago Tribune reported that former prosecutor Brian Kolp had been watching news coverage Saturday morning of a temporary restraining order handed down by US District Court Judge Sara Ellis earlier this month barring federal agents from using riot control weapons like tear gas against protesters who do not pose an immediate harm to officers' safety, when he realized federal agents where on his street in Old Irving Park.
"I could see two fully uniformed agents in military fatigues literally tackling a guy right here in my front lawn," Kolp toldCBS News.
The man the agents detained, Luis Villegas, had been working at a house in the neighborhood, and his brother told reporters he was an undocumented immigrant who came to the US with his family at the age of four.
Neighbors ran out of their houses and filmed and heckled the agents, Block Club Chicagoreported, with some shouting, "Get off of him!" Another appeared to call one of the officers a "fucking Nazi."
The outlet reported that agents got out of their vehicles moments later, "put on their gas masks, and attacked at least two different people."
A person on a rapid response team that warns locals when Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other federal agents are in the area told Block Club Chicago that a 67-year-old woman was "knocked to the ground" by masked officers. She and a 70-year-old man were detained, and Assistant Homeland Security Secretary Tricia McLaughlin claimed they were "arrested for assaulting and impeding a federal officer."
McLaughlin also claimed Villegas was arrested for a previous assault charge, but provided no evidence of his criminal background.
In nearby Avondale, Chicago Tribune reporter Laura N. Rodríguez Presa said another woman was pushed to the ground by an ICE or Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agent when she approached their vehicle during another anti-immigration operation.
"This appears to be the new normal in Chicago," said Rodríguez Presa.
A very disturbing video from today’s ICE/CBP operations in Avondale.
An officer pushes a woman to the ground, people get angry and throw -what’s seems to be a rock- towards the moving unmarked vehicle.
In Old Irving Park, the "new normal" for residents on Saturday included federal agents deploying tear gas as parents and costumed children were leaving their homes on their way to a neighborhood Halloween parade.
Resident James Hotchkiss told Block Club Chicago that he was leaving his house with his wife and children at 9:45am for the parade when he heard whistles ringing out in the neighborhood—a sound Chicagoans have come to recognize as a warning that ICE is nearby.
“At that point, I saw a man running towards me followed by two to three officers chasing after him. They tackled him onto a neighbor’s front yard," he said.
About 10 minutes later, Hotchkiss saw smoke in the air.
“I took my glasses off because my eyes were burning,” he said. “I saw someone pour water on a gas canister that appeared to be on fire.”
Heather Cherone, a senior reporter at WTTW, said the attack on Old Irving Park marked the "third straight day that federal agents have deployed tear gas against Chicagoans and the seventh time in 22 days," despite the court order.
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Kolp toldFox 32 that he "didn't see anybody with a weapon" that would have justified the agents' use of force.
"So you had folks who were literally out on the street taking their kids to this Halloween parade when this happened," he said. "I didn't see anybody make physical contact with these agents. I didn't see anybody do anything that justified, for instance, taking my 70-year-old neighbor to the ground."
The agents left the neighborhood after about 30 minutes, and the Halloween parade proceeded—but with many families opting to stay home.
Kolp toldCBS News he retrieved a tear gas canister from his yard.
"I knew that piece of evidence would be critical for the judge to understand what the facts are," he said.
Border Patrol Chief Gregory Bovino is due in court on Tuesday, Fox 32reported, to answer questions about agents' continued use of tear gas against residentsin violation of Ellis' order.
"I was pretty upset to be honest with you," Kolp told the outlet. "I am an attorney. I used to work with and in law enforcement, and watching this happen in my front yard was just not something that I ever thought was gonna come to my front door. But you know, here we are."
A former Democratic senator once known for a purported "independent streak" now says she is working "hand in glove" with the Trump administration to force communities to allow the construction of energy-devouring artificial intelligence data centers.
As reported by YourValley.Net, former Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.) recently attended a planning and zoning commission meeting in the city of Chandler, Arizona, in which she warned local officials that a massive data center would be built in their community whether they wanted it or not.
According to YourValley.Net, Sinema was at the meeting to advocate for plans created by New York-based developer Active Infrastructure to construct a massive 420,000-square foot data center in the city.
A video of the meeting posted on X by 12News reporter Brahm Resnik shows Sinema telling local officials that if they did not act to approve the data center, then the Trump administration would simply impose it on them without seeking their input.
"The AI action plan, set out by the Trump administration, says very clearly that we must continue to proliferate AI and AI data centers throughout the country," she said. "So federal preemption is coming. Chandler right now has the opportunity to determine how and when these new, innovative AI data centers will be built."
