Trump-era rollbacks on endangered species thrown out by judge
WASHINGTON — A federal judge Tuesday threw out a host of actions by the Trump administration to roll back protections for endangered or threatened species, a year after the Biden administration said it was moving to strengthen species protections weakened under former President Donald Trump.
U.S. District Judge Jon Tigar in Northern California eliminated the Trumpera rules even as two wildlife agencies under President Joe Biden are reviewing or rescinding the Trump-era regulations. The decision restores a range of protections under the Endangered Species Act — including some that date to the 1970s — while the reviews are completed.
Tigar’s ruling “spoke for species desperately in need of comprehensive federal protections without compromise,” said Kristen Boyles, an attorney for the environmental group Earthjustice.
The ruling comes as the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries Service review five Endangered Species Act regulations finalized by the Trump administration, including critical habitat designations and rules requiring federal agencies to consult with other agencies before taking action on threatened or endangered species.
Fish and Wildlife also will reinstate the decadesold “blanket rule,” which mandates additional protections for species newly classified as threatened. Those protections were removed under Trump.
Critical habitat designations for threatened or endangered species can result in limitations on energy development such as mining or oil drilling that could disturb a vulnerable species, while the consultation rule, and a separate rule on the scope of proposed federal actions, helps determine how far the government may go to protect imperiled species.
Under Trump, officials rolled back protections for the northern spotted owl, gray wolves and other species, actions that Biden has vowed to review. The Biden administration previously moved to reverse Trump’s decision to weaken enforcement of the century-old Migratory Bird Treaty Act, which made it harder to prosecute bird deaths caused by the energy industry.
Chauvin sentencing: A federal judge will this week sentence former Minneapolis police Officer Derek Chauvin for federal civil rights violations in the killing of George Floyd.
U.S. District Judge Paul Magnuson on Tuesday set Chauvin’s sentencing hearing for Thursday in St. Paul. Chauvin’s plea agreement calls for a sentence of 20 to 25 years in prison.
Chauvin pleaded guilty in December to violating Floyd’s rights, admitting for the first time that he kept his knee on Floyd’s neck — even as the Black man said he couldn’t breathe and after he became unresponsive — resulting in Floyd’s death.
Chauvin, who is white, admitted he willfully deprived Floyd of his right to be free from unreasonable seizure, including unreasonable force by a police officer, during the May 2020 arrest.
Chauvin was convicted in a separate case on state charges of murder and manslaughter and is already serving a 22 ½-year sentence.
Sept. 11 settlement: The Justice Department settled a decades-old lawsuit filed by a group of men who were rounded up by the government in the weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and held in a federal jail in New York in conditions the department’s own watchdog called abusive and harsh.
The settlement announced Tuesday calls for a $98,000 payout to be paid out among the six men who filed the suit and were held without terrorism charges at the Metropolitan Detention Center in the borough of Brooklyn.
Ahmer Iqbal Abbasi, Anser Mehmood, Benamar Benatta, Ahmed Khalifa, Saeed Hammouda, and Purna Raj Bajracharya said they were detained in restrictive conditions and, in some cases, abused by members of the staff.
The settlement is unusual because federal courts at nearly every level had thrown out large chunks of the lawsuit.
In 2017, the Supreme Court threw out parts of the suit but tossed one claim, against the former warden of the federal lockup, back to a lower court. A federal judge in Brooklyn dismissed the remaining parts of the suit last year, finding that the men didn’t have the right to sue for their injuries, though the judge did not address whether there were constitutional violations.
A panel of Tennessee judges has dismissed a lawsuit filed by a couple who alleged that a state-sponsored Christian adoption agency refused to help them because they are Jewish.
The lawsuit challenged a 2020 law that installed legal protections for private adoption agencies to reject state-funded placement of children to parents based on religious beliefs.
Much of the criticism of the law had focused on how it allowed adoption agencies to discriminate against
Adoption bias suit:
LGBTQ people. But Elizabeth and Gabriel RutanRam sued over claims that they were discriminated against because they were Jewish, in violation of their state constitutional rights.
Pacific hurricane: Bonnie strengthened into a major hurricane Tuesday, the first in the eastern Pacific this season.
Bonnie continued to move roughly parallel to Mexico’s Pacific coast after crossing over Central America from the Caribbean and dropping heavy rain, contributing to at least two deaths.
Forecasters said they now expect that the Category 3 storm will not threaten land.
Bonnie had maximum sustained winds of 115 mph, the hurricane center said. It was centered 340 miles south of Cabo Corrientes, near Puerto Vallarta, and was moving west at 15 mph.
Air show death: The father of the jet engine-powered semitruck driver who died
during a performance at a southwestern Michigan air show said Tuesday that the truck burst into flames after a blown tire ruptured the fuel tank.
Chris Darnell, 40, died Saturday during a race between the Shockwave Jet Truck and two airplanes at the Battle Creek Field of Flight Air Show and Balloon Festival.
No one else was injured in the accident.
The custom-built jet truck reaches speeds topping 350 mph and races at shows across North America, according to Springfield, Missouri-based Darnell Racing Enterprises.
“As the tire came apart it ruptured the fuel tank on the left side of the car and that, of course, initiated the fire. It happened so quickly that Chris didn’t even have time to react,” said Neal Darnell, the driver’s father.
Video shows the truck catching fire before flipping down the runway at Battle Creek Executive Airport.