Conservation groups filed a federal lawsuit today challenging the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ illegal approval of the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline to be constructed through hundreds of rivers, streams, and wetlands without evaluating the project’s impacts as required by the National Environmental Policy Act and the Clean Water Act. The groups also sent notices of their intent to sue President Donald Trump, the Army Corps, and the companies seeking to build Keystone XL and its power-line infrastructure over the project’s lethal threats to endangered species, including the whooping crane.
A federal court today permanently blocked the Trump administration from accessing $2.5 billion in military funds for the president’s border wall, ruling that the administration’s attempt to transfer funds for a border wall Congress denied is unlawful. Wall construction using the funds, which the administration announced it would divert under counterdrug authorities, was set to begin as soon as Monday.
The Trump administration released a resource management plan today that would expand federal fossil fuel development across a huge swath of southwestern Colorado, threatening a growing organic agriculture hub and undermining the state’s new climate law. The federal administration’s plans directly contradict Colorado’s new law calling for steep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, a 50 percent cut by 2030 and a 90 percent reduction by 2050.
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Today, on the one-year anniversary of Justice Anthony Kennedy announcing his retirement, the Supreme Court ruled on cases involving the addition of a citizenship question to the 2020 Census and partisan gerrymandering. The Court struck down the citizenship question, reasoning that the Trump Administration did not give adequate explanation for adding the question, but also ruled that partisan gerrymandering is beyond the reach of the federal courts.
Top Trump Air Pollution official Bill Wehrum's resignation comes in no small part due to the scrutiny his corruption and extremism received due to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
WASHINGTON, D.C. - A new proposed EPA FOIA rule, first reported in The Hill, will give untrained political appointees at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) the authority to make decisions about public information requests.
San Francisco, CA-- Today in federal court, ACLU attorney Dror Ladin will represent the Sierra Club, ACLU and SBCC in arguments against the Trump Administration’s appeal of a preliminary injunction granted in a lawsuit against the president’s national emergency declaration. The plaintiff groups won a preliminary injunction to block the Trump administration from using military funds to build 50-55 miles of new border wall in Arizona and New Mexico.
WASHINGTON, D.C.-- Ten environmental groups sued the Trump administration today to challenge rollbacks of the 2016 Well Control and Blowout Preventer Rule, a safety regulation meant to prevent another blowout like what happened during the 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon disaster.
Montgomery County, MD -- Two weeks after a Maryland Circuit Court ruled against a coal company’s efforts to block clean water safeguards at its Chalk Point power plant in Prince George’s County, another Circuit Court judge rejected the same company’s attempt to challenge a Clean Water Act permit for its Dickerson plant in Montgomery County.
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed a legal challenge to the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, ruling the case was no longer active due to President Trump’s revocation of the permit at the center of the case. In March, Trump issued a new “presidential” permit for Keystone XL, in an effort to spur construction of the pipeline.