December, 21 2017, 02:30pm EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Neil Gormley, Staff Attorney, Earthjustice, (202) 797-5239, ngormley@earthjustice.org
Daveon Coleman, Press Secretary, Earthjustice, (608) 216-4648, dcoleman@earthjustice.org
Michael Burger, Volunteer Attorney, Columbia Environmental Law Clinic, Executive Director, Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, (212) 854-2372, mburger@law.columbia.edu
Susan J. Kraham, Senior Staff Attorney, Columbia Environmental Law Clinic, 212 854-4291, skraha@law.columbia.edu
Tiffany Challe, Communications Associate, CELC/Sabin Center, (212) 854-0594, tc2868@columbia.edu
Doctors and Scientists Challenge Removal of EPA Science Advisers
Illegal Policy Undermines Integrity of Science and Threatens Public Health.
WASHINGTON
Today, a coalition of doctors, scientists, and professional groups are filing a lawsuit challenging EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt's attempt to remove highly qualified, independent scientists from advisory committees that ensure the integrity of science at the agency. EPA advisory committees provide crucial scientific and technical information to inform EPA decisions and review the scientific accuracy of EPA findings across a wide range of agency programs. Under a new policy, Pruitt is removing publicly funded scientists from the committees and replacing them with advocates for the polluting industries EPA is charged with regulating.
The parties to the suit are Physicians for Social Responsibility, National Hispanic Medical Association, and the International Society for Children's Health and Environment, on behalf of their members, and Professor Edward Avol, represented by the public-interest law firm Earthjustice, together with independent scientists Dr. Robyn Wilson and Dr. Joseph Arvai, represented by the Columbia Environmental Law Clinic, Morningside Heights Legal Services at Columbia Law School.
"If we can't do this work, we can't protect public health," said Deborah Cory-Slechta, a member of Physicians for Social Responsibility and a Professor of Environmental Medicine, Pediatrics, and Public Health Sciences at the University of Rochester Medical Center. Dr. Cory-Slechta conducts research to better understand the harmful effects of air pollution on the brain. Because she is a current member of the EPA Chemical Assessment Advisory Committee, the new policy makes her ineligible for EPA research grants.
"We're standing up to protect scientific integrity because Hispanic health care professionals and the communities they serve need a strong, effective EPA to safeguard their health," said Dr. Elena Rios, President of the National Hispanic Medical Association. "Scott Pruitt should not be allowed to use selective science to undermine critical health protections."
"EPA's effort to purge independent scientists from its advisory committees has harmful implications for the nation's health," said Physicians for Social Responsibility program director Barbara Gottlieb. "Losing top-flight academic researchers, and replacing them with industry-dependent voices, will undermine actions to protect us from toxic pollutants and life-threatening climate change. If EPA won't abandon this harmful approach, we're happy to take them to court."
"Publicly funded researchers who have devoted their professional lives to understanding these issues help EPA make the best use of limited resources, address gaps in scientific understanding, and leverage the best peer-reviewed research," said Professor Ed Avol of the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California, who joined the organizations' lawsuit as an affected individual. "It's discouraging to see that the Administrator of the very agency charged with protecting the public's environmental health doesn't value those researchers' participation."
"They're claiming the academic scientists and doctors are biased and then replacing them with industry representatives," said Earthjustice attorney Neil Gormley, the lead attorney on the case. "The hypocrisy is kind of stunning."
"This new directive by the Administrator is unnecessary, at best, and an explicit attack on science-informed policy, at worst," said Dr. Robyn Wilson, an Associate Professor of Risk Analysis and Decision Science in the School of Environment and Natural Resources at the Ohio State University. Wilson joined the lawsuit as one of the members of the Science Advisory Board forcibly removed as a result of the Directive. "There are already procedures in place to avoid a potential conflict-of-interest among advisory board members, which makes this latest effort seem to be more about stacking the board with members who will support the new Administration's deregulatory agenda."
"This is a classic case of the fox setting up shop in the henhouse," said Dr. Joseph Arvai, a former member of the EPA's Chartered Science Advisory Board. Dr. Arvai, who joined the suit as an affected individual, is the Max McGraw Professor of Sustainable Enterprise at the School for Environment & Sustainability, and the Ross School of Business, at the University of Michigan. "The Pruitt directive unfairly and unlawfully bars some of the nation's leading environmental and health scientists from providing science advice to the EPA; at the same time, it allows scientists from EPA-regulated companies and industries, as well junk scientists hired by their lobbyists, to rubber stamp rules and regulations that will compromise human and environmental health across the United States. Enough is enough."
