Congress

Biden admin cedes pivotal air pollution rules to Trump

Published

2 years ago

January 2, 2025

As the Biden administration enters its final weeks, EPA continues to press forward on some fronts, while relinquishing on others to incoming President-elect Donald Trump.

In a decision issued Monday that marks the latest twist in a see-saw regulatory battle, the agency rejected an industry coalition’s petition to scrap toughened safeguards against accidental releases of dangerous air pollutants from refineries, chemical plants and thousands of other operations that must file plans to manage those risks.

In the petition, the coalition, whose members include the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the American Chemistry Council and the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers, wrote that the more stringent regulations impose “multiple unlawful and highly prescriptive mandates that undermine the performance-based flexibility that is the linchpin of process safety.” Besides rescinding the rules, the coalition asked EPA to freeze implementation.

In a thumbs-down that marked one of his last official acts, however, ex-EPA Administrator Michael Regan found that the petition “fails to identify any information or circumstances that warrant mandatory reconsideration.”

The rejection clears the way for proceedings to resume in a lawsuit brought last year by coalition members before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. But with Trump set to take office Jan. 20, they could also ask his administration to revisit the regulations.

It was a tactic used successfully during Trump’s first term, when EPA largely rolled back an earlier bid to tighten a similar batch of requirements issued in the final days of President Barack Obama’s second term.

American Chemistry Council spokesperson Scott Jensen said Thursday the coalition is already working on a letter to Trump’s transition team that will request a start to a new rulemaking process. While Jensen did not have a specific timetable, “obviously we want it to go over to them as soon as possible,” he said in a phone interview.

Elsewhere, the Biden administration is already yielding`sway to its successor.

Late last month, EPA signaled that it is ending plans for now both to widen the geographic reach of its latest good neighbor smog control framework and tighten emission standards on large trash incinerators that may be located near people of color and low-income communities.

The final versions of both rules had been under review by the White House regulations office since September, with a goal of completing work before the year’s end. Instead, both have now been withdrawn, according to notices posted on a government tracking website.

Asked earlier this week about the reasons for the withdrawals, EPA spokesperson Nick Conger in an email noted that only recently amended consent decrees in litigation with environmental groups pushed back the respective deadlines to finalize both rules.

“EPA will continue working on these Clean Air Act actions,” Conger said in an email.

For the update to the incinerator standards, the new due date falls near the end of this year.

Under an earlier EPA proposal, the rule would have toughened New Source Performance Standards and emissions guidelines for dozens of large municipal incinerators that are sources of smog-forming nitrogen oxides, lead, mercury and other pollutants.

The new December 2025 deadline means that almost another year will pass before EPA updates standards that have remained largely unchanged since 1995.

Filings in the litigation before the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia do not explain why the challengers, led by the California-based East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice, agreed to the delay. An Earthjustice attorney representing them could not be reached for comment.

Under the Clean Air Act’s good neighbor provision, states are barred from allowing smog-forming pollution from power plants and other industries that contributes to downwind compliance problems outside of their borders.

The original good neighbor framework, issued in March 2023, initially applied to 23 states. It aims to ensure nationwide compliance with EPA’s 70 parts per billion limit for ground-level ozone, a lung-damaging compound that is the main ingredient in smog.

Under the proposed expansion issued a year ago, EPA sought to add Arizona, Iowa, Kansas, New Mexico and Tennessee to a cap-and-trade program to cut power sector emissions of nitrogen oxides.

Since then, the agency has stayed implementation of the original 23-state good neighbor plan in response to a Supreme Court ruling.

“We decided from our part” that “it didn’t make sense for EPA to finalize” the proposed expansion that would then immediately be stayed, Sierra Club senior attorney Zachary Fabish said in an interview. Previously due in November, the final version must now be completed by February 2026.

Asked whether he has any concerns about the Trump administration’s follow-through, Fabish said “the law requires something to be done.” Otherwise, he added, the environmental advocacy group will be at the forefront “of making sure that EPA and the states are following through on their obligations.”

