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For Immediate Release
January, 11 2021, 11:00pm EDT
Contact:
Jeremy Nichols, WildEarth Guardians, (303) 437-7663, jnichols@wildearthguardians.org
Melissa Hornbein Western Environmental Law Center, (406) 471-3173, hornbein@westernlaw.org
Liz Trotter Earthjustice, (305) 332-5395, etrotter@earthjustice.org
Michael Saul Center for Biological Diversity, (303) 915-8309, msaul@biologicaldiversity.org
Latest Lawsuit Challenges Trump Sale of Montana Public Lands for Fracking
Suit underscores need for President-elect Biden to follow through with pledge to ban on new fossil fuel leases on public lands.
WASHINGTON
Citing the failure of the Trump administration to protect the climate and clean water, a coalition today filed suit to overturn the sale of more than 58,000 acres of public lands for fracking in Montana.
The lawsuit comes as President-elect Joe Biden has pledged to end the sale of public lands to the oil and gas industry.
"Today's lawsuit underscores the need for President-elect Joe Biden to make good on his promise to ban oil and gas leasing on public lands," said Jeremy Nichols, Climate and Energy Program Director for WildEarth Guardians. "We're holding the line on the Trump administration's denial of climate change and embrace of costly fossil fuels, but to really turn the tide, we need the next administration to make climate and clean energy a number one priority."
Filed in federal court, the suit aims to completely reverse the sale of 58,297 acres in Montana and North Dakota to oil and gas companies that occurred between July 2019 and September 2020. The coalition filing suit includes WildEarth Guardians, Montana Environmental Information Center, the Center for Biological Diversity, the Sierra Club, and the Waterkeeper Alliance, all represented by attorneys with Earthjustice and the Western Environmental Law Center.
The suit comes on the heels of a May 2020 federal court win that reversed the sale of nearly 150,000 acres of public lands for fracking in Montana. The judge held the Trump administration's U.S. Bureau of Land Management illegally ignored the impacts of selling public lands for fracking to the climate and to groundwater.
"In its prior ruling, the court made clear that the government's incomplete analysis violated the law," said Tom Delehanty, Earthjustice attorney. "Yet the agency has continued leasing public lands to the oil and gas industry relying on the same unlawful flaws, which is why we are going to court."
This court ruling is one of several that have overturned the Trump administration's attempts to sell public lands for fracking in the western U.S. In March 2019, a federal court rejected the Bureau of Land Management's sale of more than 300,000 acres in Wyoming and in early 2020, an Idaho judge overturned the sale of nearly one million acres in Nevada, Utah, and Wyoming. In November 2020, a federal court again rejected the ale of public lands for fracking in Wyoming and in December 2020, a court also rejected the sale of 60,000 acres of public lands for fracking in Utah.
"Time after time, the Bureau continues to insist that the individual impacts of a given lease sale are so minimal as to absolve the Bureau of Land Management of the need to conduct meaningful analysis under the National Environmental Policy Act," said Melissa Hornbein, Western Environmental Law Center attorney. "As long as the agency continues to ignore the fact that the climate crisis is fundamentally cumulative in nature, we will continue to seek judicial relief to correct this misapprehension."
Hundreds of environmental, health, justice, and climate advocacy organizations have called on President-elect Biden to make good on his promise to end the sale of public lands for oil and gas extraction and to put new permitting and extraction on hold while the Bureau of Land Management addresses the climate consequences of fossil fuel development on public lands.
"It's long overdue for our public lands to become part of the solution to the climate crisis rather than a source of plunder for the oil and gas industry," said Michael Saul, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity. "We're suing to set aside these illegal oil and gas leases because the Trump administration has completely disregarded its obligation to consider the consequences of its reckless public lands decisions on our climate and water quality."
More than 25 million acres of public lands in the U.S. have been leased to the oil and gas industry for development. In Montana, 2.1 million acres are locked up by leases to the oil and gas industry. Only half of all leased lands are actually producing oil and gas.
"In spite of the extreme urgency of the water and climate crises we face, the Bureau of Land Management has repeatedly ignored the clear evidence that significant water depletions and climate impacts will occur as a result of the lease sales we are challenging," said Kate Hudson, Western U.S. Advocacy Coordinator for Waterkeeper Alliance. "We are seeking to overturn these lease sales so that our communities, our Western waterways, our Native American Nations, and our planet will not be forced to pay the price."
WildEarth Guardians protects and restores the wildlife, wild places, wild rivers, and health of the American West. Driven by passion, we've tackled some of the West's most difficult and pressing conservation challenges over the past three decades. We've celebrated small victories (banning leghold trapping in the state of Colorado), monumental triumphs (ending logging on more than 21 million acres in the Southwest), and everything in-between.
