In Texas, Unlikely Alliance Forms Against Nuke Waste Proposal

Environmental groups, state regulators, a waste company and others oppose a federal plan to let disposal sites that aren’t specifically licensed for radioactive waste request an exception to take in the waste.

The Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant in Vernon, Vt., pictured in 2012 before the plant closed and began the decommissioning process. (Photo via Nuclear Regulatory Commission)

August 7, 2020 TRAVIS BUBENIK

(CN) — In a far-flung corner of West Texas, just off a lonely oilfield highway on the state’s dusty border with New Mexico, a small facility that the New York Times once dubbed “America’s most valuable hole in the ground” has drawn the ire of environmentalists for years.

The Waste Control Specialists facility in rural Andrews County has bold ambitions to become the nation’s primary home – at least for the next few decades – for used nuclear power plant fuel, a much more radioactive type of waste than the “low-level” waste that’s already been housed there for years.

Though the government has so far concluded the plan would be safe, critics, like longtime environmental attorney Terry Lodge, have railed against it for years.

So, imagine Lodge’s surprise to find himself now agreeing with the waste company’s opposition to a new and separate proposal from federal regulators that many worry could lead to radioactive waste being thrown out with the garbage at local landfills across the nation.

“Yes, it is a strange ally,” Lodge said with a laugh during a recent interview.

The new proposal is far from just a Texas issue, but for a state with a long history of fights over nuclear waste, it’s notable just how much agreement there is among a variety of stakeholders that the plan from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is a bad idea.

In an unusual and perhaps unlikely alliance, environmental groups, state regulators, the Texas waste company and others in the Lone Star State have all come out against the new plan.

“We regret to find ourselves in such definitive opposition to an NRC staff proposal,” Waste Control Specialists wrote last month in formal comments to regulators. “We are not accustomed to being in this position.”

The proposal centers on a type of nuclear waste colloquially referred to as “very low-level” waste.

Though the term isn’t a formal one, very low-level waste can refer to things like contaminated debris or soil from shuttered nuclear power plants. The NRC identifies this type of waste as the least hazardous variety on the spectrum and says it generally only contains “residual” radioactivity, but others have argued the phrase is a deceptive one that glosses over the health dangers of even mildly-contaminated waste.

The NRC’s proposed change would reinterpret existing regulations to let disposal sites that aren’t specifically licensed for radioactive waste request an “exception” to take in the waste. Once an exception is granted, the facilities would have a blanket authority to receive the waste without a further case-by-case review of the shipments.

Critics worry that local landfills or even individual landowners could try to get in on the action, bringing the waste to facilities that aren’t equipped to handle it.

“I mean, it’s monstrous,” said Lodge. “You’re talking about a guaranteed disaster.”

Though a variety of groups and entities in Texas are hoping to stop the plan, their specific arguments against it vary widely.

Dozens of environmental and advocacy groups from across the U.S., including a handful in Texas, penned a letter to regulators in July urging them to cancel the proposal, saying it’s simply too dangerous.

“This proposal wants to let that waste out into the regular garbage, which could get recycled, could get burned, could get buried into landfills but then leach into your water,” said Diane D’Arrigo, a longtime environmental advocate with the Nuclear Information and Resource Service, one of the groups that signed onto the letter.

“If they get away with this, this is truly getting away with murder,” she said.

An NRC spokesperson dismissed those kinds of allegations as unfounded.

“It’s not a proposal to put the nation’s nuclear waste into your county landfill,” spokesperson David McIntyre said. “The material we’re talking about is not very radioactive at all.”

The intention of the proposal, McIntyre said, is that the very low-level waste would only go to certain EPA-approved hazardous waste sites, not just any local landfill or plot of land. The NRC’s full proposal echoes that assertion.

While the proposal might create a new process, transfers of nuclear waste to “alternate” disposal sites have happened before, McIntyre said, and regulators would only expect a “handful” of sites to try to get an exception to take in nuclear waste under the new method.

“So it would save our resources, taxpayer money, and it would make it a little more efficient for both the waste generator and the hazardous waste facility receiving it,” he said.

Still, environmental groups are quick to note that an “intention” is far from a guarantee.

Meanwhile, the Texas waste company has warned that the plan could lead to 90% or more of the nation’s low-level nuclear waste winding up at unlicensed facilities.

“A very real result of the Proposed Interpretive Rule process could be an unintended increase in concentrations and doses of radioactive material at unlicensed disposal sites all across the country,” Waste Control Specialists wrote in its comments to regulators. “At a minimum, it was incumbent upon staff to fully assess such issues, and it has not done so.”

The proposal could also chip away at the company’s bottom line, as nuclear plants might prefer to ship their waste to a closer, cheaper facility instead of sending it all the way to West Texas.

In Andrews County, where the WCS site is located, local officials have long supported the company and its plans to bring more radioactive types of waste to Texas. Those officials have also joined the chorus against the NRC’s new plan.

“Yeah, it would take money away from WCS, and in return it takes money away from us, but set money aside, that’s not my biggest concern,” said Andrews County Judge Charlie Falcon. “It’s just not safe.”

“This would change everything about the way we do business in Texas,” said Ashley Forbes, director of the radioactive materials division at the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. “We don’t see a need for a change at this point.”

The TCEQ worries the new proposal would at a minimum create regulatory confusion and lead to new procedures that its staff aren’t necessarily trained for.

Forbes said that while the proposal wouldn’t necessarily be dangerous to public health or the environment, it would require the agency to completely rethink how low-level waste is managed within the state. Moreover, she said the agency isn’t even clear on why the NRC is pursuing the change in the first place.

“I think they should come to the table and be very clear on what problem they’re trying to solve,” Forbes said. “That would be helpful.”

McIntyre, the NRC spokesperson, pointed to two nuclear waste management companies that have voiced support for the proposal, Idaho-based U.S. Ecology and EnergySolutions in Utah. Neither company responded to questions about the proposal. A uranium mining company active in South Texas has lodged its support for the proposal as well, saying it would help with the decommissioning and reclamation of old mines.

McIntyre said the plan was not prompted by a request from the nuclear industry.

“To be honest, I don’t know that I could pinpoint any particular stimulus that prompted this,” he said. “It’s grown out kind of organically from an effort we had looking at our low-level waste regulations for several years.”

Waste Control Specialists and the environmental groups have asked the NRC to withdraw the proposal, while the TCEQ has suggested the commission either abandon the idea or at least start over with a more thorough process for an entirely new regulation.

For now, the coronavirus pandemic has pushed back the proposal’s timeline – federal regulators recently extended a public comment period on the plan to late October.

“We are discussing with our other state partners and NRC and we hope that they’ll come up with something different or at least be responsive to our comments and the comments of all the stakeholders in this process,” Forbes said.

NFL Player’s Suit Over Painkiller ‘Culture’ Revived by Ninth Circuit
August 7, 2020   NICHOLAS IOVINO

(AP Photo/Rey Del Rio)

SAN FRANCISCO (CN) — After six years of litigation and two appeals, the Ninth Circuit on Friday revived a class action claiming the National Football League negligently allowed teams to push painkillers on hurt athletes, causing permanent injuries and drug addictions for players.