She then added that "when federal preemption comes, we'll no longer have that privilege, it will just occur, and it will occur in the manner in which they want it."
Former US Sen. Kyrsten Sinema lobbies for data center developer at Chandler AZ Plan Commission. Says she's working "hand in glove" w Trump Admin & warns city to embrace DCs or face federal intervention. City Council vote on Sinema's DC scheduled for Nov. 13. pic.twitter.com/KulHg594gj — Brahm Resnik (@brahmresnik) October 24, 2025
The construction of AI data centers has provoked outrage throughout the US, as local residents have complained about the data centers consuming massive amounts of resources—increasing monthly electricity bills and, in some cases, disrupting local water supplies.
Mike Jacobs, a senior energy manager at the Union of Concerned Scientists, last month released an analysis estimating that data centers had added billions of dollars to Americans’ electric bills across seven different states in recent years. In Virginia alone, for instance, Jacobs found that household electric bills had subsidized data center transmission costs to the tune of $1.9 billion in 2024.
Some progressive critics were quick to denounce Sinema lobbying for AI data centers, as it confirmed the view they held during her Senate career that she shilled for corporate interests.
"[I] knew Sinema would show up in some super-scummy corporate role," remarked journalist Nathan Newman in a post on Bluesky. "But being handmaiden to the AI tech lords in strong-arming local communities to accept AI data centers—or face the wrath of the Trump administration—is about as low as it goes."
Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) argued that Sinema's comments at the meeting show why "we need a lifetime ban on members of Congress lobbying."
Ian Carrillo, a sociologist at the University of Oklahoma, expressed horror at the way major tech companies are deploying people such as Sinema to bully communities into accepting their plans.
"The AI bubble can't pop soon enough," he wrote. "These data centers are rolled out in the most anti-democratic ways, involving NDAs, shadow companies and, according to Sinema, federal preemption."
Current Affairs editor Nathan Robinson condemned the former senator for "openly threatening localities."
Sinema's message to Chandler residents, said Robinson, was "Approve resource-sucking AI data centers in your communities, or I will work with the Trump administration to inflict data centers on you without consent, regardless of the harm that occurs
Drop Site News reporter Ryan Grim, meanwhile, simply labeled Sinema a "cartoon villain."
"Only a right-wing elitist would think that owning a bunch of farmland makes you a farmer," said one critic. "No, farming makes you a farmer, Scott. You’re an investor and landowner."
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent—a large landowner and former hedge fund manager worth north of half a billion dollars—faced widespread derision Sunday after claiming that he's a soybean farmer who, like actual farmers, is suffering from President Donald Trump's tariff war.
Asked by ABC "This Week" co-anchor Martha Raddatz about the apparent contradiction between Trump's claim to care about American farmers and the pain inflicted upon them by his trade war—especially with China, which is boycotting US agricultural exports—Bessent said: "Well, Martha, I'm actually a soybean farmer. So... I have felt this pain, too."
Bessent then tried to blame China for slashing US soybean imports and "using American farmers, who are amongst President Trump's biggest supporters."
The treasury secretary also mentioned the double whammy of tariffs and this season's bumper soybean crop, which he said have created a "perfect storm."
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After Trump slapped 30% tariffs on Chinese imports in May, Beijing retaliated with measures including stopping all purchases of US soybeans. Before the trade war, a quarter of the soybeans—the nation’s number one export crop—produced in the United States were exported to China. Trump’s tariffs mean American soybean growers can’t compete with countries like Brazil, the world’s leading producer and exporter of the staple crop and itself the target of a 50% US tariff.
Critics swiftly pounced on Bessent's comments, with one actual farmer pointing out on X that the centimillionaire "owns up to $25 million worth of corn and soybean farmland... and earns as much as $1 million a year in rental income from the land."
Some social media users sardonically shared an artificial intelligence-generated image of Bessent standing in a field wearing overalls. Others posted a photo of John Ravenel House, the historic Charleston mansion he sold earlier this year for $18.5 million plus $3 million for furniture and fixtures—reportedly the highest price ever in the South Carolina city.
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Spencer Ross, an associate professor at the Lowell Manning School of Business at the University of Massachusetts, noted that Bessent "promised—and failed—to divest his "$25 million of rent-seeking soybean property."
"I cannot imagine another farmer considering [Bessent's investments] actively being a 'farmer,'" Ross added before referencing the last president who actually grew crops. "I'm fairly certain Jimmy Carter wouldn't."
Author and activist Tim Wise quipped on social media: "Only a right-wing elitist would think that owning a bunch of farmland makes you a farmer. No, farming makes you a farmer, Scott. You’re an investor and landowner."
