EPA stay on emission rule struck down
WASHINGTON — An appeals court Monday struck down the Environmental Protection Agency’s two-year suspension of new emission standards on oil and gas wells, a decision that could set back the Trump administration’s broad legal strategy for rolling back Obama-era rules.
In a 2-to-1 ruling, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia concluded that the EPA has the right to reconsider a 2016 rule limiting methane and smogforming pollutants emitted by oil and gas wells but cannot delay the effective date for two years while it seeks to rewrite the regulation.
“The court’s ruling is yet another reminder … that the federal judiciary remains a significant obstacle to the president’s desire to order immediate change,” Richard Lazarus, an environmental law professor at Harvard Law School, said in an email.
The EPA, along with the American Petroleum Institute, had argued that the stay that Administrator Scott Pruitt imposed last month was not subject to judicial review because it did not constitute final action on the rule.
But the court rejected that interpretation, writing, the “EPA’s stay, in other words, is essentially an order delaying the rule’s effective date, and this court has held that such orders are tantamount to amending or revoking a rule.”
The ruling could affect a myriad of agencies that have delayed the Obama administration’s regulations, some for long periods.
Trump’s voter probe challenged as unlawful
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s Advisory Commission on Election Integrity was sued by a privacy advocacy group seeking a court order to limit the panel from collecting voter information from across the U.S.
The Electronic Privacy Information Center, in a complaint filed Monday in a federal court in Washington, said the presidential commission’s actions are an unlawful invasion of privacy and unconstitutional.
The commission has asked all 50 states to submit data on all registered voters, including their names, birth dates, political party affiliations and records of elections in which they participated, plus the last four digits of citizens’ Social Security numbers.
Several states, including Ohio, already have said they legally can’t or won’t comply — either fully or partially — with that request.
WWII raid veteran talks with president
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump spoke Sunday with the last surviving member of the World War II-era Doolittle Raiders ahead of Independence Day.
The White House said Trump spoke with 101-yearold Lt. Col. Dick Cole of Comfort, Texas, thanking him for his service.
Cole served as the co-pilot of the lead B-25 bomber during the 1942 raid on Tokyo. The crews knew they wouldn’t have enough fuel to return and had to bail out over China. Three crewmen died in the raid, and three of those captured by the Japanese were executed.