Congress

Former MLB star Mark Teixeira to hit campaign trail with GOP leaders

Published

1 hour ago

July 31, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

House GOP leaders are planning to bring former MLB star Mark Teixeira, one of their top candidate recruits this cycle, out on the trail in battleground districts over the summer recess sprint.

Majority Leader Steve Scalise will host a fundraiser with Teixeira in New York City on Aug. 20 with Speaker Mike Johnson as a special guest, according to three people with direct knowledge of the event, granted anonymity to discuss plans that have not yet been made public.

It’s part of a New York swing where Teixeira and Johnson will also hit nearby stops in GOP Rep. Mike Lawler’s 17th Congressional District and for Mike LiPetri, who is trying to unseat Democratic Rep. Tom Suozzi in New York’s 3rd Congressional District.

Teixeira is running to replace GOP Rep. Chip Roy in Texas’ 21st Congressional District. He won a World Series title with the Yankees in 2009 and also played for the Texas Rangers, Atlanta Braves and Los Angeles Angels before retiring from professional baseball in 2016 after 14 seasons.

Because Teixeira has little chance of losing in the deep-red seat, Republican leaders are hoping to harness his star power to boost their candidates in the most competitive races. They’re planning for Teixeira to help campaign in a wider swath of battleground districts in August and through November, including likely stops in Pennsylvania and Georgia.

Congress

Faced with Blanche dilemma, Trump chooses revenge

Published

1 hour ago

July 31, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

President Donald Trump has a choice: allow changes to a controversial court settlement and secure the confirmation of his former personal lawyer as attorney general, or thumb his nose at a pair of his few remaining Republican critics in Congress.

True to form, he is giving no ground — so far.

Trump’s decision Thursday to signal he would rather pull the nomination of Todd Blanche, his pick to lead the Justice Department, rather than give in to the demands of Sens. John Cornyn and Thom Tillis demonstrated that the president’s desire to thwart his enemies does not end with the demise of their political careers.

Both Republican senators will leave Congress at the end of the year after running afoul of Trump, and both have found a degree of independence since becoming untethered from needing to keep in his good graces.

But their efforts to exert leverage and seek to curtail a controversial settlement agreement reached in May between Trump and the IRS only prompted the president to double down. He announced in a Truth Social post that Blanche would remain as acting attorney general “in any event” and that he would potentially withdraw and resubmit the nomination “after Cornyn and Tillis are out of office” in January.

Tillis, who announced he would not seek reelection last year after clashing with Trump over Medicaid cuts in his home state of North Carolina, betrayed little surprise when asked about Trump’s reticence to bargain over the IRS settlement.

“Look up the definition of recalcitrant,” he said.

Cornyn, who lost his bid for renomination to a fifth term representing Texas in May after Trump endorsed a scandal-prone opponent, brushed off the accusation that he was simply seeking revenge by blocking Blanche.

He called Trump’s claim “a convenient excuse, but it’s certainly not true.” And he warned the president that trying to wait him out would be a “gamble.”

“After the midterms, who knows who’s going to be the next United States senator from North Carolina or Texas?” he said.

The subtext of Cornyn’s remark was that Republicans might have a smaller majority if they have one at all — raising the question that if Trump can’t strike a deal with members of his own party to advance his prized nominee, what will governing with Democrats possibly look like?

One of Trump’s frequent Democratic sparring partners from his first term in office — Sen. Adam Schiff of California — said the pressure from Cornyn and Tillis is only a hint of what is to come and that the president should get used to “a restoration of checks and balances.”

“I would hope what it will mean both for the remainder of this Congress and the next is that Congress will once again assume the role of being a counterbalance to the power of the executive,” said Schiff, who led Democrats’ first Trump impeachment attempt. “We largely reneged on that.”

The battle of Blanche has been especially pitched given Trump’s personal interests. Not only did Blanche represent Trump in multiple cases brought in the years before the president’s reelection, Cornyn and Tillis were seeking to curtail a deal that personally benefited him.

