July, 01 2019, 12:00am EDT
New FOIA Documents Reveal More Industry Influence at Interior
Bernhardt’s Former Client, Independent Petroleum Association of America, Appears to Have Influenced Decisions by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services
WHITE FISH, Mont.
A new analysis of public documents exclusively obtained by Western Values Project reveal extensive communication by an industry association that may have influenced public lands and wildlife management decisions at Interior.
The Independent Petroleum Association of America (IPAA), a former client of Secretary Bernhardt, were in frequent contact with now Acting Director of the Bureau of Land Management Casey Hammond and former Acting U.S. Fish and Wildlife Director Greg Sheehan, including making a request to delist an endangered species that was later proposed by the agency. Sheehan has since stepped down from his position.
"We've seen this behavior from Secretary Bernhardt's political cronies before - industry gets what they want from Interior at the expense of our public lands and wildlife. The culture of corruption at Interior starts at the top but it doesn't end there. Given the level of coordination between Interior political appointees and special interests, it's not surprising that Bernhardt is now violating the law by delaying and limiting public document releases," said Chris Saeger, Western Values Project Executive Director.
The documents revealed that in an August 2017 email, IPAA's director of government relations Sam McDonald sent then-U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's Acting Director Greg Sheehan a letter partially explaining why the industry association wanted the agency to delist the American Burying Beetle. Fast forward and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services (USFWS) released a proposed rule to delist the American Burying Beetle, an effort that left the biologists and researchers 'shocked and disappointed.' An email by IPAA's McDonald was sent to former Interior political appointee Vincent DeVito around the same period.
Sheehan also met with IPAA's Sam McDonald and senior vice president Dan Naatz on June 30, 2017 to hear their "concerns," where they appreciated his "willingness to help." Naatz was caught on audio laughing about the access he had within the Trump administration saying, "We know him [Bernhardt] very well, and we have direct access to him, have conversations with him about issues ranging from federal land access to endangered species, to a lot of issues."
IPAA's Naatz also reached out to the Bureau of Land Management's (BLM) Casey Hammond about their difficulties with staffers in the New Mexico BLM office, claiming Resource Developments Units (RDUs) were "not fully vetted through Washington" and may be terminated. Hammond suggested Naatz reach out to Kate MacGregor, another Interior political appointee, instead.
The documents released from Acting BLM Director Casey Hammond's communications with IPPA also revealed a partial list of the industry association's membership. IPAA does not list its members publicly, instead choosing to lobby as a front group for the oil and gas industry.
The partial list of IPAA memberships was included after correspondence concerning Deputy Director of External Affairs Tim Williams and then-Deputy Assistant Secretary of Land and Minerals Management Casey Hammond arrangement to speak at IPAA's 2017 Regulators' Forum. It included 16 different oil and gas corporations: Shell, Chesapeake Energy, QEP Resources, PDC Energy, Huntley & Huntley, Cimarex Energy, Pioneer Natural Resources, Noble Energy, US Energy Stream Inc, Encana Oil & Gas, SK Plymouth, Whiting Petroleum, Concho Resources, Hess, SM Energy, and American Exploration & Production Council.
WVP previously documented industry's influence on Secretary Bernhardt's overhaul of state sage-grouse habitat management plans. Recently, WVP filed suit against the Interior Department, Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) for unfulfilled public records requests.
Western Values Project brings accountability to the national conversation about Western public lands and national parks conservation - a space too often dominated by industry lobbyists and their allies in government.
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Bayer Continues Push to 'Close the Door' on Glyphosate Victims at US Supreme Court
"Bayer is intent on preserving its right to harm at all costs—a pursuit the Trump administration is all too willing to endorse," said a Food and Water Watch campaigner.
Apr 27, 2026
As pesticide critics held a "The People v. Poison" rally outside the US Supreme Court on Monday, the justices heard arguments in Monsanto Company v. Durnell, a case whose conclusion is expected to have sweeping implications for cancer patients trying to take on the Roundup maker—now owned by Bayer—in the country's legal system.
The case stems from John Durnell's 2019 lawsuit against Monsanto in Missouri state court, alleging that exposure to the herbicide Roundup—whose active ingredient is glyphosate—caused his non-Hodgkin lymphoma, a type of blood cancer. A jury found that the company failed to warn users of the risks associated with the weedkiller, and awarded Durnell $1.25 million in damages.
Bayer argued before the Supreme Court on Monday that Durnell—and others like him—should not be able to bring such a suit because the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act preempts state rules for labeling pesticides when the Environmental Protection Agency doesn't require a cancer warning. Bayer and the EPA continue to insist that glyphosate is safe, despite the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer classifying it as probably carcinogenic to humans over a decade ago.
