#Department of Water and Environmental Regulation

[sapphia]

USA please listen to me: the price of “teaching them a lesson” is too high. take it from New Zealand, who voted our Labour government out in the last election because they weren’t doing exactly what we wanted and got facism instead.

Trans rights are being attacked, public transport has been defunded, tax cuts issued for the wealthy, they've mass-defunded public services, cut and attacked the disability funding model, cut benefits, diverted transport funding to roads, cut all recent public transport subsidies, cancelled massive important infrastructure projects like damns and ferries (we are three ISLANDS), fast tracked mining, oil, and other massive environmentally detrimental projects and gave the power the to approve these projects singularly to three ministers who have been wined and dined by lobbyists of the companies that have put the bids in to approve them while one of the main minister infers he will not prioritise the protection of endangered species like the archeys frog over mining projects that do massive environmental harm. They have attacked indigenous rights in an attempt to negate the Treaty of Waitangi by “redefining it”; as a backup, they are also trying to remove all mentions of the treaty from legislation starting with our Child Protection laws no longer requiring social workers to consider the importance of Maori children’s culture when placing those children; when the Waitangi Tribunal who oversees indigenous matters sought to enquire about this, the Minister for Children blocked their enquiry in a breach of comity that was condemned in a ruling — too late to do anything — by our Supreme Court. They have repealed labour protections around pay and 90 day trials, reversed our smoking ban, cancelled our EV subsidy, cancelled our water infrastructure scheme that would have given Maori iwi a say in water asset management, cancelled our biggest city’s fuel tax, made our treasury and inland revenue departments less accountable, dispensed of our Productivity Commission, begun work on charter schools and military boot camps in an obvious push towards privatisation, cancelled grants for first home buyers, reduced access to emergency housing, allowed no cause evictions, cancelled our Maori health system that would have given Maori control over their own public medical care and funding, cut funding of services like budgeting advice and food banks, cancelled the consumer advocacy council, cancelled our medicine regulations, repealed free prescriptions, deferred multiple hospital builds, failed to deliver on pre-election medical promises, reversed a gun ban created in response to the mosque shootings, brought back three strikes = life sentence policy, increased minimum wage by half the recommended amount, cancelled fair pay for disabled workers, reduced wheelchair services, reversed our oil and gas exploration ban, cancelled our climate emergency fund, cut science research funding including climate research, removed limits on killing sea lions, cut funding for the climate change commission, weakened our methane targets, cancelled Significant National Areas protections, have begun reversing our ban on live exports. Much of this was passed under urgency.

It’s been six months.

[e-the-village-cryptid]

A brief bullet-point list of the executive orders Trump signed yesterday. The tiktok thing is a distraction. If you are in the US, please read this. It will take less than 5 minutes. Gift article so no paywall

Some of the items on that list:

Freeze federal hiring except for military and immigration enforcement.

Bar asylum for people newly arriving at the southern border; declare migrant crossings at the southern border to be a national emergency; suspend the entire Refugee Admissions Program.

Terminate DEI initiatives across the federal government.

Recognize only two sexes; remove protections for transgender people in federal prisons.

Withdraw the United States from the Paris Agreement, the pact among almost all nations to fight climate change.

Declare a national energy emergency, a first in U.S. history, which could unlock new powers to suspend certain environmental rules or expedite permitting of certain mining projects.

Try to undo Biden’s ban on offshore drilling for 625 million acres of federal waters; undo Biden-era tailpipe pollution regulations and other energy-efficiency, fossil fuel, and pollution regulations.

Open the Alaska wilderness to more oil and gas drilling.

Eliminate environmental justice programs across the government, which are aimed at protecting poor communities from excess pollution.

Withdraw from the World Health Organization.

Ensure that states carrying out the death penalty have a “sufficient supply” of lethal injection drugs.

Create the Department of Government Efficiency with Elon Musk in charge.

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this New York Times story:

President Trump on Thursday said he was allowing commercial fishing in one of the world’s largest ocean reserves, introducing industrial operations for the first time in more than a decade to a vast area of the Pacific dotted with coral atolls and populated by endangered sea turtles and whales.

Mr. Trump issued an executive order opening up the Pacific Islands Heritage Marine National Monument, which lies some 750 miles west of Hawaii. President George W. Bush established the monument in 2009 and President Barack Obama expanded it in 2014 to its current area of nearly 500,000 square miles.

A second executive order directed the Commerce Department to loosen regulations that “overly burden America’s commercial fishing, aquaculture, and fish processing industries.” It also asks the Interior Department to conduct a review of all marine monuments and issue recommendations about any that should be opened to commercial fishing.

“The United States should be the world’s dominant seafood leader,” Mr. Trump wrote.

The marine monument, a chain of islands and atolls amid more than 160 seamounts, is a trove of marine biodiversity. Environmentalists said opening the area to commercial fishing would pose a serious threat to the area’s fragile ecosystems.

“This is a gift to industrial fishing fleets and a slap in the face to science and the generations of Pacific Islanders who have long called for greater protection of these sacred waters,” said Maxx Phillips, director for Hawaii and Pacific Islands at the Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental nonprofit organization.

Angelo Villagomez, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, a research organization, said opening marine monuments to industrial fishing “sets a dangerous precedent that our public lands and waters are for sale to the highest bidder.”

Mr. Villagomez noted that the United States controlled nearly five million square miles of ocean and said, “there is room for us to have the world’s best managed fisheries and networks of marine protection, safeguarding the most threatened, iconic and special places in our ocean.”

