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For Immediate Release
November, 15 2020, 11:00pm EDT
Contact:
Taylor McKinnon, Center for Biological Diversity, (801) 300-2414, tmckinnon@biologicaldiversity.org
Erik Molvar, Western Watersheds Project, (307) 399-7910, emolvar@westernwatersheds.org
Matt Nykiel, WildEarth Guardians, (719) 439-5895, mnykiel@wildearthgurardians.org
Kate Hudson, Waterkeeper Alliance, (914) 388-5016, khudson@waterkeeper.org
John Weisheit, Living Rivers and Colorado Riverkeeper, (435) 260-2590, john@livingrivers.org
Legal Protest Blasts Plan for 430 Square Miles of Fracking Leases in Wyoming
Trump plan threatens 43 million tons of climate pollution ahead of Biden’s promised leasing ban.
WASHINGTON
Citing harm to wildlife, clean air and the climate, conservation groups filed a legal protest over the weekend challenging a Trump administration plan approving the sale of fracking leases on 275,000 acres of public lands in Wyoming. Fracking those leases would destroy habitat for greater sage-grouse, worsen air quality and cause up to 43 million tons of climate pollution -- as much as a coal-fired power plant emits in 11 years.
The online auction, which will offer 118,219 of the 275,000 approved acres, is scheduled Dec. 15-17. President-elect Biden has pledged to ban new oil and gas leasing on federal public lands and waters when he takes office Jan. 20.
"Each ounce of climate pollution lends urgency to Biden's plan to end fossil fuel leasing on public land and waters," said Taylor McKinnon, a senior campaigner at the Center for Biological Diversity. "This Wyoming plan is a recipe for disaster. Our climate can't afford one more acre of public land committed to fossil fuel development."
The leases continue the Trump administration's defiance of climate scientists' call to cut greenhouse gas pollution by half in the coming decade. The Trump administration has offered more than 7 million acres of public lands in the lower 48 states for fracking leases, and 4 million acres have been sold. Lawsuits have so far invalidated the leases on about 60% of those 4 million acres.
"The unrestrained leasing of our public lands for oil and gas extraction not only jeopardizes local and regional water quality and quantity but also intensifies climate impacts across the Western United States," said Kate Hudson, Western US Advocacy Coordinator for Waterkeeper Alliance. "All communities -- but especially our Native American nations -- are increasingly threatened with a devastating combination of irreversible drought and catastrophic fire. We call on the Biden administration to abandon aggressive fossil fuel extraction from our public lands and equitably address the climate crisis before it is too late."
The protest challenges the Bureau of Land Management's failure to analyze harm from climate pollution and assess how volatile organic compounds and nitrogen oxides will worsen ozone pollution. Wyoming's Upper Green River Basin already suffers pollution levels that exceed federal health standards.
"This last gasp assault on our climate and public lands firmly bolsters the need for President-elect Biden to make good on his commitment to ban federal fossil fuel leasing and reverse the damage wrought by four years of climate and science denial under Trump," said Matt Nykiel with WildEarth Guardians. "For four years now, we've been on the frontlines fighting back against the Trump administration's attempts to sell out our public lands for fracking and we don't intend to back down until President-elect Biden holds true to delivering bold action for climate."
"Regional warming from greenhouse gas pollution is drying the Colorado River and forcing emergency actions to send water from Flaming Gorge Reservoir in Wyoming to Lake Powell in Utah," said John Weisheit with Living Rivers and Colorado Riverkeeper. "The disastrous decision to increase fossil fuel extraction and greenhouse gas pollution at this crucial juncture is a decision that also accepts a future of dangerous water poverty for the Colorado River Basin."
The protest also challenges the Bureau's failure to prioritize leasing outside of sage-grouse habitat and to fully assess potential harms from fracking to grouse populations. Estimates from multiple state wildlife agencies show that grouse populations are plummeting. The grouse once occupied hundreds of millions of acres across the West, but their populations are dwindling as oil and gas development, livestock grazing, roads, powerlines and other activities have destroyed and fragmented their native habitats.
