On Tuesday the Federal Register published a document regarding NEPA (National Environmental Policy Act) in which the Trump Adminstration wants to gut. Ponder America and Love Canal, NY. From 1969, this law is the Magna Carta of American environmental policy and protection. It's very first step in selling off OUR Public Lands. There is a 30 day comment period and EVERYONE should make direct comments on the Federal Register site. And please inform their Senators and Congress members. And any associated important outlets. I have a deep background educationally, some professionally, and definitely personally in the environmental field. But this effects us in ways that are beyond comprehension. This is one blockbuster of a challenge.
But we can overwhelm with input and help protect our conservation/environmental resources.
I heard him as a featured speaker about 20 years ago when I was in grad school in a sustainability program. It boggles the mind what he has become. Perhaps that worm did in fact eat his brain.
I think that it is best to listen to those who know RFK Jr best-- his family. Whatever ideas he has about policy are completely overwhelmed by his egotism.
The MAGAs always like to make a big deal about property crimes (which they clearly care more about than crimes against people), with a focus on property damage as a result of the George Floyd riots, many of which, including the first one, they instigated themselves. Part of any 24/7/365 digital media campaign really should be keeping a running tab on all the property crimes being committed by Trump and DOGE, both theft (eg selling off land and buildings at firesale prices, a la Russia's "privatization") and destruction (taking down and destroying billions of dollars of research and data that we, the people, paid for with our tax dollars). I'm working on stickers with QR codes and a Google Doc for this. More soon...
Thanks. I just forwarded this to my daughter, a forestry major, who took a class on NEPA last year. I asked her to forward it to all of her classmates and professors.
Great. My goal is to have 250k comments by the end of the 30 day period. I have only begun to share it with friends and groups that are in the field. My neighbor works for the EPA as a manager and was not familiar.
Please also understand this relates to all environmental/conservation regulation. It is so sweeping that it is simply brilliant given how much impact it could have.
Trump wants to accelerate oil and gas development through the guise of “efficiency” in issuing permits under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). His EO for “Unleashing American Energy” may lay the foundation to turn back the clock on environmental assessment and protection to 1977 through chaos and confusion. NEPA and the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) were authorized in 1969 and the new policies rescind all CEQ regulations made after 1977. There is also a recent court opinion, Marin Audubon Society v. Federal Aviation Administration, that said CEQ’s NEPA regulations were not enforceable.
NEPA applies to projects like developing non-renewable or renewable natural resources, building natural gas pipelines, power plant construction, and building bridges and highways. Federal agencies may follow current NEPA processes while revising or establishing new implementation procedures. The interim rule eliminates any considerations of environmental justice, such as whether low-income, minority or tribal populations will suffer disproportionately. Cumulative impact analyses may no longer be required, although they are important to adequately assess what damage can occur.
If environmental assessment and protection standards are lowered, it will likely result in degraded air quality, degraded surface water / groundwater quality, and jeopardize ecosystem health, i.e., our life support system. Human health will be directly impacted by the additional pollution load to air and water resources. Additional pollution would also increase our contribution to the existing climate crisis, yet those analyses may no longer be required.
VA05 rep John McGuire held a phone “town hall” last night that filtered out most constituent questions and during which he talked about sex change operations on pets. Yes, for real.
Looked up the 5th district and realized that it's my parents' district! I let them know, since I know they have been deeply concerned about local doggies getting sex changes. (Typed with as much sarcasm as I can muster.)
My daughter worked for a vet and trained with pre vet students; there's no way any vet would perform such a surgery, nor would people be willing to pay for it.
It's of course ridiculous, since the operations that people bring their pets are for "neutering" so they DON'T have sex. Either this member of Congress is a total moron or he thinks his constituents are.
So, I kind of switched up my comments during my phone calls to my Electeds today. I asked them to say No to the Save Act, it is not appropriate to suppress women’s votes, I asked them to say No to voting to do away with Sanctuary City Status,we need our safe cities for immigrants to continue to exist, I asked them to continue to fight to protect Medicaid for the children and seniors, I asked them to not allow the USPS to become privatized and finally to keep an eye on the CDC because it looks like they are not going to be producing a flu vaccination for 2026 which is a bad plan. I didn’t mention ridding our government of Elon Musk even once. Not today.
No flu vaccine for next year?! OMG! I hadn't heard that. Just yesterday I heard a report about the death of two children from flu; the presumption is that the flu season was worse because fewer people had been vaccinated.
