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When Ohio Senator JD Vance was briefing the press earlier today, he was asked about East Palestine residents being required to sign indemnity waivers, releasing Norfolk Southern Railway from legal liability, as a requirement of having their water/air tests conducted on their property. Senator Vance said he talked to a resident about it, then reviewed the contract and confirmed the indemnity demand. Vance then immediately called Norfolk Southern Railroad officials and asked them about it. According to Vance, the response from Norfolk Southern Railway was that the liability waiver was accidentally presented. ... Does anyone really believe the contingency waivers...

The ethanol wars between King Corn and the oil and gas industry continue, with the corn faction finding a new champion this month in the person of Senator Tammy Duckworth (D-Illinois). It shouldn’t come as any surprise that she’s teaming up with Senators Ernst and Grassley since Illinois is the third largest ethanol producer in the country. The fight is still going on over the EPA granting waivers to smaller refineries from the ethanol blending requirements in the Renewable Fuel Standard, but Duckworth is raising the stakes. She’s asking the EPA’s Inspector General to investigate whether or not Trump’s EPA...

New Jersey Sen. Robert Menendez interceded on behalf of an Ecuadorian woman who was banned from traveling to the U.S. because of allegations she had engaged in visa fraud. The woman, Estafania Isaias, is the daughter of a fugitive from Ecuador convicted in absentia for bank fraud and whose relatives in Florida made significant campaign donations to the New Jersey Democrat's 2012 campaign and the Democratic Party. Current and former U.S. government officials tell NBC 4 New York that Estefania Isaias was barred from traveling to the U.S. in 2007 because she allegedly lied on visa applications to bring immigrant...

Environmental groups filed another lawsuit Thursday challenging the Trump administration’s use of waivers to speed up construction of a border wall, this time in Texas. Three groups sued the Department of Homeland Security, a week after the agency waived environmental laws along a roughly 25-mile (40-kilometer) stretch of border in the Rio Grande Valley, which is the southernmost point of Texas. […] In Texas, the government wants to connect existing sections of fencing on river levees in Hidalgo County and to close other gaps in fencing in neighboring Cameron County. […] Environmental groups say DHS is wrongly using authority that...

Smoked pot? Want to go to war? No problem. As more states lessen or eliminate marijuana penalties, the Army is granting hundreds of waivers to enlist people who used the drug in their youth — as long as they realize they can’t do so again in the military. The number of waivers granted by the active-duty Army for marijuana use jumped to more than 500 this year from 191 in 2016. Three years ago, no such waivers were granted. The big increase is just one way officials are dealing with orders to expand the Army’s size. “Provided they understand that...

The Army's top officer said Wednesday that the service had "rescinded" a controversial memo permitting people with a history of severe mental illness to seek waivers allowing them to join up. Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley told reporters the memo was "unauthorized" and its author did not have the authority to change the Army's recruitment policy. "It was rescinded last night," Milley said of the memo, which was dated Sept. 7 of this year and initially reported by USA Today on Sunday.

The U.S. Army quietly relaxed standards over the summer to allow potential recruits to receive waivers for a host of previous mental health issues — including self-mutilation. A 2017 recruiting goal of 80,000 new soldiers through September appears to be at the root of a decision to reverse a 2009 waiver ban on mental health issues. Documents obtained over the weekend by USA Today show a willingness to consider applicants with a history of bipolar disorder, depression, and drug and alcohol abuse.

More than $45 million in revenue is believed to have been lost when the state suspended highway toll collections to help speed evacuations and relief efforts for Hurricane Irma, Florida's Turnpike system estimates. However, the estimated $3 million-a-day impact is not expected to hinder operations of the system or ongoing work programs, “as impacts such as toll suspensions due to a hurricane are taken into consideration during the annual budgeting process,” turnpike spokesman Chad Huff said in an email Friday. Funding 404 full-time positions, the turnpike system is budgeted at $1.57 billion for the current fiscal year, which began July...

President Donald Trump will sign an executive order in Wisconsin on Tuesday directing a government-wide review aimed at putting new teeth back into decades-old “Buy American” and “Hire American” directives. The 220-day review process, which could lead to additional executive orders and possibly legislation, will focus on preventing foreign workers with H-1B visas from, as one senior administration official put it, “undercutting American labor at less cost,” which the official labeled as “an abuse” of the current system. “This is a clear statement from the president of the United States to shore up some of these abuses,” the official continued....

