EnviroPolitics Blog

Jerry Falwell Jr. agrees to resign from Liberty University

By Susan Svrluga, Sarah Pulliam Bailey and Michelle Boorstein
Washington Post, August 24, 2020 at 5:05 p.m.

Jerry Falwell Jr. has agreed to resign as president of Liberty University on Monday, according to a school official. The move came after a series of personal scandals rocked the evangelical university he has led since 2007.

Opposition to his presidency had been growing but came to a dramatic head after two new reports about a young man Falwell and his wife befriended at a Florida pool, went into business with and who allegedly was sexually connected to the couple. One report painted Falwell as the victim of an obsessive affair; the other as an eager participant manipulating a naive young man.

Falwell had been placed on paid leave Aug. 7 after he posted a provocative picture of himself and his wife’s assistant on social media. Both had their zippers partially down and Falwell was holding a dark beverage he joked was nonalcoholic and “just a prop.” Drinking or being around alcohol as well as sexual promiscuity are banned for students under Liberty’s personal code of conduct. Liberty board members had said in a statement Friday that they were investigating.

Monday was the first day of classes for Liberty students this fall.

Liberty University was founded in 1971 to “train champions for Christ,” and many at the school revere the memory of his father, Jerry Falwell Sr., the prominent evangelist who was one of the school’s founders.

For many years, Falwell was best known for lifting the university his father helped found out of debt, shoring up its finances, improving its physical campus and leading a dramatic growth in enrollment.

Jerry Falwell Jr., president of conservative Liberty University, praised Donald Trump’s conservative credentials at the Republican National Convention in 2016. (The Washington Post)

He made national headlines when he endorsed President Trump in 2016, one of the first prominent evangelicals to do so.

He also garnered criticism for that: A former chairman of Liberty’s executive committee, Mark DeMoss, resigned over the endorsement, saying Trump’s campaign was a rejection of the values the university promotes.

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California Fires Live Updates: Lightning Storms Spare Fire Zone

Live Updates From The New York Times
Updated Aug. 24, 2020, 4:06 p.m. ET

The wildfires have now burned through more than a million acres, but there was some relief for firefighters overnight. “Mother Nature has helped us quite a bit,” one fire commander said.

The Oakland Zoo is among the institutions that have closed because of concerns about poor air quality in the Bay Area.

Here’s what you need to know:

Flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires leap above a road in Northern California on Sunday. (AP Photo/Noah Berger)

More than a million acres have burned, but fresh lightning strikes are few.

Clusters of devastating wildfires continued to rage in Northern California on Monday, though there was some relief for firefighters: A turn in the weather did not deliver a feared barrage of new lightning strikes overnight.

More than 14,000 firefighters have been scrambling to protect communities from two dozen major blazes, which have left at least seven people dead and dozens injured, and have forced more than 100,000 people from their homes.

Roughly 1.2 million acres have burned since Aug. 15, according to Cal Fire, the state’s firefighting agency. Almost 700,000 acres of that have been in the groups of fires known as the L.N.U. Lightning Complex and the S.C.U. Lightning Complex, which have become the second- and third-largest fires in state history.California Fires Map TrackerMaps showing the extents of the major fires in Northern California.

On Monday morning, the largest, the L.N.U. complex, which stretches across Napa and surrounding counties, was 22 percent contained. Shana Jones, the chief for Cal Fire’s Sonoma-Lake-Napa unit, said at a news conference Monday that firefighters were “making good progress” on the complex. But she added that given the size and complexity, “it’s going to take time to put this fire out.”

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New York AG wants to depose Eric Trump in investigation into Trump organization’s finances

The Trump Organization has stalled a state inquiry into the financing of four properties for months, Attorney General Letitia James said in court papers.

Eric Trump abruptly canceled an interview under oath with the New York attorney general’s office last month about the financing of several Trump projects.Credit…Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York Times

By William K. Rashbaum and Danny Hakim, The New York Times
Aug. 24, 2020 Updated 3:15 p.m. ET

The New York State attorney general’s office has stepped up its inquiry into whether President Trump and the Trump Organization committed fraud by overstating assets to get bank loans, asking a judge to order Eric Trump to answer questions under oath and the company to hand over documents, court papers show.