I just want to make a quick comment and get people here thinking about it. The national Indivisible team put out an email yesterday that when the Republican budget votes start happening, there will be a number of protests in Washington D.C. I plan on attending and I hope that the Hopium community will do the same. This will be an opportunity to not just protest, but I plan to talk with my legislators or their staffs while I am in D.C. for this. So, start thinking about if you can come and make your voices heard once the Republicans start trying to jam this atrocious budget bill through.
I'm hoping some of the people in the DC Indivisible group can head over to the Health and Human Services building 200 Independence Ave SW to protest the delay in formulation of the flu vaccine for 2025-26. (I commented above.) I looked at the website. What are PTAC meetings being held on March 3 and 4???
I saw an article on inflation heating up as well. We're starting to see the high unemployment, high inflation, low supply to be expected from Trumponomics now.
I looked up inflation this morning It's running 3%, 1% higher than the Federal Reserve target. This is before the tariff increases threatened to go into effect on March 4 hit all of us.
Last night I learned that an unvaccinated child in West Texas has died of measles. And, RFK, Jr. has abruptly cancelled the flu shot meeting at the FDA. The meeting was intended to determine which strains of influenza should be used in development of the 2025-26 flu vaccine. Do we need to travel abroad now to receive our flu vaccines? If my doctor orders vaccines from Canada for her patients, there would be huge tariffs now, which my prescription drug insurance company would certainly refuse to cover. This news was published in Dr. Jeremy Faust's Substack Inside Medicine. Dr Faust is an Emergency Room Doctor at Brigham and Young Hospital in Boston.
I'm doing everything as Simon instructs. This morning I focused my contact form emails to Senators Durbin and Duckworth on the state of the flu vaccine. My Democratic Congresswoman, Jan Schakowsky, is fabulous and totally on top of all the emerging issues daily. I would like to send her and her staff some baked goods but not sure they would get through security since the anthrax letters of 2001. Instead I wrote a handwritten thank you to all of them and put it in the mail yesterday.
As someone who volunteers for a rescue and handwrites Thank You notes to our donors for whom we have addresses, those are much more impactful than most people realize. Great idea!
A good piece from the Atlantic written by a psychiatrist and evidence-based, on why "hope with a plan," not head in the sand optimism, is the right way to go--for the sake of *your own well-being.* We all know that, of course, but could be worth sharing with friends and colleagues reluctant to fully get in the fight (gift link):
THE MORE DANGEROUS CASE OF DONALD TRUMP 40 PSYCHIATRISTS AND MENTAL HEALTH EXPERTS WARN ANEW
p89
"So, what needs to be done to keep America safe from enemies from within?
... extraordinary times require extraordinary skill in applying the laws and who possess the self-understanding to fight off the twin temptations of complicity or cowardice in the face of fear .."
CALL. Especially for Democrats in Red states. Thank your Representatives.
🔸️Keep calling Attorneys General in the states.
🔸️Keep calling to stop Musk's crime spree and assault on the US government.
🔸️Keep calling your electeds and let them know you are outraged by traitorous Trump's selling out of Zelenskyy, abandonment of Europe and embrace of Putin.
I have so much respect for the work that Anderson Clayton has done in North Carolina. As someone who spent 7 weeks as a full-time volunteer in NC last fall through election day, I saw the great work that has been done with the NC Dems. I am very proud that I helped get great Democrats elected statewide and I would go back and help again. It's a testament to Anderson's leadership that we accomplished all that we did!
I wrote to the WNYC person who originally sent this out with a suggestion that I include here in case it might be of interest or useful to others:
Given everything else going on and the games being played, I would encourage you to make this fight about more than public media, even at the risk of alienating some Republican viewers and listeners, by making clear what else they are trying to cut, especially those things that are hurting or will hurt their constituents the most, so that they can't just tell their people that you're engaged in elite special pleading because *your* ox is being gored.
I would go so far as to make sure everyone is familiar with the story below, because the only way to make sense of *everything* going on is that this is an effort by two highly compromised individuals--Trump and Musk--to dismantle our country for the benefit of the Russians and Chinese.
Opinion | Putin Aide Issues Ominous Warning About Trump’s New “Obligations”
Based on the strong visceral and negative reaction across the spectrum to Trump siding with Putin over Ukraine, this is a message that still resonates viscerally with the Right, and Trump's actions in that area completely confirm what this news story implies. You are in the fight of your lives, and so are we--best not to leave any ammo unfired and leave it all on the field.
Yes! WisDems are able to provide help and infrastructure to her campaign. Most importantly, funding the party helps them get out the vote. Either place is good for a donation!
