Free Republic

(Free Range Report)-The elderly Vietnam veteran, Joe Robertson, convicted by the Obama Administration for alleged violations of the Clean Water Act, has been furloughed from the federal prison facility where has been locked up since September of last year. Following his appeal in the Ninth Circuit Court on Wednesday September 6, Robertson was released into his own custody to enter a halfway house in Butte, Montana, with plans to later be admitted to the Veterans Administation Medical Center in Fort Harrison, Montana...... Mr. Robertson has lost 60lbs while in prison, and is suffering from poor health due to a lack...

WASHINGTON—Nearly 400 workers have left the Environmental Protection Agency in recent days, the agency said Tuesday, a wave of departures that soon could take the agency’s staffing to its lowest point in almost 30 years. The departures come primarily from buyouts offered as part of President Donald Trump’s efforts to fulfill a campaign promise of “tremendous cutting” at the EPA. His budget proposal in March suggested a 31% funding cut that would result in approximately 3,200 fewer jobs at the agency. The voluntary buyouts were offered in June to more than 1,200 workers. Almost a third of those eligible took...

Solar farms are cropping up in Will County As harvest season approaches, some Will County farmers may already be considering alternatives to the future of their corn and soybean fields. They are learning that the sun they now rely on to produce vegetables, could be harnessed into a new cash crop. Empowered by Illinois' new Future Energy Jobs Act, solar companies have approached area farmers in recent weeks about converting a portion of their property into solar farms. Cypress Creek Renewables, which currently operates solar farms in eight states, has an agreement with a landowner in Crete Township to convert...

Judicial Watch Sues for Info Obama/Enviro Attack on Key Energy Project Obama’s EPA Lied About Its Clean Power Plan’s Benefits What is Rahm Emanuel Hiding About the Controversial Police Shooting? Judicial Watch Sues for Info Obama/Enviro Attack on Key Energy Project Your Judicial Watch is leading the way in uncovering the corrupt maneuvering by the Obama administration to impose its leftist agenda on our country. As Obama holdovers and the federal Deep State continue to push this agenda even now in the Trump administration, our work is essential. A good example of this is our new lawsuit on the...

Multiple EPA officials colluded with Monsanto to slow a safety review of the company’s glyphosate-based herbicide, Roundup, according to email communications obtained by Freedom of Information Act requests. Monsanto officials first reached out to the EPA in early 2015 regarding the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s planned toxicology review of the herbicide, which the CDC said would be published by October 2015. This review has yet to be published, something EcoWatch notes was “no accident, no bureaucratic delay, but rather was the result of a collaborative effort between Monsanto and a group of high-ranking EPA officials.” The emails, sent...

Six months after President Donald Trump's inauguration, employees at the Environmental Protection Agency are still "crying at their desks." The latest edition of Rolling Stone, which features Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau on the cover with the question, "Why can't he be our president?" goes after EPA administrator Scott Pruitt for alleged "crimes against nature." The article features quotes from fearful EPA employees, who are still distraught over President Trump's victory. "It's been six months, and people are still crying at their desks," one EPA staffer said. Rolling Stone‘s contributing editor Jeff Goodell labels Pruitt a "God-fearing Christian," who is...

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) violated its policy during the last three years of the Obama administration by giving employees overtime pay without sufficient — or in most cases, any — justification, according to a report by the EPA Office of Inspector General (OIG). In an audit released on Aug. 9, the OIG revealed “numerous instances of noncomplicance” with the emergency overtime pay system at its regional branch — Region 10 covering the Pacific Northwest — and a lack of consistency and accountability in the overall record-keeping system. The audit, which examined Region 10, found almost 80 EPA employees that...

<p>Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt said his staff will gauge the “accuracy” of a major federal science report that blames human activity for climate change — just days after researchers voiced their fears to The New York Times that the Trump administration would alter or suppress its findings.</p>

The Environmental Protection Agency says it plans to scrap an Obama-era measure limiting water pollution from coal-fired power plants. A letter from EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt released Monday as part of a legal appeal said he will seek to revise the 2015 guidelines mandating increased treatment for wastewater from steam electric power-generating plants. Acting at the behest of electric utilities who opposed the stricter standards, Pruitt first moved in April to delay implementation of the new guidelines. The wastewater flushed from the coal-fired plants into rivers and lakes typically contains traces of such highly toxic heavy metals as lead, arsenic,...