(206) 417-6363LATEST NEWS
Rubio Confirms End of New START, Sparking Calls for Nuclear Talks With Russia, China
"Trump, Putin, and Xi can and must put the world on a safer path by taking commonsense actions to build down the nuclear danger," said one campaigner.
Feb 04, 2026
Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday implicitly confirmed that New START—a key arms control treaty between the United States and Russia—will expire Thursday, prompting renewed demands for what one group called "a more coherent approach from the Trump administration" toward nuclear nonproliferation.
Asked about the impending expiration of New START during a Wednesday press conference, Rubio said he didn't "have any announcement" on the matter, and that President Donald Trump "will opine on it later."
"Obviously, the president’s been clear in the past that in order to have true arms control in the 21st century, it’s impossible to do something that doesn’t include China because of their vast and rapidly growing stockpile," Rubio said.
🇺🇸🇷🇺🇨🇳 Secretary of State Marco Rubio:
I don't have any announcement on New START right now. I think the President will opine on it later.
The President has been clear in the past that in order to have true arms control in the 21st century, it's impossible to do something that… pic.twitter.com/8pxi3bfdsy
— Visioner (@visionergeo) February 4, 2026
New START, signed in 2010, committed the United States and Russia to halving the number of strategic nuclear missile launchers in their arsenals. While the treaty did not limit the size of the countries' actual nuclear arsenals, proponents pointed to its robust verification regime and other transparency features as mutually beneficial highlights of the agreement.
“We have known that New START would end for 15 years, but no one has shown the necessary leadership to be prepared for its expiration,” said John Erath, senior policy director at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation and former longtime State Department official.
“The treaty limited the number of nuclear weapons the United States and Russia could have, but perhaps more importantly, New START also provided each country with unprecedented insights into the other’s arsenal so that Washington and Moscow could make decisions based on real information rather than speculation," Erath added.
The last remaining major treaty limiting the world's two largest nuclear arsenals expires Feb. 5. Does this mean the end of nuclear arms control? Not necessarily. Read our statement.armscontrolcenter.org/statement-on...
[image or embed]
— Nukes of Hazard (@nukesofhazard.bsky.social) February 4, 2026 at 2:04 PM
Daryl G. Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, said Wednesday that "the end of New START requires a more coherent approach from the Trump administration."
"If President Trump and Secretary Rubio are serious, they should make a serious proposal for bilateral (not trilateral) talks with Beijing," he asserted. "Despite Trump’s talk about involving China in nuclear negotiations, there is no indication that Trump or his team have taken the time to propose risk reduction or arms control talks with China since returning to office in 2025."
Kimball continued:
Furthermore, there is no reason why the United States and Russia should not and cannot continue, as [Russian President Vladimir] Putin suggested on September 22, to respect the central limits of New START and begin the hard work of negotiating a new framework agreement involving verifiable limits on strategic, intermediate-range, and short-range nuclear weapons, as well as strategic missile defenses.
At the same time, if he is serious about involving China in “denuclearization” talks, he could and should invite [Chinese President Xi Jinping] when they meet later this year, to agree to regular bilateral talks on risk reduction and arms control involving senior Chinese and US officials.
"With the end of New START, Trump, Putin, and Xi can and must put the world on a safer path by taking commonsense actions to build down the nuclear danger," Kimball added.
Erath lamented that "with New START’s expiration, we have not only lost unprecedented verification measures that our military and decision-makers depended on, but we have ended more than five decades of painstaking diplomacy that successfully avoided nuclear catastrophe."
"Agreements preceding New START helped reduce the global nuclear arsenal by more than 80% since the height of the Cold War,"
he noted. "Now, both Russia and the United States have no legal obstacle to building their arsenals back up, and we could find ourselves reliving the Cold War."
Last week, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ Science and Security Board advanced its symbolic Doomsday Clock to 85 seconds to midnight, the closest it has ever been to global thermonuclear annihilation, citing developments including failure to extend New START, China's growing arsenal, and Russian weapons tests—to which Trump has vowed to respond in kind.
"The good news is," said Erath, is that "the end of New START does not have to mean the end of nuclear arms control."
"While New START can’t be extended beyond today, Presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin could decide to respect the numerical limits the treaty set on nuclear arsenals," he explained. "They could also resume the treaty’s data exchanges and on-site inspections, in addition to implementing verification measures from other previous arms control treaties."
"Further, they could instruct their administrations to begin immediate talks on a new treaty to cover existing and novel systems and potentially bring in other nuclear powers, like China," Erath continued. "Meanwhile, Congress could—and should—fund nonproliferation and global monitoring efforts while refusing to fund dangerous new nuclear weapons systems."
