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For Immediate Release
January, 04 2018, 02:00pm EDT
Contact:
Email:,communications@environmentamerica.org
Offshore Drilling Proposal Threatens America's Coasts and Marine Wildlife
Bidding for offshore oil and gas leases could begin as early as 2019 in almost all federal waters under a new Trump administration proposal. Environment America denounced the plan, which would open vast new areas of the Atlantic, Arctic and Pacific Oceans and the Gulf of Mexico to drilling.
WASHINGTON
Bidding for offshore oil and gas leases could begin as early as 2019 in almost all federal waters under a new Trump administration proposal. Environment America denounced the plan, which would open vast new areas of the Atlantic, Arctic and Pacific Oceans and the Gulf of Mexico to drilling.
"Oil and gas drilling is an inherently dirty and dangerous business. There is simply no safe way to drill," said Kelsey Lamp, Oceans Associate with Environment America. "By allowing offshore drilling in more of our coastal waters, the Trump administration increases the chances of a dangerous oil spill. Opening these areas to drilling endangers sea life including whales, dolphins and sea turtles, as well as the life and livelihoods of Americans in coastal communities."
Public opposition to the proposed plan could still make a difference. It did during the Obama administration.
During President Barack Obama's second term, his administration, under pressure from coastal communities and environmentalists, created a five-year offshore drilling plan that protected the Atlantic and Arctic from drilling. Then, just before leaving office, President Obama announced additional protections for parts of the Arctic and Atlantic. But after President Obama left office, President Donald Trump signed an Executive Order vacating these protections. The matter is currently being litigated.
Today's proposed plan is only the second stage in the approval process -- and it is open to public comment. Once the Trump administration formally releases the plan, the public will have an opportunity to comment.
"Everyone who cares about clean and healthy oceans should make his or her voice heard by commenting against this proposal," said Lamp. "We will fight for our coasts by fighting this plan."
By opening these areas to drilling, the Trump administration will be acting counter to the best available science -- and the will of coastal residents. The past two years has seen an unprecedented outcry against drilling. Communities up and down the Atlantic coast have passed resolutions against drilling, and businesses have organized an anti-drilling alliance. Similar organizing has also taken place across the country in California.
"Instead of threatening our waterways and marine wildlife, President Trump should pay attention to the thousands of citizens, fishermen, and business owners along the Atlantic Coast and the millions of Americans from Alaska to Maine who have already said 'no' to offshore drilling," said Lamp. "Today's action is the wrong decision and we will do whatever it takes to block proposals to drill off our coasts."
With Environment America, you protect the places that all of us love and promote core environmental values, such as clean air to breathe, clean water to drink, and clean energy to power our lives. We're a national network of 29 state environmental groups with members and supporters in every state. Together, we focus on timely, targeted action that wins tangible improvements in the quality of our environment and our lives.
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DOJ Slammed for Ending Efforts to Tackle Racist Policing
One critic called the move "an unprecedented abandonment of the Department of Justice's responsibility to enforce civil rights laws and protect communities from unlawful police abuse."
May 22, 2025
Racial justice advocates decried Wednesday's announcement by the U.S. Department of Justice that it will end law enforcement reform and accountability efforts, including the Biden administration's agreements with the cities of Minneapolis and Louisville—a move that came just days before the fifth anniversary of George Floyd's murder by a Minneapolis cop.
The Department of Justice's (DOJ) Civil Rights Division said it is dropping lawsuits against the Minneapolis and Louisville police departments and ending pending consent decrees—court-enforceable agreements under which law enforcement agencies commit to reform—with the two cities. The deals, which have been submitted to judges for approval, have been held up in federal court as the Trump administration has sought to block their implementation.
The Civil Rights Division said it "will also be closing its investigations into, and retracting the Biden administration's findings of constitutional violations on the part of," the Louisiana State Police and police departments in Phoenix; Memphis; Oklahoma City; Trenton, New Jersey; and Mount Vernon, New York.
To “disappear” DOJ findings like this is the most disturbing and disgraceful part. A key advantage of DOJ pattern & practice investigations is that DOJ has the resources to absorb the cost of generating the findings that indiv civ rights groups suing police depts find onerous & often prohibitive.
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— Sherrilyn Ifill ( @sifill.bsky.social) May 21, 2025 at 8:02 AM
Civil rights lawyer Benjamin Crump, who represents the families of George Floyd—murdered by then-Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin on May 25, 2020—and Breoanna Taylor, who was killed earlier that year by Louisville police, called the DOJ announcement a "slap in the face."
"Just days before the fifth anniversary of George Floyd's murder—a moment that galvanized a global movement for justice—the U.S. Department of Justice has chosen to turn its back on the very communities it pledged to protect," Crump said in a statement Wednesday.
"By walking away from consent decrees in Minneapolis and Louisville, and closing its investigation into the Memphis Police Department while retracting findings of serious constitutional violations, the DOJ is not just rolling back reform, it is attempting to erase truth and contradicting the very principles for which justice stands," he asserted.
