New Trump rule aims to limit tough clean air measures under Biden
WASHINGTON—TheTrump administration completed a rule Wednesday that could weaken federal authority to issue clean air and climate change rules by changing the way the costs of pollution to human health and safety are tallied — and the way benefits of controlling that pollution are tabulated.
The new rule is the latest in a flurry of final Trump administration policies from the Environmental Protection Agency, as agency political appointees seek to wrap up four years of rolling back or weakening morethan 100 environmental rules and policies.
But the cost-benefit rule, which changes the way the EPA is required to report economic analyses of Clean Air Act regulations, is not expected to survive the incoming Biden administration.
Andrew Wheeler, the EPA administrator, said the rule was designed primarily to increase transparency. But he also said that it had been explicitly designed to prevent future administrations from releasing rules like an Obama administration regulation on toxic mercury pollution, which the industry officials said was far too costly for the benefits and which the EPA rolled back this spring.
The new rule would change how the EPA is required to reports its calculations of the economic costs and benefits of newclean air and climate change rules. Agency economists will be required to calculate the value of benefits to public health that directly stem from a newenvironmental regulation and separately the value of ancillary benefits, or “co-benefits” — such as the reduction of additional pollutants not directly governed by the regulation. Direct benefits and “co-benefits” would then have to be presented as separate categories.
That requirement, experts said, appears to be designed to give regulated industries a new avenue to sue a future EPA over tight new air pollution rules, by centering litigation around the costs and benefits of the ancillary category.
More than a month after the presidential election, YouTube says it will start removing newly uploaded material that claims widespread voter fraud or errors changed the outcome.
The Google-owned video service said Wednesday that this is in line with how it has dealt with past elections. That’s because Tuesday was the “safe harbor” deadline for the election and YouTube said enough states have certified their results to determine Joe Biden as the winner.
YouTube has been widely criticized for not doing more to prevent misinformation from spreading on its platform. Unlike Twitter and Facebook, which put measures in place — with some success — YouTube had until Wednesday stood by its decision to allow baseless claims about election fraud to stay up.
There is no evidence of widespread fraud in the 2020 election. Election officials confirmedthere were no serious irregularities and the election went well. Attorney
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General William Barr said last week the Justice Department has not identified voter fraud that would change the presidential election.
The Trump administration said Wednesday that it will allow migrants from six countries to extend their legal U.S. residency under a temporary status for nine months while courts consider its effort to end the program.
President Donald Trump has long sought to terminate the program, which allows migrants from countries devastated by war or natural disaster to legally live in the U.S.
President-elect Joe Biden has promised “an immediate review”
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of it once he’s in office and has said he’ll pursue legislation for longtime residents to remain in the U.S. and seek citizenship.
The Department of Homeland Security announced the extension in a notice in the Federal Register. The extension applies to more than 300,000 people from countries including El Salvador and Haiti who are in the United States on what’s formally known as Temporary Protected Status.
DHSsaid the program is being extended until a court finalizes an order allowing the administration to end the program for four countries that are part of a legal challenge. The extension also applies to Honduras, Nicaragua, Nepal and Sudan.
Fighterjet crashes: AWisconsin-based fighter jet crashed in a national forest in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula while on a training mission and searchers were looking Wednesday for the pilot, whowas the only person aboard, authorities said.
The F-16 Fighting Falcon assigned to the Wisconsin Air National Guard’s 115th Fighter Wing at Truax Field Air National Guard Base in Madison crashed about 8 p.m. Tuesday, the Wisconsin Department of Military Affairs said in a statement.
The cause of the crash, as well as the status of the pilot, weren’t immediately known, the statement said. The plane went down in Hiawatha National Forest, about 250 miles northeast of the base.
Thecrash remains under investigation, authorities said.
In France: The French government unveiled a draft law Wednesday aimed at better arming France against Islamist radicalism, a project promoted by President Emmanuel Macron to root out “separatists” undermining the nation.
France has suffered numerous Islamist terrorist attacks, including the beheading of a teacher in October who had showed his class cartoons of Islam’s prophet, followed by an attack inside Nice’s largest church that killed three.
The proposed legislation targets home schools, mosques or associations that promulgate an ideology running counter to French values, which authorities have called the “Islamist hydra” that can cultivate violence in some.
With claims by some that the draft law is too soft, or a political maneuver by Macron ahead of 2022 presidential elections to capture followers on the far right, it is likely to see lively debate when it goes before Parliament in coming months.
France’s Muslim population is estimated at 5 million.
Iranian authorities have detained a number of people accused of involvement in the assassination of the country’s top nuclear scientist last month near Tehran, a parliamentary adviser told an Iranian state-run broadcaster Wednesday.
The adviser, Hossein Amir Abdollahian, did not say how many people had been arrested in connection with the death of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, and revealed nothing about their identities, according to the news outlet, Al Alam.
Iran’s judiciary and security forces have not said arrests had been made related to Fakhrizadeh’s assassination.
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