"With its last dying gasp, the Trump administration appears hellbent on committing as much sage grouse habitat as possible to its failing energy dominance agenda," said Erik Molvar, executive director of Western Watersheds Project. "But the courts have made clear that this stampede to lease key sage grouse habitats for drilling and fracking is illegal, and the Biden administration has signaled a pivot to climate-friendly policies on public lands, so this commitment of public lands to industrial destruction may be short-lived indeed."
The protest was filed by WildEarth Guardians, the Center for Biological Diversity, Living Rivers and Colorado Riverkeeper, Waterkeeper Alliance and Western Watersheds Project.
Background
Fossil fuel production on public lands causes about a quarter of U.S. greenhouse gas pollution. Peer-reviewed science estimates that a nationwide federal fossil fuel leasing ban would reduce carbon emissions by 280 million tons per year, ranking it among the most ambitious federal climate-policy proposals in recent years.
Federal fossil fuels that have not been leased to industry contain up to 450 billion tons of potential climate pollution; those already leased to industry contain up to 43 billion tons. Pollution from already-leased fossil fuels on federal lands, if fully developed, would essentially exhaust the U.S. carbon budget for keeping the world below a 1.5 degrees Celsius temperature increase.
Western Watersheds Project is an environmental conservation group working to protect and restore watersheds and wildlife through.
LATEST NEWS
Prosecutor Handpicked to Go After Trump's Enemies Attacked Journalist in Bizarre Texts
Some observers speculated that US Attorney Lindsey Halligan may have violated federal law by sending "disappearing messages" about an ongoing case.
Oct 21, 2025
Lindsey Halligan, the US attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, who was hand-picked by President Donald Trump to bring criminal charges against his political rivals, left a legal journalist befuddled earlier this month when she sent unsolicited text messages containing sensitive details about one of her highest-profile cases.
On Monday night, Anna Bower, a senior editor at Lawfare, published the full text message exchange, which pertained to the prosecution of New York Attorney General Letitia James, against whom Halligan brought charges for mortgage fraud earlier this month.
The case against James has been widely criticized as politically motivated, as James had previously brought a case against Trump for financial crimes, which resulted in a finding against him in a civil fraud trial in 2022.
The president appointed Halligan, a former insurance lawyer who has never prosecuted a criminal case but previously worked as a personal attorney for Trump, to take over for her predecessor, Erik Siebert, who was forced out for declining to prosecute former FBI Director James Comey on what he believed to be flimsy charges.
Halligan first messaged Bower on October 11, just two days after the indictment against James had been handed up by the Department of Justice (DOJ), accusing her of misrepresenting how she intended to use a rental property in Norfolk, Virginia, to secure a better mortgage rate in 2020, allegedly by claiming that it was for personal use as a "second home" when she was actually renting it to a family of three.
Even before Halligan's texts, Bower said she was "among the skeptics" of the case's merits, noting that the type of mortgage agreement signed by James not only allowed her to rent the property after a year, but that the indictment "provides scant details about the circumstances of the supposed rental arrangement" James supposedly made with clients in violation of her mortgage contract.
Her perception was bolstered by reporting from the New York Times, which revealed that since 2020, the home has been occupied by James' grand-niece, who does not pay rent on the property, and that James stays there several times per year.
In response to the report, Bower—an analyst who often provides commentary on legal stories that she did not herself report—posted on X that “this is important exculpatory evidence because the indictment accuses James of seeking a ‘second home’ mortgage when in reality she intended to use it as an ’investment’ home by renting it.”
This post apparently caught the attention of Halligan, who messaged Bower on Signal later that afternoon.
"Anna, Lindsey Halligan here," the first message read. "You are reporting things that are simply not true. Thought you should have a heads up."