[saywhat-politics]

This story is part of a Grist package examining how President Trump's first 100 days in office have reshaped climate and environmental policy in the U.S.

Despite its widespread perception, the U.S. Department of Agriculture is involved in much more than farming. The federal agency, established in 1862, is made up of 29 subagencies and offices and just last year was staffed by nearly 100,000 employees. It has an annual budget of hundreds of billions of dollars. Altogether it administers funding, technical support, and regulations for: international trade, food assistance, forest and grasslands management, livestock rearing, global scientific research, economic data, land conservation, rural housing, disaster aid, water management, startup capital, crop insurance, food safety, and plant health.

In just about 100 days, President Donald Trump and Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins have significantly constrained that breadth of work.

[probablyasocialecologist]

While they contribute little to society, welfare ranchers on public lands demand a lot in the form of subsidies whose scope is a testament to their outsize power and influence. It’s estimated the state and federal largesse to the industry amounts to between $500 million and $1 billion a year, all of it funded generously by the taxpayer. This includes below-market grazing fees for cows and sheep, fence construction, road building and maintenance, cattle guards, forage improvement and seeding programs, poisoning of unwanted vegetation, forest clearing, stream diversions, water projects such as dams, pipelines, aqueducts, stock ponds and troughs, the monitoring of livestock health, and control of predators and other mammalian and avian pests deemed a threat to the industry. The U.S. Department of Agriculture operates a specialized hunting and trapping unit—referred to by the Saboteur as “hired killers”—that slaughters tens of thousands of animals each year to aid public lands stockmen, including coyotes, beavers, and prairie dogs. Ranchers also receive generous federal and state tax write-offs for every cow they graze, along with reduced state property taxes for their private deeded lands. They are additionally “blow-jobbed,” as the Saboteur put it, by the very agencies that are supposed to be preventing their overstocking and overgrazing of public lands. The Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management are the primary culprits in this charade of regulation, in which it appears the cowboys run the show and the bureaucrats are their puppets. The industry is thus provided all kinds of preferential treatment and survives on the dole because in the arid conditions of the West, where the climate conspires against cattle production, it cannot do otherwise. “Western cattlemen are nothing more than welfare parasites,” wrote author Edward Abbey, the literary father of the eco-sabotage movement in the United States, who also observed that cattlemen “survive by hiding behind the cheap mythology of the ‘Cowboy’: literally, a boy who looks after cows.” Abbey was hardly alone in coming to this conclusion. Conservative pundit George Will opined that an inner-city mother on public assistance was “the soul of self-reliance compared to a westerner who receives federally subsidized range privileges.” The industry, naturally, wants ever more privilege. The primary advocacy group of ranchers who exploit the public domain is the Public Lands Council, which is funded and staffed by the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, a political and cultural giant in the annals of lobbying. Every few years, the Public Lands Council issues a policy document to outline priorities for Congress and the White House. Katie Fite, an ecologist with the nonprofit Wildlands Defense in Boise, calls it the “Welfare Rancher’s demand letter.” “The Big Hats basically want super-duper extra special status for every welfare ranching permit holder,” she told me in an email, “because if you have herds of cows or sheep you are a Lord.” Among the common demands: the general annihilation of prairie dogs, a keystone species already 98 percent gone throughout the West but which ranchers still consider a pest; the stripping of Endangered Species Act protections for the trifling number of remaining grizzly bears and for “all species of wolves” in the United States; and rollbacks of key provisions of the National Environmental Policy Act, which requires environmental impact assessments of all commercial activities on federal lands, including ranching operations. The Public Lands Council has also sought to amend the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act so that wild horses can be killed because they compete for forage with cows. “They want wild horses in the West pretty much GONE,” Fite wrote me. “The Endangered Species Act rendered meaningless/GONE. They want a free hand to grossly pollute water. They attack just about everything good or positive with public lands and the environment.”

1 April 2025

[femenaces]

The Environmental Protection Agency plans to eliminate its scientific research arm, firing as many as 1,155 chemists, biologists, toxicologists and other scientists, according to documents reviewed by Democrats on the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology.

The strategy is part of large-scale layoffs, known as a “reduction in force,” being planned by the Trump administration, which is intent on shrinking the federal work force. Lee Zeldin, the administrator of the E.P.A., has said he wants to eliminate 65 percent of the agency’s budget. That would be a drastic reduction — one that experts said could hamper clean water and wastewater improvements, air quality monitoring, the cleanup of toxic industrial sites, and other parts of the agency’s mission.

The E.P.A.’s plan, which was presented to White House officials on Friday for review, calls for dissolving the agency’s largest department, the Office of Research and Development, and purging up to 75 percent of the people who work there.

The remaining staff members would be placed elsewhere within the E.P.A. “to provide increased oversight and align with administration priorities,” according to the language shared with The New York Times by staff members who work for Democrats on the House science committee.

Molly Vaseliou, a spokeswoman for the E.P.A., said in a statement that the agency “is taking exciting steps as we enter the next phase of organizational improvements” and stressed that changes had not been finalized.

“We are committed to enhancing our ability to deliver clean air, water and land for all Americans,” she said, adding, “While no decisions have been made yet, we are actively listening to employees at all levels to gather ideas on how to increase efficiency and ensure the E.P.A. is as up to date and effective as ever.”

