September, 14 2021, 05:17pm EDT
Federal Regulators Make Wrong Decision in Allowing New Nuclear Waste Site in Texas
Dumping ground will put Texans at tremendous risk.
WASHINGTON
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) approved a private company's plan Monday to store nuclear waste in West Texas's Permian Basin. The announcement marks the latest decision in the continuing saga of determining where to store spent fuel from U.S. nuclear power plants.
The NRC said the agency "authorizes the company to receive, possess, transfer and store up to 5,000 metric tons of spent fuel and 231.3 metric tons of Greater-Than-Class C low-level radioactive waste for 40 years. The company has said it plans to expand the facility in seven additional phases, up to a total capacity of 40,000 metric tons of fuel. Each expansion would require a license amendment with additional NRC safety and environmental reviews."
According to the Government Accountability Office's estimate, America's fleet of nuclear reactors has produced an estimated 80,000 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel without a long-term storage plan. At the same time, these reactors are adding 2,000 metric tons of additional waste annually.
Environment Texas is an affiliate of Environment America.
Luke Metzger, executive director of Environment Texas, issued the following statement:
"For so many reasons, Texas cannot become America's nuclear waste dumping ground.
"Shipping half of the nation's radioactive waste to Texas would expose communities across America to a dangerous game of radioactive roulette. These shipments could expose truck drivers and everyday highway travelers to radiation -- not to mention transportation accidents can and do happen. America shouldn't risk a mobile Chernobyl by transporting nuclear waste on the nation's roads, rails and waterways.
"This is an inherently high-risk process. The concrete casks the company proposes to use to transport radioactive waste would be among the heaviest loads transported on America's roads, rails and waterways. These heavy loads would stress the integrity of our already degraded infrastructure, making accidents even more likely.
"Beyond that, the math doesn't add up with this deal. A 40-year arrangement to store spent nuclear reactor fuel that remains harmful for thousands of years just kicks the can down the road -- and doesn't kick it very far. What happens after 40 years? Will we ship the waste back to where it came from or will Texas be left holding the bag?
"At a time when America -- and Texas, in particular -- has an abundance of renewable energy technologies like wind and solar, federal regulators shouldn't saddle our state with the lion's share of the nation's nuclear waste. Texas is the nation's largest producer of wind power. We're moving toward renewable energy and turning our back on nuclear power, and the waste that comes with it.
We keep asking the question: What should we do with waste that's deadly for thousands of generations? The only rational answer must be that we should not produce it in the first place."
With Environment America, you protect the places that all of us love and promote core environmental values, such as clean air to breathe, clean water to drink, and clean energy to power our lives. We're a national network of 29 state environmental groups with members and supporters in every state. Together, we focus on timely, targeted action that wins tangible improvements in the quality of our environment and our lives.
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Sensing Opportunity, White-Collar Criminals Vie for Trump Pardons
"Everybody that is in prison now is keenly aware of the environment, and it's become a very hot topic within the low- and minimum-security inmate communities," said a consultant who has advised white-collared convicts.
Mar 11, 2025
U.S. President Donald Trump began his second term with a blitz of clemency actions, including issuing pardons and commutations for over 1,500 rioters convicted in connection to the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol and pardoning Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht, and now the president's "moves to expand the use of pardons have white-collar defendants jolting to attention," according to Tuesday reporting from Politico.
Those reportedly angling for clemency include individuals like jailed crypto titan Sam Bankman-Fried, former Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) who earlier this year was sentenced to 11 years in prison for corruption and bribery, two reality TV stars guilty of defrauding banks and evading taxes, and a member of the music group the Fugees who was convicted for taking part in an embezzlement scheme.
Sam Mangel, a consultant to people convicted of white-collar crime who has advised individuals like Bankman-Fried, told Politico that "everybody that is in prison now is keenly aware of the environment, and it's become a very hot topic within the low- and minimum-security inmate communities."
According to The New York Times, "The new administration has a team of appointees focusing on the process early in Mr. Trump's term, with a particular focus on clemency grants that underscore the president's own grievances about what he sees as the political weaponization of the justice system."
Accordingly, clemency petitioners are "tailoring their pitches to the president by emphasizing their loyalty to him and echoing his claims of political persecution," per the Times.
For example, a lawyer representing conservative reality TV stars Todd and Julie Chrisley wrote in a document prepared for the Trump administration that the couple's conviction for bank fraud and tax evasion "exemplifies the weaponization of justice against conservatives and public figures, eroding basic constitutional protections."
Some, like Menendez, have made themselves out to be the victims of the "corrupt" justice system.
"President Trump is right," wrote Menendez on X the day he was sentenced to 11 years in prison. "This process is political and has been corrupted to the core. I hope President Trump cleans up the cesspool and restores integrity to the system."
In Trump's first term, his use of clemency was "all about cronyism and partisanship and helping out his friends and his political advisers," Rachel Barkow, a professor at New York University School of Law, told the Times. This time around, "the potential for corruption is higher," she said, "because they're starting early, they have figured out how they want to set it up so that people have a pipeline to get to them."
This shift in Trump's second term includes disempowering the Justice Department's Office of the Pardon Attorney and instead shifting control of the clemency operations to the White House Counsel's Office, according to anonymous sources cited by the Times.
Elizabeth Oyer, who had been the U.S. pardon attorney since being appointed in 2022, was fired last week after she refused to recommend that actor Mel Gibson—who is a supporter of Trump—should have his gun rights restored, according Monday reporting from the Times. Gibson lost his gun rights following a 2011 domestic violence misdemeanor conviction.
