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Environment Legal, Laws, and Regs

Digging for coal on public land? Not on our watch

This week, Trump signed executive orders that, among other things, rescinded a moratorium on new coal permits on public land. Department of Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke quickly followed with an order rolling back the moratorium.

The Obama administrations had placed the moratorium on permits because the fees collected hadn’t been adjusted in decades, and the American taxpayers were not getting good value for their money. Zinke ostensibly gives a nod to this concern by chartering a committee to look into the fees but sees no reason not to give out permits in the meantime.

A lawsuit was immediately filed by a coalition of environmental and citizen groups and the Northern Cheyenne Tribe. The groups are Earth Justice, Sierra Club, Citizens for Clean Energy, Montana Environmental Information Center, Center for Biological Diversity, Defenders of Wildlife, and Wildlife Guardians.

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Documents Environment Government Legal, Laws, and Regs

Groups Challenge Trump’s Terminator two-fer order

NRDC, The Communication Workers of America, and Public Citizen just filed a lawsuit against Trump’s infamous “two-fer” rule. This is the rule I’ve designated the Terminator Rule.

From the lawsuit:

To repeal two regulations for the purpose of adopting one new one, based solely on a directive to impose zero net costs and without any consideration of benefits, is arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, and not in accordance with law, for at least three reasons.

First, no governing statute authorizes any agency to withhold a regulation intended to address identified harms to public safety, health, or other statutory objectives on the basis of an arbitrary upper limit on total costs (for fiscal year 2017, a limit of $0) that regulations may impose on regulated entities or the economy. Second, the Executive Order forces agencies to repeal regulations that they have already determined, through notice-and-comment rulemaking, advance the purposes of the underlying statutes, and forces the agencies to do so for the sole purpose of eliminating costs that the underlying statutes do not direct be eliminated. Third, no governing statute authorizes an agency to base its actions on a decisionmaking criterion of zero net cost across multiple regulations.

The Terminator rule is nonsensical in the extreme and violates all administrative procedure and law when it comes to forming regulations and rules. To instruct agencies to only include costs, not benefits, virtually cripples the federal government.

I have to wonder at this time if Trump even has access to lawyers. If so, where did they get their law degrees? Trump University?

I’ll be following this case on PACER.

Photo by Gage Skidmore CC BY-SA 2.0

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Critters Documents Government Legal, Laws, and Regs

USDA APHIS Inspection Reports posted online

The Memory Hole just posted links to thousands of inspection reports. They’re research facility inspections for 2000 through 2007.

Trump and his minions just don’t understand the way the internet works. If they build a wall, we’ll put a hole into it.

Guaranteed.

When I get any new info from the FOIA request or HSUS’s action, I’ll post an update. If I find more documents, I’ll post a link to this post.

 

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Critters Documents Government Legal, Laws, and Regs

HSUS comes through on the USDA APHIS records

Today, HSUS filed a Notice of Violation of Court Order with the Department of Justice because of the USDA pulling the APHIS records.

I did not know that the HSUS had filed a lawsuit years ago forcing the USDA to provide access to its inspection records for universities and research labs. By pulling these records, the USDA is in violation of the court settlement.

As noted in the letter, pulling these records also runs counter to government transparency requirements established by Congress. It’s becoming increasingly obvious that the impetus for this action was the short-sighted, mean-spirited actions of Trump’s transition team.

In addition, the HSUS noted in its story on the filing that the USDA finally did pull the license of several breeders in Missouri…including Rabbit Ridge. Rabbit Ridge is finally done.

The Humane Society is one of the groups we need to donate to, to protect animals and the environment during a Trump administration.

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Critters Documents Government Legal, Laws, and Regs

USDA APHIS Follow Up

Delcianna Winders posted a folder containing several USDA APHIS enforcement actions. I was surprised to see an enforcement action against Donald Schrage of the infamous Rabbit Ridge kennel.

The violations listed in the enforcement action aren’t unusual for Schrage. This is just a normal year’s worth of writeups for him. It’s good to see that the USDA finally yanked his chain. I’ll be filing a FOIA to find out what happened in this case, and if he’s still licensed. Normally, a quick visit to a web site and a bit of search would have returned the information. Not anymore.

After writing yesterday’s post, I’m less sure that the Farmer’s Bureau et al court case triggered the USDA APHIS to pull the AWA database. The USDA APHIS just invested in a new system that was only rolled out in August. They have been redacting private information from the inspection reports. They could continue and upload new inspection reports as they finish.

This action has Trump written all over it. Trump had appointed Brian Klippenstein to his agriculture transition team. Klippenstein is a compatriot of Forrest Lucas, who funded the effort to gut Proposition B, the anti-puppy mill bill, in Missouri. As of January 17, Klippenstein was the only person on Trump’s transition team for the Department of Agriculture.

I’m anxious to read the documents turned up by  Delcianna’s FOIA request for communications related to this decision.