Representative Zoe Lofgren, Democrat of California, said that the Office of Research and Development was created by congressional statute and that dissolving it would be illegal.

Representative Zoe Lofgren of California, the top Democrat on the science committee, said that without the Office of Research and Development, the E.P.A. would not be able to meet its legal obligation to use the “best available science” when writing regulations and considering policy. She also said that the office was created by congressional statute and that dissolving it would be illegal.

“Every decision E.P.A. makes must be in furtherance of protecting human health and the environment, and that just can’t happen if you gut E.P.A. science,” Ms. Lofgren said in a statement. She said that the first Trump administration had weakened the agency’s scientific research in order to relax regulations against polluting industries. “Now this is their attempt to kill it for good,” she said.

The E.P.A.’s science office provides the independent research that undergirds virtually all of the agency’s environmental policies, from analyzing the risks of “forever chemicals” in drinking water to determining the best way to reduce fine particle pollution in the atmosphere. It has researched synthetic playground material made from discarded tires; found that hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, can contaminate drinking water; and measured the impact of wildfire smoke on public health. The office also helps state environmental agencies figure out how to address algae blooms, treat drinking water and more.

Its findings tend to support stronger regulations to protect against exposure to air pollution, hazardous chemicals and climate change. And that has made it a target of many industries. Eliminating the office would serve the Trump administration’s dual goals of reducing the size of government while potentially easing the regulation of the chemical and fossil fuel industries.

The science office was also criticized by Project 2025, a blueprint for overhauling the federal government that was produced by the Heritage Foundation and written by many who are serving in the Trump administration.

The chapter on the E.P.A. accuses the science office of being “precautionary, bloated, unaccountable, closed, outcome-driven, hostile to public and legislative input, and inclined to pursue political rather than purely scientific goals.”

It calls for eliminating programs within the science office, in particular the Integrated Risk Information System, which evaluates the human health effects of exposure to toxic chemicals and uses that information to form the basis for restrictions on their use. Industries regulated by the E.P.A. often push back against that research. A bill introduced by Senator John Kennedy, Republican of Louisiana, and backed by industry groups seeks to prevent the E.P.A. from using the research.

“It is an assault on science,” said Jennifer Orme-Zavaleta, who ran the E.P.A. office under the first Trump administration.

Lee Zeldin, the administrator of the E.P.A., in Altadena, Calif., last month. He has said he wants to eliminate 65 percent of the E.P.A.’s budget.

Shuttering the office would cost jobs across the country, particularly in places like North Carolina and Ada, Okla., two of the places where the agency operates major research labs, she said. In addition to chemists and biologists, the science office also employs physicians, nurses, hydrologists and experts who focus on plants, soils and wetlands.

Chris Frey, who led the Office of Research and Development under the Biden administration, said eliminating it would create a vacuum that would allow an administration to impose any policies it wanted to.

“It’s certainly convenient for certain stakeholders to have O.R.D. silenced,” Mr. Frey said.

The American Chemistry Council, which represents chemical manufacturers, said in a statement that it supported the E.P.A.’s having the “resources, technical staff and subject matter expertise needed for the agency to meet its statutory requirements.”

More than 40 former E.P.A. officials who served in Republican and Democratic administrations plan to send a letter on Tuesday to Mr. Zeldin warning that steep cuts will render the agency unable to meet its mission.

“Policy changes are to be expected from one administration to the next, but not the dismantling of E.P.A.,” the officials wrote in the letter, a copy of which was obtained by The Times. “If the administration does not agree with the laws Congress has passed and the programs it has funded, it should work with Congress to seek changes, not unilaterally and recklessly freeze, delay or eliminate funding.”

[percyjackson-post]

Non Canon Riordanverse friendships I think make sense

#1 Leo Valdez and the Stoll Brothers

You cannot convince me the Stolls didn’t find out about a Hephaestus kid with incredible mechanical skills and fire powers and didn’t immediately roll up like, "Haha, hey bro...” because they absolutely did. They are Chiron’s worst nightmare, but by the gods, they are the life of Camp Half-Blood. At least once every two weeks, they’re sat in the big house getting lectured as Chiron adds more specific things to the extremely long list of camp rules. I’m talking “Absolutely nothing but organic aquatic lifeforms sanctioned by the New York State Department environmental regulations allowed in t̶h̶e̶ ̶c̶a̶n̶o̶e̶ ̶l̶a̶k̶e̶  ANY BODY OF WATER ON THE PROPERTY

[gsirvitor]

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/trump-canceled-dei-program-raw-sewage-alabaman-homes-rcna201164

pretty sure youll find some retarded way to defend this the same way youre justifying the suspension of due process, the elites are laughing at you for being a useful idiot

Well, let's look into the situation, shall we?

The Biden Administration, in 2022, launched an EPA-USDA partnership.

The EPA is the United States Environmental Protection Agency, founded in the '70s, with the stated goal of setting and enforcing environmental standards and regulations, despite allegations of the agency's corruption, mismanagement and fraud.

Much of this fraud and mismanagement was even being investigated under the Biden administration, allegations of falsifying risk assessments for dangerous chemicals, billions in funding going missing, and so on.

Now, the USDA, the United States Department of Agriculture, has been investigated too, and has been found to have mismanaged government funding, and checkoff funds.

The aforementioned Closing America’s Wastewater Access Gap Community Initiative, headed by the EPA and USDA has achieved nothing in these past 3 years, other than spending taxpayer dollars to do nothing.