Last December, US Sens. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) and Reps. Don Beyer (D-Va.), John Garamendi (D-Calif.), and Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) reintroduced the bicameral Hastening Arms Limitation Talks (HALT) Act, "legislation outlining a vision for a 21st century freeze on the testing, production, and deployment of nuclear weapons."
"The Doomsday Clock is at 85 seconds to midnight," Markey—who co-chairs the congressional Nuclear Weapons and Arms Control Working Group—said Wednesday ahead of a press conference with HALT Act co-sponsors. "We need to replace New START now."
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'This Occupation Has to End!' Omar Argues After Homan Says Most Agents Will Stay in Minnesota
"Every single ICE and CBP agent should be out of Minnesota," the congresswoman said. "The terror campaign must stop."
Feb 04, 2026
President Donald Trump's "border czar," Tom Homan, announced Wednesday that 700 immigration agents are leaving Minnesota, but with around 2,000 expected to remain there, Democratic Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, whose district includes Minneapolis, declared that the drawdown is "not enough."
As part of Trump's "Operation Metro Surge," agents with Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have invaded multiple Minnesota cities, including Minneapolis and Saint Paul, and committed various acts of violence, such as fatally shooting Alex Pretti and Renee Good.
In a pair of social media posts about Homan's announcement, Omar argued that "every single ICE and CBP agent should be out of Minnesota. The terror campaign must stop."
"This occupation has to end!" she added, also renewing her call to abolish ICE—a position adopted by growing shares of federal lawmakers and the public as Trump's mass deportation agenda has hit Minnesota's Twin Cities, the Chicago and Los Angeles metropolitan areas, multiple cities in Maine, and other communities across the United States.
In Congress, where a fight over funding for CBP and ICE's parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, is playing out, Omar has stood with other progressives in recent votes. The bill signed by Trump on Tuesday only funds DHS through the middle of the month, though Republicans gave ICE an extra $75 billion in last year's budget package.
During an on-camera interview with NBC News' Tom Llamas, Trump said that the reduction of agents came from him. After the president's factually dubious rant about crime rates, Llamas asked what he had learned from the operation in Minnesota. Trump responded: "I learned that maybe we can use a little bit of a softer touch. But you still have to be tough."
"We're really dealing with really hard criminals," Trump added. Despite claims from him and others in the administration that recent operations have targeted "the worst of the worst," data have repeatedly shown that most immigrants detained by federal officials over the past year don't have any criminal convictions.
Operation Metro Surge has been met with persistent protests in Minnesota and solidarity actions across the United States. Jaylani Hussein, executive director of the Minnesota chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said Wednesday that "the limited drawdown of ICE agents from Minnesota is not a concession. It is a direct response to Minnesotans standing up to unconstitutional federal overreach."
"Minnesotans are winning against this attack on all our communities by organizing, resisting, and defending our constitutional rights. But this moment should not be a victory lap," Hussein continued. "It must instead be a call to continue pushing for justice. The deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti at the hands of federal immigration agents remain uninvestigated, and communities and prosecutors alike have raised grave concerns about violations of their oaths and the Constitution. This is not the time to pull back, it is the time to deepen our resilience, increase our support for one another, and keep fighting for our democracy and accountability until justice is served."
The Not Above the Law coalition's co-chairs—Praveen Fernandes of the Constitutional Accountability Center, Kelsey Herbert of MoveOn, Lisa Gilbert of Public Citizen, and Brett Edkins, of Stand Up America—similarly said that "Tom Homan's announcement that 700 federal immigration agents will be withdrawn from Minnesota is more a minor concession than a meaningful policy shift."
"The vast majority—approximately 2,000 federal agents—remain deployed in the state, and enforcement operations continue unabated," the co-chairs stressed. "This token gesture does nothing to address the ongoing terror families face or the constitutional crisis this administration's actions have created."
“The killings of Minnesotans demand real accountability," they added. "Families torn apart by raids and alleged constitutional violations deserve justice. Real change means the complete withdrawal of all federal forces conducting these operations in Minnesota, full accountability for the deaths and violations that have occurred, and congressional action to restore the rule of law. The American people deserve better than political theater when constitutional rights hang in the balance."
On Tuesday, the state and national ACLU asked the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination to "use its early warning and urgent action procedure in response to the human rights crisis following the Trump administration's deployment of federal forces" in the Twin Cities.
"The Trump administration's ongoing immigration enforcement operations in Minnesota are being carried out by thousands of masked federal agents in military gear who are ignoring basic constitutional and human rights of Minnesotans," said Teresa Nelson, legal director of the ACLU of Minnesota. "Their targeting of our Somali and Latino communities threatens Minnesotans’ most fundamental rights, and it has spread fear among immigrant communities and neighborhoods."