Bower explained: "I assumed the exchange was a hoax because, while it is not unusual for lawyers to reach out to me about my reporting or commentary, it is highly unusual for a US attorney to do so regarding an ongoing prosecution—particularly in a high-profile case in which her conduct is already the subject of immense public scrutiny."
But she later confirmed it was Halligan, and asked what precisely her post had gotten wrong.
Halligan responded: "You're assuming exculpatory evidence without knowing what you're talking about. It's just bizarre to me. If you have any questions, before you report, feel free to reach out to me. But jumping to conclusions does your credibility no good."
Noting that she was not the person who reported the story, Bower asked if the Times report had gotten something wrong. Halligan brought the conversation back to Bower.
"Yes they did but you went with it!" she said. "Without even fact checking anything!!!!"
Halligan referred Bower to the DOJ's indictment of James, but Bower noted that the indictment's "odd and ambiguous" wording did not actually contradict the Times' reporting. When she asked for more clarification about what specific details were inaccurate, Halligan said "I can't tell you grand jury stuff," even though her discussion with Bower had already discussed grand jury materials.
When Bower explained that it was still "unclear" what the Times report had gotten wrong, Halligan began to launch into a personal attack against her.
"You're biased," Halligan wrote. "Your reporting isn't accurate. I'm the one handling the case and I'm telling you that. If you want to twist and torture the facts to fit your narrative, there's nothing I can do. Waste to even give you a heads up."
Bower again insisted that she'd be "happy to correct" any mistakes, but that she "can't do so without a sense of what I supposedly got wrong."
Halligan replied: "Continue to do what you have been and you'll be completely discredited when the evidence comes out."
Over the subsequent days, when Bower would continue to reach out to Halligan to ask about other aspects of the case, she was met with more insults and eventually silence.
When Bower reached out to the DOJ for comment, a spokesperson responded that Halligan was "attempting to point you to facts, not gossip, but when clarifying that she would adhere to the rule of the law and not disclose grand jury information, you threaten to leak an entire conversation."
"Good luck ever getting anyone to talk to you when you publish their texts," theDOJ added.
After sending the DOJ another set of follow-up questions on Monday in anticipation of the story's publication, Bower received another text from Halligan minutes before the story was to be posted. Bower described the exchange as follows:
"By the way—everything I ever sent you is off record. You're not a journalist so it's weird saying that but just letting you know."
I responded: "I'm sorry, but that's not how this works. You don't get to say that in retrospect."
Halligan was unpersuaded: "Yes I do. Off record."
"I am really sorry. I would have been happy to speak with you on an off the record basis had you asked," I said. "But you didn't ask, and I still haven't agreed to speak on that basis. Do you have any further comment for the story?
To my surprise, she kept going: "It's obvious the whole convo is off record. There's disappearing messages and it's on signal. What is your story? You never told me about a story."
Halligan has a bachelor's degree in politics and broadcast journalism from Regis University. And as Bower notes, she has frequently dealt with the press as a member of Trump's legal team.
"As anyone who professionally engages with the media as routinely as Halligan would know, the default assumption when a reporter speaks with a public official is that everything is 'on the record,' meaning that anything the source says can be printed with attribution," Bower wrote.
The saga is the latest in a series of gaffes that have called Halligan's credibility as a prosecutor into question.
Her indictment against Comey has been ridiculed by legal scholars for being "almost devoid of factual material," as Benjamin Wittes, the co-director of the Harvard Law School-Brookings Project on Law and Security, put it. While attempting to present charging documents to a magistrate judge, she mistakenly presented two inconsistent documents, which the judge said "has never happened before."
While attempting to have the case against Comey for allegedly making false statements thrown out of court, his attorneys argued that Halligan altered some of his testimony, including by claiming that he was speaking about “Hillary Clinton” when he was actually answering a question about “the Clinton administration.”
