Tag Archives: Maine.

‘Haul Louis DeJoy in Front of a Criminal Grand Jury’: Outrage After Postal Service Misses Court-Ordered Election Day Deadline

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“It’s how we all thought they would do it. It’s what they said they wouldn’t do. And it’s exactly what they are doing.”

By Jessica Corbett, staff writer for Common Dreams. Published 11-3-2020

Election experts and other critics of voter suppression responded with alarm Tuesday after the United States Postal Service failed to meet a court-ordered afternoon deadline to conduct sweeps at mail processing facilities to “ensure that no ballots have been held up and that any identified ballots are immediately sent out for delivery.”

Earlier Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan of the District of Columbia had ordered the sweeps between 12:30 pm and 3:00 pm ET, and set a 4:30 pm ET deadline for facilities to file a status update. John Kruzel, a reporter at The Hill, tweeted Tuesday afternoon that the USPS failed to comply, in spite of saying this week that about 300,000 ballots had entered the mail sorting system but lacked a delivery scan. Continue reading →

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23 AGs Sue Trump Council Over ‘Reckless and Unprecedented’ Gutting of Bedrock US Environmental Law

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“This administration’s insidious attack on one of our most important environmental laws is an attack on the democratic process itself.”

By Jessica Corbett, staff writer for Common Dreams. Published 8-28-2020

Photo: NRDC

A coalition of 27 U.S. states, commonwealths, territories, counties, and cities filed a federal lawsuit on Friday challenging the Trump administration’s “unlawful, unjustified, and sweeping revisions” to a 50-year-old law that the president claimed would “streamline” infrastructure projects by limiting environmental reviews.

After revealing plans to alter the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) in January, President Donald Trump announced what critics called “reckless and unprecedented” changes during a July campaign stop. The revisions, detailed in a final rule released by the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), swiftly provoked legal threats from advocacy organizations. Continue reading →

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Should the president pick the attorney general?

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William Barr walks through Lafayette Park before demonstrators were cleared by federal police on June 1, 2020. Joshua Roberts/Getty Images

Joshua Holzer, Westminster College

Attorney General William Barr recently announced, late on a Friday, that Geoffrey Berman was “stepping down after two-and-a-half years of service as United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York.”

This announcement was news to Berman, who later contradicted Barr by declaring that he had not resigned and indeed had no intention of resigning. Barr then contradicted himself by informing Berman that since he had refused to resign, he had instead been fired. Continue reading →

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‘Quietly Putting Hundreds of Species at Risk,’ Trump Opens 5,000 Square Miles of Atlantic Ocean to Commercial Fishing

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“Ancient and slow-growing deep sea corals, endangered large whales and sea turtles, and an incredible array of fish, seabirds, sharks, dolphins and other wildlife—these are the species and habitats that will pay the price.”

By Jake Johnson, staff writer for Common Dreams. Published 6-6-2020

“Like one of America’s very first national monuments, the Grand Canyon, the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts is a natural treasure,” said NRDC’s KateDesormaeu. “It provides habitat for a wide range of species, from endangered whales to Atlantic puffins to centuries-old deep-sea corals.” Photo: Wikipedia (Public domain)

In a move that environmentalists warned could further imperil hundreds of endangered species and a protected habitat for the sake of profit, President Donald Trump on Friday signed a proclamation rolling back an Obama-era order and opening nearly 5,000 square miles off the coast of New England to commercial fishing.

“We’re opening it today,” Trump said during a roundtable talk in Maine with commercial fishermen and the state’s former governor Paul LePage. “What reason did he have for closing 5,000 miles? That’s a lot of miles. Five thousand square miles is a lot. He didn’t have a reason, in my opinion.” Continue reading →

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Walmart Was Almost Charged Criminally Over Opioids. Trump Appointees Killed the Indictment.

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Even as company pharmacists protested, Walmart kept filling suspicious prescriptions, stoking the country’s opioid epidemic. A Republican U.S. Attorney in Texas thought the evidence was damning. Trump’s political appointees? Not so much.

By Jesse Eisinger and James Bandler. Published 3-25-2020 by ProPublica

Attorney General William P. Barr, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, and FBI Director Christopher Wray. Photo: Department of Justice (Public domain)

On a Tuesday just before Halloween in 2018, a group of federal prosecutors and agents from Texas arrived in Washington. For almost two years, they’d been investigating the opioid dispensing practices of Walmart, the largest company in the world. They had amassed what they viewed as highly damning evidence only to face a major obstacle: top Trump appointees at the Department of Justice.

