Last week, ThinkProgress reported that an equity firm that loaned Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior White House adviser, Jared Kushner, $184 million and advised the Trump administration on infrastructure also stood to directly benefit from three Trump administration rule changes to roll back pipeline safety regulations.
Yesterday, the Department of the Interior announced the cancellation of an oil and gas lease sale near Chaco Culture National Historical Park, a UNESCO Heritage Site in northern New Mexico. The controversial leases would have auctioned off an additional 4,434 acres in the Greater Chaco region for industrialized fracking, exposing local communities to increased pollution and threatening ancient ruins considered sacred by Indigenous Nations.
EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt proposed weakening vital clean water protections against toxic coal ash. His proposal clears the way for polluters, and polluter funded politicians to write weak standards for groundwater monitoring and coal ash cleanups, and attack the core health and environmental protections of the 2015 coal ash safeguards.
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- This morning, Politico reported on a series of 2005 Oklahoma talk radio interviews in which Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt dismissed evolution as unproven, denounced gun control measures, voiced islamophobic statements, and advocated for a constitutional convention to ban abortion and same-sex marriage
Washington, DC -- On Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke’s one year anniversary on the job, new scandals have emerged and past ones have grown, continuing the trend Zinke has established this year. Yesterday, CNN reported that Zinke was warned he was on pace to exceed his travel budget by $200,000 -- despite, as Zinke claims, his office being understaffed.
Last night, it was reported that the Department of the Interior will host a second public hearing in New York tomorrow on its draft offshore drilling plan.
WASHINGTON, D.C. - In an interview with CBS News, and on the heels of an NYT op-ed declaring Pruitt the worst member of the Trump administration, Scott Pruitt has declared that he has told his security team to accommodate security threats in “alternate ways, up to and including flying coach, and that is what's going to happen on my very next flight.”
Today, N.C. Policy Watch is reporting that a contractor hired by the Atlantic Coast Pipeline (a Duke Energy project) is operating without a valid license.
Californians speak out against Trump Administration’s Clean Power Plan rollback Community leaders, public health experts, mothers, young activists, and clean energy and clean air advocates from California and across the country’s West Coast spoke out today in opposition to the attempt to repeal Clean Power Plan by the Trump Administration. Today, the EPA is holding a listening session on Trump and his EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt’s plans to repeal the Clean Power Plan today in San Francisco --the second of just three scheduled listening sessions across the country.
A look at our March/ April edition!