Following the reveal of her exchanges with Bower, Andrew Fleischman, a trial and appellate lawyer in Georgia, joked on social media that "Halligan has all the poise and butt-dialing capacity of a sober [Rudy] Giuliani."
Others, like Matthew Gertz, a senior fellow at Media Matters for America, raised the possibility that Halligan’s use of “disappearing messages” on Signal could have violated federal law, which requires federal prosecutors to preserve evidence that may be favorable to the accused.
In a CNN interview with Kaitlan Collins on Monday night, following the release of the texts, Bower explained that she has spoken to other legal reporters and prosecutors in the days since her conversation with Halligan.
Her sources in the legal profession, she said, "have never quite seen an exchange like this.”
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‘Why Do You Continue Unlawfully Detaining US Citizens?’ Democratic Lawmakers Ask ICE
"This administration’s failure to investigate or even acknowledge that these indiscriminate immigration raids are canceling the rights of US citizens is dangerous."
Oct 21, 2025
Days after new reporting revealed that at least 170 US citizens are among those who have been detained by federal immigration agents under the Trump administration, which Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal called "absolutely shocking," the Washington Democrat joined Rep. Jamie Raskin in demanding answers from top homeland security officials on the report.
Jayapal and Raskin (D-Md.) noted that they previously wrote to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Director Todd Lyons in February, just weeks into President Donald Trump's second term, when the detention of US citizens ensnared in Trump's mass deportation operation was already raising alarm.
At that point, NBC News had reported on the detentions of US citizens including Native tribe members, which raised concerns about racial profiling—but in their Monday letter to Noem and Lyons, Jayapal and Raskin said the response they got in February was "flippant and unserious," with the officials simply reiterating existing policies that prohibit ICE from detaining US citizens—"without providing any assurance" that agents were "actually following that policy."
"This administration cannot hide behind a broad policy statement, as it continues to unlawfully detain US citizens as part of indiscriminate immigration raids," wrote Jayapal and Raskin.
The lawmakers emphasized that numerous arrests of US citizens by ICE and other immigration agents have been violent.
Raskin and Jayapal drew attention to four specific cases, including those of:
- Rodrick Johnson, a 67-year-old man who was dragged out of his apartment in Chicago by immigration agents who zip-tied him after breaking down his door as part of a raid on his building, and then left tied up outside the building for nearly three hours;
- George Retes, who was pepper-sprayed and detained for three days in a raid on a farm where he worked, with agents refusing to look at his ID and then denying him his right to see an attorney or make a phone call;
- Julio Noriega, a 54-year-old man who was handcuffed by ICE officers and loaded into a van while he was handing out copies of his resume to businesses in Berwyn, Illinois; and
- Leonardo Garcia Venegas, who was arrested twice during worksite raids in Alabama, even after showing agents his REAL ID that proved his US citizenship.
Other cases not mentioned in the letter include those of Job Garcia, a photographer who was tackled and held on the ground by ICE agents during a raid at a Home Depot in Los Angeles and then detained for more than 24 hours, and Debbie Brockman, a news producer in Chicago who was handcuffed by agents who accused her of throwing an object at them, and then hauled into an unmarked vehicle that crashed into another car as it sped away—only to be released later that day with no charges.
Raskin and Jayapal accused Noem and Lyons of overseeing a "lawless 'detain first, ask questions later' approach to immigration
enforcement" that is "terrorizing communities across the country."
"Masked, armed agents are snatching people on the street and refusing to identify themselves," said the lawmakers. "US citizens are now afraid to speak Spanish in public and are carrying their passports everywhere they go. This administration’s failure to investigate or even acknowledge that these indiscriminate immigration raids are canceling the rights of US citizens is dangerous."
Jayapal and Raskin demanded that Noem and Lyons provide an accounting of all the US citizens who have been detained with their identities, the length of time they were held, and their criminal records if they had any—which, according to an analysis by the CATO Institute in June, a majority of people arrested by ICE this year have not.
