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Today, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) finalized federal standards to strengthen the nation’s emissions standards for heavy-duty vehicles.

The federal truck standards will cover model years 2027-2032 and reduce the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions that trucks and buses emit, cleaning up pollution from large vehicles on the roads like transit buses, school buses, delivery trucks, and garbage trucks.

In addition to contributing to the climate crisis, these vehicles are a major threat to public health for millions of Americans and especially dangerous for marginalized communities across the nation that often live next to major freight corridors due to the history of red-lining. Hundreds of thousands of Americans are harmed by diesel pollution every year. Although trucks make up less than 10 percent of vehicles on the road, they emit the majority of hazardous air pollutants from vehicles, including 63 percent of smog-forming NOx pollution.

Research shows that pollution-free, electric heavy-duty trucks are cheaper to own and operate over the lifetime of the vehicle compared to a polluting version, saving fleets money. There are already about 150 existing medium- and heavy-duty zero-emission truck models that are commercially available in the U.S. today.

In response to the final rule, Sierra Club Executive Director Ben Jealous released the following statement:

“Today’s EPA announcement highlights the significant health, economic, and climate benefits that cleaner trucks deliver. From California to New York, communities across the country are suffering under the constant traffic of dirty freight.

“Despite the truck and oil industries’ relentless lobbying to weaken and delay these life-saving standards, the Biden Administration’s new emissions standards for heavy-duty trucks and buses are an important step to address this harmful pollution. In combination with the recently announced federal charging investments in trucking and the clean transportation investments in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act, these standards will help to move the needle on electrifying our biggest, dirtiest vehicles.

“We’re pleased to see the Biden Administration’s continued progress to address public health and climate, but even more is needed to address heavy-duty vehicle pollution. The Sierra Club will continue its advocacy pushing truck manufacturers to quickly ramp up the pace towards zero-emission trucks and we urge the Administration to keep the momentum up and grant California’s waivers quickly.”

The Department of the Interior and Department of Commerce today finalized their proposed revisions to three sets of regulations that implement the Endangered Species Act’s listing and consultation procedures.

Of the 31 harmful changes made in 2019 to the Act’s regulations, only seven are fully addressed and corrected in today’s final rules. Those include restoring the precautionary “blanket-rule” for threatened species. Today’s finalized rules restored the long-standing prohibition on consideration of economic impacts when deciding whether to list species as threatened or endangered. The rules also remove barriers to designating as critical habitat unoccupied areas that are vital to the recovery of the nation’s wildlife and plants.

The new final rules fail to undo changes made in 2019 to the consultation process that ignore cumulative impacts to listed species and in general make it far easier for industries to receive approval for projects that destroy the habitat of countless species nationwide.

“This was a massive missed opportunity to address the worsening extinction crisis,” said Stephanie Kurose, a senior policy specialist at the Center for Biological Diversity. “We needed bold solutions to guide conservation as the climate crisis drives more and more animals and plants to extinction. Instead we’re mostly still stuck with the disastrous anti-wildlife changes made by the previous administration.”

The final rules retain a number of harmful provisions governing the responsibility of federal agencies to avoid jeopardizing protected species or harming their critical habitat.

In particular, one rule requires federal actions to affect species’ critical habitat “as a whole” before real habitat protections are put in place. This is particularly harmful for wide-ranging animals like the northern spotted owl, polar bear or gulf sturgeon that have large critical habitat designations but are still at risk of extinction.

The rules also let federal agencies off the hook for past harms to endangered species from things like dam or highway construction by deeming these projects part of the “environmental baseline.”

In 2022 the Center filed a legal petition urging the wildlife agencies to enact ambitious new regulatory safeguards that strengthen all aspects of the law. The Biden administration has yet to respond to the petition.

The Biden administration today released final Endangered Species Act regulations that restore several core components of the bedrock conservation law that the previous administration sought to undercut. Defenders of Wildlife, which pursued legal challenges to the 2019 regulations, expressed both appreciation and concern with the newly released regulations.

