January, 30 2018, 10:00am EDT

For Immediate Release
Contact:
Emilie Surrusco, Earthjustice, eksurrusco@gmail.com, (202) 341-8787, Abbie Marks, Atchafalaya Basinkeeper, basinkeeper@gmail.com, (225) 685-9439, Lindsey Muzzio, Waterkeeper Alliance, lmuzzio@waterkeeper.org, (212) 747-0622 x113, Matt Rota, Gulf Restoration Network, matt@healthygulf.org, 504-525-1528 x206, Julie Rosenzweig, Sierra Club Delta Chapter, Julie.rosenzweig@sierraclub.org, 337-577-8494
Atchafalaya Groups Seek Halt to Construction of Bayou Bridge Pipeline
Federal Judge Will Hear Requests for Immediate Injunction in Atchafalaya
BATON ROUGE, LA
Seeking an immediate halt to the controversial Bayou Bridge pipeline, several groups today asked a Louisiana federal court for an immediate injunction on pipeline construction in the Atchafalaya River Basin, one of our nation's ecological crown jewels, as well as surrounding communities and ecosystems.
The groups - Atchafalaya Basinkeeper, the Louisiana Crawfish Producers Association (West), Gulf Restoration Network, Waterkeeper Alliance and Sierra Club, represented by lawyers at Earthjustice - made this request to stop construction from moving forward while a lawsuit, filed on January 11, is being considered by the court. The lawsuit contends that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers issued permits and authorizations for the 162-mile pipeline without adequate environmental review - in a violation of the Clean Water Act and the National Environmental Policy Act.
The Bayou Bridge pipeline project proposes to connect the controversial Dakota Access pipeline, which transports volatile and explosive Bakken crude oil from North Dakota to refineries in St. James Parish and export terminals, forming the southern leg of the Bakken Pipeline. Energy Transfer Partners, which owns the Dakota Access Pipeline and is a joint owner in the proposed Bayou Bridge Pipeline, has one of the worst safety and compliance records in the industry.
"Energy Transfer Partners has a deplorable track record when it comes to respect for our environment and our nation's irreplaceable ecosystems," said Jan Hasselman, an Earthjustice attorney for the plaintiffs. "We can't allow them to run roughshod over the Atchafalaya Basin's bottomland hardwoods, cypress swamps, bayous and backwater lakes - and the communities that rely on them - particularly when the Corps failed to adequately consider the risks posed by this project."
The proposed pipeline threatens to degrade forested swamps in the Atchafalaya Basin, and destroy wild crawfish habitat by making permanent the illegal spoil banks that are already destroying swamps along the Bayou Bridge pipeline right-of-way. Before any more pipelines are built in the Basin, the Corps needs to enforce existing permits and bring illegal rights-of-way back into compliance.
"There are already miles of pipelines crisscrossing the Basin that have decimated our water quality, creating hypoxic water that kills crawfish, and filled the Basin with so much sand that our ability to fight flooding has been seriously compromised," said Jody Meche, a commercial crawfisherman with the Louisiana Crawfish Producers Association, West. "Why should we let a company that has already proven it has no regard for our environment or our way of life do even more harm?"
"Not only is the Atchafalaya Basin critical for migratory birds and the persistence of Cajun culture, but it also protects millions of people from Mississippi River floods," said Dean Wilson, executive director of the Atchafalaya Basinkeeper. "It is negligent for our agencies to continue allowing unrestricted oil development in the Basin without enforcing our environmental laws."
In addition to the harms presented by pipeline spoil banks and tree clearing for construction, the overall health of the basin would be threatened by potential leaks and spills - a routine occurrence for old and new pipelines. One study revealed an average of 20 major spills occur in Louisiana each year.
Federal data shows that Energy Transfer Partners and its subsidiary Sunoco Inc. have been responsible for at least 329 "significant" pipeline incidents across the country in the last decade, and Energy Transfer Partners was responsible for five spills from their new Dakota Access Pipeline in the first six months of operation. On January 24, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission ordered a halt to construction of the Energy Transfer Partners Rover pipeline for a second time because of spills during construction.
