August, 26 2019, 12:00am EDT

For Immediate Release
Contact:
Susan Jane Brown, Western Environmental Law Center, brown@westernlaw.org, 503-914-1323
Randi Spivak, Center for Biological Diversity, rspivak@biologicaldiversity.org, 310-779-4894
Sam Evans, Southern Environmental Law Center, sevans@selcnc.org, 828-258-2023
Olivia Glasscock, Earthjustice, oglasscock@earthjustice.org, 907.500.7134
Conservation Groups Blast Draft Forest Service Rule to Gut Bedrock Environmental Law
Proposal Would Eliminate Review, Public Input for Most National Forest Projects
WASHINGTON
Conservation and public interest groups today submitted formal opposition to a proposed Trump administration rule that would fundamentally change long-held environmental practices and allow for the sweeping destruction of national forests across the country.
In comments to the U.S. Forest Service, 177 groups said the proposed changes to the agency's National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) implementing procedures would gut this important decision-making tool by waiving requirements that the agency disclose environmental harm and involve the public. Among other things, the proposed rule would allow the agency to approve large-scale commercial logging and roadbuilding on up to 7,300 acres (11 square miles) of national forest land at a time without public input or comment.
The Forest Service's sweeping draft rule broadens so-called "categorical exclusions" to exempt an alarming range of projects from public review, including logging, roadbuilding, oil and gas drilling, mining and power lines. Currently, categorical exclusions are reserved for routine projects that don't harm the environment, such as hiking trail restoration or maintenance on a park building.
The Forest Service's draft rule also proposes a sharp reduction in public input - under the agency's proposed rule, the public would lose the right to comment on more than 93% of decisions affecting national forests and grasslands. Although the Forest Service has stated that the changes are needed to speed up project delivery, the groups' comments point out that projects with public input and transparent scientific analysis are actually more efficient on a per-acre basis than projects developed behind closed doors.
Before finalizing its proposal, the Forest Service must consider the objections raised in these and the tens of thousands of other comments submitted in opposition. If the Forest Service does not abandon the proposal or fundamentally change course, the proposal's fate will ultimately be decided by the courts.
The groups submitting comments today issued the following statements:
"The Forest Service's proposed rule is deeply flawed, not only because it violates federal environmental laws, but also because it seeks to take the public out of public lands management," said Susan Jane Brown, Attorney and Public Lands Director at Western Environmental Law Center. "Rather than building agreement around transparent science-based land management and restoration, the rule would shroud agency decision-making in arbitrary agency discretion. Instead of increasing efficiency, the proposed rule is guaranteed to result in controversy and litigation. The Forest Service should abandon this rulemaking effort."
"The Trump Administration is rushing to hand favors to big oil, gas, logging, and mining interests once again with the Forest Service's latest proposal to attack bedrock environmental law," said Olivia Glasscock, Attorney at Earthjustice. "This proposal would shut the public out of over 90% of decisions affecting national forests and grasslands. The Forest Service should abandon it and instead concentrate on protecting our best tools in the fight against climate change - our forests."
"This rule would streamline the destruction of America's national forests," said Alison Flint, Director of Litigation and Agency Policy at The Wilderness Society. "Under the guise of 'modernizing' forest policy, the rule would shut out the public while speeding up logging, road building and other assaults on wild lands that the public owns. In our comments to the Forest Service, we cite decades of data and science showing that roads are a leading cause of pollution to the forest rivers and streams that provide drinking water for millions of Americans as well as critical habitat for native fish and other wildlife."
"This proposal would shut out the public - including nearby communities - from helping decide what makes sense for our publicly-owned forests," said Matthew Davis, Legislative Director of the League of Conservation Voters. "This is yet another Trump administration attack on our public lands and our democratic process for the benefit of corporate polluters. The Trump administration's Forest Service should abandon this irresponsible proposal and make sure the public's voice is heard in decision-making."
"Public involvement is fundamental to democracy, but this proposed rule seeks to silence local communities and move decision-making about our forests behind closed doors," said Joro Walker, General Counsel for Western Resource Advocates. "We urge the Forest Service to abandon this misguided rulemaking process, which will deprive on-the-ground agency staff of a critical planning tool and put the West's unique natural places, critical wildlife habitats, and scarce water resources at risk. It will also do nothing to alleviate the real cause of backlog at the agency, which is a lack of funding, rather than the public input and environmental review process."