Despite President Trump’s executive order temporarily suspending the refugee program, the U.S. government gave 872 refugees waivers to be allowed entry into the country this week, Reuters reports. A Homeland Security official, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed the waivers, noting that the refugees were considered "in transit" and had already been cleared for resettlement before the ban took effect.Refugees preparing for resettlement typically have severed personal ties and relinquished their possessions, leaving them particularly vulnerable if their plans to depart are suddenly canceled.The waivers, granted by the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), came amid international...

Only weeks after the White House made headlines with a directive urging prosecutors to get tougher on corporate crime, the Obama administration has moved to protect a convicted financial firm from punishment. The bank, Credit Suisse, has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to President Barack Obama’s political campaigns. It also employs the Podesta Group, a lobbying firm with family connections to the Obama administration and Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign. In 2014, Credit Suisse pleaded guilty to criminal charges for operating “an illegal cross-border banking business that knowingly and willfully aided and assisted thousands of U.S. clients in opening and...

http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-12-21/iran-nuclear-deal-restricts-u-s-more-than-congress-knew Link only, per FR Rules. Essentially Dear Leader is going to run around Congress and grant visa waivers to Iran.

Newt Gingrich told Breitbart News that the country is in rebellion against the coastal power centers and that Donald Trump might be the candidate who can "kick down the doors" of the establishment. Former House speaker Gingrich weighed in on Trump's rise. "I think he represents a different era" in the same conservative movement, Gingrich said. "The system has become so incompetent and outrageously buracratic. The centers of power are so, so in New York, Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles, that the whole rest of the country is in rebellion. And people are looking for somebody who can kick down...

The Amish may have a reputation for raising barns lightning-fast, but this project has taken 10 years. It has taken that long for members of the Old Order Amish who want to build homes in Eau Claire County to complete the permitting process. The county refused to accommodate to their religious beliefs. Members of the Old Order strictly adhere to Amish religious and cultural traditions, and they reject electric appliances, modern plumbing and other innovations. The county welcomed the Amish when they first began settling in Eau Claire in the 1970s. “Bridge Creek officials say that if the Amish hadn’t...

US Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton has accused China of stealing commercial secrets and government information. She accused China of "trying to hack into everything that doesn't move in America", and urged vigilance. US officials had named China as the chief suspect in the massive hack of the records of a US government agency earlier this year. China had denied any involvement, and called US claims "irresponsible".

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, her Chief of Staff Cheryl Mills, and Sen. Bob Menendez (D., N.J.) supported a visa waiver for the daughter of a fugitive Ecuadorian banker in exchange for significant campaign contributions to the Democratic Party. On Tuesday, NBC 4 New York reported that Menendez, with express written support from Clinton, intervened on behalf of Estefania Isaías, who was banned from traveling to the U.S. due to accusations of visa fraud. Isaías is the daughter of Roberto Isaias, who lives in Miami and is currently fighting extradition to Ecuador for banking crimes and under investigation for...

The White House has just made a damning admission about ObamaCare: Its employer mandate creates an incentive for businesses to lay off workers. That’s not how the administration puts it, of course. But a new rule requiring certain businesses to certify — on pain of perjury — that layoffs they make are not ObamaCare-related rests on this assumption.

President Obama—the imperial President, the “I’ve got a pen and I’ve got a phone” President who can’t wait to show us his “year of action”—once vowed to do exactly the opposite. "The biggest problems that we’re facing right now have to do with George Bush trying to bring more and more power into the executive branch and not go through Congress at all. And that’s what I intend to reverse when I’m President of the United States of America." That was candidate Obama back in 2008. This comment somehow slipped under the radar for the past few years and resurfaced...

Labor leaders who have spent months lobbying unsuccessfully for special protections under the Affordable Care Act warned this week that the White House’s continued refusal to help is dampening union support for Democratic candidates in this year’s midterm elections. Leaders of two major unions, including the first to endorse Obama in 2008, said they have been betrayed by an administration that wooed their support for the 2009 legislation with promises to later address the peculiar needs of union-negotiated insurance plans that cover millions of workers. Their complaints reflect a broad sense of disappointment among many labor leaders, who say the...

Labor leaders who have spent months lobbying unsuccessfully for special protections under the Affordable Care Act warned this week that the White House’s continued refusal to help is dampening union support for Democratic candidates in this year’s midterm elections.