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For Immediate Release
February, 19 2019, 11:00pm EDT
Contact:
Miyoko Sakashita, (510) 844-7108, miyoko@biologicaldiversity.org
Santa Barbara County Advances Plains' Coastal Oil Pipeline Project
Company that caused 2015 refugio oil spill seeks to restart offshore drilling
SANTA BARBARA, Calif.
Santa Barbara County has announced public hearings for the Plains All-American Pipeline's proposal to build a coastal oil pipeline to serve offshore drilling platforms. It would follow the same route as Plains' Line 901, the severely corroded pipeline that failed in 2015, causing a large coastal oil spill and idling the offshore platforms it served.
A Santa Barbara jury last year found Plains criminally liable for that oil spill near Refugio State Beach and the hundreds of marine mammals and birds that were coated with oil and died. Most of the offshore drilling platforms it served are being decommissioned, but ExxonMobil has been trying to restart its three platforms, proposing to transport the oil by tanker trucks on local highways.
"Plains Pipeline doesn't deserve a second chance to spill oil along California's coast. Californians want to end offshore drilling, not extend it with a new coastal oil pipeline," said Miyoko Sakashita, oceans program director with the Center for Biological Diversity. "Offshore drilling is a dirty and dangerous threat to marine life and coastal communities. It's time for Plains Pipeline and ExxonMobil to pack it up and let Californians reclaim their coastline."
The first public hearing on the project is scheduled for Feb. 27 at 6 p.m. in Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors hearing room, 105 E. Anapamu St., Santa Barbara. Plains' proposed 124-mile oil pipeline would ship the offshore oil to processing facilities in San Luis Obispo and Kern counties.
Oil pipelines regularly fail in California. Federal pipeline data shows there were 621 pipeline incidents in California from 1986 through 2014, causing 200 injuries, 48 fatalities and almost $800 million in property damage. A Center analysis of federal pipeline data found pipeline failures are most common after 30 years and shortly after they're completed, as a result of faulty welds and other construction-related problems.
"Building this pipeline would lock in offshore drilling in California for decades, just like the Trump administration wants. But huge bipartisan majorities in coastal states around the country oppose new offshore drilling," Sakashita said. "Let's reject efforts by Trump, Plains and ExxonMobil to force offshore oil drilling on future generations."
At the Center for Biological Diversity, we believe that the welfare of human beings is deeply linked to nature — to the existence in our world of a vast diversity of wild animals and plants. Because diversity has intrinsic value, and because its loss impoverishes society, we work to secure a future for all species, great and small, hovering on the brink of extinction. We do so through science, law and creative media, with a focus on protecting the lands, waters and climate that species need to survive.
(520) 623-5252LATEST NEWS
Senate Republicans Block Sanders Amendment to Cut US Drug Prices by More Than 50%
Sen. Bernie Sanders said the amendment blocked by the GOP "would prevent pharmaceutical companies from charging more for prescription drugs in the United States than they do in Canada, the UK, Germany, France, and Japan."
Apr 23, 2026
Senate Republicans voted in the early hours of Thursday morning to reject an amendment offered by Sen. Bernie Sanders that aimed to cut US prescription drug prices in half by mandating that Americans pay no more for medications than people in Canada and other wealthy nations.
Just two Republicans, Sens. Josh Hawley of Missouri and Dan Sullivan of Alaska, voted with every present Democrat in support of Sanders' (I-Vt.) proposed amendment to the GOP's emerging budget reconciliation package. Republicans plan to use the legislative vehicle to fund the Department of Homeland Security and its component agencies, principally Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP).
The amendment vote put nearly every Senate Republican on the record against a policy supported by President Donald Trump. Last year, Trump signed an executive order directing federal health officials to "communicate most-favored-nation price targets to pharmaceutical manufacturers to bring prices for American patients in line with comparably developed nations."
But experts have noted that, without congressional action giving the federal government more power over drug pricing, pharmaceutical companies would not be required to comply with the proposed targets—rendering Trump's order effectively meaningless. Drug prices have continued to rise in the US despite Trump's order and his outlandish, mathematically impossible claims.
"If Trump is serious about making real change rather than just issuing a press release," Sanders said last year in response to Trump's executive order, "he will support legislation I will soon be introducing to make sure we pay no more for prescription drugs than people in other major countries. If Republicans and Democrats come together on this legislation, we can get it passed in a few weeks."
The Sanders-led amendment that Republicans blocked on Thursday called for reducing "the price of prescription drugs in the United States by more than 50% by adopting most-favored-nation drug pricing so that the American people pay no more for prescription drugs than Europeans or Canadians."
Research has shown that Americans pay at least twice as much on average for prescription drugs as people in other wealthy nations.
"This amendment is very simple," Sanders said during Senate debate on Thursday. "It would prevent pharmaceutical companies from charging more for prescription drugs in the United States than they do in Canada, the UK, Germany, France, and Japan.”
Last May, Sanders and several of his Democratic colleagues in the Senate introduced the Prescription Drug Price Relief Act, which would require federal health officials to "review brand-name drugs annually for excessive pricing and, if a drug is found to be priced excessively, to void any exclusivity granted to its sponsor."
"Under the bill, a price is considered excessive if the domestic average manufacturing price exceeds the median price for the drug in Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, and Japan," according to a summary of the legislation. "If a price does not meet this criteria, or if pricing information is unavailable in at least three of these countries, the price is still considered excessive if it is higher than reasonable in light of specified factors, including development cost, revenue, and the size of the affected patient population."
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Critics reacted with disgust after Eric Trump went on Fox Business on Thursday morning to boast about Foundation Future Industries, a company where he serves as chief strategy adviser, scoring a multimillion-dollar deal from the US Department of Defense.