Despite Google AI claiming it achieved its goal, the affected communities still have these issues, no new sewage system, no clean water, no, just government bureaucracy scratching its head trying to figure out how to hire a contractor to replace the degraded systems.

I would also state, predicating a government agency on fighting "environmental racism" isn't helping you beat the DEI allegations.

I work in construction, do you know how simple it is to dig up a sewer system, and broken septic tanks? Do you????

It's so simple, sure, decontaminating the ground and ground water will take effort and time, and money, but the aforementioned agency wasn't doing that, it was wasting money over engineering a solution.

Which is typical government bureaucracy.

Now, let's go over the Trump Administration's statement on the situation;

“The DOJ will no longer push ‘environmental justice’ as viewed through a distorting, DEI lens,” said Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division.

“President [Donald] Trump made it clear: Americans deserve a government committed to serving every individual with dignity and respect, and to expending taxpayer resources in accordance with the national interest, not arbitrary criteria.”

So, yeah, end a racist and corrupt program, it shouldn't base its treatment on the race of the aggrieved party, nor should it continue to exist when it can't actually deliver on its promises.

You may not believe me, but I've been following the situations in areas such as Lowndes County, it's a damn shame that they're subjected to this, but the Biden administration's solution, wasn't a solution.

Is this retarded to you? Because I find defending illegals and terrorists to be far more retarded.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Robert Reich's Substack:

Friends, For years, conservatives have railed against what they call the “administrative state” and denounced regulations. But let’s be clear. When they speak of the “administrative state,” they’re talking about agencies tasked with protecting the public from corporations that seek profits at the expense of the health, safety, and pocketbooks of average Americans. Regulations are the means by which agencies translate broad legal mandates into practical guardrails. Substitute the word “protection” for “regulation” and you get a more accurate picture of who has benefited — consumers, workers, and average people needing clean air and clean water. Substitute “corporate legal movement” for the “conservative legal movement” and you see who’s really mobilizing, and for what purpose.

**

[...] Last week, the Supreme Court made it much harder for the FTC, the Labor Department, and dozens of other agencies — ranging from the Environmental Protection Agency to the Food and Drug Administration, Securities and Exchange Commission, Occupational Safety and Health Administration, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and National Highway and Safety Administration — to protect Americans from corporate misconduct.

On Thursday, the six Republican-appointed justices eliminated the ability of these agencies to enforce their rules through in-house tribunals, rather than go through the far more costly and laborious process of suing corporations in federal courts before juries. On Friday, the justices overturned a 40-year-old precedent requiring courts to defer to the expertise of these agencies in interpreting the law, thereby opening the agencies to countless corporate lawsuits alleging that Congress did not authorize the agencies to go after specific corporate wrongdoing. In recent years, the court’s majority has also made it easier for corporations to sue agencies and get public protections overturned. The so-called “major questions doctrine” holds that judges should nullify regulations that have a significant impact on corporate profits if Congress was not sufficiently clear in authorizing them.

[...] In 1971, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, then a modest business group in Washington, D.C., asked Lewis Powell, then an attorney in Richmond, Virginia, to recommend actions corporations should take in response to the rising tide of public protections (that is, regulations). Powell’s memo — distributed widely to Chamber members — said corporations were “under broad attack” from consumer, labor, and environmental groups. In reality, these groups were doing nothing more than enforcing the implicit social contract that had emerged at the end of World War II, ensuring that corporations be responsive to all their stakeholders — not just shareholders but also their workers, consumers, and the environment.

[...] The so-called “conservative legal movement” of young lawyers who came of age working for Ronald Reagan — including Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. — were in reality part of this corporate legal movement. And they still are. Trump’s three appointments to the Supreme Court emerged from the same corporate legal movement. The next victory of the corporate legal movement will occur if and when the Supreme Court accepts a broad interpretation of the so-called “non-delegation doctrine.” Under this theory of the Constitution, the courts should not uphold any regulation in which Congress has delegated its lawmaking authority to agencies charged with protecting the public. If accepted by the court, this would mark the end of all regulations — that is, all public protections not expressly contained in statutes — and the final triumph of Lewis Powell’s vision.

Robert Reich wrote an interesting Substack piece on the history of the right-wing war on regulatory power that began with the infamous Powell Memo by Lewis Powell, and culminated with the recent Loper Bright Enterprises, Jarkesy, and Trump rulings.

[mariacallous]

Donald Trump makes no secret of his loathing for regulations that limit water and energy use by home appliances. For years, he has regaled supporters at his campaign rallies with fanciful stories about their impact. He is so exercised by the issue that, even as global stock markets convulsed Wednesday in response to his tariff plans, Trump took time out to issue an executive order titled “Maintaining Acceptable Water Pressure in Showerheads.”

Contemporary shower fixtures are only one of the items that rankle the president, who complains that “there’s no water coming and you end up standing there five times longer,” making it difficult to coif his “perfect” hair. He has frequently denounced dishwashers that he claims take so long and clean so poorly that “the electric bill is ten times more than the water”; toilets that require flushing “ten or 15 times”; and LED lightbulbs, which he faults for making him look orange.

In his first term, Trump pursued an array of gimmicks to try to undermine the rules. His moves were opposed by industry and environmental groups alike. If it’s possible for regulations to be popular, these ones are. They have cut America’s water and energy consumption, reduced global-warming emissions and saved consumers money. Legal prohibitions stymied most of Trump’s maneuvers back then, and the Biden administration quickly reversed the steps Trump managed to take.