Mr. Trump, who is President Trump’s son and an executive vice president of the company, abruptly canceled an interview with the attorney general’s office last month, and last week the Trump Organization told the office that the company and its lawyers would not comply with seven subpoenas related to the investigation.

The filings were made last week in State Supreme Court in Manhattan by the attorney general, Letitia James, and became public on Monday. They come as President Trump faces legal actions on other fronts. The Manhattan district attorney’s office has suggested in court filings that it is investigating possible bank and insurance fraud by the president and the Trump Organization.

The attorney general’s office started the civil inquiry in March 2019 after President Trump’s former personal lawyer, Michael D. Cohen, told Congress that the president had inflated his assets in financial statements to banks when he was seeking loans and had understated them to reduce his real estate taxes.

The office initially subpoenaed records from two of the Trump Organization’s lenders, Deutsche Bank and Investors Bank, seeking loan records for four of the company’s big projects and a failed effort to buy the Buffalo Bills of the N.F.L. in 2014.

The Trump Organization at first provided some information and sought to forestall the attorney general from seeking a similar court order eight months ago, after the company failed to turn over information on a particular property.

But more recently, the attorney general’s office said, the Trump Organization had stalled and stonewalled, according to the filings, some of which were sealed.

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By Sonia Moghe and Kara Scannell, CNN
Updated 1 hour ago Aug 24, 2020

(CNN) – The New York state attorney general is asking for a court to compel Eric Trump to be deposed in an investigation of the Trump Organization.

In court filings Monday, Letitia James’ office said Eric Trump initially agreed to sit for a deposition on July 22, only to refuse, “balking less than two days before he was scheduled by agreement to give testimony.”
James’ office outlined the scope of the investigation into whether the Trump Organization “improperly inflated the value of Mr. Trump’s assets on financial statements in order to secure loans and obtain economic and tax benefits.”

The attorney general’s office has been investigating President Donald Trump and the Trump Organization since 2019, when Trump’s former attorney Michael Cohen testified before Congress that Trump’s annual financial statements inflated the values of his assets in order to secure favorable loans and insurance coverage, but deflated the value of other assets in order to reduce real estate taxes.

In the filing, James’ office states Eric Trump’s attorney sent a letter to the attorney general saying he would invoke “those rights afforded to every individual under the Constitution” as justification not to testify.
CNN has reached out to an attorney for Eric Trump for comment.

Alan Garten, chief legal officer for the Trump Organization, downplayed the development.
“There has been no lawsuit filed by the NY Attorney General,” Garten said. “This is simply a discovery dispute over documents and the like. As the motion papers clearly state, the NY AG has made no determination that anything was improper or that any action is forthcoming. We will respond to this motion as appropriate.”

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Department of Energy selects labs for battery innovation partnership

Seeking scientific breakthroughs to strengthen U.S. battery manufacturing

Department of Energy News Release

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced the selection of 13 projects through a Battery Manufacturing Lab Call with combined funding of almost $15 million over three years. The call sought proposals from National Laboratories to establish public-private partnerships that address engineering challenges for advanced battery materials and devices, with a focus on de-risking, scaling, and accelerating adoption of new technologies.

“Manufacturing competitiveness is a priority for the Trump Administration,” said Daniel R Simmons, Assistant Secretary for DOE’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE). “DOE’s investments under this opportunity will help accelerate the scientific breakthroughs needed to strengthen U.S. economic leadership in battery manufacturing.”

