Free Republic

U.S. House Democrats jammed through a resolution Thursday to revive a constitutional amendment that could end all abortion restrictions and allow unborn babies to be aborted for any reason up to birth. The Democrat-controlled House passed House Joint Resolution 79 in a 232-183 vote in an attempt to nullify the seven-year deadline for the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) that expired in 1979. Five Republicans joined Democrats in supporting the resolution. The bill now heads to the Senate, which will not likely take it up for consideration. The constitutional amendment appears to be simple. It states that “equality of rights under...

In 2011, President Obama issued a presidential memorandum urging federal agencies to “take steps to expedite permitting and review,” including “setting clear schedules for completing steps in the environmental review and permitting process.” Such bureaucratic delays, Obama explained, interfered with the “engine of job creation and economic growth[.]” In recognizing the significant costs that excess bureaucracy imposes, Obama was in good company. Presidents of both political parties long have sought to make the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) — a federal statute that requires agencies to produce reports on the environmental effects on their actions — work for the American...

Another day, another barrage of hysterical reactions to a marginal regulatory reform. The latest cause for concern is the White House's finalized clean water rule that renounces the federal government's ability to regulate ponds, puddles, and (some) ditches. Yesterday's regulation replaces the prior Waters of the United States (WOTUS) rule issued by the Obama administration in 2015. The Obama-era rule was controversial from the get-go, with multiple Red states filing legal challenges claiming it exceeded the federal government's authority to regulate water pollution. A slew of federal court rulings stayed the implementation of the rule in over half the states....

The Environmental Protection Agency finalized a rule Thursday afternoon scaling back an Obama-era regulation farmers and energy producers claimed saddled them with unnecessary burdens. EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler announced the rule change in Las Vegas, effectively hemming in a regulation restricting the use of fertilizers and pesticides. President Donald Trump promised to repeal his predecessor’s “Waters of the United States” policy when he was running in 2016. Rolling back WOTUS saves landowners, farmers and businesses from being forced to hire “teams of attorneys to tell them how to use their own land,” Wheeler told reporters at a meeting of the...

WASHINGTON -- The Trump administration appears ready to move ahead with its plan to remove protections for some of the nationÂ’s millions of miles of streams, wetlands and arroyos, completing one of its most far-reaching environmental rollbacks. The changes, promised by President Donald Trump in his first weeks in office, would sharply scale back the governmentÂ’s interpretation of which waterways qualify for protection against pollution and development under the half-century-old Clean Water Act. Trump says he is targeting federal rules and regulations that impose unnecessary burdens on businesses. The changes had been sought by industry, developers and farmers, but opposed...

New York and Connecticut sued the Trump administration on Thursday, alleging it has failed to enforce the U.S. Clean Air Act and allowed five neighboring states to pump unhealthy levels of pollution into their states. The lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan asks the court to compel President Donald Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency to protect states that are downwind from other states with excessive air pollution. “More than two-thirds of New Yorkers regularly breathe unhealthy air, yet the Trump administration continues to ignore the smog caused by upwind air pollution,” New York Attorney General Letitia James said in...

Remember when dishwashers actually cleaned your dishes? Toilets required only one flush? And faucets had more pressure than an IV drip? Well so does President Trump. Here he is, at the rally on Tuesday, addressing all of the above…plus showerhead pressure. If you’ve recently redone your kitchen/ bathroom or have checked into newer hotels you have firsthand experience with that of which the President speaks.Democrats think the country is held in thrall by their impeachment antics but in fact real people are far more concerned with government intrusion into every aspect of their lives, dictating everything from what kind of...

The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently issued a finding that could – and certainly should – undermine some of the most outrageous lawsuits and jury awards in American history. Bolstered by San Francisco area juries that have given multi-multi-million-dollar awards to clients who claim glyphosate (the active ingredient in Roundup weedkiller) caused their cancer, jackpot justice lawyers have recruited some 20,000 additional “corporate victims” who hope to reap their own fortunes.Their cases are based on the assertion that: (a) Bayer-Monsanto negligently or deliberately failed to warn consumers that the glyphosate it manufactures is carcinogenic; (b) the plaintiffs used Roundup...

WASHINGTON—President Trump proposed a major overhaul of federal environmental permitting, responding to business complaints of bureaucratic delays that have bogged down infrastructure projects such as roads and energy pipelines. “We want to build new roads, bridges and highways bigger and faster,” Mr. Trump said from the White House, adding that the proposal would help create new jobs. But environmentalists assailed the changes to rules tied to the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA, saying they would weaken standards at a time when climate change is making federal review even more critical. “Forcing federal agencies to ignore environmental threats is a...

