Canada is a major oyster supplier to the U.S. Both diners and oystermen are harmed by inaction on pollution
Freshly cleaned oysters are seen in Nova Scotia’s Chance Harbour. Photo, credit: Molly MacNaughton/IJB
By Agatha Khishchenko, Andy Lehren, Dori Seeman, Robert Cribb, and Molly MacNaughton, Inside Climate News
Mark Kapczynski had been looking forward to it for weeks.
He had VIP tickets for him and his wife to attend an upscale seafood festival in Los Angeles last December, where they would feast on the food he grew up eating as a kid in Boston.
Surrounded by shellfish presented raw on ice by some of the city’s best chefs, Kapczynski said he chose to sample a few “Fanny Bay” oysters harvested from the southern British Columbia coastline.
“After three or four hours, I wished I was dead, it hurt so much,” said Kapczynski, who was hit with severe abdominal pain, vomiting every 30 minutes for five hours. “It was the most painful thing I’ve ever felt.”
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Commuters watch a departures board at Penn Station in New York on June 18, 2024.Photographer: Yuki Iwamura/Bloomberg
The highly anticipated renovation of New York City’s Pennsylvania Station will kick off construction by the end of 2027, the Trump administration announced on Wednesday.
The $7 billion project calls for replacing the current transit hub with a 250,000 square-foot single-level facility, new amenities and retail stores, as well as mixed-income housing. Penn Station was once an architectural marvel, built in an Beaux-Arts style with soaring soaring steel and glass providing travelers with light and space on their journeys.
The old structure was torn down in the 1960s and replaced with an underground hub to make room for Madison Square Garden, the iconic Manhattan sports and concert venue. Now, one the nation’s busiest rail station is dark and cramped, often frustrating commuters who ride New Jersey Transit and the Long Island Rail Road.
“Crumbling infrastructure, bleak and dirty architecture, unnavigable hallways and no inviting spaces for families with kids – the current state of Penn Station is unacceptable,” US Department of Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said in a statement.
Penn Station is one of the major gateways to Manhattan, logging more than 1,000 daily trains across 21 tracks, according to figures released by Amtrak. More than 200,000 commuter and Amtrak passenger trips go through the hub each day.
The announcement comes after the Trump administration moved to make Amtrak — the owner of Penn Station — the lead of the project, effectively ousting the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. The federal government said the transit agency, which operates the New York City subway system, “proved it was incapable of delivering major infrastructure on time or on budget.”
Amtrak will receive a nearly $43 million federal grant to help fund the project development and the solicitation of a master developer, as well as permitting and preliminary engineering work.
Andy Byford, the lead for the project and a former New York City Transit President — nicknamed “Train Daddy” — will start the process to solicit a developer on Aug. 28, according to the statement. He was appointed as a special adviser to Amtrak’s board of directors for the redevelopment earlier this year. The process will start by the end of October and a selection will be made by the end of May 2026, the statement detailed.
Once shovels are in the ground, commuters can expect to experience some delays and changes to their routes, according to Byford. “We’ll strategize on how to do it with minimum disruption,” he said.
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A packed 18 bus pulls up near Girls High at Broad and Olney Streets on Aug. 25, 2025 in Philadelphia. A new lawsuit claims that SEPTA’s deep service cuts harm communities of color and low-income riders. Photo credit: Monica Herndon / Staff Photographer
Consumer advocates and two SEPTA riders sued the transit agency on Wednesday seeking to stop service reductions, arguing that the cuts unlawfully place a greater burden on people of color and low-income communities.
Philadelphia lawyer George Bochetto filed the complaint in Common Pleas Court on behalf of consumer advocate Lance Haver and two Black SEPTA users in Philadelphia who say they have been harmed.
The transit agency projects a $213 million deficit in its operations budget this fiscal year, which began July 1, and says the shortfall will continue each year without a stable source of state funding.
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The Trump administration is halting wind projects that had been approved, financed, and underway — while providing little to no justification.
Components for the ongoing construction of the Revolution Wind offshore wind farm in New London, Conn., in November. Credit…Cj Gunther/EPA, via Shutterstock
When the Trump administration ordered that construction stop last week at Revolution Wind, a giant wind farm off the coast of Rhode Island that was nearly finished, it alluded vaguely to national security concerns but did not offer any further explanation.
It’s becoming a striking pattern.
The order was the third time the Trump administration had revoked permits or halted work on wind farms that had already received federal approval while offering little legal justification for doing so, following actions against wind projects in New York and Idaho. Legal experts say that there is little basis for blocking projects that have already received permits.