For the segment, Fox Business' Maria Bartiromo invited on both Eric Trump and Sankaet Pathak, co-founder and CEO of Foundation Future, a robotics firm that earlier this year won a $24 million Pentagon contract that will see its robots deployed in Ukraine, where they will be used to inspect and transport weapons.
Bartiromo asked the second-eldest son of President Donald Trump how he got involved with Foundation Future, and "what attracted" him to the enterprise.
Trump responded that he decided to get involved with robotics to help America "win" the race with China to build battle-ready robots, in the same way he purportedly helped the US "win" by being an early investor in cryptocurrency.
"We better be winning this race in the United States of America," he declared. "We're the greatest economy in the world... When you go up and you interact with these robots, and they fist bump you and they high five you, they follow your commands. You bring in AI economy, it's going to change industry, it's going to change military application, it's going to change hospitality. The uses are unlimited."
Eric Trump on his $24 million Pentagon contract for robots: "It's gonna change industry, military application, hospitality. The uses are unlimited and I think it's a very beautiful thing, but we must win that race." pic.twitter.com/JsfiB6Usbi
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 23, 2026
Eric Trump and his brother, Donald Trump Jr., for months have been investing in companies with the goal of scoring lucrative Pentagon deals.
The Wall Street Journal reported in March that the Trump brothers invested in a Florida-based drone company called Powerus that “is vying to meet fresh demand from the Pentagon” for drones that started when the Trump administration banned foreign-made drones and drone components from the US in December.
And in 2025, at least two companies backed by Trump Jr. received contracts collectively worth hundreds of millions of dollars from the DOD.
Given this history, critics were quick to hurl accusations of corruption at the Trumps for using their father's presidency to personally enrich themselves.
"The president's son, who was never involved in this industry before his father became president, should not be getting contracts from the Pentagon," declared Ron Filipkowski, editor-in-chief of MeidasTouch. "This is absurd corruption that Republicans in Congress will say nothing about and do no oversight."
Phillips O'Brien, professor of strategic studies at the University of St. Andrews, said the fact that the president's son is openly boasting about getting multimillion-dollar deals from his father's DOD shows "the US government is now one of, if not the most, corrupt governments on earth."
University of Michigan political scientist Donald Moynihan compared the Trump brothers to Uday and Qusay Hussein, the late sons of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, and argued that much of Trump's second administration appears to be running the US government like it's a family business.
"An underestimated rationale for Trump's massive ramp-ups in immigration/military spending," he wrote, "is to create a public slush fund for friends, families, donors."
National security attorney Bradley Moss, in a nod to possible future congressional investigations of the Trump family's corruption, advised Eric Trump to "preserve your records."
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"Israel’s targeting of media professionals in the south while they are performing their professional duties is no longer a matter of isolated incidents; rather, it has become a proven pattern."
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Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam late Wednesday accused the Israeli military of war crimes after rescue workers recovered the body of journalist Amal Khalil from the ruins of a house in southern Lebanon that Israel bombed hours earlier.
"Targeting journalists, obstructing the access of relief teams to them—and indeed, re-targeting their locations after these teams have arrived—constitutes a clear-cut war crime," Salam wrote on social media. "Israel’s targeting of media professionals in the south while they are performing their professional duties is no longer a matter of isolated incidents; rather, it has become a proven pattern—one that we condemn and reject, just as it is condemned and rejected by all international laws and norms."
Khalil, who was reporting on Israel's assault on southern Lebanon for the daily newspaper Al-Akhbar, took cover in a local house after an Israeli strike nearly hit her car. Israeli forces then attacked the house, trapping Khalil and fellow journalist Zeinab Faraj under rubble.
A Red Cross team granted access to the scene was able to evacuate Faraj, who was badly wounded, before coming under attack by Israeli forces. The Associated Press reported that Khalil "remained under the rubble for hours before the Lebanese army, civil defense, and the Lebanese Red Cross were able to get to the scene hours later."
"Khalil’s body was retrieved shortly before midnight, at least six hours after the strike," AP noted. The Israeli attacks were seen as flagrant violations of the 10-day ceasefire that took effect on April 16.
Civil Defence crews were finally able to access the site where Leb journalist Amal Khalil was trapped under rubble but only hours later. They retrieved her body. Her newspaper Al Akbar has put out a video tribute. Lebanon’s Minister of Information condemned the incident… https://t.co/usLPJVjDF9 pic.twitter.com/J4Vvf0JmhW
— Alex Crawford (@AlexCrawfordSky) April 22, 2026
Paul Morcos, Lebanon's minister of information, confirmed Khalil's death and said she was "targeted by the Israeli occupation army while performing her professional duty" in southern Lebanon, which has been under intense Israeli assault since early March. Khalil is the fourth media worker killed by Israeli forces in Lebanon since March 2.
"Targeting journalists is a heinous crime and a flagrant violation of international humanitarian law, which we will not remain silent about," Morcos said in a statement. "We reiterate our call to the world and supporting international organizations to take action to stop it and prevent its recurrence."
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), an organization that works to protect press freedom worldwide, pointed to "reports that Khalil had received a direct death threat attributed to the [Israel Defense Forces] in September 2024" as potential evidence that Israel deliberately targeted her.
“The repeated strikes on the same location, the targeting of an area where journalists were sheltering, and the obstruction of medical and humanitarian access constitute a grave breach of international humanitarian law,” Sara Qudah, CPJ's regional director in the Middle East and North Africa, said Wednesday. "CPJ holds Israeli forces responsible."
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