As The Associated Press and Reuters reported, the justices appeared "divided" on Monday, with the AP noting that several "seemed sympathetic to the company's argument that it can't be sued under state law because federal regulators have found Roundup likely doesn't cause cancer. Others, though, grilled attorneys about whether that wrongly stops states from responding to changing research."
Patti Goldman, senior attorney at Earthjustice—which filed an amicus brief in this case on behalf of farmworker organizations—said in a statement that "questions from the justices recognized that the Environmental Protection Agency approves pesticide labels based on the evidence before the agency at a single moment in time, but that evidence can become outdated as real-world exposure grows and scientific studies document resulting harms."
"Federal law requires the manufacturers to update their labels to provide sufficient warnings and directions to protect the public," Goldman stressed, "and state failure-to-warn claims reinforce that obligation—while ensuring children, families, and workers have a path to seek remedies for the harm they suffer."
Other groups that have submitted amicus briefs include Environmental Protection Network—which is made up of former EPA staffers—and the Center for Food Safety, one of the advocacy organizations that joined the rally outside the court. The event was also attended by members of Congress from both major political parties.
"This isn't left v. right—it's right v. wrong," said US Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ). "Big corporations and their lobbyists have captured both parties, putting profits over our families' health. I've fought Monsanto and Bayer for years, and just filed an amicus brief to the Supreme Court to protect our right to sue them for illnesses caused by their products."
Despite President Donald Trump's campaign promise to "Make America Healthy Again," the Republican recently issued an executive order mandating the production of glyphosate, and the US Department of Justice has sided with Bayer in this case—part of a broader trend of his administration serving the pesticide industry's interests.
"Monsanto Company v. Durnell will have enormous consequences for environmental health litigation," Food and Water Watch legal director Tarah Heinzen said Monday. "Bayer is intent on preserving its right to harm at all costs—a pursuit the Trump administration is all too willing to endorse. This case threatens to close the courthouse doors to the many Americans harmed by pesticides."
Heinzen argued that "should the Supreme Court hold that the Environmental Protection Agency's failed pesticide regulatory scheme preempts state failure to warn lawsuits, leaving tens of thousands of sick Americans without legal recourse, Trump and his industry-dominated EPA will be to blame."
"This high stakes case should be a wake-up call for Congress to act," the campaigner added. "Industrial agriculture's pesticide addiction is poisoning America. Congress must pass the Pesticide Injury Accountability Act to safeguard access to justice for all harmed by toxic pesticides."
As The American Prospect noted Monday in its "three-part series on Bayer's crusade for immunity from Roundup-related cancer claims," the company "is now aggressively lobbying Congress to permanently close the door" on the weedkiller's victims, and managed to get an immunity provision included in the 2026 Farm Bill that advanced out of the US House Agriculture Committee last month.
After joining the rally at the Supreme Court on Monday, Friends of the Earth (FOE) US led a protest outside Bayer's headquarters in downtown Washington, DC, delivering hundreds of thousands of petition signatures are calling on the company to phase out the production of toxic pesticides, including glyphosate and neonicotinoids.
"People are sick and tired of being exposed to toxic pesticides while pesticide corporations shirk responsibility," said FOE senior campaigner Sarah Starman, who spoke at the rally. "Bayer and other pesticide companies should not be allowed to profit from chemicals that threaten our health, harm our environment, and undermine the future of our food system. The hundreds of people who rallied outside the Supreme Court and the 200,000 people who signed comments to Bayer are demanding change."
In the leadup to the arguments before the nation's top court, the Environmental Working Group last week sued the Trump administration at the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, accusing the EPA of unlawfully delaying its response to an EWG petition seeking stronger restrictions on glyphosate.
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"Republicans lost a HUGE special election in Florida and now they're determined to CHEAT in the November election by rigging the maps in a back room deal," said one observer.
Apr 27, 2026
Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Monday unveiled his plan to unconstitutionally gerrymander the Sunshine State's congressional map amid pressure from the Trump administration, a move GOP officials hope will help their party retain control of both houses of Congress after November's midterm elections.
DeSantis handed state lawmakers a proposed map that would dramatically redraw the districts of several House incumbents, giving legislators less than 24 hours to review the redistricting plan ahead of a special session on Tuesday during which the Republican-controlled Legislature is expected to approve the gerrymandering.