"These consent decrees and investigations were not symbolic gestures, they were lifelines for communities crying out for change, rooted in years of organizing, suffering, and advocacy," Crump continued, adding that the DOJ's moves "will only deepen the divide between law enforcement and the people they are sworn to protect and serve."
Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) lamented the DOJ move and accused the Trump administration of acting "like Breonna Taylor and George Floyd's lives didn't mean a damn thing."
Democratic Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said his city would proceed with reforms despite the DOJ's announcement, while questioning the move's timing.
"The Trump administration is a mess. It is predictable that they would move for a dismissal the very same week that George Floyd was murdered five years ago," he said. "What this shows is that all [President] Donald Trump really cares about is political theater."
The DOJ claimed the Biden administration falsely accused the Minneapolis and Louisville police departments of "widespread patterns of unconstitutional policing practices by wrongly equating statistical disparities with intentional discrimination and heavily relying on flawed methodologies and incomplete data."
"These sweeping consent decrees would have imposed years of micromanagement of local police departments by federal courts and expensive independent monitors, and potentially hundreds of millions of dollars of compliance costs, without a legally or factually adequate basis for doing so," the agency argued.
Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon—the conspiracy theorist who heads the Civil Rights Division despite, or perhaps because of, her troubled history of working against voting, reproductive, LGBTQ+, and other civil rights—said in a statement Wednesday that her agency is ending the Biden administration's "failed experiment of handcuffing local leaders and police departments with factually unjustified consent decrees."
"Overbroad police consent decrees divest local control of policing from communities where it belongs, turning that power over to unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats, often with an anti-police agenda," Dhillon added.
"DOJ's actions today amount to a public declaration that law enforcement agencies are above the law."
Legal Defense Fund director of strategic initiatives Jin Hee Lee called the DOJ announcement "an unprecedented abandonment of the Department of Justice's responsibility to enforce civil rights laws and protect communities from unlawful police abuse."
Lee said the DOJ investigations that led to the consent decrees "revealed a litany of systemic harms to community members, whom officers are sworn to protect—from wanton violence and sexual misconduct to unlawful stops, searches, and arrests, and racially discriminatory policing."
"By abandoning its obligation to pursue legal remedies that would stem this unlawful conduct, DOJ necessarily condones it," Lee added. "DOJ's actions today amount to a public declaration that law enforcement agencies are above the law."
NAACP president Derrick Johnson said on social media, "It's no surprise that Trump's Department of Coverups and Vengeance isn't seeking justice."
"It's been five years, and police reform legislation still hasn't passed in Congress, and police departments still haven't been held accountable," Johnson added, referring to Floyd's murder. "Five years."
Furthermore, speculation is growing over the prospect of Trump pardoning Chauvin. Addressing the possibility, Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walzsaid earlier this week that "if Chauvin's federal conviction is pardoned, he will still have to serve the remainder of his 22-and-a-half-year state prison sentence for murder and manslaughter."
Opponents vowed to fight the Trump administration's civil rights pushback.
"Let me be clear: We will not give up," Crump said. "This movement will not be swayed or deterred by fickle politics. It is anchored in the irrefutable truth that Black lives matter, and that justice should not depend on who is in power."
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Split Supreme Court Won't Allow First Religious Public Charter School in US
Although another case could soon come before the high court, the ACLU still welcomed that, for now, "public schools must remain secular and welcome all students, regardless of faith."
May 22, 2025
Public education and First Amendment advocates on Thursday celebrated the U.S. Supreme Court's refusal to allow the nation's first religious public charter school in Oklahoma—even though the outcome of this case doesn't rule out the possibility of another attempt to establish such an institution.
"Requiring states to allow religious public schools would dismantle religious freedom and public education as we know it," Cecillia Wang, national legal director of the ACLU, said in a statement about the 4-4 decison. "Today, a core American constitutional value remains in place: Public schools must remain secular and welcome all students, regardless of faith."
Wang's group and other partners had filed a lawsuit over St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School on behalf of parents, faith leaders, and public school advocates. Her colleague Daniel Mach, director of the ACLU's Program on Freedom of Religion and Belief, declared Thursday that "the very idea of a religious public school is a constitutional oxymoron."
The new one-page opinion states that "the judgment is affirmed by an equally divided court," which means the Oklahoma Supreme Court's June 2024 ruling against St. Isidore remains in place. There are nine members of the U.S. Supreme Court, but Justice Amy Coney Barrett—who is part of its right-wing supermajority—recused herself from this case.
"While Justice Barrett did not provide an explanation for her recusal, it may be because she is close friends with Nicole Stelle Garnett, a professor at Notre Dame Law School who was an early adviser for St. Isidore," The New York Timesnoted. "Although justices sometimes provide reasons when they recuse themselves, they are not required to do so."
Law Dork's Chris Geidner warned that "a new challenge not requiring her recusal could easily return to the court in short order—especially now that the court has shown its interest in taking on the issue."
In this case, as Common Dreams reported during oral arguments last month, Chief Justice John Roberts appeared to be the deciding vote. Geidner pointed out Thursday that while it seems most likely that he sided with the three liberals, "even that could have been as much of a vote to put off a decision as a substantive ruling on the matter."