Trump’s executive order on showerheads generated headlines, but it’s likely to have little effect (more on that later). Far more consequential steps have been taken outside the Oval Office.

With the aid of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency team, Trump appears to be attempting an end run that could succeed where his past attempts failed: by simply terminating the consulting contract that the Department of Energy relies on to develop and enforce the rules. In late March, DOGE’s “wall of receipts” stated that it had “deleted” a Department of Energy contract for Guidehouse LLP (a PricewaterhouseCoopers spinoff) for “Appliance Standards Analysis and Regulatory Support Service,” producing a listed savings of $247,603,000. That item has now disappeared from the DOGE website, and its current status remains unclear.

This has produced confusion for everyone from appliance manufacturers to government officials to the contractors paid to enforce the rules. If the contract is indeed canceled, experts told ProPublica, it would cripple the government’s efficiency standards program, which relies on the consulting firm’s technical expertise and testing labs to update standards, ensure compliance and punish violators.

[notwiselybuttoowell]

Conservationists on Wednesday sued the Trump administration over its attempts to boost the oil industry by rolling back green policies.

Filed by the environmental non-profit Center for Biological Diversity, the litigation focuses on Trump’s day-one “unleashing American energy” executive order. In an effort to boost already booming US energy production, the emergency declaration directed federal agencies to identify all policies and regulations that “unduly” burden fuel producers and create “action plans” to weaken or remove them.

The lawsuit seeks information about the development of these action plans from four federal agencies: the Department of the Interior, the Department of Commerce, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service.

Since the executive order was passed, the administration has announced plans to eliminate scores of other green policies. Last week, for instance, it emerged that the EPA plans to eliminate long-standing requirements for polluting companies to collect and report their greenhouse gas emissions, ProPublica reported.

The legal challenge follows a February request for information filed by the advocacy group under the Freedom of Information Act (Foia), for which officials have not yet provided any records.

“Given the substantial implications for air and water, wildlife and nature, climate, public lands, and the environment generally through the development of energy resources,” the lawsuit says, “the Center is deeply interested in, and affected by, how the action plans implementing the Executive Order could harm, undermine, or negate the Center’s longstanding efforts to protect the environment.”

The lawsuit comes as federal agencies have slashed protections for public lands, approved air pollution permits for fossil fuel-processing facilities without environmental reviews, and gutted slews of green policies and spending plans while firing thousands of civil servants.

It also follows record donations to Trump’s presidential campaign from oil, gas and coal companies, sparking concerns of corruption. In a June meeting at his Mar-a-Lago club, Trump infamously asked fossil fuel bosses for $1bn in campaign contributions, while vowing to unravel dozens of Biden-era environmental policies.

“It seems obvious that polluters and other special interests are completely in the driver’s seat and probably ghost-writing all of Trump’s pro-fossil fuel directives,” said Brett Hartl, government affairs director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “Why else would Trump officials be so defiant about illegally keeping the public in the dark?”

The EPA declined to comment on the pending litigation. The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

Foia was an important tool for environmentalists during Trump’s first term. A request filed by the Sierra Club led to the former EPA administrator Scott Pruitt’s resignation, and records obtained by the Center for Biological Diversity led to an investigation by the inspector general of then interior secretary David Bernhardt.

[reading-writing-revolution]

The List -- Fraud, Waste and Abuse Edition

I asked ChatGPT to look at one of the earlier lists of authoritarian actions the Trump Regime is taking and categorize them according to the labels "fraud, waste and abuse". The goal was to have AI categorize and list which action represented fraud (a lie or cheat of the American people), waste (an action that was wasteful of resources) or abuse (an action that was deliberately abusive in nature against the American people), and here's the list: The original list can be found here: https://theweeklylistreturns.substack.com/p/week-17-the-return

Here’s a recategorization of the entries based on Fraud, Waste, and Abuse:

FRAUD (Cheating the American People)

Media and Information Manipulation

WAPO restricting opinion pieces to only pro-libertarian, pro-free-market views.

White House barring major media outlets while allowing only conservative news sources.

Voice of America journalists facing HR investigations for critical reporting on Trump.

AI-generated video depicting "TRUMP GAZA" misrepresenting geopolitical reality.

Corruption and Conflicts of Interest

Dr. Mehmet Oz retaining millions in investments despite nomination to oversee Medicare/Medicaid.

Lynn Dekleva’s appointment to EPA despite prior lobbying for chemical industries.

Capital One, Rocket Mortgage, and other corporations escaping consumer protection lawsuits under Trump’s CFPB.

Zelle network operators, including major banks, escaping fraud investigations due to CFPB case dismissals.

Musk inserting DOGE personnel into FAA while SpaceX stands to win a major $2.4 billion contract.

Musk influencing NASA operations and receiving private access to internal agency discussions.

Election and Legal Manipulation

DOJ reviewing conviction of Tina Peters, a convicted election conspiracist.

Harmeet Dhillon and John Sauer suggesting some court orders can be ignored.

Demotion of prosecutors overseeing Capitol insurrection cases.

Trump pardoning January 6 defendants and shutting down investigations into domestic extremism.

House Republicans attempting to extend Trump’s presidency beyond two terms.

Trump proposing national crypto reserve, raising conflict-of-interest concerns.