“While the regulations restore some essential wildlife protections, we were hopeful for far more than the marginal win the Biden administration delivered today. Our nation’s threatened and endangered species are under constant attack and the Endangered Species Act is the only thing standing between them and extinction,” said Jamie Rappaport Clark, president and CEO of Defenders of Wildlife. “We appreciate the administration’s work on this matter, but at the end of the day much work remains to be done to ensure the Endangered Species Act can fulfill its critical lifesaving mission.”

Among the positive changes in the final regulations are the reinstatement of automatic ESA protections for threatened species managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service known as the “blanket 4(d) rule” and the removal of regulations that injected economic considerations when determining whether a species should be listed under the ESA. The ESA requires listing decisions be made using the best available science and specifically prohibits consideration of related economic costs.

Of concern in the regulations, among other things, is retained 2019 language that allows the piecemeal destruction of critical habitat for threatened and endangered species; invites federal agencies to rely on speculative and unverified mitigation measures when analyzing agency actions that could jeopardize listed species or destroy or adversely modify critical habitat; and, invites federal agencies to ignore existing degraded conditions that have caused serious harm to listed species or critical habitat when considering the modification or relicensing of activities and existing facilities.

Today, the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) released new data showing that domestic nonfinancial corporate profits increased $136.5 billion in Q4, compared with an increase of $90.8 billion in Q3. Groundwork’s Executive Director Lindsay Owens reacted with the following statement:

“Even as supply chains have normalized and input costs have fallen, corporations are still padding their profits on the backs of families. Falling inflation has been a welcome sight, but it has more room to fall if corporations stop their excessive profiteering.”

Email press@groundworkcollaborative.org to speak with one of Groundwork’s experts about the role of corporate profits in rising prices.

Well that was blessedly quick. Less than a week after NBC said it would pay fascist bootlicker and election liar Ronna McDaniel to bootlick and lie on air - and a day after its employees loudly protested the move - NBC, citing their "legitimate concerns," said oops never mind and dropped McDaniel. Along with her colleagues, Rachel Maddow had cogently argued against giving a platform to a low-life hack who is "part of an ongoing project to get rid of our system of government."

The righteous revolt by journalists at NBC and MSNBC was swift after the network announced McDaniel's $300,000 hire Friday, two weeks after she was forced out as RNC chair to make room for Trump's even more servile daughter-in-law Lara Trump. At the time, NBC said it wanted to include news contributors representing a "diverse set of viewpoints and experiences," a dumpster-fire of an explanation blasted by enraged reporters who noted that McDaniel aiding and abetting a propaganda campaign intended to overthrow or at least undermine electoral democracy - including telling GOP canvassers in Michigan to not certify 2020 election results - is so far above and beyond a "diverse viewpoint" that Trump and multiple co-conspirators have been criminally indicted for it.

Reporters railed through Monday against McDaniel poisoning what Nicolle Wallace called "our sacred airwaves," from Morning Joe's Mika Brzezinski decrying someone "who used her position of power to be an anti-democracy election denier" to late-night Lawrence O’Donnell advising his network, "Don’t hire anyone close to the crimes." Jen Psaki, who also went from politics to reporting, bluntly rejected right-wing comparisons. "That kind of experience (only) has value if it's paired with honesty and good faith," she said, especially in this fraught moment. "Our democracy is in danger because of the lies that people like Ronna McDaniel have pushed on this country...This isn’t about Republicans versus Democrats. This isn't about red versus blue. This is about truth versus lies."

Maddow joins colleagues in objecting to McDaniel for legitimizing Trump, attacking democracy www.youtube.com

Rachel Maddow devoted most of her time on air to an impassioned defense of and expression of solidarity with her colleagues' "loud and principled objections" to enabling the willing accomplice of an aspiring strongman. En route, she carefully decimated our “long history of forgettable men" intent on convincing the country we need a "new system of government." “We have had a lot of these guys, but our generation’s version of this guy has gotten a lot farther than all the rest of them," she said. "And why is that? (Trump) would have been as forgotten as the rest of them had he not been able to attach himself to an institution like the Republican Party, and had the leader of that party (decide) she would not just abide him, she would help. She would help with the worst of it."