The Trump administration has signaled in a court filing that it next plans to rescind federal approvals for yet another wind farm, the Maryland Offshore Wind Project, which had not yet begun construction but would consist of up to 114 wind turbines off the coast of Ocean City, Md. The filing was first reported by WBOC.
These extraordinary moves are creating a crisis for the wind industry, experts said, putting thousands of jobs and billions of dollars of investments at risk. Even if developers are able to challenge the legality of the administration’s actions in court and ultimately win, the delays can drive up costs and inject enough uncertainty to potentially kill wind projects.
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The filing means the case will now head to the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Habba has not gone quietly, though. She appeared on Fox News over the weekend to talk about the process used by the U.S. Senate to approve judicial nominations.
A tradition known as “blue slips” makes it possible for senators to block judicial and U.S. attorney nominees in their home states from advancing.
She took aim at the two New Jersey senators, Cory Booker and Andy Kim, both of whom have criticized Habba’s nomination.
“Senator Booker and Senator Kim had absolutely every right to vote no for me for the U.S. attorney position, but I had the right as the nominee to get in front of the Senate and to be voted on, to be vetted. I never even got there. Of course not. I was, according to them, unqualified,” Habba said. “Look at Rep. Hakeem Jeffries’ tweet. Because I arrested a congresswoman for a charge of assaulting a police officer. And you know what? I stand by my work as the U.S. attorney, and I won’t be intimidated by this type of political rhetoric.”
The arrest Habba cited is that of Rep. LaMonica McIver in relation to the incident at Delaney Hall in Newark in May. McIver, along with Reps. Bonnie Watson Coleman and Rob Menendez visited to inspect the Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainments happening at the site.
Trump picks a losing fight with the longest-serving GOP senator
Chuck Grassley was first elected to Congress in 1974 and won his Senate seat in 1980. Over half a century on Capitol Hill, the Iowa Republican has been in the minority party about a year longer than in the majority. Grassley’s experience in and out of power underscores why he is leading the Senate GOP’s resistance to escalating pressure from President Donald Trump to abandon an important tradition called the blue slip.
The senatorial courtesy gives deference to home-state senators on a president’s picks for U.S. attorney and district courts. If both senators from a state oppose a nominee, they refuse to return a colored form — literally a blue slip — and that person does not get a vote. For more than a century, this has been central to how the Senate performs its constitutional duty to advise and consent on nominees. It has incentivized presidents in both parties to solicit input from the opposition and elevated mainstream picks over extremists.
Professor Jacob Elberg, of Seton Hall Law School and a former assistant attorney in New Jersey’s U.S. Attorney’s office, spoke with NJ Spotlight News about the ruling and its potential impact on federal prosecutions in New Jersey.
Who is Alina Habba? (Source: Wikipoedia)
Alina Saad Habba (Arabic: ألينا حبة, born March 25, 1984) is an American lawyer and political advisor who has served as the acting United States Attorney for the District of New Jersey since March 2025; her continued tenure since July 2025 is disputed, and was voided by a judge, though he stayed his order.[2] Habba previously served as a counselor to the president. From 2021 to 2025, she was a legal spokesperson for President Donald Trump and a senior advisor for MAGA, Inc., Trump’s super PAC.[3][4]
Between 2005 and 2007, Habba worked in the fashion industry in accessories production and marketing with executives at Marc Jacobs. According to her, though she enjoyed the fashion industry, she decided to attend law school for financial reasons.[8] She obtained a Juris Doctor from the Widener University Commonwealth Law School in 2010.[10][11]
Law career
After completing law school, Habba served as a law clerk to Eugene J. Codey Jr., then-Presiding Judge of the Civil Superior Court in Essex County, New Jersey, from 2010 to 2011.[12][13] Habba began private practice in September 2011, when she joined as an associate at Tompkins, McGuire, Wachenfeld & Barry, LLP, where she worked from September 2011 to February 2013. From February 2013 to March 2020, she was an equity partner and the Managing Partner of Sandelands Eyet LLP, a seven-attorney firm formed by her then-husband in 2013.[14][15][16] In March 2020, Habba left to start her own firm. The firm, Habba, Madaio, and Associates LLP, employs five people.[8] Along with the firm’s Bedminster, New Jersey office, Habba has an office in Manhattan.[17][18]
Habba is licensed to practice law in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut.[12][19] She has served as lead counsel for three cases, including a federal class action suit against a New Jersey nursing home accused of various negligent acts and consumer fraud violations.[17] Habba has also held the position of general counsel for her second husband’s parking garage company.[17] She has represented clients in various legal cases, including a man suing a nursing home in New Jersey,[20] and a student seeking a refund for college tuition after the University of Bridgeport moved classes to an online format.[21][22]
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