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marco rubio
Trump Goes Zero for Five Against Offshore Wind
Feb 02, 2026
Today, the Trump administration lost yet another legal battle in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. This is the fifth and final offshore wind project that has successfully challenged the administration’s stop-work order.
In December—three days before Christmas—Donald Trump’s Department of the Interior halted five offshore wind projects that were all more than 40 percent complete. Vineyard Wind off the coast of Massachusetts was nearly 95 percent finished and already delivering power to the grid. Trump’s orders halted fully-vetted, billion-dollar projects and sent thousands of workers home at a time when construction jobs were scarce and energy demand was nearing its peak. Since then, all five stop-work orders have been challenged in court, and in all five times, the courts have ruled in favor of the offshore wind projects.
“The unilateral court victories are evidence of what we’ve known all along—Donald Trump has it out for offshore wind, but we aren’t giving up without a fight. Communities deserve a cleaner, cheaper, healthier future, and offshore wind will help us get there,” said Sierra Club Senior Advisor Nancy Pyne. “Despite the roadblocks Donald Trump has tried to throw up in an effort to bolster dirty fossil fuels, offshore wind will prevail. We will continue to call for responsible and equitable offshore wind from coast to coast, as we fight for an affordable and reliable clean energy future for all.”
“We are glad to see Sunrise Wind’s 800 workers, made up largely of local New Yorkers, get back to work on this critical project,” added Allyson Samuell, Sierra Club Senior Campaign Representative in New York. “Once constructed, Sunrise Wind will supply 600,000 local homes with affordable, reliable, renewable energy – this power is super needed and especially important during extreme cold snaps and winter storms like Storm Fern. Here in New York, South Fork has proven offshore wind works, now is the time to see Sunrise, and Empire Wind, come online too.”
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Advocates Sue Trump Administration Over Mercury Exemptions for Taconite Plants
Lawsuit challenges two-year waiver from the EPA’s mercury and toxic air pollution limits that protect Great Lakes communities, and public health
Feb 02, 2026
Minnesota state and national environmental groups filed a lawsuit today challenging the Trump administration’s decision to exempt the nation’s taconite iron ore processing facilities from newly strengthened Environmental Protection Agency limits on mercury and other hazardous air pollutant emissions. The groups say the waiver is yet another example of the Trump administration’s overreach that undermines the country’s clean air safeguards.
The taconite industry contributes approximately half of the mercury emissions from all sources in Minnesota.
“As home to the majority of these facilities, Minnesota is particularly vulnerable to mercury pollution from taconite facilities. By carving out special exemptions for taconite plants, the Trump administration is effectively sacrificing our waters, our wild rice, and our children’s health so companies can keep emitting mercury into the air,” said Ashlynn Kendzior of the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy. “That violates the law and it harms our communities, and we are going to court to stop it.”
Mercury is a potent neurotoxin that accumulates in fish and poses particular risks to those who are pregnant, to fetuses, and to young children. Many communities in northern Minnesota and Michigan’s Upper Peninsula where taconite facilities are concentrated rely on fish as a traditional food source, making them especially vulnerable to mercury contamination. State and federal health agencies have issued fish consumption advisories across Minnesota waters due in part to airborne mercury deposition.
“These exemptions put children, pregnant people, and communities at greater risk from mercury and other toxic air pollution so taconite facilities owned by well-resourced companies can keep delaying pollution controls,” says Shampa Panda-Bryant, senior attorney at NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council). “Communities have fought for decades for protections that President Trump is unlawfully trying to undo with the stroke of his pen, and once again putting profit and pollution over people.”
The lawsuit, filed by the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy and NRDC, in federal court in Washington, D.C., seeks to overturn a July 17, 2025 presidential proclamation that granted a two-year exemption from the EPA’s 2024 Taconite Iron Ore Processing air toxics rule. During the exemption period, these facilities are allowed to continue operating without federal standards for mercury emissions for taconite processing facilities and avoid new requirements to curb emissions of mercury, hydrochloric acid, and hydrofluoric acid, pollutants linked to brain damage in children, heart and lung disease, and premature death.
EPA’s 2024 taconite rule established, after years of advocacy by impacted communities, the first nationwide limits on mercury from taconite iron ore processing plants and tightened standards for acid gases like hydrochloric and hydrofluoric acid. The agency found that these standards would significantly reduce emissions of hazardous air pollutants from taconite plants in the United States.
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Judge Rules Against Kristi Noem Order Seeking to Block Lawmakers From Immigrant Detention Facilities
"The Court’s decision today... against ICE’s unlawful effort to obstruct congressional oversight is a victory for the American people," said Rep. Joe Neguse.
Feb 02, 2026
Doubling down on a ruling from late last year, a federal judge on Monday once again rejected an effort by the Trump administration to block congressional lawmakers from accessing federal immigration detention facilities.