Which was, in essence, "priming your people" not to accept the next election results. "In the news business, yes, we are covering an election," she said. "We’re also covering bad actors trying to use the rights and privileges of a democracy to end democracy. The chief threat among them now is not the rioters and kooks, but the slick political professionals who are turning their considerable talents to laundering violently revolutionary claims (that) America’s election results aren’t real, and they shouldn’t be respected.” The company's hire of McDaniel to report on election news, she suggested, was akin to hiring a mobster at a D.A.'s office or a pickpocket as a TSA airport screener. She ended with a civil, simple plea to the network: "I hope they will reverse their decision."

And so they did. Tuesday evening, Puck News reported NBC had dropped McDaniel as a contributor in her second, well-deserved job humiliation in two weeks. In NBC's account, they said NBCUniversal chairman Cesar Conde sent staff an email reversing the hire and apologizing to those "who felt we let them down." McDaniel is reportedly, unsurprisingly "exploring her legal options." Still, argues historian Timothy Snyder, a fat check will be a small price to pay for election integrity. In what is "not a normal political situation, where you can give a little and get a little," he says, appeasement is a lousy option: "If you practise giving things away, if you say, 'Ok, we're gonna practice appeasing a dictator so when the dictator comes we'll be better at it' - is that what you should be doing?"

Forty-five community, environmental, and animal welfare organizations—together representing tens of millions of people across the United States—filed public comments yesterday with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, pressing for strong protections against water pollution from slaughterhouses and animal rendering facilities. The EPA published a proposal to strengthen existing protections in January 2024, following lawsuits from several of the commenting organizations. Yesterday’s comments emphasized that the EPA must improve its proposal to address environmental injustice and reduce harm to people and the environment.

Food & Water Watch Attorney Dani Replogle said: “EPA’s preference for weak slaughterhouse regulations privileges the health of a polluting industry over that of frontline communities and our nation’s waters. To adopt anything less than the most stringent clean water protections in the agency’s final rule would be a missed opportunity and a big mistake.”

“For decades, slaughterhouses and meat processing plants have benefited from lax water pollution standards, and we are pleased that the EPA is finally taking action to strengthen these standards for some of the largest plants,” said Sarah Kula, Attorney for the Environmental Integrity Project. “But EPA’s proposal falls far short of what the Clean Water Act requires and exempts thousands of polluting plants that put downstream communities and our waterways in harm’s way. EPA must require that these plants install modern water pollution controls and clean up their act.”

Nearly 10 billion animals are killed each year in slaughterhouses across the United States—that is, over 18,825 animals every minute. Slaughterhouse byproducts such as fat, bone, and feathers frequently are sent to rendering facilities for conversion into tallow, animal meal, and other products. Both slaughterhouses and rendering facilities require a near-constant flow of water, and every year, these facilities discharge hundreds of millions of pounds of water pollution into rivers and streams. According to EPA, slaughterhouses and rendering facilities, which together comprise the Meat and Poultry Products (“MPP”) industrial point source category, are the largest industrial source of phosphorus pollution and the second largest industrial source of nitrogen pollution.

“EPA knows that pollution from slaughterhouses and rendering facilities disproportionately harms under-resourced communities, low-income communities, and communities of color,” said Earthjustice attorney Alexis Andiman. “Yet EPA’s proposal expressly ignores environmental justice and, instead, champions weak standards that, it claims, are necessary to thwart disruptions to the nation’s meat supply—despite clear evidence that stronger regulations will have virtually no impact on meat producers or consumers. The Agency’s priorities are backwards. We need the EPA to protect people and the environment, not corporations.”

Pollution from MPP facilities has devastating consequences for human health and the environment, and it disproportionately harms people living in vulnerable and under-resourced communities. Nonetheless, EPA has failed to revise its regulations governing water pollution from the MPP industry for at least 20 years. Some MPP facilities are still subject to outdated and under-protective standards promulgated in the mid-1970s. EPA’s existing regulations fail to impose any restrictions on discharges of phosphorus, and the Agency has never published national standards applicable to the vast majority of MPP facilities, which discharge wastewater indirectly through publicly owned treatment works (“POTWs”), even though EPA has known for decades that—without adequate pretreatment—pollutants in MPP wastewater pass through many POTWs into our nation’s rivers and streams.