Trump's DOJ delaying foreign bribery cases under the pretext of reassessing corruption laws.

WASTE (Destroying Essential Programs and Services)

Federal Budget and Economic Policy

Mass layoffs across federal agencies, including 10,000 EPA staff and nearly all 1,700 CFPB employees.

Foreign aid freeze cutting off health and disaster relief funding worldwide.

Termination of USAID programs combating polio, HIV, and malaria.

Attempt to defund universities over "illegal protests," violating the First Amendment.

Pausing military aid to Ukraine despite ongoing war.

Stock market crashes due to abrupt tariff announcements, harming U.S. economy.

Trump tariffs against Canada, Mexico, and China escalating trade wars.

Overhaul of rural broadband program to favor Starlink, awarding billions to Musk.

Musk manipulating air safety concerns to justify Starlink involvement in FAA.

Mismanagement of Agencies

Abandoning lawsuits against chemical companies accused of releasing carcinogens.

Closing civil rights and anti-discrimination enforcement offices under DOGE.

Halting State Department’s global air quality monitoring program after a decade.

Ending federal policies allowing language assistance for non-English speakers.

GOP’s "big beautiful bill" cutting key programs like Medicaid and food assistance.

Environmental and Public Infrastructure Neglect

Dismantling of NOAA, jeopardizing weather forecasting and climate research.

Closing of National Park Service offices, leading to nationwide protests.

Cuts to FEMA disaster relief workforce weeks before hurricane season.

Ending federal enforcement of clean air and water regulations.

ABUSE (Harming or Causing Distress to Americans)

Targeting Vulnerable Populations

Trump regime removing all transgender troops unless granted a waiver.

Federal judge blocking attempts to withhold hospital funding for trans youth.

Ending hiring discrimination lawsuits, enabling racial bias in policing and fire departments.

ICE attempting to obtain home addresses of 700,000 undocumented immigrants.

DOGE seeking IRS tax records to target recipients of government benefits.

Undermining Public Safety

Trump-appointed officials ordering mass layoffs of air traffic controllers.

Musk soliciting retired air traffic controllers due to FAA staffing crisis.

Halting cyber defense operations against Russia, putting national security at risk.

Removing high-ranking Black military officials from leadership roles.

Attempt to rename Fort Moore to honor a Confederate general.

Authoritarian and Anti-Democratic Actions

White House pressuring USAID to cover up impacts of foreign aid freeze.

Targeting federal judges who oppose Trump’s agenda.

Seizing and transporting classified document boxes on Air Force One.

House Republicans introducing bills to rename federal buildings after Trump.

Human Rights and Foreign Policy Failures

Zelensky humiliated at the White House, leading to international fallout.

Abandoning U.S. military aid and intelligence support for Ukraine.

Praising Putin while criticizing NATO allies.

Cutting U.S. foreign aid while China, Russia, and Iran expand influence.

GOP officials pressuring Zelensky to "apologize" to Trump.

Arrest and deportation threats increasing for immigrants under ICE expansion.

Conclusion

Fraud: Policies that deceive the public or enable corruption.

Waste: Reckless destruction of necessary government functions and resources.

Abuse: Policies designed to cause harm, distress, or fear to specific groups or the general public.

This categorization highlights how many of these actions fit into a broader pattern of corruption, negligence, and authoritarian behavior.

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this New York Times story:

President Trump this week directed 10 federal agencies — including the Environmental Protection Agency, the Energy Department and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission — to implement a novel procedure to scrap a wide array of longstanding energy and environmental regulations.

He told agencies that oversee everything from gas pipelines to power plants to insert “sunset” provisions that would cause regulations to automatically expire by October 2026. If the agencies wanted to keep a rule, it could only be extended for a maximum of five years at a time.

Experts say the directive faces enormous legal hurdles. But it was one of three executive orders from Mr. Trump on Wednesday in which he declared that he was pursuing new shortcuts to weaken or eliminate regulations.

In another order, he directed a rollback of federal rules that limit the water flow in shower heads with a highly unusual legal justification: Because I say so.

“Notice and comment is unnecessary because I am ordering the repeal,” Mr. Trump’s order said.

Legal experts called that sentence astonishing and contrary to decades of federal law. The 1946 Administrative Procedure Act requires federal agencies to go through a lengthy “notice and comment” process when they issue, revise or repeal major rules, giving the public a chance to weigh in. Agencies that do not follow those procedures often find their actions blocked by the courts.

“On its face, all of this is totally illegal,” said Jody Freeman, the director of the Harvard Law School Environmental and Energy Law Program and a former White House official under President Barack Obama. “Either the real lawyers have left the building or they just don’t care and want to take a flier on all these cases and see if the courts will bite.”

In another order, titled “Directing the Repeal of Unlawful Regulations,” Mr. Trump gave his cabinet secretaries 60 days to identify federal rules they considered unlawful and to make plans to repeal them. The order stated that agency heads could bypass the notice-and-comment process by making use of an exception that experts say is normally reserved for emergencies.

Yet legal experts said that the laws written by Congress that govern how federal agencies can get rid of regulations are quite strict.

Normally, when a federal agency like the E.P.A. issues or changes a regulation, it first publishes a proposed rule and gives the public time to comment. Then agency officials read and respond to the comments, providing detailed evidence to support the changes they want to make and showing that they addressed public concerns. Then, the agency publishes the final rule.