Republicans currently hold 20 of Florida's 28 US House seats. The new map is projected to increase that number to 24. Four Democrat-held seats will be most affected, with Reps. Kathy Castor, Lois Frankel, Darren Soto, and Debbie Wasserman Schultz facing markedly different maps and Rep. Jared Moskowitz in a new district.
🚨Florida voters are being denied any say on the new electoral maps. Ron DeSantis knows they won’t go for it, which is why he’s bypassing them — just like they did in Texas. This is actually ILLEGAL. In California and Virginia, voters got to decide.#StopIllegalFloridaMaps
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— Jon Cooper (@joncooper-us.bsky.social) April 27, 2026 at 12:19 PM
However, the mid-decade partisan redistricting is expressly illegal under Florida's Constitution, which states in Section 20 of Article II that “no apportionment plan or individual district shall be drawn with the intent to favor or disfavor a political party.”
While Republicans claim the new maps are racially neutral, state Rep. Anna Eskamani (D-42) called that assertion "obvious horseshit."
"The map goes out of its way to split up the growing Puerto Rican population in Central Florida between multiple districts. It's racial cracking at a textbook level," she said, referring to the practice of drawing maps so that minority communities are spread across multiple districts, depriving them of the opportunity to form effective voting blocs.
Republicans lost a HUGE special election in Florida and now they're determined to CHEAT in the November election by rigging the maps in a back room deal. Florida voters banned partisan political maps 15 years ago.DO NOT STANDBY AND LET THEM.#StopIllegalFloridaMaps
— Grant Stern (@grantstern.bsky.social) April 27, 2026 at 1:38 PM
US House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) warned last week that Florida's move could backfire.
"If Florida Republicans proceed with this illegal scheme, they will only create more prime pick-up opportunities for Democrats," Jeffries said. "We are prepared to take them all on, and we are prepared to win.”
National and state Democrats are already vowing legal challenges to Florida's plan.
“If DeSantis forces this unconstitutional gerrymander forward in Florida, it won’t be because the voters asked him to,” National Democratic Redistricting Committee president John Bisognano said Monday. "Republicans will only have themselves to blame when they face resistance in the courtroom and at the ballot box for this egregious power grab.”
"Poll after poll has shown that the overwhelming majority of Floridian voters do not want a mid-decade gerrymander," Bisognano added. "They aren’t alone. Local editorial boards across the state are slamming this blatantly partisan power grab."
The gerrymandering war kicked off last year when, under pressure from President Donald Trump, the Republican-controlled Texas Legislature redrew the state's congressional map in a bid to eliminate all Democratic districts. The right-wing US Supreme Court gave Texas its blessing to use the rigged map in a ruling last December.
Texas' move was countered last November when California voters approved redrawn districts favoring Democrats.
Since then, Republican-controlled legislatures in states including Missouri and North Carolina and Democratic-controlled states like Virginia, Maryland, and Washington have redrawn or are in the process of redrawing their congressional maps.
Last week, a district court judge subsequently blocked Virginia's new map a day after it was approved, setting up a battle in the state Supreme Court.
Responding to last week's voter-approved redistricting in Virginia, former US Attorney General Eric Holder noted major differences between the bottom-up redraws in Democratic states and top-down rigging by Republicans.
“The mere existence of this special election stands in stark contrast to the gerrymanders forced on constituents in Texas, Missouri, and North Carolina and shows that voters are tired of Republican attempts to silence their power at the voting booth," Holder said.
All Voting Is Local Action Florida state director Brad Ashwell said in a statement Monday that "it is clear that the end goal in this state is to redraw maps in order to give one party an advantage over another, essentially putting partisan politics over the voters."
"What’s even more egregious is that this move is in direct conflict with the fair districts ballot amendments these same voters approved by a supermajority in 2010, meaning our governor and lawmakers are directly undermining our state Constitution and the will of the voters," he continued.
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This isn't Desantis' first foray into gerrymandering. A state judge in 2022 invalidated parts of a previously redrawn congressional map, siding with plaintiffs in a lawsuit who argued that Republicans violated the state Constitution by racially rigging districts. However, in 2024 a federal appellate panel ruled that Florida could proceed with use of the map.
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Study Shows Trump's Tightened Embargo on Cuba 'Has Killed a Lot of Babies'
“The question is how many more babies will have to die before the current economic siege against Cuba is lifted.”
Apr 27, 2026
The publication Monday of another report showing that President Donald Trump's tightening of the 65-year US embargo of Cuba over his two terms in office is "likely the primary cause of a major increase in infant mortality" on the economically besieged island prompted renewed calls for the lifting of deadly sanctions.
