October, 15 2014, 01:00pm EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Catherine Collentine (303)454-3363 (Sierra Club Colorado Campaign Representative)
Bruce Baizel (970) 259-3353 x 2 (Earthworks Director)
Victory for Longmont Residents: Lawsuit Challenging Health, Pollution Protections Dropped
Today the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission (COGCC) and the Colorado Oil and Gas Association (COGA) dropped their lawsuit to invalidate a Longmont City Ordinance that protects residents from the pollution and associated health threats of oil and gas development. The State dismissed the suit after more than two years of litigation, as a part of a deal brokered in August 2014 to keep two anti-fracking initiatives off the November ballot.
LONGMONT, Colo.
Today the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission (COGCC) and the Colorado Oil and Gas Association (COGA) dropped their lawsuit to invalidate a Longmont City Ordinance that protects residents from the pollution and associated health threats of oil and gas development. The State dismissed the suit after more than two years of litigation, as a part of a deal brokered in August 2014 to keep two anti-fracking initiatives off the November ballot.
"Upholding this ordinance is a victory for the people of Longmont and the right of local government to regulate oil and gas development. Industry has run roughshod over community concerns for decades. This decision is a step towards balancing the scales of justice," said Earthworks Director Bruce Baizel.
The challenged Ordinance, passed by the City Council in July 2012, prohibits oil and gas surface activities from occurring in zoned residential areas and establishes voluntary, enhanced standards for fast-track administrative approval that create setbacks greater than the State's for homes, schools, hospitals, waterways and parks. The Ordinance also requires disclosure to emergency responders of hazardous chemicals transported through the City and consultation with local wildlife experts before any operations begin.
"In light of continued scientific research showing that oil and gas development risks the health of those living nearby, it's clear that ordinances like the one put in place by Longmont are necessary for community well-being," said Sierra Club Colorado Campaign Representative Catherine Collentine. She continued, "In the absence of adequate state rules governing oil and gas development, local governments must be able to step in to protect public health and the environment."
Over the past decade Colorado has experienced a historic boom in oil and gas drilling. Colorado currently has more than 52,000 active oil and gas wells covering much of the state's landscape. Across Colorado's northern plains, oil and gas companies are increasingly operating not only in sparsely populated areas, but also in towns and suburbs.
"Living with oil and gas drilling and fracking near your home or your children's school is not something anyone wants. These are very minimal protections for residents in Longmont and
are the first step to protect public health and safety , We are glad to see the State and the industry agree," said Karen Dike, Longmont resident and member of the Sierra Club.
This growing trend of drilling near homes and schools prompted the City of Longmont, located 37 miles north of Denver and on the western edge of Colorado's most productive oil and gas field, to update its land use rules to prohibit certain surface activities in residential areas.
The new rules immediately came under legal attack by the State of Colorado calling into question the City's authority to protect its own citizens from the adverse effects of oil and gas development. This lawsuit was one of many that are ongoing in other Colorado communities working to protect the health and environment of residents across the state from the threats of rampant oil and gas development.
For more information on Sierra Club's efforts to protect communities from harmful oil and gas operations go to https://content.sierraclub.org/naturalgas and to https://rmc.sierraclub.org/ ; for Earthworks visit https://www.earthworksaction.org/
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.
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Trump Taps Anti-Trans Lawyer Harmeet Dhillon for Key Civil Rights Post
"Dhillon has focused her career on diminishing civil rights, rather than enforcing or protecting them," argued one critic.
Dec 10, 2024
LGBTQ+ and voting rights defenders were among those who sounded the alarm Tuesday over Republican President-elect Donald Trump's selection of a San Francisco attorney known for fighting against transgender rights and for leading a right-wing lawyers' group that took part in Trump's effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election to oversee the U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division.
On Monday, Trump announced his nomination of Harmeet Dhillon to head the key civil rights office, claiming on his Truth Social network that the former California Republican Party vice-chair "has stood up consistently to protect our cherished Civil Liberties, including taking on Big Tech for censoring our Free Speech, representing Christians who were prevented from praying together during COVID, and suing corporations who use woke policies to discriminate against their workers."
"In her new role at the DOJ, Harmeet will be a tireless defender of our Constitutional Rights, and will enforce our Civil Rights and Election Laws FAIRLY and FIRMLY," Trump added.
However, prominent trans activist Erin Reed warned on her Substack that Dhillon's nomination—which requires Senate confirmation—"signals an alarming shift that could make life increasingly difficult for transgender people nationwide, including those who have sought refuge in blue states to escape anti-trans legislation."
