October, 01 2015, 01:45pm EDT

For Immediate Release
Contact:
Keith Rushing, Earthjustice, (202) 797-5236, (757) 897-2147 krushing@earthjustice.org; David Baron, (202) 667-4500 Ext. 5203, dbaron@earthjustice.org; Seth Johnson, (202) 797-5245, sjohnson@earthjustice.org
EPA Rejects Doctors' Advice on Limits for Ozone Pollution
New standard leaves millions of kids and asthmatics at risk
WASHINGTON
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency today released a new ozone pollution standard that is far weaker than called for by the nation's leading medical organizations. Although somewhat stronger than the previous standard, the new limit still falls far short of what doctors say is needed to save lives and protect kids, seniors, and asthmatics from harm.
"This action falls far short of what's needed to protect the 1 in 10 children who live with asthma," said Lisa Garcia, Earthjustice's Vice President of Healthy Communities. "The science shows that ozone is dangerous to these kids at the levels allowed by this new standard."
Ozone, commonly called smog, is a greenhouse gas that forms from the exhaust of cars, trucks, power plants and factories. It is linked to asthma attacks, emergency room visits, hospitalizations, and deaths.
The new standard lowers the amount of ozone allowed in the air from 75 parts per billion to 70 parts per billion. That's still far weaker than the 60 parts per billion limit called for by the American Medical Association, American Academy of Pediatrics, American Thoracic Society, American Heart Association, and numerous other leading health organizations. The updated standard will require states that do not meet the new limit to develop plans to reduce ozone pollution and will be used to determine when to alert the public that ozone levels are unsafe.
Earthjustice Managing Attorney David Baron, who oversees much of the organization's air pollution work, called the action weak.
"This weak-kneed action leaves children, seniors, and asthmatics without the protection doctors say they need from this dangerous pollutant," Baron said. "It will allow thousands of deaths, hospitalizations, asthma attacks, and missed school and work days that would be prevented by the much stronger standard supported by medical experts. It's likely this weak standard will be challenged in court as a betrayal of the Clean Air Act's promise of healthy air."
EPA also rejected calls from its science advisers and the National Park Service to set a strong, separate standard to protect forests from ozone. "Ozone damages trees and stunts their growth in National Parks and forests throughout the nation," Baron said. "EPA's failure to set a standard that protects these majestic places is indefensible."
Today's action was taken to comply with a court-ordered deadline secured by Earthjustice in a suit on behalf of health and environmental groups. The 2013 suit was brought to require EPA to complete a legally required review of the ozone standard under the Clean Air Act.
Earthjustice is a non-profit public interest law firm dedicated to protecting the magnificent places, natural resources, and wildlife of this earth, and to defending the right of all people to a healthy environment. We bring about far-reaching change by enforcing and strengthening environmental laws on behalf of hundreds of organizations, coalitions and communities.
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'When We Fight, We Win!': LA School Workers Secure Deal After 3-Day Strike
"The agreement addresses our key demands and sets us on a clear pathway to improving our livelihoods and securing the staffing we need to improve student services," said SEIU Local 99.
Mar 25, 2023
Union negotiators for about 30,000 school support staffers in California's Los Angeles County struck a historic deal with the second-largest district in the United States on Friday after a three-day strike.
Members of Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 99, including bus drivers, cafeteria workers, special education assistants, teaching aides, and other school staff—backed by about 35,000 educators of United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA)—walked off the job on Tuesday and continued to strike through Thursday.
The tentative contract agreement, which must still be voted on by SEIU Local 99 members, was reached with the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) after mediation from Democratic Mayor Karen Bass.
The deal would increase the average annual salary from $25,000 to $33,000, raise wages by 30%, boost the district minimum wage to $22.52, provide a $1,000 Covid-19 pandemic bonus, secure healthcare benefits for part-time employees who work at least four hours a day, and guarantee seven hours of work for special education assistants.
"The agreement addresses our key demands and sets us on a clear pathway to improving our livelihoods and securing the staffing we need to improve student services," SEIU Local 99 said in a statement. "It was members' dedication to winning respect from the district that made this agreement possible."
The Los Angeles Times reports that during a Friday news conference at City Hall with Bass and Alberto Carvalho, the LAUSD superintendent, Local 99 executive director Max Arias declared that "here in California this agreement will set new standards, not just for Los Angeles, but the entire state."
"I want to appreciate the 30,000 members that sacrificed three days of work, despite low income, to raise the issue to society, that we as a society need to do better for all workers, all working people, for everyone," Arias added.
While the strike meant about 400,000 K-12 students weren't in classes for three days this week, "many parents stood in support of union employees," according toKTLA, with one local parent saying that "it's obvious all over the schools that we're really not putting the support where it's needed and our children are suffering because of that."