“Despite the NFL’s one-step-removed relationship to the players, it was within the NFL’s control to promulgate rules or guidelines that could improve safety for players across the league,” Senior U.S. Circuit Judge Richard Tallman, a Bill Clinton appointee, wrote in a 20-page opinion.

Lead plaintiff Richard Dent, a former Chicago Bear and NFL Hall of Famer, sued the league in May 2014. He claimed the NFL instructed team doctors from at least 1969 to 2012 to dole out unprescribed drugs without warning players of harmful side effects. Dent says he ended his career with an enlarged heart, permanent nerve damage in his foot and an addiction to painkillers.

U.S. District Judge William Alsup dismissed the lawsuit in 2014, finding because the claims were governed by labor contracts between players and 32 individual NFL teams, the case must go to arbitration.

In 2018, a three-judge Ninth Circuit panel reversed Alsup’s decision, finding the NFL’s duty to handle drugs with reasonable care was governed by federal laws, not labor contracts.

A year later, Alsup again dismissed the case, finding the former players lacked sufficient allegations to support their claim that the NFL played a role in team doctors doling out unprescribed medications to hurt athletes.

On Friday, the Ninth Circuit partly reversed that decision, finding the league could be liable under a “voluntary undertaking theory of negligence” under California law.

The three-judge panel cited the Ninth Circuit’s 2018 decision in Mayall v. USA Water Polo, which found the governing body for water polo in the U.S. could be liable for failing to do more to protect young athletes from concussions.

Tallman and his colleagues found the NFL voluntarily took steps to prevent the misuse of prescription painkillers, but those steps were inadequate. The NFL allegedly created a drug oversight program in 1973. According to the lawsuit, the league required teams to report the volume of drugs given to players, funded studies and commissions to prevent the misuse of drugs, performed audits of each team’s practices, required each club to register storage facilities for medications, and forced teams to make players sign waivers before they could receive Toradol, a strong prescription painkiller.

Despite those actions by the NFL, teams continued to dole out prescription drugs and put hurt players back on the field, exacerbating injuries and increasing each player’s dependence on painkillers, according to the lawsuit.

“The NFL allegedly was aware of this from its audit results but nonetheless turned a blind eye to maximize its revenues,” Tallman wrote.

However, the NFL could still escape liability if the negligence claims are pre-empted by medical care provisions in collective bargaining agreements between players and teams. Because the Ninth Circuit did not have the labor contracts before it on this appeal, it remanded the case to Judge Alsup to determine if the state-law negligence claim is pre-empted by those agreements.

“The district court should examine afresh whether the NFL’s general disclaimer of liability for individual players’ medical treatment is relevant to the sufficiently pled allegations of the organization’s inaction, where audit results demonstrate failure to safely distribute pain killers to keep marquee players in the game and maximize television revenues,” Tallman wrote.

The panel affirmed Alsup’s dismissal of a separate negligence per se claim based on the NFL’s alleged involvement in the handling, distribution and administration of controlled substances. The panel found the players failed to specify what behavior by the league supported that claim.

Senior U.S. Circuit Judges Jay Bybee and N. Randy Smith, both George W. Bush appointees, joined Tallman on the panel.

Plaintiffs’ attorney Steve Silverman, of Silverman Thompson Slutkin White, said his clients are pleased with the Ninth Circuit’s decision.

“Richard Dent and the other plaintiffs have already changed the game for the better by bringing the leagues practices to light with this lawsuit, and collectively are committed to a successful resolution on behalf of themselves and the more than 2,000 former NFL players who have joined this litigation,” Silverman said in an emailed statement.

The NFL’s corporate office and NFL attorney Allen Ruby, of Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom, did not immediately return emails and phone calls requesting comment Friday.

Last year, the Ninth Circuit affirmed Alsup’s dismissal of a separate class action seeking to hold individual NFL teams liable for pushing painkillers on hurt athletes. The appeals court found the players waited too long to file their lawsuit.

Federal Judge ‘Alarmed’ Immigrant Children Still Detained During Pandemic
August 7, 2020 MARTIN MACIAS JR

In this Feb. 19, 2019 file photo, children line up to enter a tent at the Homestead Temporary Shelter for Unaccompanied Children in Homestead, Fla. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee)

LOS ANGELES (CN) — A California federal judge said Friday the Trump administration has not sufficiently explained why immigrant youth continue to be held in federal custody weeks after she ordered their release.

U.S. District Judge Dolly Gee presides over the landmark 1997 Flores settlement agreement that sets national standards on the treatment, detention and release of immigrant children in federal custody.

As cases of the novel coronavirus surged in jurisdictions where immigrant youth detention facilities are located, attorneys for class members filed motions to enforce the settlement.

They cited reports of unsafe health conditions inside facilities and unnecessary delays in granting children release to their parents, a suitable guardian or a court approved sponsor.

Gee, a Barack Obama appointee, ordered U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to release detained immigrant youth who’ve been held for more than 20 days at the agency’s Family Residential Centers.

The order, which set a July 17 deadline, also requested the agency exercise its discretion by also releasing class members’ parents, a procedure Gee has no jurisdiction over.

After parties to the settlement requested a deadline extension, Gee extended it to July 27, adding that while her release mandate was likely “unenforceable by its own terms” the federal government should continue to release class members where conditions are unsafe due to Covid-19.

In a telephonic hearing Friday, Gee said she was “displeased and alarmed” that class members continue to be held in ICE facilities where active Covid-19 outbreaks are occurring.

“Defendants have done nothing to release minors by July 27,” Gee said. “It seems like a month has been squandered and defendants are not doing much of anything.”

A reason for the delays is the difficult choice parents face in deciding to approve their children’s release during a deadly pandemic, a situation made more difficult by the federal government’s decision not to release families together.

Gee blasted Justice Department attorney Sarah Fabian for failing to meet and confer with Flores counsel on release protocols, saying her action “betrayed a lack of understanding” of the court’s procedures.

“Let’s get on the same page. I have to impose a remedy whenever I find a breach,” Gee said. “A mutually agreed upon remedy is usually stronger and better thought out. I didn’t think it would be misconstrued as some permission for defendants to not comply with prior orders. My remedy may be unilateral, or one that neither side likes or one that only one side will like.”

Fabian said the federal government’s position is that it has exhausted its practice of meeting with Flores counsel to shape a policy governing the release of class members.

“That’s disingenuous because the federal government has chosen to implement the policy that has given rise for parents to be in that position,” Gee said.

Peter Schey, an attorney for class members, told Gee he believes she has authority to impose a release procedure that allows counsel to inform detained immigrant children about their rights, as long as it’s a “reasonable interpretation” of the settlement.

“I understand the need to interpret the language of a contract,” Gee said, noting her past rulings ordering the government to adopt healthier sanitation practices. “But new procedures seem to be a different animal.”

The Trump administration has also failed to provide the court a reason why detained class members continue to be held if they’re not categorized as flight risks or dangerous to others, Gee said.

“When I said my July 27 order was ‘unenforceable’ I knew defendants were not going to meet that deadline as I had wanted, but that doesn’t mean defendants don’t have a duty to comply with the settlement agreement,” Gee said.