I live in WI - my calls are in to my Republican Senator and congressman. I did tell them I expect in person town halls to be held in western WI and I’d be looking for that information to be clearly displayed on their websites.Even though I’m sure it won’t happen, it’s worth an ask.
In 2017, our district (which has been redrawn since) had a Town Hall With or Without the Representative. She was invited but Republicans don’t attend town halls. So a lot of Democratic candidates came to introduce themselves, and speakers talked about issues. It was very well attended, and the incumbent lost the next election. I would love to see DIY town halls where the Rep’s absence is pointedly featured.
Our Governor, JB Pritzker, travelled to DC yesterday to push for the release of $1.8 billion in frozen federal funds to the state of Illinois — and to further sound the alarm on a pending GOP budget cut to Medicaid that will strip coverage for more than 700,000 Illinois residents.
NEPA Proposed Dissolution
On Tuesday the Federal Register published a document regarding NEPA (National Environmental Policy Act) in which the Trump Adminstration wants to gut. Ponder America and Love Canal, NY. From 1969, this law is the Magna Carta of American environmental policy and protection. It's very first step in selling off OUR Public Lands. There is a 30 day comment period and EVERYONE should make direct comments on the Federal Register site. And please inform their Senators and Congress members. And any associated important outlets. I have a deep background educationally, some professionally, and definitely personally in the environmental field. But this effects us in ways that are beyond comprehension. This is one blockbuster of a challenge.
But we can overwhelm with input and help protect our conservation/environmental resources.
https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/02/25/2025-03014/removal-of-national-environmental-policy-act-implementing-regulations
You'd think RFK Jr. would be aghast at this.
I heard him as a featured speaker about 20 years ago when I was in grad school in a sustainability program. It boggles the mind what he has become. Perhaps that worm did in fact eat his brain.
I think that it is best to listen to those who know RFK Jr best-- his family. Whatever ideas he has about policy are completely overwhelmed by his egotism.
The MAGAs always like to make a big deal about property crimes (which they clearly care more about than crimes against people), with a focus on property damage as a result of the George Floyd riots, many of which, including the first one, they instigated themselves. Part of any 24/7/365 digital media campaign really should be keeping a running tab on all the property crimes being committed by Trump and DOGE, both theft (eg selling off land and buildings at firesale prices, a la Russia's "privatization") and destruction (taking down and destroying billions of dollars of research and data that we, the people, paid for with our tax dollars). I'm working on stickers with QR codes and a Google Doc for this. More soon...
Wow - Thank you!
Thanks. I just forwarded this to my daughter, a forestry major, who took a class on NEPA last year. I asked her to forward it to all of her classmates and professors.
Great. My goal is to have 250k comments by the end of the 30 day period. I have only begun to share it with friends and groups that are in the field. My neighbor works for the EPA as a manager and was not familiar.
Yes I am being ambitious.
Please also understand this relates to all environmental/conservation regulation. It is so sweeping that it is simply brilliant given how much impact it could have.
Sharing. And will send to a local editor of an env news paper
Trump wants to accelerate oil and gas development through the guise of “efficiency” in issuing permits under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). His EO for “Unleashing American Energy” may lay the foundation to turn back the clock on environmental assessment and protection to 1977 through chaos and confusion. NEPA and the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) were authorized in 1969 and the new policies rescind all CEQ regulations made after 1977. There is also a recent court opinion, Marin Audubon Society v. Federal Aviation Administration, that said CEQ’s NEPA regulations were not enforceable.
NEPA applies to projects like developing non-renewable or renewable natural resources, building natural gas pipelines, power plant construction, and building bridges and highways. Federal agencies may follow current NEPA processes while revising or establishing new implementation procedures. The interim rule eliminates any considerations of environmental justice, such as whether low-income, minority or tribal populations will suffer disproportionately. Cumulative impact analyses may no longer be required, although they are important to adequately assess what damage can occur.
If environmental assessment and protection standards are lowered, it will likely result in degraded air quality, degraded surface water / groundwater quality, and jeopardize ecosystem health, i.e., our life support system. Human health will be directly impacted by the additional pollution load to air and water resources. Additional pollution would also increase our contribution to the existing climate crisis, yet those analyses may no longer be required.
https://natlawreview.com/article/future-nepa-implementation-without-ceq-regulations
https://www.eenews.net/articles/trump-hands-off-nepa-to-agencies/
https://bbklaw.com/resources/la-112124-split-dc-circuit-panel-holds-that-ceq-lacks-authority-to-issue-nepa-reg
What you said!