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Senate Democrats Expose Trump's Latest 'Fraud' and Lay Out Plan to Reduce Drug Costs as Prices Surge
"When Big Pharma gets richer off the back of a grandmother struggling to pay for cancer medication, the system is broken."
Feb 04, 2026
Led by Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden, four Democratic senators on Wednesday outlined plans to reduce the costs of prescription drugs after President Donald Trump claimed he would do so—only to allow Big Pharma companies to delay negotiating lower prices and secure "zero commitments" from top executives on making lifesaving medications more affordable for millions of Americans.
“There is no greater fraud than Donald J. Trump when it comes to lower drug prices,” Wyden (D-Ore.) said. “Our doors are wide open to anybody who wants to take the bold next step forward on lowering drug costs for Americans."
Along with a "flash report" on Trump's "broken promises" regarding his pledge to bring drug prices down “to levels nobody ever thought was possible," Wyden sent a Dear Colleague letter to Democratic senators regarding his committee's plans to follow through with lowering costs.
"Finance Committee minority staff will dedicate substantial time and effort this year to developing the next generation of healthcare solutions that lower costs for American families," Wyden wrote. "These solutions will rein in Big Pharma’s outrageous price increases, lower costs for consumers, guarantee predictability for patients, and reduce wasteful government spending that pads the profits of big corporations. Alongside the co-signers of this letter, I invite you to be a part of this bold vision."
The letter, co-signed by Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.), Peter Welch (D-Vt.), and Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.), notes that "the only concrete drug pricing policy Trump enacted within the past year was a price hike for the biggest blockbuster cancer drugs on Earth, giving an $8.8 billion windfall to the pharmaceutical industry."
In contrast, the senators wrote, the Senate Finance Committee will develop policies to incorporate international pricing models into the Medicare drug price negotiation framework, including by allowing Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to consider international prices as a factor or penalize drugmakers when pricing for US customers exceeds international benchmarks.
“Democrats are determined to bring prices down, and we’re willing to work with anyone to find concrete ways to do it."
The committee will also work to end Republican "blockbuster drug bailouts from negotiation," like the ones included in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that shielded several high-priced drugs—including the cancer drug Keytruda—from Medicare price negotiations.
"The Republican budget bill contained a nearly $9 billion sweetheart deal that benefits the biggest drug companies by delaying or exempting some lifesaving medications from negotiation," reads the Democrats' flash report.
Gallego said that "when Big Pharma gets richer off the back of a grandmother struggling to pay for cancer medication, the system is broken."
"That’s what this is all about: Big Pharma execs sitting in their fancy corner offices profiting off of sick, working-class Americans,” the senator said. “We are not going to accept an America where millions of families live in fear of getting sick and needing to fill a prescription. We are going to fight and fight hard for a healthcare system that does what Donald Trump never did: actually lower costs for working families.”
The lawmakers emphasized that even if manufacturers are forced to lower drug prices, patients are not currently guaranteed to directly benefit, because as much as 45% of the $5.4 trillion the US spends on healthcare annually is "absorbed by middlemen such as insurers, pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs), and drug distributors."
"Healthcare middlemen profit when drug costs are high because they make money off of drug margin or payments that are linked to the price of a drug, ripping off patients who pay more than they should. Medicare Part D and the patients it serves should stop footing the bill for inflated drug prices and instead pay for drugs in a more transparent manner that reduces middleman margin," wrote the senators.
The Finance Committee will develop policies to eliminate abuses in the prescription drug supply chain including "egregious drug price markups," and to ensure that patient cost-sharing on drugs more closely aligns with the costs to plans and PBMs.
Finally, the Democrats said they would work to fix the "unmitigated disaster" that Trump and Kennedy have been "for innovation and drug development," as the administration has proposed slashing the National Institutes of Health budget by 40% and has cut off access to treatment for an estimated 74,000 patients who were enrolled in NIH clinical trials.
The Finance Committee, they said, plans to create new incentives for innovation and drug development, including through the tax code.
In their flash report, the Democrats wrote that while failing to force Big Pharma to the negotiating table to save money for Americans, Trump "has been parading Big Pharma executives through the White House, claiming to be cutting cost-saving deals with these corporations."
"One look under the hood reveals the truth: Trump is giving them a pass on tariffs, while receiving zero commitments about how they will lower costs for taxpayers and patients," they wrote. "Donald Trump is getting fleeced by Big Pharma CEOs, and Americans are going to foot the bill."
Welch said that the president "loves to talk a big game and make promises to working families about lowering prescription drug prices. But in reality, his administration is handling this like a PR problem: They’ve got to keep moving and talking about it, but then do nothing to really address the crisis."
“Democrats are determined to bring prices down, and we’re willing to work with anyone to find concrete ways to do it," said Welch. "We’re going to lower healthcare costs and ensure everyone can access affordable, lifesaving, and pain-relieving medication.”
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