"Yet again the Trump administration wants to roll back vital safeguards and curtail public input. This rule will make it easier to log, drill and mine our forests-- actions that will be doubly bad for our climate by both increasing pollution and limiting our ability to reduce it. Our forests must be managed as part of the climate solution," said Kirin Kennedy, Sierra Club Deputy Legislative Director for Lands and Wildlife.
"This rule would keep the public completely in the dark while the Trump administration bulldozes our national forests," said Randi Spivak, Public Lands Director at the Center for Biological Diversity. "The Forest Service is saying 'trust us' with public lands, but they've given us every reason not to trust them. This agency has a duty to protect public lands and we intend to make sure that they do, even if it means taking them to court."
"Audubon and the public depend on NEPA to ensure that decisions affecting birds like marbled murrelets in the Tongass National Forest in Alaska and greater sage-grouse in the Sawtooth National Forest in Idaho are based on sound science and made with public input," said Nada Culver, Vice President for Public Lands, National Audubon Society. "But the Forest Service is letting all these fundamental concepts fly out the window in order to more hastily approve logging, energy development and road building. The Forest Service should abandon this ill-advised process."
"Public input has saved countless acres of old growth forests, rare habitats, streams, trails, and scenic vistas by persuading the Forest Service to relocate or scale back logging projects, roads, and other infrastructure," said Sam Evans, National Forests and Parks Program Leader for the Southern Environmental Law Center. "Now, under tremendous pressure to meet climbing timber quotas, the agency wants to forgo those improvements and instead hide the impacts of its projects from public view. We won't stand for it."
"The proposed rule brings no comfort to the hundreds of imperiled wildlife species that depend on America's national forests for their survival. As the world wrestles with a biodiversity crisis, it is irresponsible and reprehensible for this administration to willfully ignore the negative impacts of logging and roadbuilding on America's treasured wildlife and lands," said Peter Nelson, Director of Federal Lands, Defenders of Wildlife.
"From Grand Canyon to Shenandoah National Parks, more than a dozen of our country's most iconic parks border national forest lands. And what happens in forests adjacent to national parks can dramatically impact the environment inside the park itself. The U.S. Forest Service's proposed rule not only threatens the lands, water and wildlife found in our national forests, but will also inevitably impact the irreplaceable natural and cultural resources within park borders," said Ani Kame'enui, Deputy Vice President of Government Affairs for National Parks Conservation Association. "NPCA has long been a supporter of the National Environmental Policy Act and its facilitation of community engagement and commitment to landscape connectivity. The proposed rule cuts at the very heart of this bedrock law, undermining both national park landscapes and the millions of people who visit these treasured places each year."
A copy of the organizations' technical comments is available HERE.
In addition, the following organizations, state governments, and decision-makers also submitted comments in opposition to the Forest Service's proposed rule:
- Jim Furnish, a retired Deputy Chief of the U.S. Forest Service
- The Conservation Alliance, a group of 250 outdoor and related businesses
- 25 U.S. Senators opposing the Forest Service's draft rule
- 27 U.S. Representatives opposing the Forest Service's draft rule
- 54 law professors from across the country with thousands of years of experience in federal administrative, environmental, and natural resources law
- Horst Greczmiel, former Associate Director for NEPA Oversight at CEQ, expressing deep concern with the Forest Service's draft rule
- Local elected officials from Eagle County, CO; Pitkin County, CO; Gunnison County (CO); the City of Aspen, CO; Boulder County, CO; county officials in Pima County, AZ; San Juan County Commission (UT); Grand County Commission (UT); and, King County, WA
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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At Least 95 Palestinians Killed in Israeli Attacks Including Massacres at Beach Café, Aid Points
"I saw body parts flying everywhere, and bodies cut and burned," said one eyewitness to a strike on the popular al-Baqa Café.
Jun 30, 2025
Israeli forces ramped up their genocidal assault on the Gaza Strip Monday, killing at least 95 Palestinians in attacks including massacres at a seaside café and a humanitarian aid distribution center and bombings of five school shelters housing displaced families and a hospital where refugees were sheltering in tents.
