Among the many ugly truths of COVID-19’s heartbreak and ruin, these are the ugliest: In Milwaukee, African Americans are 70% of COVID-19’s deaths, but only 26% of the population. In Louisiana, those numbers are 70% and 32%. In Michigan, the numbers are 40% and 14%. In Chicago, it is 70% and…
Late last month, Americans were panicked by COVID-19 claiming the lives of hundreds of people per day (it’s now more than 1,000 per day), and consumed by the fear of sickness, job loss, financial distress and the anxiety caused by our entire way of life being cast into uncertainty. President…
The Trump administration’s “Strengthening Transparency in Regulatory Science” rule will severely limit the scientific studies used by the federal government to create new regulations. Environmental attorney Shawn Collins says the rule requires data to be publicly available, including confidential medical records and sensitive personal information and will be a major…
It started with a letter to Congress. Seven past EPA chiefs, appointed by both Democratic and Republican presidents, wrote to Congress in April. They were concerned about the direction of the current EPA and offered to help Congress use its oversight to put a halt to Trump’s misguided deregulatory push and…
President Trump’s decision to abandon America’s commitment to the Paris Climate Change Accord is just the latest horrible environmental decision that he has made. Here are just some of the others: Trump named as head of the EPA, Scott Pruitt, a lackey for the petroleum industry who has spent his…
When Pope Francis met with President Trump at the Vatican this past week, Francis gave him a copy of his 2015 Encyclical, which passionately argued that the environment is God’s gift to mankind, to benefit all mankind, and therefore that the powerful must not exploit it for their selfish purposes.…
According to the non-profit Environmental Working Group, California’s public water systems in the San Joaquin Valley and urban areas like LA and San Bernardino and San Mateo counties are contaminated with a very dangerous, cancer-causing chemical known as 1,2,3 trichloropropane (“TCP”). Evidently, the TCP is a remnant of a chemical…
This month in Germany, the world’s biggest industrial nations are meeting to discuss what to do about increasingly threatening climate change. A good idea, right? Except it turns out that the meeting will be disgraced by the presence of some 270 business lobbyists, most of them there to protect trillions…
Pro-business forces in Congress have proposed laws aimed at restricting, or even eliminating, the rights of injured Americans to join together in bringing their claims in the form of a single “class action” lawsuit. A class action is a kind of lawsuit in which those who have been injured…