“The Administrative Procedure Act is a boring-sounding law that no one cares about, but we treat it in the legal profession as foundational,” Ms. Freeman said. “It tells the federal government that it is required to do things deliberately, to take public input and to defend its actions as rational. It’s a promise that government can’t be arbitrary.”

There are certain conditions where an agency might be able to bypass certain steps. If, say, it needs to issue emergency regulations on airplane safety.

But the Trump administration appears to be pushing to use this so-called good cause exception to rescind a much wider array of federal rules.

[misfitwashere]

Musk’s dangerous bullying

ROBERT REICH

DEC 2

Friends,

No one better illustrates the sinister consequences of great wealth turned into unaccountable power than Elon Musk. 

Musk, the richest person in the world, is not only claiming presidential authority to fire federal workers, but he’s posting the identities of those whose jobs he wants to eliminate — with the clear intention that his followers harass and threaten them so they quit. 

Musk is utterly unaccountable. He has never been elected to anything, but he spent $120 million helping Trump become the president-elect and is now acting as if he’s Trump’s co-president, calling himself Trump’s “First Buddy.”

After buying Twitter for $44 billion, Musk turned it into a cesspool of disinformation and conspiracy theories and manipulated its algorithm to give himself 205 million followers, to whom he is now distributing treacherous lies. 

In recent days, Musk boosted posts on his website singling out the names and job titles of four federal employees working in climate policy and regulation who have done nothing other than hold titles Musk dislikes. All four targets are women. 

In one instance, Musk quote-tweeted a post highlighting the role of 37-year-old Ashley Thomas, a little-known director of climate diversification at the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation. 

Musk’s repost — “So many fake jobs” — garnered 32 million views, triggering a tsunami of taunts against Thomas, such as, “Sorry Ashley Thomas Gravy Train is Over” and “A tough way for Ashley Thomas to find out she’s losing her job.”

Musk apparently took the word “diversification” in Thomas’s title to mean the “D” in “DEI,” which Musk considers “woke.” 

Thomas (who holds degrees in engineering, business, and water science from Oxford and MIT) is focused on climate diversification to protect agriculture and infrastructure from extreme weather events.

Following Musk’s tweet, Thomas shut down several of her social media accounts. 

In another repost, Musk mocked Alexis Pelosi, a relative of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who works as a senior adviser to climate change at the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

“Nancy Pelosi’s niece should not be paid $181,648.00 by the U.S. Taxpayer to be the ‘Climate Advisor’ at HUD,” the original account wrote. “But maybe her advice is amazing 🤣🤣” Musk snarked. 

Musk also singled out the chief climate officer in the Department of Energy’s loan programs office and shared the name of an employee serving as senior adviser on environmental justice and climate change at the Department of Health and Human Services.

IMHO, Musk’s targets should sue him for defamation. 

This is hardly the first time Musk has targeted specific people, and he obviously knows how dangerous such targeting can be. 

After taking over Twitter in 2022, Musk targeted Yoel Roth, the platform’s former head of trust and safety, who had recently left the company. Musk tweeted, incorrectly, that it looked like Roth had argued “in favor of children being able to access adult Internet services.” Some platform users interpreted this as Musk calling Roth a pedophile, and they posted calls for Roth’s death. 

Roth moved out of his house because of the threats. 

Musk has also singled out specific civil servants. In 2021, he targeted Missy Cummings, a former fighter pilot and senior adviser at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, whom Musk claimed was “extremely biased against Tesla” because she questioned the safety of Tesla’s advanced driver-assistance system. 

Cummings said she received death threats and was forced to leave her home as a result of Musk’s posts.

Musk’s current targeting is even more dangerous because he has the apparent authority of the president-elect. Although the so-called “Department of Government Efficiency” that Musk is co-heading (with Vivek Ramaswamy) isn’t a real department and has not been authorized by Congress, Musk is acting as if it’s real. 

Cummings says Musk’s personal intimidation is already leading some longtime federal employees to leave their jobs: “He intended for them, for people just like this, to be intimidated and just go ahead and quit so he didn’t have to fire them. So his plan, to some extent, is working.”

**

I worked in the federal government between 1974 and 1980, first at the Federal Trade Commission and then at the Justice Department, and from 1993 to 1997 I served as secretary of labor. 

Most of the federal employees I came to know cared deeply about the common good. The vast majority did their work carefully and thoughtfully. We owe them a huge debt of gratitude. 

But ever since Richard Nixon attacked “unelected bureaucrats” as America’s enemy and Ronald Reagan blamed “liberal bureaucrats” for government’s failings, government employees have been scapegoated. And now Trump is preparing to attack the so-called “deep state.”

In fact, America spends less each year on the federal government’s civilian workforce (roughly $200 billion) than we spend annually on federal contractors ($750 billion). 

Much of the “fat” is found in these private, for-profit contractors, who aren’t accountable to anyone except the office that draws up the contracts. 

The biggest waste is in the Defense Department, where many contractors have avoided competitive bidding because they have a monopoly over critical technologies. 

Which brings me back to Musk, whose businesses are fast becoming among the government’s largest contract monopolists. According to USASpending.gov (the government database that tracks federal spending), Musk’s SpaceX and his Starlink satellite division have signed contracts totaling nearly $20 billion. 

I don’t know how much waste and inefficiency are to be found in Musk’s government contracts because I haven’t been able to find any reports on them — which is precisely the problem. 