"Energy Transfer Partners has proven time and time again that it can neither construct or operate new pipelines without spilling," said Larissa Liebmann, Waterkeeper Alliance Staff Attorney. "This injunction is necessary to protect the communities and waterways from bearing the costs of yet another irresponsible pipeline build-out."
"Losing the delicate wetland forest in the path of this pipeline will cause damage that no amount of money can fix. No amount of money can regrow what Energy Transfer Partners is cutting down today," said Julie Rosenzweig, Director of the Sierra Club Delta Chapter. "Conversely, a delay sufficient to allow plaintiffs' concerns to be heard in court would not pose any risk to ETP that would be irreparable. The balance of fairness is clearly in favor of granting this temporary injunction."
"A company with as egregious a track record as Energy Transfer Partners should not be given free rein to move ahead with construction of their dirty, dangerous pipeline as legal challenges continue," said Sierra Club Beyond Dirty Fuels campaign director Kelly Martin. "There still has not been an adequate review of the damage this pipeline would do to communities and families along its route and allowing construction to continue in the meantime puts them at an unacceptable risk."
"All we are asking is that the people impacted by this pipeline get their day in court before ETP does irreparable harm to the Atchafalaya Basin and the Louisianians who rely on it," said Matt Rota, Gulf Restoration Network Senior Policy Director. "We cannot afford to forsake our waterways and our local economies for an out-of-state company that provides hardly any jobs or economic benefit to the residents of Louisiana."
The preliminary injunction motion is available here. The court will likely issue a schedule for briefing and resolving the motion in the days ahead.
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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'We Cannot Be Silent': Tlaib Leads 19 US Lawmakers Demanding Israel Stop Starving Gaza
"This current blockade is starving Palestinian civilians in violation of international law, and the militarization of food will not help."
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As the death toll from Israel's forced starvation of Palestinians continues to rise amid the ongoing U.S.-backed genocidal assault and siege of the Gaza Strip, Rep. Rashida Tlaib on Monday led 18 congressional colleagues in a letter demanding that the Trump administration push for an immediate cease-fire, an end to the Israeli blockade, and a resumption of humanitarian aid into the embattled coastal enclave.
"We are outraged at the weaponization of humanitarian aid and escalating use of starvation as a weapon of war by the Israeli government against the Palestinian people in Gaza," Tlaib (D-Mich.)—the only Palestinian American member of Congress—and the other lawmakers wrote in their letter to U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio. "For over three months, Israeli authorities have blocked nearly all humanitarian aid from entering Gaza, fueling mass starvation and suffering among over 2 million people. This follows over 600 days of bombardment, destruction, and forced displacement, and nearly two decades of siege."
"According to experts, 100% of the population is now at risk of famine, and nearly half a million civilians, most of them children, are facing 'catastrophic' conditions of 'starvation, death, destitution, and extremely critical acute malnutrition levels,'" the legislators noted. "These actions are a direct violation of both U.S. and international humanitarian law, with devastating human consequences."
Gaza officials have reported that hundreds of Palestinians—including at least 66 children—have died in Gaza from malnutrition and lack of medicine since Israel ratcheted up its siege in early March. Earlier this month, the United Nations Children's Fund warned that childhood malnutrition was "rising at an alarming rate," with 5,119 children under the age of 5 treated for the life-threatening condition in May alone. Of those treated children, 636 were diagnosed with severe acute malnutrition, the most lethal form of the condition.
Meanwhile, nearly 600 Palestinians have been killed and more than 4,000 others have been injured as Israeli occupation forces carry out near-daily massacres of desperate people seeking food and other humanitarian aid at or near distribution sites run by the U.S.-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF). Israel Defense Forces officers and troops have said that they were ordered to shoot and shell aid-seeking Gazans, even when they posed no threat.
"This is not aid," the lawmakers' letter argues. "UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini has warned that, under the GHF, 'aid distribution has become a death trap.' We cannot allow this to continue."
"We strongly oppose any efforts to dismantle the existing U.N.-led humanitarian coordination system in Gaza, which is ready to resume operations immediately once the blockade is lifted," the legislators wrote. "Replacing this system with the GHF further restricts lifesaving aid and undermines the work of long-standing, trusted humanitarian organizations. The result of this policy will be continued starvation and famine."