"Scott Pruitt's directive is entirely unprecedented," said Michael Burger, a volunteer attorney with the Columbia Environmental Law Clinic and Executive Director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School. "Government agencies have relied on scientific experts serving as advisors and consultants for more than 50 years. Nobody before now has ever thought to ban all scientists receiving grants of any kind from an agency from serving in any way on its advisory committees. That's because it makes no sense."
The complaint filed today in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia explains that Pruitt's new policy is an illegal attempt to override federal ethics rules and that it is arbitrarily biased in favor of polluting industries. If it's allowed to remain in effect, the policy will undermine the integrity of EPA science and introduce pro-polluter bias into agency decisions and programs.
The complaint asks the Court to declare the policy unlawful and arbitrary and throw it out. It also asks the Court to prohibit EPA from removing any more scientists under the policy and direct EPA to reinstate the scientists who were disqualified.
The publicly funded scientists being removed by Pruitt are experts and leaders in their fields of study, including cancer, children's health, asthma and other respiratory diseases, epidemiology, the hazards posed by chemicals in the home, and risk analysis and decision science. Over several years of distinguished service, they have helped ensure that EPA makes decisions based on scientific merit and not on politics.
Pruitt's chosen replacements appear handpicked to put the interests of polluting industries ahead of sound science, public health, and the environment. Virtually all of them have financial connections to polluting industries, hold pro-pollution views that are outside the scientific mainstream, or both. Specifically, of Pruitt's 18 new appointees to the EPA Science Advisory Board,
- 7 currently draw paychecks from polluting industries;
- 4 more have a history of taking money from polluters; and
- 5 more have a history of echoing the talking points of industrial polluters and rejecting mainstream science.
One of Pruitt's appointees to the Science Advisory Board, Robert Phalen, claims that air pollution is good for children and that "modern air is a little too clean for optimum health." Michael Honeycutt, another Pruitt appointee, denies the overwhelming scientific evidence that smog causes asthma and has suggested that more smog would be a "health benefit." As a regulator in Texas, he has opposed stricter limits on mercury and arsenic releases, and actually weakened state protections for benzene, a widespread and extremely potent carcinogen. Honeycutt will now chair the Science Advisory Board.
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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As Senate Prepares for NDAA Vote, Progressive Caucus Says It Is 'Past Time' to Slash Pentagon Budget
"This legislation on balance moves our country and our national priorities in the wrong direction," said Rep. Pramila Jayapal.
Dec 12, 2024
As Senate Democrats prepared to move forward with a procedural vote on the annual defense budget package that passed in the House earlier this week, the Congressional Progressive Caucus outlined its objections to the legislation and called for the Pentagon budget to be cut, with military funding freed up to "reinvest in critical human needs."
CPC Chair Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) said following the passage of the Servicemember Quality of Life Improvement and National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for 2025 (H.R. 5009) that "it should alarm every American taxpayer that we are nearing a trillion-dollar annual budget for an agency rampant with waste, fraud, and abuse."
Jayapal, who was one of 140 lawmakers to oppose the package, emphasized that the Pentagon has failed seven consecutive annual audits.
Despite being the only federal agency to never have passed a federal audit, said Jayapal, the Department of Defense "continues to receive huge boosts to funding every year. Our constituents deserve better."
As Common Dreams reported last month, more than half of the department's annual budget now goes to military contractors that consistently overcharge the government, contributing to the Pentagon's inability to fully account for trillions of taxpayer dollars.
The $883.7 billion legislation that was advanced by the House on Wednesday would pour more money into the Pentagon's coffers. The package includes more than $500 million in Israeli military aid and two $357 million nuclear-powered attack submarine despite the Pentagon requesting only one, and would cut more than $621 million from President Joe Biden's budget request for climate action initiatives.
Jayapal noted that the legislation—which was passed with the support of 81 Democrats and 200 Republicans—also includes anti-transgender provisions, barring the children of military service members from receiving gender-affirming healthcare in "the first federal statute targeting LGBTQ people since the 1990s when Congress adopted 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' and the Defense of Marriage Act."
"This dangerous bigotry cannot be tolerated, let alone codified into federal law," said Jayapal.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Thursday that the legislation "has some very good things we Democrats wanted in it, it has some bad things we wouldn't have put in there, and some things that were left out," and indicated that he had filed cloture for the first procedural vote on the NDAA.
The vote is expected to take place early next week, and 60 votes are needed to begin debate on the package.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), a longtime critic of exorbitant U.S. military spending, said in a floor speech on Wednesday that he plans to vote no on the budget.