In a series of tweets, Local 99 thanked people from across the country for their solidarity this past week and stressed that the LA mayor, who has no formal authority over LAUSD, "was instrumental to getting the district to finally start hearing our demands."
Bass, in a statement, thanked Arias and Carvalho "for working together with me to put our families first" and emphasized that "we must continue working together to address our city's high cost of living, to grow opportunity, and to support more funding for LA's public schools, which are the most powerful determinant of our city's future."
Carvalho said Friday that "when we started negotiating with SEIU, we promised to deliver on three goals. We wanted to honor and elevate the dignity of our workforce and correct well-known, decadeslong inequities impacting the lowest-wage earners. We wanted to continue supporting critical services for our students. We wanted to protect the financial viability of the district for the long haul. Promises made, promises delivered."
Contract talks with district teachers are ongoing. When announcing support for Local 99's strike earlier this month, UTLA president Cecily Myart-Cruz said that "despite LAUSD having one of the largest school budgets and largest reserves in the nation—teachers and essential school workers are struggling to support their own families and live in the communities they work for."
The strike and pending deal in California come amid a rejuvenated labor organizing movement across the United States, with employees of major corporations including Amazon and Starbucks fighting for unions.
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Trump Rally in Waco Called Not a Dog Whistle, But a 'Blaring Air Horn' to Far-Right
"There's not really another place in the U.S. that you could pick that would tap into these deep veins of anti-government hatred—Christian nationalist skepticism of the government," said one extremism expert.
Mar 24, 2023
While former U.S. President Donald Trump's 2024 campaign insists it is purely coincidental that his planned Saturday rally in Waco, Texas falls during the 30th anniversary of a deadly 51-day siege targeting a religious cult, some Texans and extremism experts aren't buying it.
Since law enforcement—including Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents—carried out the botched operation at a Branch Davidian compound near Waco from February 28 to April 19 in 1993, the event has been a source of anti-government sentiment for the likes of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh and U.S. militia movement members.
"When Donald Trump flies into Waco on Saturday evening for the first major campaign event of his 2024 reelection quest, dog ears won't be the only ones twitching," the Houston Chronicle editorial board argued Thursday. "Trump doesn't do subtle; dog-whistle messages are not his style. The more apt metaphor is the blaring air horn of a Mack 18-wheeler barreling down I-10."
"'Waco' has become an Alamo of sorts, a shrine for the Proud Boys, the Three Percenters, the Oath Keepers, and other anti-government extremists and conspiracists."
"The GOP-friendly city of Waco—Trump won McLennan County by more than 20 percentage points in 2020—has every right, of course, to host a former president, the leading contender for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, but 'Waco,' the symbol... means something else entirely," the board stressed. "'Waco' has become an Alamo of sorts, a shrine for the Proud Boys, the Three Percenters, the Oath Keepers, and other anti-government extremists and conspiracists."
The twice-impeached former president faces potential legal trouble in multiple states and at the federal level for everything from a hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels to trying to overturn his 2020 electoral loss and inciting the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Trump, a documented serial liar, took to his Truth Social platform last weekend to say that he would be arrested Tuesday—as part of a New York grand jury investigation into the hush money—and call for protests. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said Thursday that Trump "created a false expectation that he would be arrested."
In a Truth Social post on Friday, Trump
warned of "death and destruction" if he is indicted—which led the watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) to charge that "he's not being subtle, he's threatening prosecutors with violence."
The Chronicle board tied Trump's legal problems to his Waco trip:
Thirty years later, the anti-government paramilitary groups feeding off lies about the "deep state" and a stolen election periodically visit the modest, little chapel on the site of the sprawling, ramshackle building that burned to the ground. Although the Branch Davidians had nothing to do with anti-government conspiracists, chapel construction was funded by loud-mouthed conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.
Militia members and conspiracists know exactly what Trump's Waco visit symbolizes. They have heard him castigate the FBI and the "deep state," particularly after agents searched for classified documents at Mar-a-Lago. How they'll respond to his remarks, particularly if he shows up as the first former president in American history to face criminal charges, has law enforcement in Waco and beyond taking every precaution. What he says will likely set the tone for the presidential campaign to come. Every American should be concerned.
Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung wrote Friday in an email to The New York Times that Waco was chosen "because it is centrally located and close to all four of Texas' biggest metropolitan areas—Dallas/Fort Worth, Houston, Austin, and San Antonio—while providing the necessary infrastructure to hold a rally of this magnitude."
The Chronicle board noted other local options, writing that "the Waco Regional Airport and an expected crowd of 10,000 or so fit the bill. Of course, Temple or Belton or Killeen (home to Fort Hood) would have fit the bill, as well—without the weight of symbolism."