"We cannot be silent. This current blockade is starving Palestinian civilians in violation of international law, and the militarization of food will not help," the lawmakers added. "We demand an immediate end to the blockade, an immediate resumption of unfettered humanitarian aid entry into Gaza, the restoration of U.S. funding to UNRWA, and an immediate and lasting cease-fire. Any other path forward is a path toward greater hunger, famine, and death."
Since launching the retaliatory annihilation of Gaza in response to the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, Israeli forces have killed at least 56,531 Palestinians and wounded more than 133,600 others, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which also says over 14,000 people are missing and presumed dead and buried beneath rubble. Upward of 2 million Gazans have been forcibly displaced, often more than once.
On Sunday, U.S. President Donald Trump reiterated a call for a cease-fire deal that would secure the release of the remaining 22 living Israeli and other hostages held by Hamas.
In addition to Tlaib, the letter to Rubio was signed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Democratic Reps. Greg Casar (Texas), Jesús "Chuy" García (Ill.), Al Green (Texas), Jonathan Jackson (Ill.), Pramila Jayapal (Wash.), Henry "Hank"Johnson (Ga.), Summer Lee (Pa.), Jim McGovern (Mass.), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.), Ilhan Omar (Minn.), Chellie Pingree (Maine), Mark Pocan (Wisc.), Ayanna Pressley (Mass.), Delia Ramirez (Ill.), Paul Tonko (N.Y.), Nydia Velázquez (N.Y.), and Bonnie Watson Coleman (N.J.).
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Some of the names on the list of people crafting the agenda—named Project 2029, an echo of the far-right Project 2025 blueprint Trump is currently enacting—left progressives with deepened concerns that party insiders have "learnt nothing" and "forgotten nothing" from the president's electoral victories against centrist Democratic candidates over the past decade, as one economist said.
The project is being assembled by former Democratic speechwriter Andrei Cherny, now co-founder of the policy journal Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, and includes Jake Sullivan, a former national security adviser under the Biden administration; Jim Kessler, founder of the centrist think tank Third Way; and Neera Tanden, president of the Center for American Progress and longtime adviser to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Progressives on the advisory board for the project include economist Justin Wolfers and former Roosevelt Institute president Felicia Wong, but antitrust expert Hal Singer said any policy agenda aimed at securing a Democratic victory in the 2028 election "needs way more progressives."
As The New York Times noted in its reporting on Project 2029, the panel is being convened amid extensive infighting regarding how the Democratic Party can win back control of the White House and Congress.
After democratic socialist and state Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani's (D-36) surprise win against former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo last week in New York City's mayoral primary election—following a campaign with a clear-eyed focus on making childcare, rent, public transit, and groceries more affordable—New York City has emerged as a battleground in the fight. Influential Democrats including House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) have so far refused to endorse him and attacked him for his unequivocal support for Palestinian rights.
Progressives have called on party leaders to back Mamdani, pointing to his popularity with young voters, and accept that his clear message about making life more affordable for working families resonated with Democratic constituents.
But speaking to the Times, Democratic pollster Celinda Lake exemplified how many of the party's strategists have insisted that candidates only need to package their messages to voters differently—not change the messages to match the political priorities of Mamdani and other popular progressives like Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.).
"We didn't lack policies," Lake told the Times of recent national elections. "But we lacked a functioning narrative to communicate those policies."
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Project 2029's inclusion of strategists like Kessler, who declared economic populism "a dead end for Democrats" in 2013, demonstrates "the whole problem [with Democratic leadership] in a nutshell," said Jonathan Cohn of Progressive Mass—as does Sullivan's seat on the advisory board.
As national security adviser to President Joe Biden, Sullivan played a key role in the administration's defense and funding of Israel's assault on Gaza, which international experts and human rights groups have said is a genocide.
"Jake Sullivan's been a critical decision-maker in every Democratic catastrophe of the last decade: Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign, the withdrawal from Afghanistan, the Israel/Gaza War, and the 2024 Joe Biden campaign," said Nick Field of the Pennsylvania Capital-Star. "Why is he still in the inner circle?"