Flores counsel has requested data on how many class members have been impacted by the coronavirus pandemic.

In a related matter, Gee ordered Fabian to report to the court whether any class members are impacted by a recent ICE practice of detaining immigrant youth in Texas hotels during removal proceedings or while in transit to other facilities.

“I found the information I received about this to be very disturbing,” Gee said.

Fabian said she will comply and added that the practice is likely covered in separate litigation.

“It’s a separate process under a separate authority,” Fabian said, adding that the regulation governing the practice – called Title 42 – has been “reissued and is still underway.”

Carlos Holguin, a Flores counsel member, asked Gee to ensure that independent court monitors can access detention facilities for inspections and receive relevant data for their reports to the court.

Gee said she need not reiterate the Trump administration’s requirement to comply with her standing order governing monitors’ access privileges.

“I want to see that data,” Gee said.

A status conference is set for Sep. 4 in the Central District of California.

California Judge to Decide on Uber, Lyft Driver Classification
August 6, 2020 NICHOLAS IOVINO



SAN FRANCISCO (CN) — The fate of more than 100,000 Uber and Lyft drivers lies in the hands of a state court judge, who after a nearly three-hour hearing Thursday lamented his inability to fully predict the ramifications of a potential court order extending employment benefits to California drivers.

“I feel a little like I’m being asked to jump into a body of water without knowing how deep it is, how cold the water is or what’s going to happen when I get in,” San Francisco Superior Court Judge Ethan Schulman said during a virtual court hearing Thursday.

Joined by the cities of San Francisco and San Diego, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra is asking Judge Schulman to issue a preliminary injunction that would require Uber and Lyft to comply with California’s Assembly Bill 5 and start classifying drivers as employees instead of independent contractors.

The state argues the worker misclassification has deprived drivers of crucial benefits, including minimum wage, overtime, sick pay, reimbursement for car and gas expenses, unemployment insurance, paid family leave and workers’ compensation.

Uber and Lyft say a preliminary injunction would force thousands of drivers to lose earning potential and federal benefits, eliminate scheduling flexibility for workers and require the companies to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on restructuring.

“A sweeping injunction as we have here raises questions on what will be the effect on drivers’ ability to earn income, hours they can work, eligibility for state and federal benefits,” Schulman said.

Attorneys for Uber and Lyft were quick to point out that Judge Schulman and a federal judge previously rejected efforts to make Lyft reclassify drivers as employees in a class action seeking emergency sick pay for drivers.

Both judges found that making Lyft provide a mere three days of sick leave as required by California law to a small portion of eligible drivers would put drivers at risk of losing emergency federal benefits for independent contractors.

But this lawsuit is different, San Francisco Deputy City Attorney Matthew Goldberg told the judge, because it would make drivers eligible for a more comprehensive panoply of state employment benefits, including up to 59 weeks of unemployment pay, up to 52 weeks of disability insurance and up to eight weeks of paid family leave.

“The full range of California benefits is substantial,” Goldberg said.

Representing Lyft, attorney Rohit Singla of Munger Tolles & Olson said drivers would earn less money if classified as employees. He cited a study showing the average Lyft driver makes $20 per hour after car and gas expenses, far more than California’s $13 hourly minimum wage for large businesses.

“They’re asking for this massive injunction that would lead to hundreds of thousands of people losing earning opportunities without evidence of harm,” Singla said.

Singla further insisted that drivers will lose flexibility if classified as employees, but nothing in California’s labor laws prevents companies from letting workers set their own schedules.

The Lyft lawyer also argued that his client could not maintain the same number of drivers if required to provide employment benefits. Goldberg called that claim bogus.

“Whether they reclassify employees or not, there will be precisely the number of drivers to meet the demand of riders,” Goldberg said. “There’s no reason to expect there will be less demand for these services.”

Despite clear evidence that state legislators specifically intended for AB5 to apply to gig companies, Uber attorney Theane Evangelis of Gibson Dunn & Crutcher steadfastly contended that her client is exempt from the law.

Evangelis said Uber is not the “hiring entity” of drivers that is subject to the law. Uber does not employ drivers but rather provides a technology platform that connects drivers to riders, she argued.

She cited recent changes to Uber’s platform that gives California drivers the power to set their own rates for rides. She added that a monthly subscription service for riders means Uber is not dependent on drivers to generate revenue, a concept Judge Schulman had some difficulty accepting.

“You just said Uber is not financially dependent on drivers providing rides,” Schulman said.

Evangelis replied that Uber, like Airbnb and eBay, is merely dependent on users using its platform.

Uber and Lyft also insisted that the balance of harms weighs in their favor because they would have to spend hundreds of millions of dollars hiring new supervisors, creating new procedures and expanding its human resources and payroll systems to reclassify drivers as employees.

Countering that argument, Goldberg noted that both companies have a combined $11 billion in cash reserves and maintain large white-collar work forces to support their platforms. Each of their software developers and white-collar workers get unemployment benefits, disability insurance, paid family leave and other perks, he said.

“Extending this set of benefits to more workers I think administratively is not as difficult as they allege given that they already do this for thousands of workers,” Goldberg told the judge.

After three hours of debate, Judge Schulman took the arguments under submission and said he would issue a written ruling “in matter of days, not weeks.”

Without Feds, Portland Protests Again Peaceful
August 1, 2020 KARINA BROWN

Speakers address a crowd of over 1,000 protesters in Portland on Friday night. (Courthouse News photo/Karina Brown)

PORTLAND, Ore. (CN) — Two nights without federal agents patrolling the federal courthouse in Portland has equaled two nights without violence, but President Donald Trump said that didn’t mean federal troops were leaving the city altogether.

“Homeland Security is not leaving Portland until local police complete cleanup of Anarchists and Agitators!” Trump tweeted on Friday night, the second night in a row without violent exchanges between protesters and law enforcement, and the second night since Governor Kate Brown announced a deal to replace the federal agents guarding the Mark O. Hatfield Federal Courthouse with Oregon State Troopers.

Protesters in Oregon’s largest city have demonstrated every day since May 31 against systemic racism, police brutality and the death of George Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man, by the Minneapolis Police Department. Peaceful protests of all kinds have ranged across the city, even on weekdays with temperatures reaching 100 degrees.

Citing what he claimed was local law enforcement’s inability to quell civil unrest, the president claimed he was sending federal officers with the U.S. Marshals Service, Customs and Border Patrol and the Department of Homeland Security to Portland to protect federal property.

But agents’ actions quickly devolved into violence directed at peaceful protesters, journalists, legal observers and volunteer street medics.

On Friday, U.S. District Judge Michael Simon floated the idea of requiring journalists to be identified by the blue vests issued to legal observers by the American Civil Liberties Union in order to avoid assault or arrest by federal agents under the court’s temporary restraining order.

An attorney for the ACLU said that would raise serious constitutional questions.

And federal agents have shown a willingness to assault legal observers wearing those vests. On the very night that Simon issued his restraining order, federal agents shot legal observer Kat Mahoney in the head with a pink paint ball as she stood across the street from the federal courthouse, observing the protest, according to Mahoney’s declaration.

Later that same night, Mahoney says, a federal officer calmly doused her and three other legal observers with mace “as though he were watering a line of flowers.”

