http://thehill.com/policy/energy-enviro ... -pollution
A pair of Democratic lawmakers is questioning Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) head Scott Pruitt over a memo that gave him new authority to make certain determinations over water pollution standards.
The March memo took away the authority of regional EPA officials to make some calls as to whether a particular body of water can be federally controlled under the Clean Water Act, and gave that authority to Pruitt.
...They accused him of "sidelining" local expertise and said that Pruitt actions “appear nothing more than a power grab to consolidate absolute authority in your personal offices, with no assurance that you will follow the rule of law, science, or the precedents of the agency in exercising your statutory responsibility under the Clean Water Act to ‘restore and maintain the chemical, physical, and biological integrity of the Nation’s waters.’”
The lawmakers, each the top Democrat on the Senate and House committees that oversee the EPA’s enforcement of the Clean Water Act, asked Pruitt for a wide range of documents and explanations related to the memo.
http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/3845 ... mp-va-pick
The Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee has delayed the confirmation hearing for President Trump’s pick to run the Department of Veterans Affairs after committee leaders said they needed to look into "serious allegations" about nominee Ronny Jackson.
While the White House issued a statement Tuesday sticking by Jackson, the delay and an accompanying statement from the committee leaders underlined the problems Trump's pick may have in moving forward.
...While the statement did not offer details on the allegations faced by Jackson, CBS News reported that staffers are looking into chargers of a "hostile work environment," including "excessive drinking on the job [and] improperly dispensing meds.”
[Chairman Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.) and Sen. John Tester (Mont.), the panel's ranking Democrat] sent a joint letter to the White House on Tuesday requesting more information about Jackson's service in the White House Medical Unit and as physician to the president.
Tester told NBC that he believed every member of the committee was standing by the decision to postpone the matter.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/ar ... ms/558779/
The Negligent Nomination of Ronny Jackson: The president’s pick to be secretary of veterans affairs stands accused of misconduct, but with a proper vetting process he would never have been in this position anyway.
One problem is that, as the Post reported in March, the Presidential Personnel Office, which looks into nominees’ pasts, isn’t fully staffed, and those who are working there are young, inexperienced, and have spotty resumes of their own.
The Jackson nomination so far shows the president failing doubly to learn his lesson from the previous problems with nominees: He hasn’t fixed the vetting office, and at the same time bypassed it in choosing Jackson.
It also contains this:
Jackson’s surprise stall-out is not the only example of a vetting failure—it’s not even the only one this week. On Monday, Secretary of State-designee Mike Pompeo barely managed to scrape through through the Senate Foreign Relations Committee with an endorsement, and he faces a tight vote in the broader Senate. Senators said Pompeo could not answer basic questions about the administration’s foreign policy
http://thehill.com/business-a-lobbying/ ... panel-vote
A Senate panel on Monday voted to give CIA Director Mike Pompeo a favorable recommendation that puts him on course to be confirmed as secretary of State, following a surprise last-minute vote switch by Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.).
http://thehill.com/policy/national-secu ... tion-fight
The Senate’s debate over Gina Haspel’s confirmation as CIA director is poised to be a bitter litigation of one of the most controversial episodes in recent U.S. history.
Haspel, the CIA’s deputy director, is indelibly tied to the agency’s use of harsh interrogation techniques after the Sept. 11 attacks. But she is also a 33-year intelligence veteran who is seen even by some critics of President Trump as an experienced and apolitical hand.
...even if Haspel clears the committee, her confirmation fight is likely to be tumultuous. Human rights advocates and some former military and intelligence officials are urging the Senate to vote down Haspel over her role in the agency’s detention and interrogation programs.
Hinting at the challenge ahead, the CIA is engaged in an extraordinarily public campaign to burnish Haspel’s image and correct what it says is a swath of inaccurate reporting about a career intelligence officer who, up until a year ago, was virtually anonymous.
...Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), both members of the Intelligence Committee, have complained that the CIA is selectively declassifying only positive information about Haspel.
The CIA on Friday did declassify a 2011 memo in which former Deputy Director Michael Morell found that Haspel “acted appropriately” when she drafted an order to destroy videotapes of harsh interrogations at a “black site” prison in Thailand that she briefly ran.
