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(notice he left out Texas and Florida)
ditto Illinois and NY
(notice he left out Texas and Florida)
GAO opines once again that Trump is violating the Impoundment Control Act
Trump wants to up libraries, for some reason
https://www.gao.gov/products/b-337375
Trumplandia is losing in federal court about 95% of the time from May on -- too much specious and way too much arbitrary and capricious
US agencies can't refuse to spend appropriated funds because appropriations are US laws
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/0...awful-00411906A federal judge on Tuesday ruled that EPA’s termination of $600 million in environmental justice grants issued by the Biden administration for low-income areas and communities of color was unlawful.
The ruling over the Thriving Communities Grantmaking Program comes as EPA is separately appealing a ruling that its termination of $20 billion in Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund grants was also unlawful. Congressional Republicans have proposed rescinding funding for both grant programs as part of their reconciliation bills.
The Thriving Communities Grantmaking Program was part of a $2.8 billion tranche of funding under the Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act intended for community groups to provide block grants to address pollution that takes a disproportionately heavy toll on communities of color and low-income and rural areas.
Announced in December 2023, EPA selected 11 groups to disburse the funds to subrecipients, a setup the Biden administration argued would help the groups cut through red tape and access the money more easily.
EPA in February terminated the grants as it sought to end environmental justice work under the Trump administration’s move against diversity, equity and inclusion programs. Three of the regional grantmakers sued: the Green and Healthy Homes Initiative, which worked in the mid-Atlantic region; the Minneapolis Foundation, operating in the Midwest; and Philanthropy Northwest, which funded programs in the Pacific Northwest and Alaska.
EPA’s termination of these grants violated the Administrative Procedure Act, ruled Judge Adam Abelson of the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland.
“EPA contends that it has authority to thumb its nose at Congress and refuse to comply with its directives. That cons utes a clear example of an agency acting ‘in excess of statutory jurisdiction, authority, or limitations, or short of statutory right,’ and thereby violating the APA,” wrote Abelson, a Biden appointee.
Abelson rejected the argument EPA made in this and similar cases that the grant terminations are effectively contract disputes that must be heard by a special court, the U.S. Court of Federal Claims.
Instead, he ruled that EPA’s terminations of the grants because the administration opposes environmental justice efforts were unlawful precisely because Congress intended the agency to spend it on environmental justice activities.
“Congress expressly required EPA to use the appropriated funds for ‘environmental justice’ programs. By terminating Plaintiffs’ grants on the basis that current EPA leadership no longer wants to support ‘environmental justice’ programs, EPA exceeded its authority under the Clean Air Act, and therefore was ‘in excess of statutory . . . authority, or limitations,’” under the Administrative Procedures Act, Abelson ruled.
Abelson also rejected EPA’s argument that the grants were terminated to prevent waste. “EPA is required to spend the funds that Congress appropriated … and to do so on specified types of projects, and to specifically ensure that such projects benefit disadvantaged communities,” he wrote.
Last edited by Winehole23; 06-18-2025 at 08:47 PM.
I hate it that the Montana and Wyoming are going to lose on this
even with all the billionaires
wasn't Zinke Trump's Interior guy in the first iteration?
(yes)
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/mike-...b0e5115b42115bMeanwhile, Republican Rep. Ryan Zinke (Mont.) has also spoken out against the plan.
“I have said from day one I would not support a bill that sells public lands,” he wrote Wednesday on X. “I am still a no on the senate reconciliation bill that sells public lands.”
an unending series of pretextual emergencies to grab more power and hurt more American people
https://newrepublic.com/article/1970...-troops-cities
in Schmittian terms, Trump through his policies and actions is trying to create the emergency that will allow him to declare the state of exception
Trump and his advisers want his powers to decree emergencies—unlocking vast additional authorities—to be placed beyond judicial review entirely. Importantly, the court in the L.A. case rejected that argument. It suggested this would effectively grant Trump the power to send in the National Guard based on a decision that is “obviously absurd or made in bad faith,” or one “based on no evidence whatsoever.”
The rub is that this is exactly what Trump and his advisers believe he should and does have the power to do. David French looked at the language of Trump’s top advisers as he dispatched troops to L.A. and noticed something revealing: They almost seemed to be anticipating that this move would inflame the situation, and even appeared to be hatching, in real time, fake justifications for a more extreme military response later.