Trump has picked Harmeet Dhillon as Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights. She has stated that it must be "made unsafe" for hospitals to provide trans care, and frequently shares Libs of TikTok posts. She intends to target trans people in blue states. Subscribe to support my journalism.
[image or embed]
— Erin Reed (@erininthemorning.com) December 10, 2024 at 8:14 AM
Reed continued:
Dhillon's most prominent work includes founding the Center for American Liberty, a legal organization that focuses heavily on anti-transgender cases in blue states. The organization's "featured cases" section highlights several lawsuits, such as Chloe Cole's case against Kaiser Permanente; a lawsuit challenging a Colorado school's use of a transgender student's preferred name; a case against a California school district seeking to implement policies that would forcibly out transgender students; and a lawsuit against Vermont for denying a foster care license to a family unwilling to comply with nondiscrimination policies regarding transgender youth.
Reed also highlighted Dhillon's attacks on state laws protecting transgender people, as well as her expression of "extreme anti-trans views" on social media—including calling gender-affirming healthcare for trans children "child abuse."
Last year, The Guardian's Jason Wilson reported that the Center for American Liberty made a six-figure payment to a public relations firm that represented Dhillion in both "her capacity as head of her own for-profit law firm and Republican activist."
Writing for the voting rights platform Democracy Docket, Matt Cohen on Tuesday accused Dhillon of being "one of the leading legal figures working to roll back voting rights across the country."
"In the past few years, Dhillon—or an attorney from her law firm—has been involved in more than a dozen different lawsuits in Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, Maine, Michigan, North Carolina, Virginia, and Washington, D.C. challenging voting rights laws, redistricting, election processes, or Trump's efforts to appear on the ballot in the 2024 election," Cohen noted.
As Maya Wiley, president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, said in a statement Tuesday, "The Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division has the critical responsibility of enforcing our nation's federal civil rights laws and ensuring equal justice under the law on behalf of all of our communities."
"That means investigating police departments that have a pattern of police abuse, protecting the right to vote, and ensuring schools don't discriminate against children based on who they are," Wiley noted. "The nomination of Harmeet Dhillon to lead this critical civil rights office is yet another clear sign that this administration seeks to advance ideological viewpoints over the rights and protections that protect every person in this country."
"Dhillon has focused her career on diminishing civil rights, rather than enforcing or protecting them," she asserted. "Rather than fighting to expand voting access, she has worked to restrict it."
A staunch Trump loyalist, Dhillon has also embraced conspiracy theories including the former president's "Big Lie" that the 2020 presidential election was stolen, and has accused Democrats of "conspiring to commit the biggest election interference fraud in world history."
She was co-chair of the Republican National Lawyers Association when it launched Lawyers for Trump, a group that urged the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene on behalf of the former president after he lost the 2020 election.
Cohen also highlighted Dhillon's ties to right-wing legal activist and Federalist Society co-chair Leonard Leo, described by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) as a "lawless con man and crook" for his refusal to comply with a Senate subpoena and his organization of lavish gifts to conservative U.S. Supreme Court justices.
"We need a leader at the Civil Rights Division who understands that civil rights protections are not partisan or political positions open to the ideological whims of those who seek to elevate a single religion or to protect political allies or particular groups over others," Wiley stressed. "We need a leader who will vigorously enforce our civil rights laws and work to protect the rights of all of our communities—including in voting, education, employment, housing, and public accommodations—without fear or favor."
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'Landmark Victory': US Proposes Endangered Species Protections for Monarch Butterfly
"We're hoping that this is a call to everybody to say this species is in decline, and now is our opportunity to help reverse that decline," said one federal scientist.
Dec 10, 2024
Biodiversity defenders on Tuesday welcomed a "long overdue" move by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service toward protecting the monarch butterfly under the Endangered Species Act—the result, the Center for Biological Diversity said, of a lawsuit filed by several groups to safeguard the pollinators and their fragile habitat.
The FWS proposed designating the butterfly as threatened with extinction, four years after monarchs were placed on a waiting list for protection.
"For too long, the monarch butterfly has been waiting in line, hoping for new protections while its population has plummeted. This announcement by the Fish and Wildlife Service gets this iconic flier closer to the protections it needs, and given its staggering drop in numbers, that can't happen soon enough," said Steve Blackledge, senior director of conservation campaigns for Environment America.
Monarch butterflies journey from Mexico each spring to points across the United States east of the Rocky Mountains to pollinate and reproduce. When cooler weather arrives they migrate back to the south for the winter.