The prosecution team had come to Washington to try to save its case. Joe Brown, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Texas, led the group, which included Heather Rattan, an over-20-year veteran of the office who had spent much of her career prosecuting members of drug cartels. Continue reading →

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To Stave Off ‘Climate Disaster,’ 29 States and Major Cities Sue Trump EPA Over ‘Dirty Power’ Rule

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“President Trump’s attempt to gut our nation’s Clean Power Plan is foolish. It’s also unlawful.”

By Jessica Corbett, staff writer for Common Dreams. Published 8-13-2019

Xcel Energy’s Sherburne County (Sherco) Generating Station, a coal-fired power plant, near Becker, Minnesota. Photo: Tony Webster/Wikimedia/CC

A coalition of 22 states and seven major American cities sued the Trump administration Tuesday over its repeal of the Obama-era Clean Power Plan and a replacement that critics have dubbed the “Dirty Power” rule.

The lawsuit (pdf), filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, targets the administration’s so-called Affordable Clean Energy (ACE) rule, which eases restrictions on coal plants imposed by the Obama plan, the first national policy to limit power plants’ carbon emissions. Continue reading →

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Nation Warned That Trump’s “Horrifying” Medicaid Pick Hired With “Express Purpose to Dismember” Program

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Mary Mayhew “destroyed Medicaid in Maine now she will destroy it in the whole country.”

By Jessica Corbett, staff writer for Common Dreams. Published 10-15-2018

Maine’s former Health and Human Services Commissioner Mary Mayhew has been tapped to run Medicaid on a national level. Photo: WFVX

Provoking immediate warnings about what is now in store for the most vulnerable people in the United States, President Donald Trump on Monday reportedly tapped Maine’s former health commissioner Mary Mayhew—who was instrumental in Republican Gov. Paul LePage’s efforts to block Medicaid expansion in the state—to run the program at the federal level.

Critics such as Zak Ringelstein, a Democratic U.S. Senate candidate from Maine, rapidly denounced her appointment as “horrifying.” Continue reading →

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EPA Decided Preventing a West,Texas-Style Accicdent Wasn’t a Priority. So 11 AGs Are Suing

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‘The Trump EPA continues to put special interests before the health and safety of the people they serve,” said New York Attorney General Schneiderman

By Andrea Germanos, staff writer for Common Dreams. Published 7-24-2017

The West Chemical and Fertilizer Company plant after the explosion. Photo: Occupy.com

Eleven states filed suit against the Environmental Protection Agency and its chief, Scott Pruitt, in federal court on Monday over the agency’s decision to postpone implementation of a rule aimed at lessening the risk of a chemical plant disaster such as the deadly one that rocked West, Texas in 2013.

“Protecting our workers, first-responders, and communities from chemical accidents should be something on which we all agree. Yet the Trump EPA continues to put special interests before the health and safety of the people they serve,” said New York Attorney General Schneiderman, who’s leading the lawsuit. Continue reading →

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Trump Administration Slapped With Lawsuits Over Blocked Energy Efficiency Standards

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‘By blocking these common sense standards, the administration is reversing progress in cleaning the air we breathe and fighting climate change’

By Nika Knight, staff writer for Common Dreams. Published 4-3-2017

Eric Schneiderman. Photo: True News (The Bund)

A coalition of state attorneys general—led by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman—announced plans Monday to file a lawsuit against the Department of Energy (DOE) under President Donald Trump for blocking Obama-era energy efficiency standards for a variety of commercial and consumer products.

“Energy efficiency standards are vital to public health, our environment, and consumers. This is yet another example of how the Trump administration’s polluter-first energy policy has real and harmful impacts on the public health, environment—and pocketbooks—of New Yorkers,” Schneiderman said in a statement.

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‘Resounding Win for Economic Equality’: 4 States Vote to Boost Minimum Wage

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The results offer ‘a strong message to all of Washington: If you’re not working to create a fair economy, we’ll do it ourselves’

By Andrea Germanos, staff writer for Common Dreams. Published 11-9-2016

The results, said Jonathan Schleifer, executive director of The Fairness Project, "mark a new moment in American politics where voters will no longer wait for politicians—who have failed them time and time again—to fix our broken economy." (Photo: Wisconsin Jobs Now/flickr/cc)

The results, said Jonathan Schleifer, executive director of The Fairness Project, “mark a new moment in American politics where voters will no longer wait for politicians—who have failed them time and time again—to fix our broken economy.” (Photo: Wisconsin Jobs Now/flickr/cc)

Voters in four states—Arizona, Colorado, Maine, and Washington—said yes on Tuesday to ballot initiatives that will boost their state’s minimum hourly wage, offering hope, advocates say, of an increased standard of living for roughly 2.1 million workers.

According to Jonathan Schleifer, executive director of The Fairness Project, the results “mark a new moment in American politics where voters will no longer wait for politicians—who have failed them time and time again—to fix our broken economy.” Continue reading →

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