DOE selected the following projects:

LEAD ORGANIZATION	INDUSTRY PARTNER (LOCATION)	TITLE
Argonne National Laboratory	Albemarle/Ameridia (North Carolina)	Advanced Brine Processing to Enable U.S. Lithium Independence
Argonne National Laboratory	Hunt Energy Enterprises (Texas)	Hydrothermal Production of Single Crystal Ni-rich Cathodes with Extreme Rate Capability
Argonne National Laboratory	Koura Global (Massachusetts)	Continuous Flow Reactor Synthesis of Advanced Electrolyte Components for Lithium-Ion Batteries
Argonne National Laboratory	PolyPlus (California)	Continuous high yield production of defect-free, ultrathin sulfide glass electrolytes for next generation solid state lithium metal batteries
Argonne National Laboratory	SafeLi LLC (Wisconsin)	Scale-up Production of Graphene Monoxide for Next-Generation LIB Anodes
Argonne National Laboratory	Saint-Gobain Ceramics & Plastics (Pennsylvania)	Scaling halide-type solid electrolytes for solid state batteries
Brookhaven National Laboratory	C4V & Primet (New York)	Commercially Viable Process for Surface Conditioning of High-Nickel Low-Cobalt Cathodes
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory	Saint-Gobain Research North America (Pennsylvania)	Scale-Up of Novel Li-Conducting Halide Solid State Battery Electrolyte
National Renewable Energy Laboratory	Clarios, Amplitude, Feasible (New York)	High-Throughput Laser Processing and Acoustic Diagnostics for Enhanced Battery Performance and Manufacturing
Oak Ridge National Laboratory	PPG (Pennsylvania)	High-Energy and High-Power NMP-Free Designer Electrodes with Ultra-Thick Architectures Processed by Multilayer Slot-Die Coating and Electrophoretic Deposition
Oak Ridge National Laboratory	Soteria (South Carolina)	Multilayer Electrode with Metalized Polymer Current Collector for High-Energy Lithium-Ion Batteries with Extreme-Fast-Charging Capability
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory	Albemarle (North Carolina)	Scaling up of High-Performance Single Crystalline Ni-rich Cathode Materials with Advanced Lithium Salts
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory	Ampcera Inc. (California)	Scaling-Up and Roll-to-Roll Processing of Highly Conductive Sulfide Solid-State Electrolytes

The program will be jointly-funded by EERE’s Advanced Manufacturing Office and Vehicle Technologies Office with matching funds from the private sector and investor community. Funds will be awarded directly to the National Laboratories to support work with companies under Cooperative Research and Development Agreements (CRADAs). A 50/50 cost-share will be required between DOE and the private partner, which can include an in-kind contribution.

This funding opportunity is part of the Energy Storage Grand Challenge, a DOE-wide effort to create and sustain global leadership in energy storage utilization and exports, with a secure domestic manufacturing supply chain that does not depend on foreign sources of critical materials. Visit the Energy Storage Grand Challenge website to learn more.

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Nine-state coalition says EPA is delaying landfill emissions rule, asks court to intervene

New Jersey and Pennsylvania among the petitioners

By E.A. Crunden @eacrunden Waste Dive

A coalition of nine states and the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) filed a brief earlier this month over the U.S. EPA’s “delay rule,” which has stalledlandfill methane regulations. The Aug. 12 brief was filed with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, with attorneys general from California, Illinois, Maryland, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Pennsylvania among the petitioners.

EDF confirmed the brief is separate from litigation started in May 2018 over delaying federal implementation of the 2016 Emissions Guidelines (EG) rule, also involving the environmental group and all of the same states apart from New Jersey. The target of the new action is more concerned with shifting deadlines — EPA published its final EG rule in August 2019, giving itself two years to promulgate a federal plan for states that do not submit their own plans under the EG requirements.

The new brief targets the agency’s timing and states “EPA has deployed a series of tactics to delay implementing the standards, without ever providing a valid reason for doing so.” The petitioners are asking the court to vacate the delay and require the agency to immediately implement the rule, saying any further stalling will have adverse environmental and public health effects.

Sources familiar with the two cases over the EG rule said both challenge the ways in which EPA has not implemented regulatory protections immediately, albeit in different ways. The first case targeted the agency’s initial lack of activity on the EG rule, while the second concerns the affirmative changing of its deadline.

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