December, 19 2017, 12:30pm EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Robin Cooley 303-263-2472 or rcooley@earthjustice.org
Kate Kiely, NRDC, 212-727-4592 or kkiely@nrdc.org
Gabby Brown, Sierra Club, 202-495-3051 or gabby.brown@sierraclub.org
Bruce Pendery, The Wilderness Society, 435-760-6217 or bruce_pendery@tws.org
Lisa DeVille, Fort Berthold Protectors of Water and Earth Rights, lisadeville2013@gmail.com, 701-421-8020
Groups Sue Over Trump Administration Rollback of Protections Against Methane Waste on Public Lands
Safeguards Reduce Climate Emissions and Cancer-Causing Air Pollution from Oil and Gas Industry.
SAN FRANCISCO
A coalition of conservation and tribal citizen groups today filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California challenging the Trump Administration's suspension of the Bureau of Land Management's Waste Prevention Rule and seeking to have these protections put back in place. The rule requires companies drilling on public and tribal lands to use common-sense, proven measures to reduce natural gas that is leaked, vented or flared.
This is the latest in a series of unsuccessful attempts by the oil and gas industry and the Trump administration to block the rule, which went into effect in January 2017.
Industry trade groups and several states previously tried, and failed, to get a court to prevent the rule from going into effect. In May 2017, the U.S. Senate voted not to consider repeal of the rule in a bipartisan, 51 to 49 vote. The Trump administration then unilaterally suspended parts of the rule, but that action was struck down by a California court in October.
Despite this ruling, on December 8, the administration once again attempted to stay compliance for one year while it rewrites the rule.
The rule was designed to update waste regulations that were more than 30 years old and did not reflect the dramatic advances in oil and gas drilling technology or the rapid expansion of drilling operations on public lands in recent years. The rule saves taxpayers millions of dollars in royalties every year and reduces harmful cancer-causing and smog-forming pollution. It also reduces pollution from methane, a greenhouse gas 87 times more powerful than carbon dioxide.
The rule implements cost-effective strategies used by leading companies to reduce methane waste and already in place in many states like Colorado and Wyoming. These strategies include requiring companies to monitor wells for leaks, repair faulty equipment, reduce noisy and wasteful flaring, and capture unnecessary natural gas emissions.
The rule was the result of years of deliberation and public input, including public hearings in New Mexico, Oklahoma, Colorado and North Dakota. The federal government received more than 300,000 written comments that were overwhelmingly in support of the rule.
"Rather than moving forward to implement this common-sense rule that prevents waste, saves millions of taxpayer dollars, and protects the air we breathe, the Trump administration is wasting everyone's time with yet another attempt to stop the rule from taking effect, all to appease its friends in the oil and gas industry," Earthjustice attorney Robin Cooley said. "The public has made its support for this rule crystal clear, and we will use every legal tool at our disposal to block the Trump administration from rolling back these important protections for our public lands."
"Once again, Donald Trump and Ryan Zinke are showing where their priorities lie: pandering to the desires of big polluters above all else, including the health of our communities," said Lena Moffitt, senior director of the Sierra Club's Our Wild America Campaign. "BLM's methane rule would help fight climate change and protect our public lands and communities. Undermining these protections is a slap in the face to the majority of Americans who support them, and to the many people who will breathe polluted air as a result. We will continue to fight to ensure that these common-sense protections remain in place."
"This is yet another handout to industry at the expense of the American people," said Meleah Geertsma, senior attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council. "These common-sense measures prevent unnecessary waste that fuels climate change, creates smog, and can cause cancer--all while saving taxpayers money. Once again, when the oil and gas industry says 'Jump,' the Trump administration says 'How high?' "
"Secretary Zinke rushed this attempt to suspend the BLM's waste prevention rule without giving tribal members a meaningful opportunity to comment," said Lisa DeVille, president of the Fort Berthold Protectors of Water and Earth Rights (POWER). "We spent years working with BLM to finalize this rule to reduce wasteful gas flares. What this suspension means is more flaring and degraded air quality on Fort Berthold. Secretary Zinke needs to start listening more to the people, rather than the oil and gas industry."