The EPA’s proposal set out three options to strengthen existing standards. The comments made clear that the EPA’s preferred option, which offers the weakest protections for people and the environment, is inconsistent with federal law—not least because it is motivated by a desire to avoid disruptions to the country’s meat supply, even though claims of past disruptions have been resoundingly debunked. Instead, the commenting organizations pressed the EPA to select and strengthen the most protective of the regulatory options presented, which would prevent over 320 million pounds of pollution, reduce nitrogen and phosphorus pollution by 85%, and help to protect over 22 million people.

“We call on the EPA to rise above Big Ag’s push to weaken this plan to reduce harms from the millions of gallons of pollution slaughterhouses and animal rendering plants are spewing into our waterways,” said Hannah Connor, deputy director of environmental health at the Center for Biological Diversity. “This proposal would put very reasonable updates in place that will give critically imperiled fish and mussels the protections they need to survive.”

The U.S. military should clarify that it will not develop or deploy lethal weapons powered by artificial intelligence (AI), 14 groups said in a letter sent today to U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks. The letter was co-signed by Public Citizen, the Future of Life Institute, Demand Progress, and Win Without War, among others.

The groups’ letter focuses on the Pentagon’s Replicator program, which proposes to rely heavily on drones to combat Chinese missile strength in a theoretical conflict over Taiwan or at China’s eastern coast. The just-passed appropriations bill includes $200 million in funding for Replicator, with an additional $300 million expected to be devoted to the program.

According to the groups, the Pentagon has not been sufficiently clear about whether the program involves the development and deployment of autonomous weapons. “This is no place for strategic ambiguity. Autonomous weapons are inherently dehumanizing and unethical, no matter whether a human is ‘ultimately’ responsible for the use of force or not,” the letter reads.

“The United States should state plainly that it will not create or deploy killer robots and should work to advance global treaty negotiations to ban such weapons,” said Robert Weissman, president of Public Citizen. “At minimum, the United States should commit that the Replicator Initiative will not involve the use of autonomous weapons. Ambiguity about the Replicator program essentially ensures a catastrophic arms race over autonomous weapons. That’s a race in which all of humanity is the loser.”

Amnesty International welcomes the new report by the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, which concludes there are “reasonable grounds to believe the threshold indicating Israel’s commission of genocide is met”. As the UN Human Rights Council holds a meeting today to discuss the report’s findings, Amnesty International’s Secretary General Agnès Callamard said:

“This is a crucial body of work that must serve as a vital call to action to states. They must uphold their obligations under the Genocide Convention and take concrete measures to protect Palestinians in Gaza today.

“The time to act to prevent genocide is now. Third states must apply political pressure on the warring parties to implement the UN Security Council resolution adopted yesterday demanding an immediate ceasefire, use their influence to insist that Israel abides by the resolution, including by stopping the shelling and lifting restrictions on humanitarian aid. They must impose a comprehensive arms embargo against all parties to the conflict. They must also pressure Hamas and other armed groups to free all civilian hostages.

“The report comes two months after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) issued its ruling warning of a plausible risk of genocide. In that time, the situation in Gaza has grown exponentially worse, with thousands more Palestinians killed and Israel continuing to refuse to comply with the ICJ ruling to ensure provision of sufficient humanitarian aid to Palestinians as human-made famine edges closer each day and more people starve to death.

The time to act to prevent genocide is now. Third states must apply political pressure on the warring parties to implement the UN Security Council resolution adopted yesterday… They must impose a comprehensive arms embargo against all parties to the conflict. They must also pressure Hamas and other armed groups to free all civilian hostages.
Amnesty International’s Secretary General Agnès Callamard

“We echo calls made in the UN Special Rapporteur’s report to ensure that UNRWA is fully funded, and also able to operate across all of Gaza – including in northern Gaza where Israeli authorities are denying entry to UNRWA trucks.