An Israeli strike targeted the al-Baqa Café in western Gaza City, one of the few operating businesses remaining after 633 days of Israel's obliteration of the coastal strip and a popular gathering place for journalists, university students, artists, and others seeking reliable internet service and a respite from nearly 21 months of near-relentless attacks.
Medical sources said at least 33 civilians were killed and nearly 50 others wounded in the massacre, including footballer Mustafa Abu Amira, photojournalist Ismail Abu Hatab—who survived an earlier Israeli airstrike and is reportedly the 227th journalists killed by Israel since October 2023—and prominent artist Frans Al-Salmi, whose final painting depicting a young Palestinian woman killed by Israeli forces resembles photographs of its slain creator posted on social media after her killing.
Warning: Photos shows image of death
Survivor Ali Abu Ateila toldThe Associated Press that the café was crowded with women and children at the time of the attack.
"Without a warning, all of a sudden, a warplane hit the place, shaking it like an earthquake," he said.
Another survivor of the massacre told Britain's Sky News: "All I see is blood... Unbelievable. People come here to take a break from what they see inside Gaza. They come westward to breathe."
Eyewitness Ahmed Al-Nayrab toldAgence France-Presse that a "huge explosion shook the area."
"I saw body parts flying everywhere, and bodies cut and burned," he said. "It was a scene that made your skin crawl."
Witnesses and officials said Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) troops opened fire on Palestinians seeking food and other humanitarian aid from a U.S.-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation distribution point in southern Gaza, killing 15 people amid near-daily massacres of aid-seekers.
"We were targeted by artillery," survivor Monzer Hisham Ismail told The Associated Press. Another survivor, Yousef Mahmoud Mokheimar, told the AP that Israeli troops "fired at us indiscriminately." Mokheimar was shot in the leg, another man who tried to rescue him was also shot.
IDF troops have killed nearly 600 Palestinian aid-seekers and wounded more than 4,000 others over the past month, with Israeli military officers and soldiers saying they were ordered to deliberately fire on civilians in search of food and other necessities amid Israel's weaponized starvation of Gaza.
Another 13 people were reportedly killed Monday when IDF warplanes bombed an aid warehouse in the Zeitoun quarter of southern Gaza City, according to al-Ahli Baptist Hospital officials cited by The Palestine Chronicle. IDF warplanes also reportedly bombed five schools housing displaced families, three of them in Zeitoun. Israeli forces also bombed the courtyard of al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir al-Balah in central Gaza, where thousands of forcibly displaced Palestinian families are sheltering in tents. It was reportedly the 12th time the hospital has been bombed since the start of the war.
The World Health Organization has documented more than 700 attacks on Gaza healthcare facilities since October 2023. Most of Gaza's hospitals are out of service due to Israeli attacks, some of which have been called genocidal by United Nations experts.
Israel's overall behavior in the war is the subject of an ongoing International Court of Justice genocide case, while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza, including murder and using starvation as a weapon of war.
Since October 2023, Israeli forces have killed or wounded more than 204,000 Palestinians in Gaza, including over 14,000 people who are missing and presumed dead and buried under rubble, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, whose casualty figures have been found to be generally accurate and even a likely undercount by peer-reviewed studies.
The intensified IDF attacks follow Israel's issuance of new forced evacuation orders amid the ongoing Operation Gideon's Chariots, an ongoing offensive which aims to conquer and indefinitely occupy all of Gaza and ethnically cleanse much of its population, possibly to make way for Jewish recolonization as advocated by many right-wing Israelis.
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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."
Jun 30, 2025
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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Biden National Security Adviser Among Those Crafting 'Project 2029' Policy Agenda for Democrats
"Jake Sullivan's been a critical decision-maker in every Democratic catastrophe of the last decade," said one observer. "Why is he still in the inner circle?"
Jun 30, 2025
Amid the latest battle over the direction the Democratic Party should move in, a number of strategists and political advisers from across the center-left's ideological spectrum are assembling a committee to determine the policy agenda they hope will be taken up by a Democratic successor to President Donald Trump.
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."
Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez have drawn crowds of thousands in red districts this year at Sanders' Fighting Oligarchy rallies—another sign, progressives say, that voters are responding to politicians who focus on billionaires' outsized control over the U.S. political system and on economic justice.
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?"
"Jake Sullivan is shaping domestic policy for the next Democratic administration," he added. "Who is happy with the Biden foreign policy legacy?"
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