But their populations have declined by more than 95% from over 4.5 million in the 1980s, leaving the western monarch with a 99% chance of becoming extinct over the next six decades, according to federal scientists.
The decline has been driven by the widespread use of herbicides like Roundup on milkweed, the monarch's sole food source, as well as the use of neonicotinoid insecticides. Millions of monarchs are also killed by vehicles annually during their migration, and in their winter habitats they face the loss of forests due to logging.
"The monarch butterfly is an iconic North American species and like other such iconic species, including the bald eagle and American peregrine falcon, it too deserves a chance at recovery."
Rising temperatures have also disrupted the monarch's reproduction and migration, with warmer weather tricking them into staying in the north later in the year.
"The species has been declining for a number of years," FWS biologist Kristen Lundh toldThe Washington Post. "We're hoping that this is a call to everybody to say this species is in decline, and now is our opportunity to help reverse that decline."
Western monarchs are down to an estimated 233,394 butterflies, while experts say there are several million eastern monarchs in existence.
"The protections that come with Endangered Species Act listing increase the chance that these precious pollinators will rebound and recover throughout their historic range," said Andrew Carter, director of conservation policy for Defenders of Wildlife. "The monarch butterfly is an iconic North American species and like other such iconic species, including the bald eagle and American peregrine falcon, it too deserves a chance at recovery."
The FWS is also proposing to designate 4,395 acres of the western monarch's overwintering sites as a critical habitat.
If the butterfly's protections are finalized—a process that could be completed by the end of 2025—landowners would be required to get federal approval for development that could harm the monarch.
During his first term, President-elect Donald Trump weakened the Endangered Species Act, limiting the definition of a "critical habitat."
"Today's monarch listing decision is a landmark victory 10 years in the making. It is also a damning precedent, revealing the driving role of pesticides and industrial agriculture in the ongoing extinction crisis," said George Kimbrell, legal director at the Center for Food Safety. "But the job isn't done... The service must do what science and the law require and promptly finalize protection for monarchs."
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'It Had to Be Done': Luigi Mangione Manifesto Revealed
"A reminder: the U.S. has the #1 most expensive healthcare system in the world, yet we rank roughly #42 in life expectancy," the 26-year-old accused of assassinating a health insurance CEO reportedly wrote.
Dec 10, 2024
This is a breaking story… Please check back for possible updates...
A day after Luigi Mangione was arrested and charged as the alleged killer of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, independent journalist Ken Klippenstein on Tuesday published what he said was the 26-year-old's highly reported on manifesto.
The existence of the handwritten document found on Mangione when he was taken into custody in Pennsylvania on Monday was confirmed by the New York Police Department, and major media outlets have quoted from it, but none had released it in full.
"My queries to The New York Times, CNN, and ABC to explain their rationale for withholding the manifesto, while gladly quoting from it selectively, have not been answered," Klippenstein said on his Substack.
According to Klippenstein—who previously published dossiers on Vice President-elect JD Vance and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), the nominee for U.S. secretary of state—Mangione's manifesto reads:
To the Feds, I'll keep this short, because I do respect what you do for our country. To save you a lengthy investigation, I state plainly that I wasn't working with anyone. This was fairly trivial: some elementary social engineering, basic CAD, a lot of patience. The spiral notebook, if present, has some straggling notes and To Do lists that illuminate the gist of it. My tech is pretty locked down because I work in engineering so probably not much info there. I do apologize for any strife of traumas but it had to be done. Frankly, these parasites simply had it coming. A reminder: the US has the #1 most expensive healthcare system in the world, yet we rank roughly #42 in life expectancy. United is the [indecipherable] largest company in the US by market cap, behind only Apple, Google, Walmart. It has grown and grown, but as our life expectancy? No the reality is, these [indecipherable] have simply gotten too powerful, and they continue to abuse our country for immense profit because the American public has allwed them to get away with it. Obviously the problem is more complex, but I do not have space, and frankly I do not pretend to be the most qualified person to lay out the full argument. But many have illuminated the corruption and greed (e.g.: Rosenthal, Moore), decades ago and the problems simply remain. It is not an issue of awareness at this point, but clearly power games at play. Evidently I am the first to face it with such brutal honesty.
Common Dreams has not independently verified its authenticity.
Klippenstein
said on social media that the manifesto he published is "the real one, not the fake one circulating online."
NBC News deputy technology editor Ben Goggin noted that language shared by Klippenstein "matches what NBC has reported here as real."
Earlier on Tuesday, Klippenstein published leaked talking points that UnitedHealthcare reportedly circulated to its employees as the insurance company faces widespread public criticism.
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