While Musk seeks to intimidate federal civil servants whose job titles he dislikes, forcing some to leave government because his postings have elicited threats to their lives, Musk is distracting attention from himself and his own profitable dips into the taxpayer trough. 

I invite any of you with an inclination to root out waste and inefficiency to find out what you can about any likely abuses in Musk’s government contracts, and let us know what you come up with.

[eugenedebs1920]

In their last term, The Supreme Court of the United States of America (SCOTUS), mainly the men, but occasionally Barrett showed the American people how little we are worth to them. They made it blatantly obvious that we are nothing more than serfs, subjugated, whose purpose is to pay taxes and STFU.

This was also made apparent with the reversal of Roe. The 2023-24 term had its share of long term dire consequences yet to be felt. The overturning of the Chevron doctrine was a devastating blow to the middle class/working poor. Its reversal will, at one time or another, affect the lives of 98% of Americans (the middle class, upper middle and working poor).

The right wing apparatus will tell you that regulations, protections, and limitations prohibit productivity which leads to less profits and in turn, a cooling of economic prosperity. What they aren’t divulging is the massive amounts of wealth they have amassed over the past 4 decades.

As far back as the Nixon administration, one could go back as far as the New Deal but, it’s a post, not a novel, certain restrictions, limitations, protective measures, and practices have been imposed on major corporations and industries. These regulations range from environmental protection, labor practices, safety standards, hazardous substances, banking practices, equal pay, the list goes on.

These regulatory agencies specialize in the field in which suits their skill set. Some call it the bureaucratic state. These non partisan civil servants work throughout changing administrations in their various fields without being inhibited by the views held by the party in power.

What the overturning of Chevron did is lessen the power that these agencies have. Putting the rules and regulations they enforced in peril. Now regulations created to protect the health and safety of Americans and the environment we live in, as well as the financial institutions and practices in which they can engage in, are put in peril.

The effects of this won’t be immediately noticeable. We are the frog in a warm pot of water, slowly being boiled to death. What does this have to do with Helene and future natural disasters one may ask?

Some of those regulatory agencies impacted by this reversal are, the EPA, FEMA, NOAA, the Department of Labor, OSHA, The FCC, the SEC, and so many more. Pretty much any agency that limits the exploitation these massive conglomerates and giant corporations can impose on Americans and the world they reside in.

We live in a time where the Supreme Court is rogue. With an extreme right wing MAGA majority, dead set on revoking rights as opposed to instilling them. A Supreme Court who, when scandals arose of lavish gifts coming from billionaire benefactors, rather than enforce a code of ethics they simply legalized bribery (Snyder vs the United States). A Supreme Court, so lawless and void of standards, that justices refuse to recuse themselves from constitutional crises cases, where they flew flags in support of the defendant, where the wife of another was in direct contact with the cheif of staff of a man who, while watching from the dining room of the White House, while a mob, led by his incendiary rhetoric ramshacked our capital. All the while chants of “hang Mike Pence, Hang Mike Pence” rang through the the halls of that hallowed ground. When told the mob wanted to hurt the Vice President, the defendant said, “So what”.

I’ve had tacos more supreme than this court! This November 5th, it is not a choice between a vile demented old man and a lifetime protector and prosecutor for the people, it is the direction, the safety, the environment, the lending practices, the food we eat, the wages we make, the lives our children will have that is the choice because. If Trump is elected, Alito as well as Thomas WILL retire, giving the mandarin Mussolini FIVE SCOTUS appointments. This will dictate the next 30 plus years of our lives. So please! Get out and vote! Vote the Harris Walz ticket and blue down ballot. The freedoms of women, LGBTQ rights, labor rights, environmental protections, food and drug safety, fair banking/lending practices, our federal lands, clean water, green energy for the future, so much hangs in the balance and the effects will be felt for a majority of the rest of our lives. We are one nation, indivisible, we stand for liberty and justice for all! ☮️🇺🇸

[thoughtlessarse]

Donald Trump has never been mistaken for an environmentalist, having long called the climate crisis a “giant hoax” and repeatedly lauding the supposed virtues of fossil fuels. But the US president’s onslaught upon the natural world in this administration’s first 100 days has surprised even those who closely charted his first term, in which he rolled back environmental rules and tore the US from the Paris climate agreement. This time, the mantra “drill, baby, drill” has been used to justify a hyperactive series of actions to reverse rules designed to protect clean air and water, open up vast tracts of land, ocean and even the seabed to mining, fire federal scientists en masse and downgrade the federal response to the disasters that stem from a warming world. Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is attempting to roll back toxic regulations that were calculated to save an estimated 200,000 Americans’ lives in the years ahead, his Department of the Interior is looking to shrink national monuments and his scientific agencies are degrading the basic data collection required for climate assessments and even weather forecasts. This burst of activity faces a barrage of legal action, with the courts already taking a dim view of the administration’s attempts to skirt usual practice in its haste to deregulate. Even with a rightwing-dominated supreme court, many of these executive orders are expected to founder. However, the US must accelerate efforts to cut emissions if climate goals are to be met, half of Americans still have to endure unsafe air and endangered species and public lands face pressure from a changing climate. The next few years will see little remedy to these growing problems from the White House. “The pace of announcements may slow at some point but the pressure on our regulatory system and our democracy will not only continue, but ramp up,” said Michael Burger, a climate law expert at Columbia University. -“The result will be fewer environmental protections and more people suffering the public health consequences of more pollution. It’s that straightforward.” Oliver Milman

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