EnviroPolitics Blog

Trump Vetoes Defense Policy Bill; Covid Aid in Limbo

Two key pieces of legislation are thrown into turmoil as the president objects

Senate Republicans have angered President Trump by acknowledging Democrat Joe Biden as the president-elect.

By Kristina Peterson, Andrew Restuccia and Natalie Andrews,
Wall Street Journal

WASHINGTON—President Trump vetoed a $740.5 billion defense-policy bill and demanded last-minute changes to coronavirus relief legislation, adding fresh uncertainty to the closing days of 2020 as a government shutdown loomed.

In a Wednesday afternoon statement on the defense measure released by the White House, Mr. Trump objected to some of the provisions related to Confederate base names and troop levels abroad, as well as the legislation’s lack of language revoking internet platforms’ broad immunity for the content they publish from users on their sites.

The president had called on lawmakers to terminate Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Mr. Trump has targeted that section of the law, arguing that social-media giants like Facebook and Twitter use it to suppress conservative voices on their sites.

The annual defense bill sets pay rates for troops and authorizes funds for military construction projects, aircraft, ships, nuclear weapons and other national-security programs. It also includes items related to anti-money-laundering efforts, cybersecurity, and the U.S. border wall. Congress has passed it for 59 years in a row, nearly always on a bipartisan basis. This year, the House approved final passage 335-78 and the Senate passed it 84-13.

To make the bill law over the president’s objections requires a two-thirds vote in each chamber. The House is scheduled to hold its override vote on Monday, Dec. 28, with the Senate to follow Tuesday.

Meanwhile, Washington is grappling with a second crisis related to a massive coronavirus relief package that also funds the government. Mr. Trump, in a video posted Tuesday night on Twitter, criticized the legislation and called on lawmakers to increase direct payments to Americans to $2,000 for individuals and $4,000 for couples, from $600 per adult and per child, the current level in the bill.

His unexpected broadside against the bill unleashed another standoff between the White House and Capitol Hill, where Senate Republicans have angered Mr. Trump by acknowledging Democrat Joe Biden as the president-elect.

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EPA Finalizes Ozone NAAQS, Retaining Current Standards

News release from the USEPA

WASHINGTON (December 23, 2020) — Today, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is announcing its decision to retain, without changes, the 2015 ozone National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) set by the Obama-Biden Administration. With this action, EPA is following the principles established in the earliest days of the Trump Administration to streamline the NAAQS review process and to fulfill the statutory responsibility to complete the NAAQS review within five-years. Today’s action marks the second time in Clean Air Act history that the agency has completed an ozone NAAQS review within the congressionally mandated five-year timeframe. This is a needed departure from previous administrations’ failure to meet statutory deadlines, often taking years longer under court-imposed deadlines to complete reviews.

“For only the second time in agency’s history, EPA is fulfilling its statutory obligation to complete NAAQS review for ozone within a five-year time frame,” said EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler. “Our actions today show the Trump Administration is fulfilling its promise of protecting human health and environment for all Americans, regardless of where they live.”

The decision to retain the existing ozone standards comes after careful review and consideration of the most recent available scientific evidence and technical information, consultation with the agency’s independent science advisors, and consideration of more than 50,000 public comments on the proposal.

Since the beginning of the Trump Administration, EPA has re-designated to attainment eight nonattainment areas for the 2008 8-hour ozone standards. In this same timeframe, U.S. nitrogen oxide emissions have dropped ten percent and volatile organic compound emissions have dropped three percent. Similarly, national average ozone concentrations have gone down four percent. Since 1990, national average ozone concentrations have dropped 25 percent.

“With air continuing to get cleaner as states implement existing standards, this measure strikes the right balance between protecting public health while supporting recovering communities… We commend EPA for [retaining] existing ozone standards. This proposal supports local communities now fighting to get back on their feet, while continuing to drive improved air quality under existing programs. It is backed by both EPA and its outside scientific advisors,” said U.S. Congressmen John Shimkus (IL-15), Greg Walden (OR-02), Cathy McMorris Rodgers (WA-05), Bob Latta (OH-05), Brett Gurthrie (KY-02), Pete Olson (TX-22), David McKinley (WV-01), Morgan Griffith (VA-09), Billy Long (MO-07), Larry Buschon (IN-08), Bill Flores (TX-17), Markwayne Mullin (OK-02), Buddy Carter (GA-01), Jeff Duncan (SC-03), Greg Gianforte (MT-At Large), Scott Perry (PA-10), Alex Mooney (WV-02), Glenn Grothman (WI-6), Randy Weber (TX-14), Carol Miller (WV-03), Troy Balderson (OH-12), Dan Newhouse (WA-04), Dan Crenshaw (TX-02), Tom Tiffany (WI-07), Steve Chabot (OH-01), Doug Lamborn (CO-05), Kelly Armstrong (ND-At Large), and Debbie Lesko (AZ-08).

In May 2018, EPA issued a “Back-to-Basics” memo to improve EPA’s process for reviewing the NAAQS. The memo laid out goals to get EPA back on track with Clean Air requirements, statutory deadlines, and the issuance of timely implementation rules, to ensure continued improvements in air quality across the country. Today’s action is the first NAAQS review to do so and charts a path to continue this statutory responsibility in the future.