This summarizes additional actions by the admin regarding environmental rules and regulations. https://natlawreview.com/article/president-trumps-executive-orders-and-impact-environmental-rules-and-regulations
Done. Thank you!
Shared on Bluesky too
Democrats are holding town halls in Virginia and winning over swing voters, especially those voters whose jobs Trump and Musk took away:
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/elections/federal-layoffs-shake-virginia-ahead-2025-governors-race-rcna193794
VA05 rep John McGuire held a phone “town hall” last night that filtered out most constituent questions and during which he talked about sex change operations on pets. Yes, for real.
Wow. I don't imagine that's something most people are worrying about. My heavens.
Looked up the 5th district and realized that it's my parents' district! I let them know, since I know they have been deeply concerned about local doggies getting sex changes. (Typed with as much sarcasm as I can muster.)
My daughter worked for a vet and trained with pre vet students; there's no way any vet would perform such a surgery, nor would people be willing to pay for it.
It's of course ridiculous, since the operations that people bring their pets are for "neutering" so they DON'T have sex. Either this member of Congress is a total moron or he thinks his constituents are.
Haha! Next thing Nancy Mace will be going on about which dogs have the right to use which fire hydrants!
So, I kind of switched up my comments during my phone calls to my Electeds today. I asked them to say No to the Save Act, it is not appropriate to suppress women’s votes, I asked them to say No to voting to do away with Sanctuary City Status,we need our safe cities for immigrants to continue to exist, I asked them to continue to fight to protect Medicaid for the children and seniors, I asked them to not allow the USPS to become privatized and finally to keep an eye on the CDC because it looks like they are not going to be producing a flu vaccination for 2026 which is a bad plan. I didn’t mention ridding our government of Elon Musk even once. Not today.
No flu vaccine for next year?! OMG! I hadn't heard that. Just yesterday I heard a report about the death of two children from flu; the presumption is that the flu season was worse because fewer people had been vaccinated.
I just want to make a quick comment and get people here thinking about it. The national Indivisible team put out an email yesterday that when the Republican budget votes start happening, there will be a number of protests in Washington D.C. I plan on attending and I hope that the Hopium community will do the same. This will be an opportunity to not just protest, but I plan to talk with my legislators or their staffs while I am in D.C. for this. So, start thinking about if you can come and make your voices heard once the Republicans start trying to jam this atrocious budget bill through.
I'm hoping some of the people in the DC Indivisible group can head over to the Health and Human Services building 200 Independence Ave SW to protest the delay in formulation of the flu vaccine for 2025-26. (I commented above.) I looked at the website. What are PTAC meetings being held on March 3 and 4???
https://www.hhs.gov/live/live-1/index.html#11472
Excellent insight!
I saw an article on inflation heating up as well. We're starting to see the high unemployment, high inflation, low supply to be expected from Trumponomics now.
I looked up inflation this morning It's running 3%, 1% higher than the Federal Reserve target. This is before the tariff increases threatened to go into effect on March 4 hit all of us.
Last night I learned that an unvaccinated child in West Texas has died of measles. And, RFK, Jr. has abruptly cancelled the flu shot meeting at the FDA. The meeting was intended to determine which strains of influenza should be used in development of the 2025-26 flu vaccine. Do we need to travel abroad now to receive our flu vaccines? If my doctor orders vaccines from Canada for her patients, there would be huge tariffs now, which my prescription drug insurance company would certainly refuse to cover. This news was published in Dr. Jeremy Faust's Substack Inside Medicine. Dr Faust is an Emergency Room Doctor at Brigham and Young Hospital in Boston.
Here is the link:
https://substack.com/home/post/p-157997949?source=queue
You can contact your Senators on the Health and Human Services Committee at this link. Bernie is the Minority Ranking Member.
https://www.senate.gov/general/committee_membership/committee_memberships_SSHR.htm
I'm doing everything as Simon instructs. This morning I focused my contact form emails to Senators Durbin and Duckworth on the state of the flu vaccine. My Democratic Congresswoman, Jan Schakowsky, is fabulous and totally on top of all the emerging issues daily. I would like to send her and her staff some baked goods but not sure they would get through security since the anthrax letters of 2001. Instead I wrote a handwritten thank you to all of them and put it in the mail yesterday.
As someone who volunteers for a rescue and handwrites Thank You notes to our donors for whom we have addresses, those are much more impactful than most people realize. Great idea!
https://www.thirteen.org/programs/pbs-newshour/prevention-at-risk-guest-1740695085/
This is a link to athe PBS Newshour segment about the flu vaccine meetings cancelled by RFK.