"While middle-class and working-class families are struggling to survive, we supposedly just don't have the financial resources to help them," he said. "We just cannot afford to build more housing, we just cannot afford to provide quality childcare to our kids or to support public education, or to provide healthcare to all."
"But when the military industrial complex and all of their well-paid lobbyists come marching in to Capitol Hill," he continued, "somehow or another, there is more than enough money for Congress to provide them with virtually everything that they need."
Jayapal noted that the funding package includes substantive pay raises for service members and new investments in housing, healthcare, childcare, and other support for their families.
"Progressives will always fight to increase pay for our service members and ensure that our veterans are well taken care of," said Jayapal. "However, this legislation on balance moves our country and our national priorities in the wrong direction."
By cutting military spending, she said, the federal government could invest in the needs of all Americans, not just members of the military, "without sacrificing our national security or service member wages."
"It's past time we stop padding the pockets of price gouging military contractors who benefit from corporate consolidation," said Jayapal, "and reallocate that money to domestic needs."
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Dems Urge Biden to Limit Presidential Authority to Launch Nuclear War Before Trump Takes Charge
"As Donald Trump prepares to return to the Oval Office, it is more important than ever to take the power to start a nuclear war out of the hands of a single individual and ensure that Congress's constitutional role is respected and fulfilled," wrote Sen. Edward Markey and Rep. Ted Lieu.
Dec 12, 2024
Two Democratic lawmakers sent a letter to outgoing U.S. President Joe Biden Thursday, urging him to place more checks on potential nuclear weapons use by mandating that a president must obtain authorization from Congress before initiating a nuclear first strike.
The letter writers, Sen. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) and Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.), argue that "such a policy would provide clear directives for the military to follow: A president could order a nuclear launch only if (1) Congress had approved the decision, providing a constitutional check on executive power or (2) the United States had already been attacked with a nuclear weapon. This would be infinitely safer than our current doctrine."
The two write that time is of the essence: "As Donald Trump prepares to return to the Oval Office, it is more important than ever to take the power to start a nuclear war out of the hands of a single individual and ensure that Congress's constitutional role is respected and fulfilled."
The Constitution vests Congress, not the president, with the power to declare war (though presidents have used military force without getting the OK from Congress on multiple occasions in modern history, according to the National Constitution Center).
During the Cold War, when nuclear weapons policy was produced, speed was seen as essential to deterrence, according to Jon Wolfsthal, the director of global risk at the Federation of American Scientists, who wrote an op-ed for The Washington Post last year that makes a similar argument to Markey and Lieu.
"There is no reason today to rely on speedy decision-making during situations in which the United States might launch first. Even as relations with Moscow are at historic lows, we are worlds removed from the Cold War's dominant knife's-edge logic," he wrote.
While nuclear tensions today may not be quite as high as they were during the apex of the Cold War, fears of nuclear confrontation have been heightened due to poor relations between the United States and Russia over the ongoing war in Ukraine, among other issues. Last month, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree lowering the threshold for potential nuclear weapons use not long after the U.S. greenlit Ukraine's use of U.S.-supplied long range weapons in its fight against Russia.
This is not the first time Markey and Lieu have pushed for greater guardrails on nuclear first-use. The two are the authors of the Restricting First Use of Nuclear Weapons Act, a proposed bill first introduced in 2017 that would bar a U.S. president from launching a nuclear first strike without the consent of Congress.
"We first introduced this act during the Obama administration not as a partisan effort, but to make the larger point that current U.S. policy, which gives the president sole authority to launch nuclear weapons without any input from Congress, is dangerous," they wrote.
In their letter, Markey and Lieu also recount an episode from the first Trump presidency when, shortly after the January 6 insurrection, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley ordered his staff to come to him if they received a nuclear strike order from Trump.
But Milley's ability to intervene was limited, according to Lieu and Markey, because his role is advisory and "the president can unilaterally make a launch decision and implement it directly without informing senior leaders." They argue this episode is a sign that the rules themselves must change.
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Amnesty Urges War Crimes Probe of 'Indiscriminate' Israeli Attacks on Lebanon
"The latest evidence of unlawful airstrikes during Israel's most recent offensive in Lebanon underscores the urgent need for all states, especially the United States, to suspend arms transfers," said one campaigner.
Dec 12, 2024
Amnesty International on Thursday called for a war crimes investigation into recent Israeli airstrikes in Lebanon that killed dozens of civilians, as well as a suspension of arms transfers to Israel as it attacks Gaza, the West Bank, and Syria.