Gov. Brown announced Wednesday that the agents had “agreed to a phased withdrawal” and said federal officers would no longer stay in the city as an “occupying force” and would begin to withdraw Thursday.

Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf used less certain language in his own statement issued Wednesday, leaving open the possibility that federal agents wouldn’t leave the city.

“The department will continue to maintain our current, augmented federal law enforcement personnel in Portland until we are assured that the Hatfield Federal Courthouse and other federal properties will no longer be attacked and that the seat of justice in Portland will remain secure,” Wolf said.

But on Thursday, Trump appeared to add a new condition to the withdrawal of federal troops. Speaking at the White House, Trump gave Gov. Brown a 48-hour deadline to “clean out this beehive of terrorists.” He said federal agents would slowly begin to leave Portland if that condition was satisfied. If not, he told reporters, he planned to send in the National Guard.

That night, Oregon State Troopers replaced federal agents as the only officers visible inside the steel fence surrounding the Mark O. Hatfield Federal Courthouse. They rarely appeared during the night and protests continued peacefully without police intervention.

On Friday, prosecutors charged a teen protester with arson over a fire they said he started on July 28. U.S. Attorney Billy Williams announced that federal agents with the ATF and the U.S. Marshals Service tracked down Gabriel Agard-Berryhill, who Williams claimed started a fire near the main entrance of the Mark O. Hatfield Federal Courthouse by lobbing a “large incendiary object” over the steel fence federal agents erected and into the building’s stone portico, where it set fire to the plywood covering the doors and windows.

“No legitimate protest message is advanced by throwing a large explosive device against a government building,” Williams said in a statement.

Williams said Agard-Berryhill is the same person captured on photos holding a shield in front of “Naked Athena,” a protester who sat naked in front of advancing riot police to show them, she told reporters, what they were firing at. The charges against him carry a maximum of 20 years in prison, and a five-year minimum sentence.

The investigation included reviewing product reviews on Twitter filled out by Agard-Berryhill’s grandmother, according to Williams’ press release. In her review, Agard-Berryhill’s grandmother explained that she was pleased with her purchase of a distinctive green vest, which she says she got “for my grandson who’s a protester downtown, he uses it every night and says it does the job.”

On Friday afternoon, Trump told reporters assembled in the White House Cabinet Room that protesters across the country are assaulting federal agents with Molotov cocktails and frozen water bottles the “size of a football.”

He added an allegation that protesters are throwing soup cans at federal agents that carry the force of a brick. When they get caught, Trump said, protesters claim it’s only “soup from my family.”

He said “the media” is supporting widespread protests against police brutality and systemic racism by accepting protesters’ explanations about the soup cans. Trump said the media’s coverage of months of nationwide protests amounts to collective wonderment: “Isn’t it wonderful to allow protesting?”

The president then answered his own hypothetical question.

“No,” he said.

On Friday night, neither Molotov cocktails nor soup cans — family-made or otherwise — were readily apparent as protests continued at the federal courthouse. Speakers addressed the crowd from the steps of the Multnomah County Justice Center, before heading next door to mill around the fence that still surrounds the federal courthouse.

This time, though, there were no federal officers on the other side, who lately had been wielding both the guns to shoot tear gas canisters and leaf blowers to direct the billowing clouds toward protesters.

Instead, the stone portico and steps leading to the boarded up front doors of the courthouse were empty. Slung across the fence was a 10-foot wide American flag, hung upside down, with the letters BLM printed in big block letters across it. Clusters of balloons were tied to the fence and a dozen sunflowers — a symbol of the wall of moms — were threaded through its links.

Across the Willamette River, several hundred people rallied in honor of Xeryus “Iggy” Tate, a Portland teenager who was murdered four years ago. Dozens of cars wound their way through the city, honking and holding signs in a socially distanced car parade in support of the Black Lives Matter movement.

Even without fresh rounds of tear gas on Friday, and despite the work of city cleaning crews that power washed the streets, there was enough residual tear gas in the air around the federal courthouse to sting the eyes and make the skin tingle. Still, over 1,000 protesters stood in the blocked off street, chanting to the beat of a small drum corps.

“Black Lives Matter! Black Lives Matter! Black Lives Matter!”

11th Circuit Rules Florida School’s Transgender Bathroom Policy Unconstitutional
August 7, 2020 KAYLA GOGGIN

The Elbert P. Tuttle U.S. Courthouse in Atlanta, home of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. (Photo via Eoghanacht/Wikipedia Commons)

ATLANTA (CN) — A Florida school board’s refusal to allow a transgender boy to use the bathroom matching his gender identity was unconstitutional, the 11th Circuit ruled Friday.

In a 2-1 decision, the Atlanta-based appeals court found that the St. Johns County school board violated Nease High School graduate Drew Adams’ civil rights by instructing Adams to use a gender neutral or girls’ restroom and warning him that he would be subject to disciplinary action if he used the boys’ bathroom.

“A public school may not punish its students for gender nonconformity. Neither may a public school harm transgender students by establishing arbitrary, separate rules for their restroom use. The evidence at trial confirms that Mr. Adams suffered both these indignities,” U.S. Circuit Judge Beverly Martin, a Barack Obama appointee, wrote on behalf of the majority Friday.

In a 28-page dissent in which he refers to Adams as “a female who identifies as a male,” U.S. Circuit Judge William Pryor, a George W. Bush appointee, said the majority opinion “distorts the [school board’s] policy, misunderstands the legal claims asserted, and rewrites well-established precedent.”

Pryor warned that the opinion will have “radical consequences for sex-separated bathrooms.”

The 11th Circuit’s ruling will affect schools in Florida, Georgia and Alabama and could lead to a Supreme Court battle over school bathroom policies.

Martin was joined in the majority by U.S. Circuit Judge Jill Pryor, another Obama appointee.

According to the ruling, Adams, who began medically transitioning from female to male before starting high school, used the boys’ restroom for six weeks during the ninth grade. After two anonymous female students who saw Adams entering the restroom complained, school officials ordered him to stop.

No complaints were made by male students who shared bathroom facilities with Adams.

According to court documents, both Adams’ Florida birth certificate and Florida driver’s license identify him as male.

Adams, the ruling states, felt “alienated and humiliated” by the school’s refusal to allow him to use the boys restroom.

Adams and his mother sued the school board in June 2017. After a three-day bench trial, U.S. District Judge Timothy Corrigan issued an injunction preventing the school board from enforcing its bathroom policy against him.

The school board appealed the ruling and the 11th Circuit heard oral arguments in December.

According to Friday’s ruling, school administrators barred Adams from the boys’ bathroom to enforce the school district’s “unwritten bathroom policy” requiring that students use the restroom that coincides with the sex on their enrollment documents.

But the majority ruled that the school district failed to show a “genuine, non-hypothetical privacy justification for excluding Mr. Adams from the boys’ bathroom” and found that the policy violated Title IX of the Education Amendments Act of 1972 and the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection guarantee.

The court ruled that the school’s “policy of exclusion” constitutes discrimination under Title IX, concluding that Title IX “prohibits discrimination against a person because he is transgender, because this constitutes discrimination based on sex.”