“Helping to prevent genocide also means supporting accountability efforts including the ongoing investigation by the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court and exercising universal jurisdiction to bring those suspected of crimes under international law to justice. All states and in particular allies of Israel must press Israel to allow the UN Commission of Inquiry and the Special Rapporteur and other independent human rights monitors access to Gaza.

“An enduring ceasefire remains the best way to enforce the ICJ’s provisional measures to prevent genocide and further crimes and civilian suffering. In recent days momentum has gathered around calls to halt the fighting, with the European Council demanding a ceasefire last week and a UN Security Council yesterday adopting a resolution demanding an immediate ceasefire for the remaining two weeks of Ramadan. States must now focus their efforts on making these calls a reality.”

A California federal court judge today dismissed Elon Musk-led X’s claims that the Center for Countering Digital Hate, Inc. (CCDH) violated X’s terms of service when it used automated data collection — known as scraping — to inform research criticizing X for allowing what CCDH deemed disinformation to remain on the platform.

The American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU Foundation of Northern California, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the case, arguing that private companies should not be allowed to wield breach of contract claims as a weapon to punish criticism, and to secure damages stemming solely from claimed reputational harm resulting from that criticism.

“The court’s ruling reaffirms that vital First Amendment protections apply to researchers and journalists who use digital tools like scraping to inform the public about the practices of powerful platforms,” said Esha Bhandari, deputy project director of the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project.

In this case, CCDH engaged in scraping to inform the public of instances when X failed to remove posts that CCDH deemed dis- and mis-information, despite evidence the content violated X’s content guidelines. X accused CCDH of obtaining its data illegally, and claimed that its reports drove advertisers away from the site. The ACLU and its legal partners argued in its brief, however, that scraping when done in the context of public interest research is part and parcel of the subsequent public interest speech it enables.

The court dismissed X’s suit, writing in its opinion that efforts to use an anti-scraping contract term to bypass the high standard for defamation claims was impermissible and noting that the lawsuit was about punishing CCDH for its speech criticizing X.

“This is an important decision that sees Elon Musk’s lawsuit for what it is—an effort to punish his critics for constitutionally protected speech and to deter researchers from studying his platform,” said Alex Abdo, litigation director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University. “Society needs reliable and ethical research into social media platforms, and often that research relies on being able to study publicly available posts. Musk’s lawsuit imperiled that kind of research by threatening it with ruinous liability, but thankfully, the court shut down his case.”

The speech of research organizations like CCDH. as well as academics and journalists — in many instances made possible only by scraping — has shed necessary light on a panoply of concerns that powerful social media platforms have failed to independently monitor and correct, and has provided crucial information for regulators to take enforcement action. Such public interest research serves as a key accountability mechanism to reveal the platforms’ content moderation choices and privacy policies and practices.

“The district court rightly saw through X’s chilling attempt to twist the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and contract law to retaliate against a nonprofit that published critical reports regarding hateful content on X,” said Cindy Cohn, executive director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “The First Amendment and California’s anti-SLAPP statute protect anyone who scrapes publicly available websites and publishes newsworthy information about the data.”

“This lawsuit was nothing more than a vain attempt to stymie independent research into an influential social media platform. The court’s decision today is a much-needed reminder that free speech includes the right to investigate and criticize Elon Musk and X,” said Jake Karr, deputy director of NYU’s Technology Law & Policy Clinic, which helped prepare the friend-of-the-court brief. “And it serves as a clear example for powerful corporations and individuals in the tech industry—it’s not so easy to abuse the U.S. legal system to silence criticism and evade public accountability.”

Friends of the Earth U.S. submitted a brief describing significant new science on health risks of genetically engineered corn, which the U.S. failed to consider as part of its trade dispute with Mexico. These comments were invited by the tribunal and submitted on March 13, and support Mexico’s extensive presentation of the science and rejection of the U.S.’ grossly inadequate safety assessments.

The brief was submitted to the dispute resolution tribunal set up under the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Free Trade Agreement (USMCA), charged with determining whether actions taken by Mexico to keep genetically engineered (GE or GMO) corn out of tortillas and other common corn-based foods violate provisions of the USMCA, as alleged by the U.S.

