Acting EPA chief Andrew Wheeler, a former coal lobbyist, just signed his first major regulatory amendment — making it easier for corporations to discard coal ash however they see fit.
The Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday finalized a rule that rolls back standards for disposing of the toxic ash produced by burning coal, The Hill reports. The amendment was in the works for several months, but when Wheeler took over for Scott Pruitt earlier this month, he took the reins. Pruitt resigned as EPA administrator following a string of ethics scandals.
The amendment backpedals on regulations put in place by the Obama administration, which mandated strict federal standards for coal ash disposal in 2015. In a statement, the EPA said relaxing the standards would save $31.4 million a year in regulatory costs, as states are given authority to loosen or waive requirements for companies.
"These amendments provide states and utilities much-needed flexibility in the management of coal ash, while ensuring human health and the environment are protected," said Wheeler in the statement. Environmental groups disagree, reports The Hill, and immediately condemned the measure as dangerous to groundwater and air pollution.
Companies with lax standards may not be required to monitor whether coal ash leaches into surrounding groundwater and will have extended deadlines to reduce coal ash disposal. The EPA has also loosened pollution standards on acceptable levels of lead, lithium, cobalt, and molybdenum in groundwater. Read more at The Hill. Summer Meza
Harvey Weinstein, the disgraced movie producer who has been accused of sexual assault by multiple women, has reached a tentative $44 million settlement with the women, creditors, and the New York Attorney General, people familiar with the matter told The Wall Street Journal.
The Weinstein Co. filed for bankruptcy last year, and lawyers told a bankruptcy court judge on Thursday that a deal has been reached. Under the proposed deal, the alleged victims, former Weinstein Co. employees, and studio creditors would receive $30 million, the Journal reports, with an additional $14 million going toward legal fees. The money would come from various insurance policies.
The New York Attorney General's Office filed a civil rights lawsuit in 2018, alleging that the Weinstein Co.'s board members and executives did not do enough to protect employees from Weinstein's misconduct, and if the deal goes through, it would end the suit. Weinstein is also set to go on trial in September on rape and other sexual assault charges. He denies ever engaging in nonconsensual sex. Catherine Garcia
The Trump administration is preparing to bypass Congress in order to sell $7 billion worth of weapons to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, current and former U.S. officials and lawmakers told The New York Times on Thursday.
Right now, Congress has the sale on hold, but Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and other senior aides are urging Trump to invoke a provision in the Arms Export Control Act that would let him circumvent lawmakers, the Times reports. This is sure to stoke tensions between the U.S. and Iran, which considers Saudi Arabia its biggest rival, and anger Democratic and Republican lawmakers, who are already upset with Trump over his reaction to the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi last year and his support of the Saudi-led coalition fighting in the Yemen war.
"It sets an incredibly dangerous precedent that future presidents can use to sell weapons without a check from Congress," Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Ct.) told the Times. "We have the constitutional duty to declare war and the responsibility to oversee arm sales that contravene our national security interests. If we don't stand up to this abuse of authority, we will permanently box ourselves out of deciding who we should sell weapons to." Read more about the broad implications of Trump sidestepping Congress at The New York Times. Catherine Garcia
President Trump is angry that John Walker Lindh walked out of an Indiana prison on Thursday, telling reporters he was ticked off when government lawyers told him there was nothing they could do to stop Lindh's release.
Lindh, 38, was captured in Afghanistan in 2001 after volunteering to fight with the Taliban. Dubbed the "American Taliban," Lindh converted from Catholicism to Islam at 16, and left his home in California to study Arabic in Yemen. He pleaded guilty in 2002 to supplying services to the Taliban, and during his sentencing, said he never planned on fighting U.S. forces and condemned "terrorism on every level."
Lindh served 17 years of a 20-year sentence, and as part of his release conditions, he cannot communicate with known extremists, have a passport, or use any device that can access the internet without permission from his probation officer. Leaked documents from 2016 show the government believes Lindh still holds "extremist views," and the Federal Bureau of Prisons said in a statement it does have policies in place for monitoring parolees with links to terrorism.
Trump said what bothers him the most is that Lindh "has not given up his proclamation of terror, and we have to let him out. Am I happy about it? Not even a little bit." Catherine Garcia
President Trump announced on Thursday that the Department of Agriculture is creating a program that will give $16 billion in aid to farmers affected by the trade war with China.
"We will ensure that our farmers get the relief they need — and very, very quickly," Trump said. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue blamed China for the launch of the program, telling reporters that "all of this would have been moot if China had acted appropriately and fairly."
Soybean farmers in particular have been hit hard by the escalating U.S.-China trade war. Soybeans are the largest U.S. export to China, with a value of $12.4 billion in 2018, USA Today reports. After Trump put tariffs on Chinese goods last year, China retaliated by putting a 25 percent tariff on U.S. soybean imports, causing prices to drop.
Under the program, the Department of Agriculture will send payments to counties based on the number of crops planted and losses. The first payments will be sent in July or August, and Perdue said two additional payments will be made in the fall and early next year if the U.S. and China still have not reached a trade agreement. Most of the $16 billion package will go to pay farmers, while $1.4 billion will be used to purchase excess products, like milk and beef, which will be distributed to food banks. Catherine Garcia
The Espionage Act just became relevant again.
For the first time in the law's 100-year history, the Department of Justice has accused a journalist of violating it, charging Wikileaks founder Julian Assange with 16 counts of receiving or publishing classified information. Thursday's indictment also charges Assange with one count of conspiracy to receive the leaked documents from Chelsea Manning, and reinstates Assange's April charge of conspiring to violate computer hacking laws, The Daily Beast reports.
Assange's charges stem back to 2010, when then-Army intelligence analyst Manning allegedly leaked classified Department of Defense information to Assange for publication. Assange was charged in April with conspiring to help Manning hack those computers after London's Ecuadorian embassy revoked his asylum claim.
Thursday's charges immediately rang alarm bells for journalists, with The Daily Beast writing that it is a "stunning escalation of the Trump administration's war on the press." "Legal scholars believe that prosecuting reporters over their work would violate the First Amendment," The New York Times continues, which is partly why former President Barack Obama's administration never charged Assange under the Espionage Act. The DOJ's National Security Division head John Demers countered those concerns by saying "the department takes seriously the role of journalists in our democracy ... But Julian Assange is no journalist."
Assange was also sentenced to 50 weeks in prison for skipping bail in the U.K., and Sweden has reopened a 2010 rape investigation into him. Sweden and the U.S. have both moved to extradite Assange after his prison stay. Kathryn Krawczyk