Some groups happy with the outcome in this case also highlighted that the battle is expected to continue.
"This is a crucial, if narrow, win for constitutional principles," Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) co-president Annie Laurie Gaylor said in a statement. "A publicly funded religious charter school would have obliterated the wall of separation between state and church. We're relieved that, at least for now, the First Amendment still means what it says."
"The fight isn't over," Gaylor added. "The forces trying to undermine our public schools and constitutional freedoms are already regrouping. FFRF will continue to defend secular education and the rights of all Americans to be free from government-imposed religion."
A key teachers union also weighed in. The American Federation of Teachers had filed an amicus brief in the case and its president, Randi Weingarten, welcomed that the high court on Thursday let stand the Oklahoma decision, "which correctly upheld the separation of church and state and backed the founders' intention to place religious pluralism over sectarianism."
"We are grateful that it upheld the state's highest court's clear and unambiguous ruling to preserve and nurture the roots of our democracy, not tear up its very foundations," Weingarten said in a statement. "We respect and honor religious education. It should be separate from public schooling."
"Public schools, including public charter schools, are funded by taxpayer dollars because they are dedicated to helping all—not just some—children have a shot at success," she stressed. "They are the bedrock of our democracy, and states have long worked to ensure that they remain secular, open, and accessible to all."
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Human Rights Group Blasts Trump Admin for Deporting Hundreds of Non-Costa Ricans to Costa Rica
"These summary expulsions violated the right to seek asylum and the right to a fair hearing and other due process protections prior to deportation," according to a report from Human Rights Watch.
May 22, 2025
Dozens of non-Costa Rican nationals who were deported to Costa Rica by the Trump administration in February say they did not receive an asylum screening interview before being expelled, according to a report released by Human Rights Watch on Thursday.
The report alleges that the U.S. government did not follow the "minimal, if deficient" protections around the right to seek asylum and the right not be returned to harm, and kept those expelled in "inhumane conditions" while they were detained in the United States.
The report explores one instance of the Trump administration expelling migrants to a country besides their country of origin, a tactic the administration has repeatedly reached for as part of its immigration crackdown.
In the report, Human Rights Watch calls on the U.S. government to stop expelling or transferring noncitizens to third countries.
In February, Costa Rica received two flights with 200 deportees, including 81 children, from the U.S. as part of an expulsion agreement, the details of which have not been disclosed, according to the report.
"I genuinely think the [U.S.] authorities treated us so poorly, held us in those horrendous, degrading conditions, to force us to sign those volunteer deportation papers as fast as possible and maybe also to tell others, so that people would be scared to seek asylum, to come to the U.S.," said one 33-year old woman from Russia who was deported to Costa Rica.
In some cases, U.S. officials separated families when carrying out the expulsions to Costa Rica. In one instance, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) sent an Iranian man and his daughter to Costa Rica but kept the girl's stepmother in the U.S., according to the report.
Human Rights Watch interviewed dozens of the migrants sent to Costa Rica and heard stories from those people that, "if true, indicate that people fled persecution based on factors such as ethnicity, religion, gender, family associations, and political opinion."
U.S. law guarantees the right to apply for asylum, and while many of those who spoke to Human Rights Watch appeared to have strong claims, only two out of 36 people interviewed by the group had a screening interview for asylum in the U.S. before being deported to Costa Rica. Almost all of the 36 people said U.S. officials ignored their repeated attempts to request asylum, per the report.
Some of the people whom Human Rights Watch spoke to had been in Mexico and made appointments to present themselves at a U.S. point of entry to seek asylum through an application developed by CBP, CBP One. When the Trump administration canceled all pending appointments through CBP One, some went to U.S. checkpoints to request asylum, while others crossed irregularly, such as by climbing over or through gaps in the border wall and then sought out or "waited for" U.S. border agents, according to the report.
Once apprehended, those who spoke to Human Rights Watch reported conditions such as freezing temperatures, little access to showers, and families being separated while being held at immigration processing centers.
"In every case documented by Human Rights Watch, DHS expelled people to Costa Rica without following the deportation processes set forth in U.S. law—not even the streamlined process known as 'expedited removal,'" according to the report, referencing the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. "Instead, acting under the purported authority of a presidential proclamation, DHS agents sent people to Costa Rica, a country of which they are not nationals and to which they had no intention of traveling."
"These summary expulsions violated the right to seek asylum and the right to a fair hearing and other due process protections prior to deportation, in violation of statutory and constitutional guarantees and international treaties ratified by the United States," the report states.
The people interviewed by Human Rights Watch reported that they were not given the necessary documents required to be issued during a deportation proceeding. They reported being taken to an airfield and given no explanation until they were about to board the plane to Costa Rica.
Human Rights Watch says those deported were then initially subject to arbitrary detention in Costa Rica, and in practice they were not allowed to freely leave the center where they were being held except under certain circumstances. The Costa Rican government says they were not "detained" and indicated instead that freedom of movement was limited for their own safety, according to the report.
In April, officials in Costa Rica told them they could obtain a humanitarian permit that would give them 90 days to apply for asylum in Costa Rica or leave the country.
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