The comments highlight that U.S. approval of GE corn is largely based on industry assertions, not science. Assessments of reproductive, developmental, neurological, metabolic, microbiome, or GI tract-related health risks have not been addressed in a meaningful way through the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) process or via any other process in the public or private sector. U.S. regulatory approval of GMO corn has rested on assertions from technology developers that foods derived from GMO crops are “substantially equivalent” in composition to non-GE foods, which recent findings show are not founded on science.

“The U.S. government’s submission to the tribunal is seriously deficient. It lacks basic information about the toxins expressed in contemporary GMO corn varieties and their levels. The U.S. submission also ignores dozens of studies linking the insecticidal toxins and glyphosate residues found in GMO corn to adverse impacts on public health,” according to Dr. Kendra Klein, deputy director of science for Friends of the Earth and co-author of the FOE comments.

“The U.S. government has not presented an ‘appropriate’ risk assessment to the tribunal as called for in the USMCA dispute because such an assessment has never been done in the U.S. or anywhere in the world,” said coauthor Dr. Charles Benbrook.

The comments show that, since the commercial introduction of GMO corn varieties in the 1990s, there has been an approximate four-fold increase in the number of toxins and pesticides used on the average hectare of GMO corn. Subsequently, the levels of genetically engineered insecticidal toxins found in GMO corn grain are 50-100 parts per million (ppm), up from 2-6 ppm – the average when the limited existing GMO corn food safety studies were carried out up to 30 years ago. These levels exceed maximum food tolerances for widely used corn insecticides by 40- to 2,000-fold.

The consequences of simultaneous exposures to multiple genetically engineered toxins along with residues of glyphosate and other pesticides used in growing corn have not been evaluated — a massive scientific gap in the ability to accurately assess human health risks of GMO corn as it could be utilized in Mexico. What’s more, health risks would likely be amplified in Mexico, as corn is the caloric backbone of the food supply, accounting, on average, for 50% or more of the calories in the Mexican diet.

Importantly, the comments summarize scientific data showing human health risks associated with the multiple insecticidal toxins found in GMO corn. While much of the focus of the health harms of GMO corn rightfully center on glyphosate and other hazardous herbicides that the crops have been engineered to withstand, emerging evidence on these toxins is concerning. Data show the potential for risk of adverse impacts on the human microbiome and GI tract, risks of allergenicity stimulating an immune system response “as potent as that elicited by cholera toxin,” and presence of antibodies against Cry toxins in at least 8% of Americans, clear evidence that the toxin remains mostly intact after passing through the human GI tract.

Finally, the comments summarize scientific evidence linking glyphosate-based herbicides to increased risk of blood cancers, including non-Hodgkin lymphoma and leukemia, metabolic syndrome, kidney and liver disease, preterm birth, neurodevelopmental problems, and disruption of the bacterial microbiome in humans and other mammals.

FOE calls on the U.S. to provide science addressing these concerns in its USMCA response. The tribunal is expected to issue its ruling on the dispute in the fall.

A federal court ruled on Friday that the Bureau of Land Management’s decision to lease nearly 120,000 acres of Wyoming federal land for oil and gas development in June 2022 violated the law. The court found that BLM moved forward with the lease sale – one of the largest held by the Biden administration on public lands – despite the known risks to drinking water, wildlife, and the climate. BLM will now be required to reevaluate the environmental impacts of the sale.

“While BLM is making considerable strides to safeguard critical conservation values, this decision affirms that much work remains,” said Ben Tettlebaum, director and senior staff attorney with The Wilderness Society. “BLM must fully account for the serious impacts of its oil and gas program on groundwater, wildlife, and the climate. Importantly, the court’s ruling shows that the agency must factor into its leasing decisions the enormous costs that greenhouse gas emissions stemming from its oil and gas program impose on public land resources and on the communities that depend on them for clean air and water.”