The policy “places a special burden on transgender students because their gender identity does not match their sex assigned at birth,” Martin wrote.

In his dissenting opinion, Pryor objected to the majority’s interpretation of Title IX, writing that sex “unambiguously is a classification on the basis of reproductive function” and claiming that sex “has never meant gender identity.”

Pryor went on to argue that Congress could not have intended the term “sex” to include gender identity when the law was enacted in 1972 because the medical community at that time “was firmly opposed to sex reassignment surgery.”

“It is untenable to construe transgender status, which even the medical community saw as a departure from the norm, as altering the norm itself among the general public,” Pryor wrote.

The majority also found that the school board failed to demonstrate any relationship between excluding Adams from the boys’ restrooms and protecting the privacy of other students.

“Simply put, the School Board singled out Mr. Adams’s use of the restroom as problematic, without showing that Adams did, in fact, flout or compromise the privacy of other boys when he was in the boys’ restroom,” Martin wrote.

The majority opinion states that the policy “advances gender stereotypes by deeming Mr. Adams ‘truly’ female, even though he produced legal and medical documentation showing he was male” and “treats transgender students like Mr. Adams differently because they fail to conform to gender stereotypes.”

Pryor warned that the majority opinion could have dire legal consequences, saying, “Anyone can take advantage of the majority’s demolition of sex-specific bathroom privacy.”

“The majority does not offer a meaningful way to distinguish this appeal from one that challenges sex-separated bathrooms and locker rooms. It only insists that the issue is not before it. But do not be fooled: future plaintiffs can still leverage the majority’s narrow view of privacy,” Pryor wrote.

“Ultimately, if the privacy interest at stake is untethered from using the bathroom away from the opposite sex or from biological differences between the sexes, then no justification exists for separating bathrooms—or any related facility—by sex.”

Lockdown Emissions Drop Will Have No Effect on Climate. But the Right Recovery Could

A green recovery that invests in low carbon technologies, avoids fossil fuel lock-in, and cuts global emissions to net-zero by 2050 could put the planet on track to meeting the Paris Agreement goals and curbing climate change.

Figure a (left) is annual mean daily emissions from 1970–2019 (black line). The red line shows the daily emissions up to end of April 2020 estimated here. Figure b, is daily CO2 emissions in 2020 (red line, as in Figure a). (Le Quéré, et al. / Nature Climate Change)

August 7, 2020 VICTORIA PRIESKOP

(CN) — A study released Friday by the University of Leeds warns that though the sudden reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and air pollutants during the Covid-19 lockdown is a good sign, it’s unlikely to lead to lasting impact on climate change. But if strong climate policy changes are implemented as part of an economic recovery plan, future warming could be halved in the next decade.

Carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxide and other emissions have fallen between 10 and 30% globally since February 2020 due to the massive behavioral shifts seen during lockdown. Despite this, the study predicts only a tiny impact on the climate by 2030, mainly because the decrease in emissions from confinement measures is temporary.

The team’s findings, published today in Nature Climate Change, predict that if post-COVID pollution returns to previous levels, there will be only 0.02 degree Fahrenheit reduction in global warming rates by 2030. But the study’s model also shows that a pathway with a strong green stimulus, investing around 1.2% of global GDP in low carbon technologies, and including climate policy measures, could prevent just over half a degree of additional warming by 2050.

Study lead author Professor Piers Forster, director of the Priestley International Centre for Climate at Leeds and principal investigator of the EU’s CONSTRAIN consortium, said, “The choices made now could give us a strong chance of avoiding 0.3 degrees Celsius (0.54 degrees Fahrenheit) of additional warming by mid-century, halving the expected warming under current policies. This could mean the difference between success and failure when it comes to avoiding dangerous climate change.”

Researchers analyzed the global mobility data from Google and Apple. They calculated how 10 different greenhouse gases and air pollutants changed between February and June 2020 in 123 countries. The team developed a simple set of assumptions to estimate how lockdown emissions changes translated into temperature change — the direct effect of global lockdown on climate.

These choices included economic recoveries driven by green stimulus packages or increasing reliance on fossil fuels, which were compared to a baseline reflecting a direct return to pre-Covid policies and associated emissions levels within the next two years.

In a model which assumed an additional 1.2% of GDP in low carbon technologies and reduced investment in fossil fuels, researchers predicted a 50% decrease in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 and global net-zero CO2 by 2050.

The researchers concluded that investment choices in economic recovery will strongly affect the climate trajectory to mid-century. A green recovery that invests in low carbon technologies, avoids fossil fuel lock-in, and cuts global emissions to net-zero by 2050, would mean we avoid around 0.54 degrees Fahrenheit of warming by 2050 — half of the expected 1.08 degrees of warming under current policies.

Taking the Covid reset opportunity would also set the world on track to meet the Paris Agreement’s long-term temperature goal. In other words, avoiding the 0.54 degrees of warming could mean the difference between the world facing or avoiding dangerous climate change, according to the study.

Study co-author Matthew Gidden from Climate Analytics-Berlin said, “The lasting effect of Covid-19 on climate will not depend on what happens during the crisis, but what comes after. “Stimulus focused on green recovery and low-carbon investment can provide the economic kickstart needed while putting the world on track to meet climate pledges.”

Trump calls audience at his Bedminster golf club a 'peaceful protest'

David Knowles
Editor,
Yahoo News•August 7, 2020

At a surprise press briefing Friday at his private golf club in Bedminster, N.J., President Trump said his audience of well-to-do supporters were involved in a “peaceful protest” and therefore did not need to adhere to state coronavirus guidelines prohibiting large gatherings.

Trump was asked about his earlier assertion that the pandemic was “disappearing” by a reporter who noted the crowd in attendance seemed to be violating New Jersey restrictions meant to slow the spread of the virus.

“You’re wrong on that because it’s a political activity and they have exceptions, political activity and it’s also a peaceful protest,” Trump responded.

Before the hastily called news conference began, members of Trump’s private club filed inside the room where the president was to speak, most of them not wearing masks.

Country club members awaiting the president pic.twitter.com/cm9FOvtoC9
— Jonathan Lemire (@JonLemire) August 7, 2020

Shortly before the president took to the podium, staffers distributed face masks to the attendees, many of whom had already been standing shoulder-to-shoulder inside for approximately half an hour.

As of Friday night, more than 161,000 Americans have died of COVID-19, which has sickened more than 4.9 million people here. This week, New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy retightened restrictions on indoor gatherings in the state following a recent surge in new coronavirus cases. The new guidelines prohibit indoor gatherings of more than 25 people.

“To me they pretty much look like they all have, pretty much all have masks on,” Trump continued. “You know you have an exclusion in the law. It says peaceful protest or political activity, right?”

In remarks ahead of questions from the press, Trump floated the idea of signing executive orders to extend unemployment insurance should a deal not be reached with Democrats in Congress, as well as one guaranteeing that insurance companies cover pre-existing medical conditions, something that the Affordable Care Act already put in place.

Trump Joins His Golf Club Guests in Derailing Presser to Bash Journalist Who Asked About Masks

Blake Montgomery,
The Daily Beast•August 7, 2020

Joshua Roberts/Reuters

Members of President Trump’s New Jersey golf club derailed a Friday press conference with him to jeer at a reporter who confronted the president about COVID-19 deaths and noted that the guests themselves weren’t wearing masks.