"We once again demand that you immediately provide a full accounting of all cases in which US citizens have been detained since January 20, 2025," said the Democrats, "and explain any concrete steps your agencies are implementing to prevent such abuses from continuing."
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Trump-GOP Giveaway to Big Pharma Will Hit Taxpayers With $9 Billion in Higher Drug Costs
"Donald Trump and Republicans are selling out America's seniors," said one advocate.
Oct 21, 2025
A major pharmaceutical industry handout that Republicans—with the support of one Senate Democrat—included in President Donald Trump's signature legislative package is expected to cost US taxpayers nearly twice as much as originally expected, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said in an updated analysis released Monday.
The CBO initially projected that the provision, known as the ORPHAN Cures Act, would cost around $5 billion over the next decade. But the office said Monday that its earlier assessment did not take into account several major, high-priced drugs that will be exempted from Medicare price negotiations as a result of the Trump-GOP law.
The budget office said it now expects the provision of Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill Act to cost $8.8 billion over the next 10 years.
Among the drugs included in the new CBO analysis is Keytruda, a cancer medication sold by Merck that carries a list price of $24,062 every six weeks. The Trump GOP-budget law delays Keytruda's eligibility for Medicare price negotiations by at least a year, postponing significant potential savings for taxpayers and patients.
Merith Basey, executive director of Patients for Affordable Drugs Now, said in response to the updated CBO analysis that "the ORPHAN Cures Act is a wildly expensive handout to Big Pharma that will harm patients, drain taxpayer dollars, and weaken the government's ability to rein in high drug prices."
Basey noted that the "insatiable" pharmaceutical industry is not satisfied with the enactment of the ORPHAN Cures Act, which restricts Medicare price negotiations for drugs that treat more than one rare disease. Big Pharma, Basey said, is "spending record sums this year to advance additional carveouts like the EPIC Act, which would exempt even more blockbuster drugs from negotiation."
"Any support for these bills goes against the will of the 90% of Americans who want Congress to go further to lower drug prices—not facilitate another handout to Big Pharma," said Basey.
"This isn't about helping lower costs—it's about doing the bidding of big drug companies, and Trump and the GOP are all too happy to oblige."
The deep-pocketed pharmaceutical industry has waged war on the popular Medicare price negotiation program since its inception during the Biden administration.
While pharmaceutical giants' efforts to gut the program have been stymied in court, the industry-friendly Trump administration and Republican lawmakers have done pharma's bidding through legislation and executive action. Earlier this year, as Common Dreams reported, Trump signed an executive order aimed at delaying price negotiations for a broad category of medications despite the president's repeated promises to bring down costs.
"Trump and Republicans are selling out America's seniors," said Brad Woodhouse, president of the advocacy group Protect Our Care. "Instead of letting Medicare negotiate lower prices for more drugs, they carved out a loophole to protect the industry's most profitable drugs."
"Not only does the GOP tax bill throw over 15 million Americans off their healthcare and hike costs for millions more, but it also forces older Americans to pay more for life-saving medicines while CEOs and billionaires line their pockets with more money than they know what to do with," Woodhouse continued. "This isn't about helping lower costs—it's about doing the bidding of big drug companies, and Trump and the GOP are all too happy to oblige."
Steve Knievel, access to medicines advocate at Public Citizen, said Monday that "instead of transferring $10 billion from taxpayers and cancer patients to drug corporations that are already extremely profitable, President Trump and members of Congress must work to strengthen and expand Medicare drug price negotiations."
"Instead of gutting the law through bills like the ORPHAN Cures Act, EPIC Act, and MINI Act so Big Pharma can block negotiations on blockbuster treatments," Knievel added, "Congress should pass legislation to empower Medicare to negotiate lower drug prices on all costly medicines and allow all patients to access lower, negotiated prices, even if they don't have Medicare."
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