September, 18 2017, 01:00pm EDT
Trump Administration Aims to Carve Up National Monuments for Private Profit
Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke advised President Trump to shrink the boundaries of at least four national monuments, according to a leaked memo he submitted upon concluding an agency review. Zinke also proposed subjecting several of the country's most treasured public lands and waters to drilling, logging, commercial fishing and other destruction.
Rhea Suh, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council, made the following statement:
WASHINGTON
Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke advised President Trump to shrink the boundaries of at least four national monuments, according to a leaked memo he submitted upon concluding an agency review. Zinke also proposed subjecting several of the country's most treasured public lands and waters to drilling, logging, commercial fishing and other destruction.
Rhea Suh, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council, made the following statement:
"If President Trump accepts Zinke's advice, and moves to eviscerate monument protections, he'd be ignoring the law--and the will of the American people.
"We will stand up for the nearly 3 million people who urged the administration to protect these monuments--in court, if necessary. We will not allow these special lands and waters to be handed over to private interests for drilling, commercial fishing, logging and other extraction."
BACKGROUND:
Zinke noted that he had received 2.8 million public comments that were "overwhelmingly in support of maintaining existing monuments."
Nevertheless, he called for unspecified boundary changes to at least four land monuments:
- Bears Ears in Utah
- Cascade Siskiyou in Oregon
- Gold Butte in Nevada
- Grand Staircase Escalante in Utah
Zinke's report also calls for changes in uses and/or management of:
- Katahdin Woods and Waters in Maine
- Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument, off New England
- Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks in New Mexico
- Rio Grande Del Norte in New Mexico
Zinke's report calls for changes in uses and/or boundary modification of:
- Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument
- Rose Atoll Marine National Monument
The report makes no mention of more than a dozen other monuments included in the review.
For background on Zinke's review of national monuments, see this blog by Kabir Green, senior advocate with NRDC's Government Affairs program.
For more on the threats to the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument, see this blog by Brad Sewell, Director of Fisheries and the U.S. Atlantic for NRDC's Oceans program.
NRDC's recent report, "America's Monuments: Worth the Fight," on how our monuments benefit the economy and preserve our heritage, wildlife and history, can be found here.
An interactive NRDC story map of the national monuments Secretary Zinke reviewed can be found here.
NRDC works to safeguard the earth--its people, its plants and animals, and the natural systems on which all life depends. We combine the power of more than three million members and online activists with the expertise of some 700 scientists, lawyers, and policy advocates across the globe to ensure the rights of all people to the air, the water, and the wild.
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Ignore the Cosplay. Trump's Record Shows He 'Does Not Give a Damn About Working-Class People'
"Donald Trump left workers behind when he was president," said United Auto Workers president Shawn Fain.
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The final stretch of the 2024 U.S. presidential race has seen Donald Trump, the billionaire Republican nominee, perform a staged shift at a Pennsylvania McDonald's and dress as a garbage truck driver in a clear effort to appeal to working-class voters who are set to play a decisive role in Tuesday's election.
But a detailed examination of Trump's first four-year term in the White House shows that despite his recent cosplaying, the GOP nominee was no ally of the working class when he was in a position to influence and enact policy.
"When Donald Trump was president, he repeatedly tried to raise the rent on at least 4 million of the poorest people in this country, many of them elderly or disabled," the investigative outlet ProPublicareported over the weekend. "He proposed to cut the federal disability benefits of a quarter-million low-income children, on the grounds that someone else in their family was already receiving benefits. He attempted to put in place a requirement that poor parents cooperate with child support enforcement, including by having single mothers disclose their sexual histories, before they and their children could receive food assistance."
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ProPublica also analyzed Trump's proposed federal budgets from 2018 to 2021 and found that the former president "advanced an agenda across his administration that was designed to cut healthcare, food, and housing programs and labor protections for poor and working-class Americans."
Meanwhile, Trump worked with his Republican allies in Congress to ram through a massive tax cut for the rich and large corporations—a measure he wants to double down on if he defeats Democratic nominee Kamala Harris on Tuesday.
Trump's 2024 campaign has featured some policy proposals aimed at boosting the working class, such as eliminating taxes on tips and overtime pay.
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In a video message to the country ahead of Election Day, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) similarly criticized Trump as an opponent of union rights and argued Harris is the "clear" choice for those who want to improve the lives of working-class Americans.
"While some of us may have differences of opinion and disagree with Kamala Harris on this or that issue, I hope very much we will not sit out this election. We cannot sit it out," said Sanders. "So let's get involved. Let's do everything we can. Let's come out and vote on Election Day, and let's make sure that Donald Trump is defeated and that Kamala Harris is our next president."
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Five additional possible electors signed similar documents in 2020 but were not criminally charged, according to the reporting, while at least half a dozen others "played notable roles in challenging the results of the 2020 election or promoting election conspiracy theories."
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With numerous Trump aides and GOP officials facing criminal charges for their alleged roles in the former president's bogus "Stop the Steal" scheme, experts say it is somewhat less likely that the Republican nominee or his allies would attempt another such plot. However, Trump and his boosters have recycled similar claims of election fraud in what critics say is a bid to spread misinformation and sow doubt about the outcome of Tuesday's contest if the 2020 loser is defeated by Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris.
"It does show a lack of regard for the criminal and ethical problems with doing this," Mary McCord, a Georgetown law professor and executive director of the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection, told Politico.
As Politico notes:
Six of the returning fake electors hail from Michigan. John Haggard, Hank Choate, Timothy King, Meshawn Maddock, Amy Facchinello, and Marian Sheridan were among the group of Michiganders who signed a document in 2020 purporting to be official electoral certificates claiming the state’s electoral votes went to Donald Trump, despite Biden winning Michigan by more than 150,000 votes. Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, a Democrat, brought felony charges against them, including forgery-related crimes punishable by up to 14 years. Those cases are ongoing and all have pleaded not guilty.
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Amy Tarkanian, a former chair of the Nevada Republican Party, told Politico that "these people continued to peddle and push not misinformation, which is accidental, but disinformation, which is intentional."
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In Arizona—where former state GOP chief Kelli Ward and 11 other Republican officials have been criminally charged in connection with the alleged fake electors scheme—current Republican Party Chair Gina Swoboda has been pushing spurious election fraud claims. This, even as Loraine Pellegrino, a past president of a right-wing women's group who falsely attested that Trump won Arizona in 2020, earlier this year became the first person convicted in the state's fake electors case.
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The Israel Defense Forces routinely use detained Palestinians as human shields in Gaza, according to testimony from four Palestinians and one IDF soldier shared withThe Washington Post.
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On the 15th day of Saab's ordeal, he was given civilian clothes and told to walk. As he did so, he felt a pain and realized he had been shot in the back.
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The
Post reporting came the same day as a major Associated Press investigation into Israeli raids on three hospitals in northern Gaza at the end of 2023. Israel has often justified its hospital raids with the claim that Hamas operates from the inside, turning all the patients and doctors into human shields. However, the AP concluded that
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The Austin for Palestine coalition shared a quote from the article, noting that what it described was "paid for by our tax dollars."
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