The moment arose after Trump repeated the lie that the new coronavirus pandemic, which he continually referred to as “the China virus,” would “disappear” and that it was already on track to do so. COVID-19 cases are actually rising across the country.

Trump's paying Bedminster customers boo when a reporter points out that many of them aren't wearing masks, violating New Jersey law. Trump defends them by describing them as "peaceful protesters" of the media, then ends the news conference to a round of applause. pic.twitter.com/5DVow55B1G

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 8, 2020

A reporter pushed Trump about his well-documented habit of downplaying the virus: “You said that the pandemic is disappearing, but we lost 6,000 Americans this week, and just in this room, you have dozens of people not following the guidelines in New Jersey ... ”

Trump’s supporters at the Trump National Golf Club Bedminster began booing before the reporter could finish his sentence, and the president shot back at the journalist: “No, they don’t have to. It’s a political activity. You’re wrong on that because they have exceptions for political activity. It’s also a peaceful protest.”


To deafening cheers from his country club guests, Trump claimed that “it looks like they all have masks on” and pointed to “an exclusion in the law.”

“It says, ‘Peaceful protests or political activity.’ You can call that political activity, but I’d call it peaceful protest because they heard you were coming up, and they know the news is fake. They understand it better than anybody,” he said, as his supporters cheered him on again.

Awaiting @POTUS presser in Bedminster. Many members of his club are here not social distancing and not wearing masks.

A club official just told the crowd to “spread out a little bit” because “the tweets are going out” about their noncompliance with NJ regulations pic.twitter.com/bzyLVwqS0u
— Toluse Olorunnipa (@ToluseO) August 7, 2020

New Jersey coronavirus regulations state, “Indoor gatherings must be limited to 25 people or 25 percent of a room's capacity—whichever number is lower. All attendees at indoor gatherings must wear face coverings and stay six feet apart.” Though Trump claimed his guests were wearing masks, numerous photos from the presser showed a crowd of guests without masks on.

CNN reported the conflict between Trump’s guests and the press may have been less than spontaneous. A live mic reportedly caught Trump telling his guests before the press conference, “You’ll get to meet the fake news tonight. You’ll get to see what I have to go through. Who’s there? Oh all my killers are there, wow. So you’ll get to see some of the people that we deal with every day.”

Trump has been reluctant to wear a face mask at public appearances, only donning one publicly in mid-July after 130,000 Americans had died of COVID-19. He’s promoted pseudoscience about their ineffectiveness, and Republican politicians across the country have followed his lead. Public health experts across the world agree that face coverings help slow the spread of the coronavirus. In recent weeks, he’s recast his response and said that those who wear face masks are patriotic for protecting fellow citizens.

this is the scene pic.twitter.com/SbO20iBxa4
— Justin Sink (@justinsink) August 7, 2020

UPDATED
Trump Appointee Shakes Up Postal Service Amid Mail-Delay Furor

August 7, 2020 BRANDI BUCHMAN

WASHINGTON (CN) — Suffering losses of $9 billion last year and on track to do worse in 2020, the postmaster general on Friday announced a reorganization of the service and a freeze on executive hiring amid the Covid-19 pandemic and an impending election.  

Louis DeJoy, in the position for eight weeks, announced the reductions to overtime for operations but underlined that the U.S. Postal Service would maintain a “robust and proven process” as it prepares to deliver election mail for what is shaping up to be a largely absentee and mail-in venture due to the continuing spread of the novel coronavirus.

“Despite any assertions to the contrary we are not slowing down election mail or any other mail,” DeJoy said Friday.

The postmaster general has a favorable relationship with President Donald Trump and the Republican National Committee. He previously served as the RNC convention chairman and donated more than $2 million to the Trump Victory Fund and assorted Republican ventures since the 2016 election. Trump also nominated DeJoy’s wife, Aldona Wos, to serve as ambassador to Canada for the U.S.

In a stance largely attributed to Trump’s personal feud with Amazon owner Jeff Bezos, the president has openly criticized the U.S. Postal Service as inefficient for years. Just this past April, during a press conference at the White House in April, Trump labeled the service a “joke” and called for an increase in delivery rates of up to four times the current amount.

Bezos has drawn the president’s ire both for his incomparable wealth and his ownership of the Washington Post, a news outlet Trump has frequently harangued as a purveyor of “presidential harassment!”

With the hamstrung Postal Service on track to lose more than $11 billion this year, a handful of Democrat lawmakers in both the House and Senate called Friday on Tammy Whitcomb, the Postal Service inspector general, to begin an audit of DeJoy.

Sent weeks after House lawmakers passed an amendment to stop DeJoy’s realignment efforts, the letter is signed by House Oversight Committee Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney and Senators Elizabeth Warren and Ron Wyden, the latter of whom became the first U.S. senator elected by an all-mail election in 1996.

The service has faced complaints of oppressive overtime forced on mail carriers in the past and increasingly sharper criticism for its decision earlier this year to permit delivery centers the right to delay mail if necessary for up to one day at processing facilities.

Michigan Senator Gary Peters announced Thursday he was initiating an investigation into complaints of widespread mail delays. Peters will have considerable leverage to pursue the probe as the ranking member of the powerful Senate Governmental Affairs Committee.

Trump regularly asserts without evidence that mail-in elections are prone to fraud. Citing the anticipated high volume of mail-in ballots, he suggested earlier this week the November election would be a “catastrophe.”

DeJoy’s changes are said to include cutbacks to overtime and, as documented by The New York Times and others, reports of carriers leaving mail behind on workroom floors or docks.

“Was Mr. DeJoy’s implementation of these changes consistent with the Postal Service’s internal policies and procedures and applicable legal requirements, including requirements governing consultation with the U.S. Postal Regulatory Commission and postal employees and customers?” the lawmakers asked in their letter to the administrator Friday.

DeJoy appeared to anticipate some pushback from legislators while speaking Friday to members of the Postal Service Governors Board.

“Rather than sensationalizing isolated operational incidents that I acknowledge can occur and have always occurred in a business of our size and scope or attempting to impose unfunded mandates unrelated to any postal policies, I ask members of Congress to take action on this one legislative burdensome issue that will actually make a difference,” he said.

Among their queries, Democrats are also probing potential conflicts of interest. DeJoy and his wife own anywhere from $30 million to $75 million worth of assets in competing delivery and shipment services like J.B. Hunt.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer met with the postmaster general on Wednesday on Capitol Hill amid tense negotiations for the next round of Covid-19 relief. The House initially proposed a $25 billion infusion for the Postal Service — without a call for repayment — but have since pared back, now offering $10 billion loan from the Department of the Treasury.

U.S. lawmakers from both parties sound alarm on Postal Service changes blamed for delays

Complaints about backlogs come a few months ahead of election, expected increase in mail-in vote

The Associated Press · Posted: Aug 07, 2020

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of Calif., and Senate Minority Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, speak to media on Capitol Hill in Washington this week. The Democratic leaders are concerned about changes to the U.S. Postal Service in a year of pandemic and a general election. (Carolyn Kaster/The Associated Press)

Lawmakers from both parties are calling on the U.S. Postal Service to immediately reverse operational changes that are causing delays in deliveries across the country just as big volume increases are expected for mail-in election voting.

Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said Thursday that changes imposed by the new Republican postmaster general "threaten the timely delivery of mail — including medicines for seniors, paycheques for workers and absentee ballots for voters — that is essential to millions of Americans."

In separate letters, two Montana Republicans, Sen. Steve Daines and Rep. Greg Gianforte, also urged the Postal Service to reverse the July directive, which eliminates overtime for hundreds of thousands of postal workers and mandates that mail be kept until the next day if distribution centres are running late.

And 84 House members — including four Republicans — signed yet another letter blasting the changes and urging an immediate reversal.

"This action, if not rescinded, will negatively impact mail delivery for Montanans and unacceptably increase the risk of late prescriptions, commercial products or bill delivery," Daines said Thursday in a letter to Postmaster General Louis DeJoy.

"Delaying mail service is unacceptable," Gianforte wrote to DeJoy. "Do not continue down this road."

In their letter, the 84 House members said it is "vital that the Postal Service does not reduce mail delivery hours, which could harm rural communities, seniors, small businesses and millions of Americans who rely on the mail for critical letters and packages."

The letter was led by Rep. Carolyn Maloney, a Democrat from New York and the chair of the House's oversight committee, who has called on DeJoy to testify at a hearing on Sept. 17.

The flurry of letters came as Sen. Gary Peters, the top Democrat on a Senate panel that oversees the Postal Service launched an investigation into the operational changes.
'Our financial picture is dire'

The cost-cutting measures, intended to address the Postal Service's longtime financial problems, were imposed last month after DeJoy, a Republican fundraiser and former supply chain executive, took over the top job in June.

DeJoy, 63, of North Carolina, is a major donor to President Donald Trump and the Republican Party, as well as the husband of incoming U.S. ambassador to Canada, Aldona Wos.

DeJoy is the first postmaster general in nearly two decades who is not a career postal employee.

He offered a gloomy picture of the 630,00-employee agency Friday in his first public remarks since taking the top job in June.

"Our financial position is dire, stemming from substantial declines in mail volume, a broken business model and a management strategy that has not adequately addressed these issues," DeJoy told the postal board of governors at a meeting Friday.

"Without dramatic change, there is no end in sight," DeJoy said.

U.S. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, who took on the role in June, met with select lawmakers this week, but has yet to testify on apparent changes at the Postal Service. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

While package deliveries to homebound Americans were up more than 50 per cent, that was offset by continued declines in first-class and business mail, even as costs increased significantly to pay for personal protective equipment and replace workers who got sick or chose to stay home out of fear of the virus, DeJoy said.

In his first month on the job, DeJoy said he directed the agency to vigorously "focus on the ingrained inefficiencies in our operations," including by applying strict limits on overtime.

"By running our operations on time and on schedule, and by not incurring unnecessary overtime or other costs, we will enhance our ability to be sustainable and ... continue to provide high-quality, affordable service," DeJoy said.

While not acknowledging widespread complaints by members of Congress about delivery delays nationwide, DeJoy said the agency will "aggressively monitor and quickly address service issues."

In his remarks to the postal board of governors, DeJoy called election mail handling "a robust and proven process."

While there will "likely be an unprecedented increase in election mail volume due to the pandemic, the Postal Service has ample capacity to deliver all election mail securely and on time in accordance with our delivery standards, and we will do so," DeJoy said.

"However ... we cannot correct the errors of [state and local] election boards if they fail to deploy processes that take our normal processing and delivery standards into account."
More money needed, Democrats say

In the Senate, Peters is asking the public to provide their stories about delays or other problems with deliveries.

"For 245 years, the Postal Service has worked to provide reliable, consistent and on-time delivery that keeps Americans connected no matter where they live — especially in rural areas," Peters said.

"Unfortunately, in recent weeks, I've heard firsthand from constituents, postal workers and local officials in Michigan who have encountered problems with the timely and dependable service they count on to conduct business, get prescription medications and critical supplies and even exercise their right to vote."

Letter carriers load mail trucks for deliveries at a U.S. Postal Service facility in McLean, Va., on July 31. Concerns have been expressed to changes in overtime and workload that may be slowing down mail delivery. (J. Scott Applewhite/The Associated Press)

Democrats have pushed for $10 billion US for the Postal Service in talks with Republicans on a huge COVID-19 response bill.

The figure is down from a $25-billion plan in a House-passed coronavirus measure. Key Republicans whose rural constituents are especially reliant on the post office support the idea.

Trump, a vocal critic of the Postal Service, contended Wednesday that "the Post Office doesn't have enough time" to handle a significant increase in mail-in ballots. "I mean you're talking about millions of votes. It's a catastrophe waiting to happen."

David Partenheimer, a spokesperson for the Postal Service, earlier in the week disputed reports that the Postal Service is slowing down election mail or any other mail.

While Democrats have been more vocal in their criticism, some Republican lawmakers have also expressed concern.

With her state's vast and difficult terrain, "the Postal Service is a primary source of knowledge, commerce and basic necessities," said Sen. Lisa Murkowski, a Republican from Alaska.

For Alaskans, she said additional help from Congress "is truly a necessity — not a convenience."

Republican Reps. Peter King of New York, David McKinley of West Virginia, Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania and Daniel Webster of Florida, meanwhile, joined the House letter, which was signed by 80 Democrats.

Trump Appointee Shakes Up Postal Service Amid Mail-Delay Furor

August 7, 2020 BRANDI BUCHMAN

Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, left, is escorted Wednesday to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office on Capitol Hill in Washington. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

WASHINGTON (CN) — Suffering losses of $9 billion last year and on track to do worse in 2020, the postmaster general on Friday announced a reorganization of the service and a freeze on executive hiring amid the Covid-19 pandemic and an impending election.

Louis DeJoy, in the position for eight weeks, announced the reductions to overtime for operations but underlined that the U.S. Postal Service would maintain a “robust and proven process” as it prepares to deliver election mail for what is shaping up to be a largely absentee and mail-in venture due to the continuing spread of the novel coronavirus.

“Despite any assertions to the contrary we are not slowing down election mail or any other mail,” DeJoy said Friday.

The postmaster general has a favorable relationship with President Donald Trump and the Republican National Committee. He previously served as the RNC convention chairman and donated more than $2 million to the Trump Victory Fund and assorted Republican ventures since the 2016 election. Trump also nominated DeJoy’s wife, Aldona Wos, to serve as ambassador to Canada for the U.S.

In a stance largely attributed to Trump’s personal feud with Amazon owner Jeff Bezos, the president has openly criticized the U.S. Postal Service as inefficient for years. Just this past April, during a press conference at the White House in April, Trump labeled the service a “joke” and called for an increase in delivery rates of up to four times the current amount.

Bezos has drawn the president’s ire both for his incomparable wealth and his ownership of the Washington Post, a news outlet Trump has frequently harangued as a purveyor of “presidential harassment!”