The Trump resistance movement cheered when Democratic attorneys general in several states sued to block the president’s plan to bar travelers from some Muslim majority countries. But with far less fanfare in the months since, an emboldened coalition of Democratic state attorneys general has unleashed a torrent of lower-profile litigation they argue is necessary to protect public health, the environment and consumers from a Republican White House. State attorneys from Massachusetts to New York to California, often working together, have brought more than 40 legal actions against the Trump administration over the last seven months. The pace, which both parties...

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has established a practice in recent years that allows the agency to “create its own de facto power of the purse,” according to a report from the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) released Tuesday. The EPA and Department of Justice (DOJ) force private companies and individuals to fund policies and initiatives that the agencies and president support but that Congress has not weighed-in on, or may even have voted against in the past.

The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals' 2-1 decision said EPA does not have the authority to enact a 2015 rule-making ending the use of hydrofluorocarbons commonly found in spray cans, automobile air conditioners and refrigerators. The three-judge panel said that because HFCs are not ozone-depleting substances, the EPA could not use a section of the Clean Air Act targeting those chemicals to ban HFCs.

Like the road to Hell, liberal ideas are usually paved with good intentions. But, as Ronald Reagan once said, "The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they are ignorant, but that they know so much that isn't so." And all that vast “unknowledge” births monster government agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency. Today’s EPA is an agency gone-wild, filled with environmental extremists and deep state holdovers who have little accountability for their actions. They arrogantly create rules like the “Clean Power Plan” which the Institute for Energy Research [IER] said was filled with about as much junk as...

Under the Trump administration, Scott Pruitt is not the first elected official to be appointed to head the very department he’s made a career of criticizing. His decisions as head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), however, could have disastrous and irreversible effects on our communities, country and the planet. But our biggest concern with the EPA is not Scott Pruitt, Donald Trump, or his administration. It’s the impact these actions will have on the millions of Americans directly affected by irresponsible policies put forth by climate change deniers. Latino communities may be most at risk because of their occupations,...

After 30 years in the Environmental Protection Agency, Elizabeth “Betsy” Southerland has quit her post in a rejection of the direction the agency is taking under Administrator, Scott Pruitt. Whilst the media are having a field day with the news, it’s important to remember that Southerland had a hand in some of the most wasteful, damaging policies that have come out of the EPA in recent decades. If we look back to the beginning of her time in the EPA, scandals regarding the use of “near criminal” science and “fraudulent” data are rife. Congressman John Dingell (D-Mich.) said that “It...

A top Environmental Protection Agency official resigned Tuesday in protest of the direction the EPA has taken under President Trump. Elizabeth "Betsy" Southerland ended her 30-year run at the agency with a scathing exit letter in which she claimed that “the environmental field is suffering from the temporary triumph of myth over truth.” She last worked as the director of science and technology in the Office of Water. “The truth is there is NO war on coal, there is NO economic crisis caused by environmental protection, and climate change IS caused by man’s activities,” Southerland wrote, directly rejecting many of...

After almost two years, the Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Inspector General released its report on the Gold King Mine disaster that dumped over a million pounds of metals into the Animas River, turning dozens of miles of the river orange. While inspectors general are tasked with finding out the truth and holding agencies accountable, this recently released report sheds no more light on the disaster than previous misleading reports. EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt has inherited not only an environmental mess, but also the mess created by an agency more interested in its narrow self-interests than truth. Pruitt now has...

Scott Pruitt and Steven Koonin have climate scientist-activists and their media promoters ranting and sputtering in an epic meltdown. Pruitt is, of course, President Trump’s outspoken administrator in charge of the federal Environmental Protection Agency. Dr. Koonin, a physicist and professor at New York University, was undersecretary of the Energy Department in the Obama administration. Pruitt and Koonin, along with Energy Secretary Rick Perry, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, and an impressive lineup of distinguished scientists have stirred the proverbial hornets’ nest by proposing (of all things!) — a scientific debate. Climate alarmists say this is “dangerous,” even “un-American.” And why...

Federal Register proposal comes days after Trump administration moves to repeal of federal fracking ruleThe Trump administration formally acted Wednesday to repeal the 2015 Waters of the U.S. (WOTUS) rule, dealing another blow to the Obama-era environmental regulatory regime. The Environmental Protection Agency and Department of the Army announced that the proposed WOTUS withdrawal would be published Thursday in the Federal Register, launching the 30-day comment period. In addition to rescinding the 2015 Clean Water Rule, the agencies said they will also reevaluate the definition of “waters of the United States,” in keeping with President Trump‘s Feb. 28 executive order....

[snip] American Farm Bureau Federation,I have closely followed the Duarte Nursery v. Army Corps of Engineers case...Mr. Duarte is facing trial in federal court in California....facing $2.8-million in penalties...