In case you haven't seen, even people in DOGE itself are getting outraged. 25 resign:
https://www.npr.org/2025/02/25/nx-s1-5308095/doge-staff-resignations-elon-musk
A good piece from the Atlantic written by a psychiatrist and evidence-based, on why "hope with a plan," not head in the sand optimism, is the right way to go--for the sake of *your own well-being.* We all know that, of course, but could be worth sharing with friends and colleagues reluctant to fully get in the fight (gift link):
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2025/02/optimism-anxiety-action-psychology/681846/?gift=FgeEACUw4iJoER4ZiZvsnDXpncUzbazcftg3EwDcZ6g&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share
THE MORE DANGEROUS CASE OF DONALD TRUMP 40 PSYCHIATRISTS AND MENTAL HEALTH EXPERTS WARN ANEW
p89
"So, what needs to be done to keep America safe from enemies from within?
... extraordinary times require extraordinary skill in applying the laws and who possess the self-understanding to fight off the twin temptations of complicity or cowardice in the face of fear .."
CALL. Especially for Democrats in Red states. Thank your Representatives.
🔸️Keep calling Attorneys General in the states.
🔸️Keep calling to stop Musk's crime spree and assault on the US government.
🔸️Keep calling your electeds and let them know you are outraged by traitorous Trump's selling out of Zelenskyy, abandonment of Europe and embrace of Putin.
https://5calls.org/
I have so much respect for the work that Anderson Clayton has done in North Carolina. As someone who spent 7 weeks as a full-time volunteer in NC last fall through election day, I saw the great work that has been done with the NC Dems. I am very proud that I helped get great Democrats elected statewide and I would go back and help again. It's a testament to Anderson's leadership that we accomplished all that we did!
Got this from a friend and told them I would post here. It concerns Protect Public Media Day, March 6th:
https://protectmypublicmedia.org/
I wrote to the WNYC person who originally sent this out with a suggestion that I include here in case it might be of interest or useful to others:
Given everything else going on and the games being played, I would encourage you to make this fight about more than public media, even at the risk of alienating some Republican viewers and listeners, by making clear what else they are trying to cut, especially those things that are hurting or will hurt their constituents the most, so that they can't just tell their people that you're engaged in elite special pleading because *your* ox is being gored.
I would go so far as to make sure everyone is familiar with the story below, because the only way to make sense of *everything* going on is that this is an effort by two highly compromised individuals--Trump and Musk--to dismantle our country for the benefit of the Russians and Chinese.
Opinion | Putin Aide Issues Ominous Warning About Trump’s New “Obligations”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/putin-aide-issues-ominous-warning-153252084.html
Based on the strong visceral and negative reaction across the spectrum to Trump siding with Putin over Ukraine, this is a message that still resonates viscerally with the Right, and Trump's actions in that area completely confirm what this news story implies. You are in the fight of your lives, and so are we--best not to leave any ammo unfired and leave it all on the field.
Is donating to WI party as useful as donating directly to Crawford?
Yes! WisDems are able to provide help and infrastructure to her campaign. Most importantly, funding the party helps them get out the vote. Either place is good for a donation!
I live in WI - my calls are in to my Republican Senator and congressman. I did tell them I expect in person town halls to be held in western WI and I’d be looking for that information to be clearly displayed on their websites.Even though I’m sure it won’t happen, it’s worth an ask.
In 2017, our district (which has been redrawn since) had a Town Hall With or Without the Representative. She was invited but Republicans don’t attend town halls. So a lot of Democratic candidates came to introduce themselves, and speakers talked about issues. It was very well attended, and the incumbent lost the next election. I would love to see DIY town halls where the Rep’s absence is pointedly featured.
Our Governor, JB Pritzker, travelled to DC yesterday to push for the release of $1.8 billion in frozen federal funds to the state of Illinois — and to further sound the alarm on a pending GOP budget cut to Medicaid that will strip coverage for more than 700,000 Illinois residents.
Pleased to see Senator Gallego is having a 'Tele' Town Hall this early evening at 5:30 (AZ time) If you want more info let me know.
Here is a link to a video he did with Tim Miller at The Bulwark yesterday; it is a good interview.
Protest at Musk's Tesla dealership in Tucson, Sat @ 9:30 am. Bring your protest sign!
https://youtu.be/8IImi7rA3ec?si=gmmGE5sq4xeQeOQ3