In the ruling, US District Judge Jia Cobb granted a temporary restraining order sought by Democratic members of the House of Representatives to overturn the US Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) policy of requiring lawmakers to give a week's notice before being granted access to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention facilities.
Cobb had already overturned this DHS policy in a December ruling, arguing that it "was likely contrary to the terms of a limitations rider attached to" the department's annual appropriated funds.
However, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem in January reimplemented the one-week notice policy and argued that it was now being implemented with separate funds provided to DHS through the 2025 One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which did not contain the language used in the earlier limitations rider.
Cobb rejected this argument and found that "at least some of these resources that either have been or will be used to promulgate and enforce the notice policy have already been funded and paid for with... restricted annual appropriations funds," including "contracts or agreements that predate" the passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
According to legal journalist Chris Geidner, the effect of Cobb's ruling will be that congressional oversight visits to ICE facilities will now be "allowed on request."
Rep. Joe Neguse (D-Colo.), the lead plaintiff in the case, hailed Cobb's ruling and vowed to keep putting pressure on the Trump administration to comply with the law.
"The Court’s decision today to grant a temporary restraining order against ICE’s unlawful effort to obstruct congressional oversight is a victory for the American people," said Neguse. "We will keep fighting to ensure the rule of law prevails."
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Measles Outbreak at ICE Center Holding 400 Kids Called 'Predictable Outcome' of Trump Policies
One doctor warned that the outbreak "will become an epidemic if we don't act immediately."
Feb 02, 2026
Public health experts and immigrant advocates sounded the alarm Sunday over a measles outbreak at a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement internment center in Texas where roughly 1,200 people, including over 400 children, are being held.
Texas officials confirmed Saturday that two detainees at the Dilley Immigration Processing Center, located about 75 miles (120 km) southwest of San Antonio, are infected with measles.
"Medical staff is continuing to monitor the detainees' conditions and will take appropriate and active steps to prevent further infection," the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said in a statement. "All detainees are being provided with proper medical care."
DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said Sunday that ICE "immediately took steps to quarantine and control further spread and infection, ceasing all movement within the facility and quarantining all individuals suspected of making contact with the infected."
Responding to the development, Dr. Lee Rogers of UT Health San Antonio wrote in a letter to Texas state health officials that the Dilley outbreak "will become an epidemic if we don't act immediately" by establishing "a single public health incident command center."
"Viruses are not political," Rogers stressed. "They do not care about one's immigration status. Measles will spread if we allow uncertainty and delay to substitute for reasoned public health action."
Dr. Benjamin Mateus took aim at the Trump administration's wider policy of "criminalizing immigrant families and confining children in camps," which he called a form of "colonial policy" from which disease is the "predictable outcome."
Measles is a highly contagious viral disease that can kill or cause serious complications, particularly among unvaccinated people. The United States declared measles eliminated in 2000, but declining vaccination fueled by misinformation has driven a resurgence in the disease, and public health experts warn that the US is close to following Canada, which lost its elimination status late last year.
Many experts blame this deadly and preventable setback on the vaccine-averse policies and practices of the Trump administration, particularly at the Department of Health and Human Services, led by vaccine conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
US measles cases this year already exceed the total for the whole of 2023 and 2024 combined, and it is only January. Yikes.
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— Dr. Lucky Tran (@luckytran.com) January 29, 2026 at 12:29 PM
Critics also slammed ICE's recent halt on payments to third-party providers of detainee healthcare services.
Immigrant advocates had previously warned of a potential measles outbreak at the Dilley lockup. Neha Desai, an attorney at the Oakland, California-based National Center of Youth Law, told CBS News that authorities could use the outbreak as a pretext for preventing lawyers and lawmakers from inspecting the facility.
"We are deeply concerned for the physical and the mental health of every family detained at Dilley," Desai said. "It is important to remember that no family needs to be detained—this is a choice that the administration is making."
Run by ICE and private prison profiteer CoreCivic, the Dilley Immigration Processing Center has been plagued by reports of poor health and hygiene conditions. The facility is accused of providing inadequate medical care for children.
Detainees—who include people legally seeking asylum in the US—report prison-like conditions and say they've been served moldy food infested with worms and forced to drink putrid water. Some have described the facility as "truly a living hell."
The internment center has made headlines not only for its harsh conditions, but also for its high-profile detainees, including Liam Conejo Ramos, a 5-year-old abducted by ICE agents in Minneapolis last month and held along with his father at the facility before a judge ordered their release last week. The child's health deteriorated while he was at Dilley.
On Sunday, the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC)—the nation's oldest Latino civil rights organization—held a protest outside the Dilley lockup, demanding its closure.
"Migrant detention centers in America are a moral failure,” LULAC national president Roman Palomares said in a statement. "When a nation that calls itself a beacon of freedom detains children behind razor wire, separates families from their communities, and holds them in isolated conditions, we have crossed a dangerous line."
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