The Texas newspaper was far from alone in sounding the alarm about Trump's upcoming trip to Waco.
"Waco is hugely symbolic on the far right," Heidi Beirich, co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, toldUSA TODAY. "There's not really another place in the U.S. that you could pick that would tap into these deep veins of anti-government hatred—Christian nationalist skepticism of the government—and I find it hard to believe that Trump doesn't know that Waco represents all of these things."
"Waco has a sense of grievance among people that I know he's got to be trying to tap into," Beirich added. "He's being unjustly accused, like the Branch Davidians were unjustly accused—and the deep state is out to get them all."
The newspaper pointed out that "though Trump has held more than 100 campaign rallies and similar events, and mounted a near-daily schedule of them during his campaigns, this week's appears to be the first one ever held in Waco."
Megan Squire, deputy director for data analytics at the Southern Poverty Law Center, also rejected the Trump campaign's suggestion that the trip isn't connected to the 1993 standoff and what means to many members of the far-right.
"Give me a break! There's no reason to go to Waco, Texas, other than one thing," Squire told USA TODAY. "I can't even fathom what that's about other than just a complete dog whistle—actually forget dog whistle, that is just a train whistle to the folks who still remember that event and are still mad about it."
Even some right-wing figures are openly making the connection, as TIMEreported: "Posting on the messaging app Telegram, far-right activist and conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer called the rally in Waco 'very symbolic!' A few MAGA influencers on social media noted the choice of location, with one calling it 'a meaningful shot across the brow of the deep state.'"
Nicole Hemmer, a Vanderbilt University associate professor of history and author of Messengers of the Right: Conservative Media and the Transformation of American Politics and Partisans: The Conservative Revolutionaries Who Remade American Politics in the 1990s, wrote in a Friday opinion piece for CNNthat Trump's trip is "a provocation of historic significance."
"When Trump became president in 2016, rather than becoming synonymous with the federal government as previous chief executives had done, he styled himself as both its victim and its adversary, promoting conspiracies about the deep state and encouraging supporters to keep him in power by any means necessary," Hemmer highlighted. "In choosing Waco as the kickoff site for his campaign rallies, he has signaled that his courtship of extremist groups will continue, and that he sees his role as a pivotal figure in the far-right mythos as central to his efforts to retake the presidency."
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'No One's... Having Fun': Surveys Show Soaring US Economic Pessimism
"An overwhelming share of Americans aren't confident their children's lives will be better than their own."
Mar 24, 2023
A pair of polls published Friday revealed that the rising cost of living is causing financial strain for most Americans—especially people with lower incomes—and that pessimism about the state and future of the country's economy is pervasive and spreading.
A
Wall Street Journal/NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll found that 80% of 1,019 respondents said the nation's economy is in "poor" or "not so good" condition. Asked about the future of the economy, 47% of those polled said they believe it will be worse in a year, while just 15% said they think it improve. Thirty-eight percent of respondents said the economy will be in about the same shape a year from now.
The pessimistic economic outlook can be summed up in one survey question: Asked if they felt confident that life for their children's generation "will be better than it has been for us," only 21% of respondents answered affirmatively.
The Hillnoted that 42% of people who took a similar survey in 2001 said they didn't think their children would enjoy better lives than theirs. Today, that figure has soared to 78%.
Other survey findings include:
- 92% said that rising costs of living is creating some degree of financial strain in their lives, or will cause problems if prices keep rising;
- 52% said it would be difficult to find a job with another employer with approximately the same income and fringe benefits they have now;
- 56% said a four-year undergraduate degree isn't worth the cost because people often graduate without specific job skills and with a large amount of debt; and
- 44% said their personal finances are in worse shape than they imagined for themselves at this stage of life.
Despite the respondents' economic pessimism, 68% of people polled said they were "pretty happy" or "very happy" in life.
The Associated Pressand NORC—the University of Chicago's research arm—published a separate poll Friday that found "about half of U.S. adults in households earning less than $60,000 annually and about 4 in 10 of those in households earning $60,000 to $100,000 say they're very stressed by their personal finances."
According to the AP:
About three-quarters of adults across income groups say their household expenses are higher now than they were a year ago, but those in households earning less than $100,000 a year are more likely than those in higher-income households to say they also have higher debt. Those facing a combination of rising debt and expenses overwhelmingly say their financial situation is a major source of stress.
One 76-year-old woman interviewed by the APsaid that "there's no comfort zone in their finances—no vacation" for people like her, who are " just getting by."
"Medications are expensive. Groceries. No one's living large or having fun," she added. "They should be having fun."
A 28-year-old single mother who works at an Alabama Walmart told the AP: "I used to do three grocery trips a month. Now it's one-and-a-half at the most."
"We're just gonna have to cut back on a lot of things," she added.
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