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Sen. Rick Scott has introduced an amendment to the Republican budget bill that would slash another $313 million from Medicaid and kick off millions more recipients.
The latest analysis by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) found that 17 million people could lose their health insurance by 2034 as the result of the bill as it already exists.
According to a preliminary estimate by the Democrats on the Joint Congressional Economic Committee, that number could balloon up to anywhere from 20 to 29 million if Scott's (R-Fla.) amendment passes.
The amendment will be voted on as part of the Senate's vote-a-rama, which is expected to run deep into Monday night and possibly into Tuesday morning.
"If Sen. Rick Scott's amendment gets put forward, this would be a self-inflicted healthcare crisis," said Tahra Hoops, director of economic analysis at Chamber of Progress.
The existing GOP reconciliation package contains onerous new restrictions, including new work requirements and administrative hurdles, that will make it harder for poor recipients to claim Medicaid benefits.
Scott's amendment targets funding for the program by ending the federal government's 90% cost sharing for recipients who join Medicaid after 2030. Those who enroll after that date would have their medical care reimbursed by the federal government at a lower rate of 50%.
The Affordable Care Act (ACA) introduced the increased rate in 2010 to incentivize states to expand Medicaid, allowing more people to be covered.
Scott has said his program would "grandfather" in those who had already been receiving the 90% reimbursement rate.
However, Medicaid is run through the states, which will have to spend more money to keep covering those who need the program after 2030.
The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimated that this provision "would shift an additional $93 billion in federal Medicaid funding to states from 2031 through 2034 on top of the cuts already in the Senate bill."
This will almost certainly result in states having to cut back, by introducing their stricter requirements or paperwork hurdles.
Additionally, nine states have "trigger laws" that are set to end the program immediately if the federal matching rate is reduced: Arizona, Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Montana, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Utah, and Virginia.
The Joint Congressional Economic Committee estimated Tuesday that around 2.5 million more people will lose their insurance as a result of those cuts.
If all the states with statutory Medicaid expansion ended it as a result of Scott's cuts, as many as 12.5 million could lose their insurance. Combined with the rest of the bill, that's potentially 29 million people losing health insurance coverage, the committee said.
A chart shows how many people are estimated to lose healthcare coverage with each possible version of the GOP bill.(Chart: Congressional Joint Economic Committee Democrats)
There are enough Republicans in the Senate to pass the bill with Scott's amendment. However, they can afford no more than three defections. According to Politico, Sens. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) have signaled they will vote against the amendment.
Sen. Jim Justice (R-W.V.) also said he'd "have a hard time" voting yes on the bill if Scott's amendment passed. His state of West Virginia has the second-highest rate of people using federal medical assistance of any state in the country, behind only Mississippi.
Critics have called out Scott for lying to justify this line of cuts. In a recent Fox News appearance, Scott claimed that his new restrictions were necessary to stop Democrats who want to "give illegal aliens Medicaid benefits," even though they are not eligible for the program.
Scott's proposal has also brought renewed scrutiny to his past as a healthcare executive.
"Ironically enough, some of the claims against Scott's old hospital company revolved around exploiting Medicaid, and billing for services that patients didn't need," wrote Andrew Perez in Rolling Stone Monday.
In 2000, Scott's hospital company, HCA, was forced to pay $840 million in fines, penalties, and damages to resolve claims of unlawful billing practices in what was called the "largest government fraud settlement ever." Among the charges were that during Scott's tenure, the company overbilled Medicare and Medicaid by pretending patients were sicker than they actually were.
The company entered an additional settlement in 2003, paying out another $631 million to compensate for the money stolen from these and other government programs.
Scott himself was never criminally charged, but resigned in 1997 as the Department of Justice began to probe his company's activities. Despite the scandal, Scott not only became a U.S. senator, but is the wealthiest man in Congress, with a net worth of more than half a billion dollars.
The irony of this was not lost on Perez, who wrote: "A few decades later, Scott is now trying to extract a huge amount of money from state Medicaid funds to help finance Trump's latest round of tax cuts for the rich."
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