Senate Parliamentarian rules CFPB back in, the rescission would run afoul of Byrd rules for reconciliation, but Rs can still defund it in a regular billTrump's attempts to dismantle the Consumer Financial Protection Board
keep hitting cons utional roadblocks
(Royce Lamberth is a Reagan appointee)
https://storage.courtlistener.com/re...78524.48.0.pdf
I guess we'll see if Senate Republicans still obey a parliamentarian, I wouldn't hold my breath
turns out two elderly Republican Senators from Idaho are clearing their throats, threatening their votes
suspense
Kari Lake recently called members VOA Farsi from administrative leave, who are still scheduled to be terminated on September 1stKari Lake was about to get spanked in court for her legally inept shutdown of Voice of America, so she withdrew the grant termination, provisionally
Giving herself a do-over.
Trump loses in court again for arbitrary and capricious actions and violating the 1st Amendment
Trumplandia is an autocratic criminal regime -- according to US courts, over and over again
A federal judge has ordered the Trump administration to restore millions of dollars in canceled grants to University of California researchers, calling the terminations flagrantly illegal and uncons utional.storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...Instead of seeking to define the limits of a government program advancing a government message when awarding new funding or creating new programs, the implementation of the Equity Termination Orders appears to be a concerted effort to penalize existing grants across the board for promoting forbidden views, as reflected in the stated aim to “combat” and “end” the “dangerous, demeaning, and immoral . . . DEI” speech. 90 Fed. Reg. at 8633. This is quintessential viewpoint discrimination and that likely violates the First Amendment.
Closing the National Archives to the public
What's the rationale here?
To screw researchers?
https://www.archives.gov/college-parkRestricted-Access Federal Facility, Effective July 7, 2025
Effective July 7, 2025, the National Archives at College Park, MD, will become a restricted-access federal facility with access only for visitors with a legitimate business need. It will no longer be open to the general public. Security officers will enforce these restrictions, and your cooperation is appreciated.
Trumplandia is probably going to purge all the records they don't like
Those records belong to the people
these are all restricted access now
the National Science Foundation is being kicked out of its own building, which will be given to HUD
presumably, GSA has presumably terminated the lease
generational loss for science
NSF staffer: "There is no planning for NSF, no identified future location, appropriation for a new building or a move.""The NSF will occupy 94 percent of the building and has preleased it for 15 years through the General Services Administration. The property is expected to be completed in late 2016."
the notice has been taken down, but what do you have against the National Archives?
politicizing prosecution is per se weaponization of justice
completely expected in this authoritarian regime
President Miller is a menace to the American public
htps://www.propublica.org/article/stephen-miller-trump-dhs-fbi-doj-war-on-drugsThe administration’s plans, described in internal do ents and by government officials, would reduce federal prosecutors’ control over investigations, shifting key decisions to a network of task forces jointly led by the FBI and Homeland Security Investigations, the primary investigative arm of DHS.
Officials said the plan to bring law enforcement agencies together in the new Homeland Security Task Forces has been driven primarily by President Donald Trump’s homeland security adviser, Stephen Miller, who is closely overseeing the project’s implementation.
Current and former officials said the proposed reorganization would make it easier for senior officials like Miller to disregard norms that have long walled off the White House from active criminal investigations.
”Veteran officials at the DEA — who appear to have had almost no say in the creation of the new task forces— are said to be even more concerned. Already the DEA has been fighting pressure to provide access to investigative files without assurances that the safeguards of the OCDETF intelligence center will remain in place, officials said.
“DEA has not even been invited to any of the task force meetings,” one former senior official said. “It is mind-boggling. They’re just getting orders saying, ‘This is what Stephen Miller wants and you’ve got to give it to us.’
storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
-- according to US courts, over and over again
like 9.5 times out of ten since last month
Rep. Zinke has recently been clearing his throat
to ventilate his dissatisfaction with the proposed public land sale
DOD withdraws microwave data from NOAA
https://michaelrlowry.substack.com/p...-forecast-toolMicrowave data such as those from the DoD Special Sensor Microwave Imager Sounder are essential to hurricane forecasts, not a nice-to-have. They’re used in a variety of critical applications, including estimating hurricane intensity through AI-driven neural networks like the Deep Multispectral INtensity of TCs estimator or DMINT. In the absence of hurricane hunters, DMINT has been shown to be one of the most crucial tools in a hurricane forecaster’s arsenal for estimating storm intensity, largely because of the microwave data it utilizes.
Though other microwave data will still be available to forecasters, the DoD weather satellites comprise half of all microwave instruments, which means data availability will be sliced in half, greatly increasing the odds of missing rapid intensification episodes, underestimating intensity, or misplacing the storm and degrading forecast accuracy.
Godfrey Susman gets summary judgment
https://storage.courtlistener.com/re...61.206.0_1.pdf
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