"The BLM's abandonment of its waste rule is an affront to all Americans. In less than one year, the industry and its allies have unsuccessfully tried three times to eliminate this rule, and we believe they will lose this newest court battle," said Bruce Pendery, an attorney with The Wilderness Society. "No matter how many special interests the Trump administration has on its side in its mindless pursuit of energy dominance, it cannot avoid the Interior Department's legal obligations to protect taxpayers and the planet."
Earthjustice represents several of the Conservation and Tribal Citizen Groups that filed the lawsuit challenging BLM's illegal suspension of the Rule: Sierra Club, Fort Berthold Protectors of Water & Earth Rights, The Wilderness Society, Western Organization of Resource Councils and Natural Resources Defense Council.
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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'The Next Recession Starts Here': Trump Team Weighs Abolishing Bank Regulators
The president-elect's advisers are reportedly discussing plans to shrink or eliminate key bank watchdogs, including the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.
Dec 13, 2024
President-elect Donald Trump and his advisers are reportedly considering plans to weaken—or abolish altogether—top bank regulators, including the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.
The Wall Street Journalreported Thursday that members of Trump's transition team and the new Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency have asked nominees under consideration to head the FDIC and OCC if the bank watchdogs could be eliminated and have their functions absorbed by the Treasury Department, which is set to be run by a billionaire hedge fund manager and crypto enthusiast.
"Bank executives are optimistic President-elect Donald Trump will ease a host of regulations on capital cushions and consumer protections, as well as scrutiny of consolidation in the industry," the Journal reported. "But FDIC deposit insurance is considered near sacred. Any move that threatened to undermine even the perception of deposit insurance could quickly ripple through banks and in a crisis might compound customer fears."
The Trump team's internal and fluid discussions about the fate of the key bank regulators broadly aligns with Project 2025's proposal to "merge the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the National Credit Union Administration, and the Federal Reserve's non-monetary supervisory and regulatory functions."
The FDIC, which is primarily funded by bank insurance premiums, was established during the Great Depression to restore public trust in the nation's banking system, and the agency played a central role in navigating the 2023 bank failures that threatened a systemic crisis.
Observers warned that gutting the FDIC and OCC could catalyze another economic meltdown.
"The next recession starts here," tech journalist Jacob Silverman warned in response to the Journal's reporting.
Eric Rauchway, a historian of the New Deal, wrote that "even Milton Friedman appreciated the FDIC," underscoring the extreme nature of the incoming Trump administration's deregulatory ambitions.
Musk, the world's wealthiest man, is also pushing for the elimination of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, an agency established in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis.
The Journal noted Thursday that "Rep. Andy Barr, a Republican from Kentucky and Trump ally on the House Financial Services Committee, has backed the plan to eliminate or drastically alter the CFPB and said he wants to get rid of what he calls 'one-size-fits-all' regulation for banks."
Barr has received millions of dollars in campaign donations from the financial sector and "introduced many pieces of pro-industry legislation, including significant rollbacks of protections stemming from the 2008 financial crisis," according to the watchdog group Accountable.US.
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United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said Thursday that he is "deeply concerned" by Israel's "recent and extensive violations of Syria's sovereignty and territorial integrity," including a ground invasion and airstrikes carried out by the Israel Defense Forces in the war-torn Mideastern nation.
Guterres "is particularly concerned over the hundreds of Israeli airstrikes on several locations in Syria" and has stressed the "urgent need to de-escalate violence on all fronts throughout the country," said U.N. spokesperson Stephane Dujarric.
Israel claims its invasion and bombardment of Syria—which come as the United States and Turkey have also violated Syrian sovereignty with air and ground attacks—are meant to create a security buffer along the countries' shared border in the wake of last week's fall of former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and amid the IDF's ongoing assault on Gaza, which has killed or wounded more than 162,000 Palestinians and is the subject of an International Court of Justice genocide case.
While Israel argues that its invasion of Syria does not violate a 1974 armistice agreement between the two countries because the Assad dynasty no longer rules the neighboring nation, Dujarric said Guterres maintains that Israel must uphold its obligations under the deal, "including by ending all unauthorized presence in the area of separation and refraining from any action that would undermine the cease-fire and stability in Golan."
Israel conquered the western two-thirds of the Golan Heights in 1967 and has illegally occupied it ever since, annexing the seized lands in 1981.
Other countries including France, Russia, and Saudi Arabia have criticized Israel's invasion, while the United States defended the move.