In a briefing paper titled The Sky Rained Missiles, Amnesty "documented four illustrative cases in which unlawful Israeli strikes killed at least 49 civilians" in Lebanon in September and October amid an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) campaign of invasion and bombardment that Lebanese officials say has killed or wounded more than 20,000 people.
"Amnesty International found that Israeli forces unlawfully struck residential buildings in the village of al-Ain in northern Bekaa on September 29, the village of Aitou in northern Lebanon on October 14, and in Baalbeck city on October 21," the rights group said. "Israeli forces also unlawfully attacked the municipal headquarters in Nabatieh in southern Lebanon on October 16."
Erika Guevara Rosas, Amnesty's senior director for research, advocacy, policy, and campaigns, said in a statement that "these four attacks are emblematic of Israel's shocking disregard for civilian lives in Lebanon and their willingness to flout international law."
The September 29 attack "destroyed the house of the Syrian al-Shaar family, killing all nine members of the family who were sleeping inside," the report states.
"This is a civilian house, there is no military target in it whatsoever," village mukhtar, or leader, Youssef Jaafar told Amnesty. "It is full of kids. This family is well-known in town."
On October 16, Israel bombed the Nabatieh municipal complex, killing Mayor Ahmad Khalil and 10 other people.
"The airstrike took place without warning, just as the municipality's crisis unit was meeting to coordinate deliveries of aid, including food, water, and medicine, to residents and internally displaced people who had fled bombardment in other parts of southern Lebanon," Amnesty said, adding that there was no apparent military target in the immediate area.
In the deadliest single strike detailed in the Amnesty report, IDF bombardment believed to be targeting a suspected Hezbollah member killed 23 civilians forcibly displaced from southern Lebanon in Aitou on October 14.
"The youngest casualty was Aline, a 5-month-old baby who was flung from the house into a pickup truck nearby and was found by rescue workers the day after the strike," Amnesty said.
Survivor Jinane Hijazi told Amnesty: "I've lost everything; my entire family, my parents, my siblings, my daughter. I wish I had died that day too."
As the report notes:
A fragment of the munition found at the site of the attack was analyzed by an Amnesty International weapons expert and based upon its size, shape, and the scalloped edges of the heavy metal casing, identified as most likely a MK-80 series aerial bomb, which would mean it was at least a 500-pound bomb. The United States is the primary supplier of these types of munitions to Israel.
"The means and method of this attack on a house full of civilians likely would make this an indiscriminate attack and it also may have been disproportionate given the presence of a large number of civilians at the time of the strike," Amnesty stressed. "It should be investigated as a war crime."
The October 21 strike destroyed a building housing 13 members of the Othman family, killing two women and four children and wounding seven others.
"My son woke me up; he was thirsty and wanted to drink. I gave him water and he went back to sleep, hugging his brother," survivor Fatima Drai—who lost her two sons Hassan, 5, and Hussein, 3, in the attack—told Amnesty.
"When he hugged his brother, I smiled and thought, I'll tell his father how our son is when he comes back," she added. "I went to pray, and then everything around me exploded. A gas canister exploded, burning my feet, and within seconds, it consumed my kids' room."
Guevara Rosas said: "These attacks must be investigated as war crimes. The Lebanese government must urgently call for a special session at the U.N. Human Rights Council to establish an independent investigative mechanism into the alleged violations and crimes committed by all parties in this conflict. It must also grant the International Criminal Court jurisdiction over Rome Statute crimes committed on Lebanese territory."
"Israel has an appalling track record of carrying out unlawful airstrikes in Gaza and past wars in Lebanon taking a devastating toll on civilians."
Last month, the court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in connection with Israel's 433-day Gaza onslaught, which has left more than 162,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing in the embattled enclave.
The tribunal also issued a warrant for the arrest of Hamas leader Mohammed Diab Ibrahim Al-Masri for alleged crimes committed during and after the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, in which more than 1,100 people were killed and over 240 others were kidnapped.
Meanwhile, the International Court of Justice is weighing a genocide case brought by South Africa against Israel. Last week, Amnesty published a report accusing Israel of genocide in Gaza.
The United States—which provides Israel with tens of billions of dollars in military aid and diplomatic cover—has also been accused of complicity in Israeli war crimes in Palestine and Lebanon.
"Israel has an appalling track record of carrying out unlawful airstrikes in Gaza and past wars in Lebanon taking a devastating toll on civilians," Guevara Rosas said. "The latest evidence of unlawful air strikes during Israel's most recent offensive in Lebanon underscores the urgent need for all states, especially the United States, to suspend arms transfers to Israel due to the risk they will be used to commit serious violations of international humanitarian law."
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