EPA and Justice Department Announce $245 Million Agreement for Cleanup at the Allied Paper Inc./Portage Creek/Kalamazoo River Superfund Site The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), U.S. Department of Justice, the Kalamazoo River Natural Resource Trustee Council, and Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE) today announced a proposed consent decree that would require NCR Corp. to clean up and fund future response actions at a significant portion of the Allied Paper Inc./Portage Creek/Kalamazoo River Superfund site.  The consent decree also includes payments related to natural resource damages and past cleanup efforts at the site.  The consent decree is...

No one told Jack LaPant that he could be in violation of the Clean Water Act for farming his own land. That’s mostly because the federal law includes a clear exemption for “normal” farming activities. But it’s also because the government officials LaPant consulted didn’t view overturned dirt that has been tilled and plowed as pollution. In 2016, the Army Corps of Engineers, which administers the Clean Water Act with the Environmental Protection Agency, began legal action against LaPant for plowing he did in 2011 to plant wheat on a ranch property he owned in Northern California. But in March...

BOSTON (CN) – Tensions ran high at First Circuit arguments Tuesday where several judges raised their voices in frustration with the government’s attempts to defend an order that purged scores of academic and nonprofit scientists from the agency’s advisory committees. “You’d like to think that the EPA gave some thought to the effects of its actions, but this was just a fiat,” complained U.S. Circuit Judge William Kayatta Jr., an Obama appointee. Kayatta described the agency’s attitude as: “well, we’re the EPA, and you’re not.” But the judges took issue as well with the lack of specificity in the case...

Several groups that often are at odds over environmental rules are on the same side when it comes to easing methane regulations at oil and gas sites. The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection joined major oil and gas companies, environmental groups and lawmakers from both parties last week in urging the Trump administration not to go through with its proposal to eliminate methane control requirements from well sites and pipelines across the country. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is proposing to roll back rules adopted in 2016 that require companies to identify and stop methane leaks from new and modified...

The era of secret science at EPA is coming to an end,” Pruitt said when announcing the rule. “The ability to test, authenticate, and reproduce scientific findings is vital for the integrity of the rule-making process. Americans deserve to assess the legitimacy of the science underpinning EPA decisions that may impact their lives.”

A Bushkill, Pa. woman and six other individuals are facing a multitude of charges, including counts of terrorism, assault, and kidnapping, following a failed takeover of the Pine Ridge community on Monday. According to a criminal complaint from Pennsylvania State Police out of Blooming Grove, Tonia Scott, 49, of Bushkill was the alleged ringleader of a group of armed individuals who sought to forcefully take the land occupied by the Lehman Township community on the afternoon of Nov. 18. A police interview with Scott revealed that she had claimed rightful ownership to the land of the Pine Ridge and Saw...

The Environmental Protection Agency will propose easing rules on disposal of coal ash, the residue from burning coal, to make it less likely the federal government would shutter a coal-fired utility plant, in an announcement set for Monday. The move is part of what has been a larger deregulation push by the Trump administration to roll back strict Obama-era regulations that the industry viewed as the previous administration’s “war on coal” that pushed to shut down many coal-fired power plants. “The EPA is no longer picking winners and losers in electric generation,” Peter Wright, assistant administrator for EPA Office of...

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday accused the city of San Francisco of violating the Clean Water Act by allegedly dumping untreated wastewater into oceans. In a letter to San Francisco Public Utilities Commission General Manager Harlan Kelly, Regional EPA Administrator Michael Stoker said the city is failing to operate and properly maintain its wastewater collection facilities and failing to comply with water quality standards, among other violations. The letter alleged the city discharged some two billion gallons of untreated sewer water into the ocean annually. “The failure to properly operate and maintain the city’s sewage collection and treatment...

The Trump administration on Tuesday escalated its fight with California over environmental issues by threatening to withdraw billions of dollars in federal highway funds because of poor air quality in the state. In a letter to California Air Resource Board chief Mary Nichols, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Andrew Wheeler said the state "has failed to carry out its most basic tasks under the Clean Air Act," and not produced timely plans to meet targets for ambient air quality goals. The EPA said California must withdraw inactive plans that would most likely be denied. If the EPA rejects a...

The Trump administration plans to deliver a notice of environmental violation to San Francisco over its homelessness problem. President Trump said late Wednesday the notice would come from the Environmental Protection Agency. He said waste, specifically used needles, in storm sewers is contributing to ocean pollution. He added: “They have to clean it up. We can’t have our cities going to hell.” In a statement, San Francisco Mayor London Breed said the city has a sewer system that runs effectively, keeping debris from reaching the Bay or the Pacific Ocean.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senators Mike Enzi and John Barrasso and Congresswoman Liz Cheney, all R-Wyo., applauded the Environmental Protection Agency for announcing final plans to repeal and replace the Obama-era Waters of the United States (WOTUS) regulation. "I am glad the administration is repealing the excessively burdensome Waters of the United States rule, which was a massive regulatory overreach that should have never been allowed in the first place," Enzi said. "This rule gave the federal government power to regulate nearly every creek or pond. States know best how to manage our resources. This announcement is good news for...