"The Syrian army abandoned its positions in the area... which potentially creates a vacuum that could have been filled by terrorist organizations," U.S. State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said at a press briefing earlier this week. "Israel has said that these actions are temporary to defend its borders. These are not permanent actions... We support all sides upholding the 1974 disengagement agreement."
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Sanders Says 'Political Movement,' Not Murder, Is the Path to Medicare for All
"Killing people is not the way we're going to reform our healthcare system," he said. "The way we're going to reform our healthcare system is having people come together."
Dec 12, 2024
Addressing the assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson and conversations it has sparked about the country's for-profit system, longtime Medicare for All advocate Sen. Bernie Sanders on Wednesday condemned the murder and stressed that getting to universal coverage will require a movement challenging corporate money in politics.
"Look, when we talk about the healthcare crisis, in my view, and I think the view of a majority of Americans, the current system is broken, it is dysfunctional, it is cruel, and it is wildly inefficient—far too expensive," said Sanders (I-Vt.), whose position is backed up by various polls.
"The reason we have not joined virtually every other major country on Earth in guaranteeing healthcare to all people as a human right is the political power and financial power of the insurance industry and drug companies," he told Jacobin. "It will take a political revolution in this country to get Congress to say, 'You know what, we're here to represent ordinary people, to provide quality care to ordinary people as a human right,' and not to worry about the profits of insurance and drug companies."
Asked about Thompson's alleged killer—26-year-old Luigi Mangione, whose reported manifesto railed against the nation's expensive healthcare system and low life expectancy—Sanders said: "You don't kill people. It's abhorrent. I condemn it wholeheartedly. It was a terrible act. But what it did show online is that many, many people are furious at the health insurance companies who make huge profits denying them and their families the healthcare that they desperately need."
"What you're seeing, the outpouring of anger at the insurance companies, is a reflection of how people feel about the current healthcare system."
"What you're seeing, the outpouring of anger at the insurance companies, is a reflection of how people feel about the current healthcare system," he continued, noting the tens of thousands of Americans who die each year because they can't get to a doctor.
"Killing people is not the way we're going to reform our healthcare system," Sanders added. "The way we're going to reform our healthcare system is having people come together and understanding that it is the right of every American to be able to walk into a doctor's office when they need to and not have to take out their wallet."
"The way we're going to bring about the kind of fundamental changes we need in healthcare is, in fact, by a political movement which understands the government has got to represent all of us, not just the 1%," the senator told Jacobin.
The 83-year-old Vermonter, who was just reelected to what he says is likely his last six-year term, is an Independent but caucuses with Democrats and sought their presidential nomination in 2016 and 2020. He has urged the Democratic Party to recognize why some working-class voters have abandoned it since Republicans won the White House and both chambers of Congress last month. A refusal to take on insurance and drug companies and overhaul the healthcare system, he argues, is one reason.
Sanders—one of the few members of Congress who regularly talks about Medicare for All—isn't alone in suggesting that unsympathetic responses to Thompson's murder can be explained by a privatized healthcare system that fails so many people.
In addition to highlighting Sanders' interview on social media, Congressman Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) pointed out to Business Insider on Wednesday that "you've got thousands of people that are sharing their stories of frustration" in the wake of Thompson's death.
Khanna—a co-sponsor of the Medicare for All Act, led in the House of Representatives by Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.)—made the case that you can recognize those stories without accepting the assassination.
"You condemn the murder of an insurance executive who was a father of two kids," he said. "At the same time, you say there's obviously an outpouring behavior of people whose claims are being denied, and we need to reform the system."
Two other Medicare for All advocates, Reps. Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), also made clear to Business Insider that they oppose Thompson's murder but understand some of the responses to it.
"Of course, we don't want to see the chaos that vigilantism presents," said Ocasio-Cortez. "We also don't want to see the extreme suffering that millions of Americans confront when your life changes overnight from a horrific diagnosis, and people are led to just some of the worst, not just health events, but the worst financial events of their and their family's lives."
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.)—a co-sponsor of Sanders' Medicare for All Act—similarly toldHuffPost in a Tuesday interview, "The visceral response from people across this country who feel cheated, ripped off, and threatened by the vile practices of their insurance companies should be a warning to everyone in the healthcare system."
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After facing some criticism for those comments, Warren added Wednesday: "Violence is never the answer. Period... I should have been much clearer that there is never a justification for murder."
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