Background

The Clean Air Act requires EPA to set NAAQS for “criteria pollutants.” Currently, ozone (and related photochemical oxidants) and five other major pollutants are listed as criteria pollutants. The law requires EPA to periodically review the relevant scientific information and the standards and revise them, if appropriate, to ensure that the standards provide the requisite protection for public health and welfare.

In the prior review of the ozone standards, which was completed in 2015, the Obama-Biden EPA increased the stringency of the levels of the ozone standards to 70 parts per billion (ppb), from the 2008 standard of 75 ppb.

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Grant funding updates from NYDEC’s Division of Water

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Blank Rome law firm signs new 16-year lease at One Logan Square in Philadelphia, but square footage is TBD

By Natalie Kostelni – Reporter, Philadelphia Business Journal

Blank Rome, one of Philadelphia’s largest law firms, has signed a new 16-year lease on space in the Center City building where it currently resides — One Logan Square.

What makes the deal unusual and unprecedented, at least in the Philadelphia market, is how much space the law firm will take hasn’t been determined. “I don’t know,” said Grant S. Palmer, CEO and managing partner at Blank Rome when asked how many square feet the firm will occupy under the new lease.

Palmer isn’t being cagy. Blank Rome currently occupies 196,000 square feet at One Logan and its new lease with Brandywine Realty Trust provides an option for it to contract its space when the new lease takes effect and continue to do so going forward. Most leases are typically negotiated to include options to expand a tenant’s space over time but not this one.

“We can give back space at the beginning of the lease. We know we are going to do that but we don’t have numbers,” Palmer said. “We already have more space than we need.”

There is an undisclosed range of space the firm has committed to but it’s a fraction of what it is currently occupying.

Grant Palmer is managing partner at Blank Rome. — Grant S. Palmer

This year has largely been defined by companies large and small delaying long-term decisions on office leases. The pandemic upended how businesses view and use office space, prompting them to wait and see how to approach their use in the future. Two other Philadelphia law firms, Dechert and Baker Hostettler, are still in the market looking for office space.

For Brandywine, One Logan’s landlord, the lease with Blank Rome helps to stabilize the office building. A representative from Brandywine couldn’t be reached for comment.

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On a Trump-loving island in the Chesapeake, a virus outbreak unites instead of divides

The virus was probably abetted by Tangier’s close ties of kinship and history. But those ties have also given the island its best chance at stopping covid-19′s spread, as residents do everything they can to save the lives of neighbors who are, in many cases, lifelong friends or blood relatives.

A Trump flag on Tangier Island. (Katherine Frey/The Washington Post)

By Peter Jamison, Washington Post

TANGIER, Va. — The news at the dock was bad.

As a handful of masked passengers stepped off the Courtney Thomas, one of the only boats still traveling to and from this remote island in the Chesapeake Bay, Susan Parks looked for the oxygen machine that was scheduled to arrive for her patients. The home-health aide could see it was not among the packages and mail being unloaded. The boat’s captain, Brett Thomas, had another reason to look somber as he stepped off his boat beneath a clear December sky.

“I don’t think Mr. Leon’s doing too well,” he said quietly.

A man walking by looked up.

“He’s had a rough go of it?”

“I think so.”

For eight months, the 450 residents of Tangier Island were spared a single case of coronavirus. Now Leon McMann, 89, a Tangier resident who had still been working on his boat the previous winter, was sick. So were many others.

McMann’s daughter and his son-in-law, Mayor James “Ooker” Eskridge. The physician assistant who runs the island’s sole health clinic. Her husband. School teachers, church elders. Thomas’s grandparents. The young and the old.

Over the centuries, Tangier, separated by 12 miles of water from the mainland, has preserved a unique and quirky heritage. Its residents — conservative, religious and intensely social —speak in a maritime brogue that confounds the ears of outsiders. They are simultaneously threatened by and skeptical of climate change, which scientists say could make the island uninhabitable within the next five decades. Most are fiercely devoted to President Trump, who called Tangier’s mayor to tell him not to worry about rising sea levels.

But they are also fiercely devoted to one another. And after the first infections appeared around Thanksgiving, the islanders reacted in a way that once again sets them apart — and that few would have predicted based on their politics.

Across the United States, the pandemic has divided people. Here it has united them. As Americans elsewhere argue over mask mandates, business closures and vaccines, Tangier has carried out a lockdown stricter than those in many large liberal cities. Face coverings are not only required in public spaces indoors; their use outdoors is widespread.

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Energy Department Awards $6 Million to Develop Training Programs for Professionals Working with New Energy Technologies

From EERE News

Today the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) awarded approximately $6 million to five organizations that will develop training programs for emergency responders, building managers and owners, and other officials interacting with solar energy and storage systems, alternative-fuel vehicles and their chargers, and energy-efficient building technologies.

Led by or working with professional associations, work done through these projects could educate hundreds of thousands of U.S. safety and building workers. These professionals are at the front lines as more solar systems are built, more vehicles run on batteries and nontraditional fuels, and more buildings become “smarter” and more energy-efficient. A well-trained workforce familiar with clean energy will improve safety, expedite permitting, reduce liability and insurance costs, and increase consumer confidence.

“As advanced energy technologies are built across America, firefighters, building managers, mechanics, and other workers have new job responsibilities,” said Daniel R Simmons, Assistant Secretary of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE). “These projects will help them work with new energy technologies safely and effectively.”

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