...Wyden blasted the memo as “highly incomplete” but “[confirming] some extremely troubling facts about Deputy Director Haspel.” He has hinted repeatedly that there is much about Haspel’s record that remains unknown. As a member of the intelligence panel, Wyden has access to classified information that the rest of his colleagues do not.“My concerns about Ms. Haspel are far broader than this episode or anything else that has appeared in the press,” Wyden said in a statement Friday.
Not that this comes as any surprise.
http://thehill.com/policy/finance/38447 ... he-wealthy
Much of the tax benefit from the new tax law's deduction for pass-through businesses will go to wealthy individuals, according to a Joint Committee on Taxation report released Monday.
About 44 percent of the tax benefit from the deduction will go to those with an income of $1 million or more in 2018, and 52.4 percent of the benefit will go to those with income in that range in 2024, the congressional tax scorekeeper estimated.
I can understand being diplomatic about someone you are trying to negotiate with, but this is disgusting:
http://thehill.com/homenews/administrat ... -honorable
“He really has been very open and, I think, very honorable from everything we're seeing," Trump said of Kim Jong Un during a meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron at the White House.
The U.S. has blamed North Korea for ordering the execution of Kim's brother with a banned nerve agent. The reclusive government has faced persistent criticism from human-rights groups that say it starves its own citizens.
http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/3845 ... ate-dinner
Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) on Tuesday said he thinks President Trump should have invited Democrats and the media to the state dinner with French President Emmanuel Macron.
“I think it would have sent a better message, just my opinion, if we included a cross-section of Congress. You can’t include everybody, but that’s Democrats, Independents and Republicans,” Kennedy said on CNN’s “New Day.”
Previous presidents, of course, invited both Democrats and Republicans to state dinners.
From The Atlantic:
https://www.theatlantic.com/internation ... al/558800/
Europe's Last-Ditch Effort to Save the Iran Deal
And what happens if it fails
There is every reason to fear that Macron won’t prevail on the next important item on the agenda: persuading the president to remain in the Iran nuclear deal.
It’s hardly for lack of trying. For months now, France, along with Germany and the United Kingdom (the other European signatories of the accord), has been trying to keep America in the deal. That seemed a herculean task before the latest makeover in the president’s foreign policy team. With the ascendance of John Bolton and Mike Pompeo, it might well have become an impossible one.The odds of Trump exiting the Iran deal, more formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), have gotten higher—and it’s hard to see how this ends well for the security of the United States, the Middle East, or the world.
Edit:
And Pruitt tosses out a bunch of scientific research:
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/04/ ... icy-501612
Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt announced Tuesday he would seek to bar the agency from relying on studies that don't publicly disclose all their data, a major policy change that has long been sought by conservatives that will sharply reduce the research the agency can rely on when crafting new regulations.
...The proposal, based on legislation pushed by Smith, is intensely controversial, and scientists and public health groups say it will prevent federal regulators from enacting health and safety protections. Nearly 1,000 scientists, including former EPA career staffers, signed a letter opposing the policy sent by the Union of Concerned Scientists to Pruitt on Monday.
...Pruitt has been discussing the new scientific policy publicly for weeks, but it only went to the White House for interagency review last week. Such swift review is very rare for the Office of Management and Budget, which often takes months to vet a new policy. At least one group, the Environmental Defense Fund, has requested a meeting with OMB officials to discuss the rule, but OMB's website shows that no meetings have been scheduled with interested groups.
Pruitt has signed it:
http://thehill.com/policy/energy-enviro ... rom-agency
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt signed a rule proposal Tuesday aimed at increasing "transparency" in science all while limiting reporter, environmentalist and scientist access to the event.
...Speaking in front of a number of well-known climate change skeptics including the Competitive Enterprise Institute's Myron Ebell, Pruitt announced that the new rule would require science to "be transparent, reproducible and able to be analyzed by those in the marketplace." Reporters were not invited to attend the event, and details surrounding the announcement and rule proposal were kept secret until 30 minutes before the EPA's Twitter account announced it would be live-streamed
This is one of those things that can be spun to sound good, but any scientist realizes it's very bad news and simply an effort to throw out science Pruitt doesn't like.