The report by Alexander Main, Joe Sammut, Mark Weisbrot, and Guillaume Long of the Center for Economic Policy and Research (CEPR) found an "unprecedented increase" in Cuba’s infant mortality rate (IMR), which soared 148% between 2018 and 2025.
In the early-to-mid 2010s, Cuba’s IRM was typically around 4–5 deaths per 1,000 live births, with the country regularly ranked in the top 10-15 nations with the lowest infant mortality. By 2025, the figure had soared to 9.9 deaths out of every 1,000 infants born alive.
The report's authors said that had Cuba's IMR remained unchanged since 2018, roughly 1,800 fewer babies would have died.
“The blockade has had a particularly dire effect on Cuba’s healthcare infrastructure, with frequent power outages interrupting the use of critical equipment for the treatment of patients, including incubators for premature babies, and ventilators to help sick newborns breathe,” said Sammut, CEPR's senior research fellow.
The report examines the social and economic consequences of Trump's tightened sanctions regime, focusing on the impact of the embargo on Cuba’s healthcare sector.
According to CEPR:
Trump administration pressure on Cuba has included restrictions that have sharply diminished the island’s important tourism sector; severely limited exports of goods to Cuba—including essential medication and medical equipment; cut Cuba’s access to international financial markets by putting the country back on the State Sponsors of Terrorism list; curbed remittances; pressured countries to end their partnerships with Cuba’s medical missions; and notably imposed a recent fuel blockade that prevents Venezuelan oil from reaching the island.
Trump has recently ratcheted up military threats and economic pressure on Cuba, which was already reeling from decades of US sanctions and the inefficiencies of centralized state control. His tightened embargo has severely restricted fuel imports, exacerbating an energy emergency characterized by blackouts and deadly suffering among the most vulnerable Cubans, including sick people and children.
“The Trump policy of ‘maximum pressure’ on Cuba has killed a lot of babies—and, although we don’t yet have data for the last few months, it’s highly likely that more babies are dying now, and at an even higher rate than last year as a result of the current US fuel blockade targeting Cuba,” said Main, CEPR's director of international policy. “The question is how many more babies will have to die before the current economic siege against Cuba is lifted.”
It's not just babies. As Common Dreams reported last month, nearly 100,000 Cubans—including 11,000 children—werer waiting for surgery. Childhood cancer survival rates have also fallen significantly.
"The sanctions on Cuba starkly illustrate how these economic sanctions work: They target the civilian population, often with the goal of provoking regime change,” said Weisbrot, CEPR's co-director. “This can dramatically increase death rates."
During his first term, Trump began rolling back the Obama administration’s diplomatic normalization with Cuba's socialist government. He activated a provision of the Helms-Burton Act allowing lawsuits over property confiscated after the Cuban Revolution, and on his last day in office he redesignated Cuba a state sponsor of terrorism.
Critics denounced the move as absurd, especially given that Cuba has never carried out any acts of terrorism—unlike the United States and the militant Cuban exiles it harbors, who have a decadeslong record of terrorist bombings and other attacks, as well as numerous failed or aborted attempts to assassinate former revolutionary leader Fidel Castro.
The United Nations General Assembly has overwhelmingly condemned the blockade—which Cuba's government says has cost the island more than $1 trillion—33 times.
“The collective punishment of civilians is prohibited by the Fourth Geneva Convention when there is armed conflict, and can be prosecuted as a war crime," Weisbrot noted. "This would appear to be applicable now that the current naval blockade involves the US military.”
Previous reports have sounded the alarm on Cuba's rising IMR, including a United Nations Inter-Agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation published in February that put the 2025 infant mortality rate a 7.4, considerably lower than the CEPR analysis. The British Medical Journal Pediatrics Open in February reported a 9.9 IMR for Cuba.
The IMR surge comes amid reporting that the Pentagon is “quietly ramping up” preparations to wage war on Cuba, which would be the 11th country attacked by Trump, the self-proclaimed president of peace, the most of any US leader ever.
US Sens. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), and Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) introduced a war powers resolution aimed at preventing Trump from attacking Cuba without congressional authorization as required by law. The resolution could be put to a vote as soon as Tuesday.
Numerous war powers resolutions related to Iran, Venezuela, and Trump’s extralegal high seas boat bombings have failed to pass.
World leaders, activists, and academics are among those urging the US to lift the embargo on Cuba.
"Stop this damned blockade on Cuba and let the Cuban people live their lives," Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said last week in Barcelona. "Cuba has problems. But they are Cuba's problems. Not Lula's. Not Trump's. Not the empire's."
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