In late February, Trump also appointed White House "pardon czar" Alice Johnson. Both the appointment of Johnson and the departure of Oyer, "signal that Trump is not done exercising his clemency powers," according to Politico.
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House GOP Prepares to Make It Easier for Tech Giants—Like Musk's X—to Scam Consumers
"Allowing companies like Apple, PayPal, and X Money to avoid federal laws creates a blind spot for rampant financial abuse and fraud," said one watchdog group.
Mar 11, 2025
House Republicans on Tuesday are expected to join their Senate colleagues in advancing a resolution that would roll back a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau rule designed to protect the American public from scammers on digital payment platforms, a move that watchdog groups say would personally benefit President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk.
The House resolution, led by Rep. Mike Flood (R-Neb.), targets a CFPB rule that was finalized shortly after the November election, in the waning days of the Biden administration. The CFPB said at the time that the rule would help ensure that companies offering digital payment services "follow federal law just like large banks, credit unions, and other financial institutions."
But the CFPB is now led by Project 2025 architect Russell Vought, who has halted virtually all of the agency's work while Musk's Department of Government Efficiency overtakes the bureau, looking to gut it from the inside.
With their effort to rescind the CFPB's digital payments rule, congressional Republicans are aiding Musk's assault on the CFPB and delivering a major win for his push into financial services with X Money. The Senate voted mostly along party lines to rescind the rule last week.
"This is a gift to Big Tech and likely the personal finances of Trump and Musk themselves," Tony Carrk, executive director of Accountable.US, said in a statement as the GOP-led House Financial Services Committee took up the resolution. "These companies process over 13 billion transactions a year, and millions of Americans are relying on them for safe and secure payments."
"Allowing companies like Apple, PayPal, and X Money to avoid federal laws creates a blind spot for rampant financial abuse and fraud," Carrk added.
Accountable.US noted in a recent report that both Trump and Musk stand to benefit financially from efforts to gut the CFPB and eliminate rules enacted under the Biden administration.
"Last year, Trump Media & Technology Group filed a trademark to create a broad financial services platform Truth.Fi," the group observed. "The products and services they said they would perform included the creation of a 'downloadable computer software' that serves as a 'digital wallet' to store and trade cryptocurrencies as well as a digital payments processing platform for purchases made with cryptocurrencies."
That initiative and Musk's X Money would fall under the purview of the rule that congressional Republicans are poised to roll back.
In a CNNappearance on Monday, former CFPB Director Rohit Chopra said that Musk and other powerful corporate executives are "fixated" on the consumer bureau because it is "responsible for monitoring all of those tech companies for how they're moving our money to protect against privacy errors and fraud."
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'Vindictive': Trump USDA Freezes $100 Million for University of Maine Amid Trans Athlete Fight
"This administration is targeting our state for retribution," said Rep. Chellie Pingree, "all because our elected officials are standing up for the rule of law."
Mar 11, 2025
The Trump administration on Tuesday appeared to step up its clash with Maine's Democratic-led government over the state's support for transgender women who play on women's sports teams, as the University of Maine announced $100 million in its federal funding had been halted.
The university system said the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) funding was being temporarily paused while the Trump administration investigates whether the University of Maine System (UMS) is violating Title VI or Title IX of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibit discrimination based on race or national origin and sex, respectively.
The USDA began a review of UMS compliance with the Civil Rights Act in February, a day after Gov. Janet Mills told President Donald Trump at a White House event that she was prepared to defend Maine's decision to continue allowing transgender students to play on girl's and women's sports teams.
The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) updated its policies to comply with Trump's executive order requiring the Department of Education to notify school districts that allowing transgender students to compete on women's teams violates Title IX.
"If all of their funding was removed from USDA, that would have a really big impact on farmers on the ground here."
But Mills told Trump that she will "comply with state and federal law." In 2021, Maine's state laws were updated to allow student athletes to compete on teams that correspond to their identity as long as there are no safety concerns.
Since the USDA opened its review of UMS policies, the university system has confirmed to the department that its athletic programs are in compliance with state and federal laws and that its schools that are part of the NCAA are following the association's recently updated policies.
UMS said in a statement Tuesday that after notifying the USDA of its compliance on February 26, it did not hear from the department until the notice of the funding pause was sent on March 10, with the USDA accusing the university of "blatant disregard" for Trump's executive order.
The agency said last month that UMS "receives over $100 million in USDA funding."
UMS said Tuesday that it has received funding from federal agencies including the USDA since its founding in 1865, with the USDA awarding $29.78 million in 2024 for research benefiting the largely rural state.
UMS has used its current USDA funding to invest in numerous projects, including but not limited to:
- Research on per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), also known as forever chemicals, on Maine farms;
- The development of sustainable packaging materials derived from Maine's forests;
- Research on the health and sustainability of the state's lobster fishery;
- Support for 4-H youth leadership and STEM skill development programs serving tens of thousands of Maine youth annually; and
- Education and outreach to Maine livestock farmers on farm biosecurity and disease outbreak preparedness.
"If all of their funding was removed from USDA, that would have a really big impact on farmers on the ground here," Sarah Alexander, executive director of the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association, toldReuters last month after the agency launched its review of UMS.
U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-Maine) denounced the USDA's "vindictive" funding pause, noting that the agency "shared no findings, and offered no opportunity for a hearing."
"It fails to provide any sort of timeline or opportunities for recourse," she said in a statement posted on social media. "Let's be clear about what this latest funding freeze will do: It will hurt farmers and rural Mainers, it will halt critically-needed research innovation, and it will slash educational opportunities for students throughout Maine. Once again, it appears as though this administration is targeting our state for retribution—all because our elected officials are standing up for the rule of law."
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