Before the sale, BLM acknowledged that the greenhouse gas pollution from development of the leases could result in billions of dollars in social and environmental harm – the equivalent of adding hundreds of thousands of cars to the road each year. The agency chose to move forward with the sale anyway, stating that it was not factoring those costs into its decision. The court found that this decision was illegal. The ruling stated that BLM cannot “overlook[] what is widely regarded as the most pressing environmental threat facing the world today.”

“We are beyond pleased with this outcome,” said Hallie Templeton, legal director for Friends of the Earth. “This ruling underscores that federal agencies simply cannot ignore climate, wildlife, and water impacts when analyzing the myriad risks of oil and gas leasing, whether in Wyoming or across the country. We will keep fighting to ensure that officials heed this mandate to the fullest extent.”

There is a growing body of evidence that BLM frequently puts underground sources of drinking water at risk by failing to enforce its own regulations that require companies to properly construct oil and gas wells to protect those aquifers. In the ruling, the court recognized that BLM violated the law by ignoring evidence of the lack of effectiveness and enforcement of its own regulations.

Finally, the court held that the agency had not grappled with how drilling on the leases would harm wildlife such as the sage grouse and mule deer. The court noted that BLM is reworking its conservation plans for the sage grouse in order to “stop the bleeding” of this iconic species, yet refused to postpone leasing in the bird’s habitat until those updates were completed and instead proceeded with the lease sale. The agency must now properly consider the harm to these species.

“We are pleased that the court recognized the harm of moving forward with this lease sale to groundwater, wildlife, and the climate,” said Alexandra Schluntz, senior associate attorney with Earthjustice’s Rocky Mountain Office. “This should be another wake up call for the Bureau of Land Management to at long last address the damage caused from federal oil and gas development. It is time to make fossil fuel leasing on our public lands a thing of the past.”

Earthjustice represents The Wilderness Society and Friends of the Earth in this lawsuit, filed in June 2022.

U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) efforts to ramp up corporate crime enforcement remain insufficient, as the DOJ prosecuted only 113 corporate offenders in 2023, an uptick from the previous year’s 99 prosecutions, according to a new report from Public Citizen.

Federal corporate prosecutions have been trending downward since 2000, when the DOJ prosecuted triple the number of corporations that it does today (304). The number of corporate prosecutions has remained far below the agency’s 25-year average (172) since the end of the Obama administration.

The report shows that large corporations that break the law continue to receive more lenient treatment – and that small businesses are likelier to face prosecution. According to U.S. Sentencing Commission data, about 76% of the corporations that the DOJ prosecuted in 2023 had 50 employees or less, while only about 12% had 1,000 employees or more. Meanwhile, the majority of corporations that were able to avoid prosecution for criminal misconduct through leniency deals with the DOJ (10 out of 14) had 5,000 employees or more.

“The increase in corporate prosecutions is a welcome shift from the previous decline, and the new policy of rewarding corporate crime whistleblowers could go further toward restoring enforcement,” said Rick Claypool, a research director for Public Citizen and author of the report. “But prosecutions remain far too few, and the ongoing overuse of leniency deals for big corporations that break the law continues to undermine deterrence.”

The report notes that the DOJ’s newly strengthened policies for punishing corporate recidivists is currently facing a critical test: Boeing.

The 2021 deal Trump’s DOJ struck with Boeing over misconduct related to the 737 Max crashes, which claimed 346 lives, expired in January, just days before the Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 door plug failure. Prosecutors have until June to determine whether Boeing abided by the deal. If Boeing violated its deal with the DOJ, the deal states that the corporation can be prosecuted for any federal criminal violation that prosecutors know about related to the 737 Max crashes. This is separate from any criminal charges that the DOJ might bring related to the Alaska Airlines flight.

Public Citizen sent a letter in February to Attorney General Merrick Garland, Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco, and other top officials urging the DOJ to initiate an investigation to assess whether Boeing violated the 2021 deal. A criminal investigation is now underway, according to news reports.

“If the DOJ finds that Boeing again violated the law, Boeing should be prosecuted both for its original and its subsequent misconduct,” said Robert Weissman, president of Public Citizen and co-author of the letter. “Boeing should be charged as aggressively as the facts and the law support, including possibly with multiple counts and manslaughter charges.”