Both men sought to ensure a $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization fund” set out in the agreement text could not be revived and to restrict the terms of an audit immunity agreement applying to Trump, his family and business.

It’s possible a deal could still be reached. Cornyn and Tillis met with Blanche Thursday afternoon after Trump issued his ultimatum. One person granted anonymity to describe the private meeting said the two sides were “working collaboratively now” and that it was good “they were finally all face to face.”

Ahead of the meeting, both senators insinuated that the White House — not Blanche — was the obstacle to revising the settlement and moving forward with the confirmation. Cornyn explicitly blamed Trump, while Tillis said the presidents’ advisers could be to blame.

“They’re making this a lot harder than it needs to be,” Cornyn said Wednesday. “We’ve tried to make it easy for them, and they simply refuse to take our help.”

Both said they believed there was a desire in Trump’s orbit to resurrect the payout fund at some point to direct federal settlements to the president’s political allies.

GOP colleagues also chalked up Thursday’s drama to the White House not wanting to give in — whether to protect the original settlement agreement or to deny Trump’s critics a victory.“Clearly, the White House does not want to do what Senator Cornyn and Senator Tillis were asking,” said Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska said she shared Cornyn and Tillis’ qualms about the settlement and asked Blanche in her own private meeting to put his oral commitments in writing.

“I have expressed the same concerns, and I am waiting for the same answers,” said Murkowski, an occasional Trump critic who is up for reelection in 2028.

Jennifer Scholtes contributed to this report.

Congress

Trump-aligned parents rally behind kids’ online safety rules

Published

12 hours ago

July 30, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Parents’ rights groups aligned with the MAGA movement and other socially conservative groups are imploring congressional leaders to enact strict rules that aim to prevent online dangers for kids.

They join a chorus of more progressive parent and survivor groups urging lawmakers ahead of an upcoming Senate Commerce online kids’ safety markup to enact robust and clear “duty of care” requirements that would legally compel technology companies to prevent harm to children.

In a July 30 letter to Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), shared first with Blue Light News, the groups demanded specific standards that would require technology companies to “truly stand with, not against parents.”

So-called duty of care requirements have emerged as a central battleground in negotiations over kids’ online safety legislation. The provision would mandate tech companies to take reasonable steps to prevent and mitigate specific harms to minors on their platforms and would give regulators a legal basis to hold companies accountable if they fail to do so.

“[W]e write as parents, pro-family leaders, survivors, and child advocates to implore you to act in a way that truly empowers parents to protect our children, and to resist the rather loud voices who say that immunity for Big Tech and evisceration of state efforts in this space is somehow pro-parent,” the groups wrote. “It is not.”

They also urged lawmakers to expand on state laws rather than override them. Preemption provisions have become much more broadly unpopular in the year since Cruz tried — and failed — to attach a 10-year moratorium on the ability of states to set their own artificial intelligence laws in the GOP’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

“States are standing with parents and children,” the letter reads. “Your committee must build on that work, not tear it down.”

The groups signing the letter, led by Institute for Families and Technology, include MAGA-aligned Moms for Liberty, Louisiana Family Forum, South Dakota Family Voice and the Family Policy Alliance, a conservative Christian group influencing state policies.

Cruz this week postponed a broader artificial intelligence markup tentatively planned for next week until September. Instead, next week, he’s going to take up several measures on kids’ safety and chatbots.

Cruz, in an interview Wednesday, did not rule out preemption provisions in next week’s markup, telling Blue Light News, “Those are all active topics under negotiation.”

Spokespeople for Cruz and Cantwell did not return requests for comment.

The letter comes as right-leaning and family organizations have a heightened awareness of kids’ safety around technology. In fact, the issue was a big topic at last week’s SoCon Con, where there were multiple panels and speakers on kids and tech, including one on keeping kids safe and how to “beat Big Tech.”

“This is new substantive engagement that didn’t really exist before,” said a social conservative advocate granted anonymity to discuss private coalition discussions. “There’s this tipping point that is happening where these groups represent large populations at the state level and saying this is an issue that’s important to us and we’re going to engage as family groups.”