With the hamstrung Postal Service on track to lose more than $11 billion this year, a handful of Democrat lawmakers in both the House and Senate called Friday on Tammy Whitcomb, the Postal Service inspector general, to begin an audit of DeJoy.

Sent weeks after House lawmakers passed an amendment to stop DeJoy’s realignment efforts, the letter is signed by House Oversight Committee Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney and Senators Elizabeth Warren and Ron Wyden, the latter of whom became the first U.S. senator elected by an all-mail election in 1996.

The service has faced complaints of oppressive overtime forced on mail carriers in the past and increasingly sharper criticism for its decision earlier this year to permit delivery centers the right to delay mail if necessary for up to one day at processing facilities.

Michigan Senator Gary Peters announced Thursday he was initiating an investigation into complaints of widespread mail delays. Peters will have considerable leverage to pursue the probe as the ranking member of the powerful Senate Governmental Affairs Committee.

Trump regularly asserts without evidence that mail-in elections are prone to fraud. Citing the anticipated high volume of mail-in ballots, he suggested earlier this week the November election would be a “catastrophe.”

DeJoy’s changes are said to include cutbacks to overtime and, as documented by The New York Times and others, reports of carriers leaving mail behind on workroom floors or docks.

“Was Mr. DeJoy’s implementation of these changes consistent with the Postal Service’s internal policies and procedures and applicable legal requirements, including requirements governing consultation with the U.S. Postal Regulatory Commission and postal employees and customers?” the lawmakers asked in their letter to the administrator Friday.

DeJoy appeared to anticipate some pushback from legislators while speaking Friday to members of the Postal Service Governors Board.

“Rather than sensationalizing isolated operational incidents that I acknowledge can occur and have always occurred in a business of our size and scope or attempting to impose unfunded mandates unrelated to any postal policies, I ask members of Congress to take action on this one legislative burdensome issue that will actually make a difference,” he said.

Among their queries, Democrats are also probing potential conflicts of interest. DeJoy and his wife own anywhere from $30 million to $75 million worth of assets in competing delivery and shipment services like J.B. Hunt.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer met with the postmaster general on Wednesday on Capitol Hill amid tense negotiations for the next round of Covid-19 relief. The House initially proposed a $25 billion infusion for the Postal Service — without a call for repayment — but have since pared back, now offering $10 billion loan from the Department of the Treasury.

Trump Appointee Shakes Up Postal Service Amid Mail-Delay Furor

August 7, 2020 BRANDI BUCHMAN

Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, left, is escorted Wednesday to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office on Capitol Hill in Washington. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

WASHINGTON (CN) — Suffering losses of $9 billion last year and on track to do worse in 2020, the postmaster general on Friday announced a reorganization of the service and a freeze on executive hiring amid the Covid-19 pandemic and an impending election.

Louis DeJoy, in the position for eight weeks, announced the reductions to overtime for operations but underlined that the U.S. Postal Service would maintain a “robust and proven process” as it prepares to deliver election mail for what is shaping up to be a largely absentee and mail-in venture due to the continuing spread of the novel coronavirus.

“Despite any assertions to the contrary we are not slowing down election mail or any other mail,” DeJoy said Friday.

The postmaster general has a favorable relationship with President Donald Trump and the Republican National Committee. He previously served as the RNC convention chairman and donated more than $2 million to the Trump Victory Fund and assorted Republican ventures since the 2016 election. Trump also nominated DeJoy’s wife, Aldona Wos, to serve as ambassador to Canada for the U.S.

In a stance largely attributed to Trump’s personal feud with Amazon owner Jeff Bezos, the president has openly criticized the U.S. Postal Service as inefficient for years. Just this past April, during a press conference at the White House in April, Trump labeled the service a “joke” and called for an increase in delivery rates of up to four times the current amount.

Bezos has drawn the president’s ire both for his incomparable wealth and his ownership of the Washington Post, a news outlet Trump has frequently harangued as a purveyor of “presidential harassment!”

With the hamstrung Postal Service on track to lose more than $11 billion this year, a handful of Democrat lawmakers in both the House and Senate called Friday on Tammy Whitcomb, the Postal Service inspector general, to begin an audit of DeJoy.

Sent weeks after House lawmakers passed an amendment to stop DeJoy’s realignment efforts, the letter is signed by House Oversight Committee Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney and Senators Elizabeth Warren and Ron Wyden, the latter of whom became the first U.S. senator elected by an all-mail election in 1996.

The service has faced complaints of oppressive overtime forced on mail carriers in the past and increasingly sharper criticism for its decision earlier this year to permit delivery centers the right to delay mail if necessary for up to one day at processing facilities.

Michigan Senator Gary Peters announced Thursday he was initiating an investigation into complaints of widespread mail delays. Peters will have considerable leverage to pursue the probe as the ranking member of the powerful Senate Governmental Affairs Committee.

Trump regularly asserts without evidence that mail-in elections are prone to fraud. Citing the anticipated high volume of mail-in ballots, he suggested earlier this week the November election would be a “catastrophe.”

DeJoy’s changes are said to include cutbacks to overtime and, as documented by The New York Times and others, reports of carriers leaving mail behind on workroom floors or docks.

“Was Mr. DeJoy’s implementation of these changes consistent with the Postal Service’s internal policies and procedures and applicable legal requirements, including requirements governing consultation with the U.S. Postal Regulatory Commission and postal employees and customers?” the lawmakers asked in their letter to the administrator Friday.

DeJoy appeared to anticipate some pushback from legislators while speaking Friday to members of the Postal Service Governors Board.

“Rather than sensationalizing isolated operational incidents that I acknowledge can occur and have always occurred in a business of our size and scope or attempting to impose unfunded mandates unrelated to any postal policies, I ask members of Congress to take action on this one legislative burdensome issue that will actually make a difference,” he said.

Among their queries, Democrats are also probing potential conflicts of interest. DeJoy and his wife own anywhere from $30 million to $75 million worth of assets in competing delivery and shipment services like J.B. Hunt.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer met with the postmaster general on Wednesday on Capitol Hill amid tense negotiations for the next round of Covid-19 relief. The House initially proposed a $25 billion infusion for the Postal Service — without a call for repayment — but have since pared back, now offering $10 billion loan from the Department of the Treasury.

Top Trump Donor Named Next Postmaster General May 6, 2020 In "Government"

Here’s How the Trump Donor in Charge of the USPS Could Sabotage November’s Election

KEYA VAKIL

Originally Published AUGUST 7, 2020

Louis DeJoyPostmaster General Louis DeJoy, left, is escorted to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, Aug. 5, 2020. 

Some clarity is beginning to emerge from the bipartisan Washington talks on a huge COVID-19 response bill. An exchange of offers and meeting devoted to the Postal Service on Wednesday indicates the White House is moving slightly in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's direction on issues like aid to states and local governments and unemployment insurance benefits. But the negotiations have a long ways to go. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

Elections experts and Democrats are concerned that Louis DeJoy, the new postmaster general and longtime Republican donor, is helping President Trump set the groundwork to dispute the validity of mail-in-ballots this November.

With less than 90 days until Election Day, an increasing number of elected officials and voting rights advocates are sounding the alarms over what they view as the Trump administration’s attempt to sabotage the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) ahead of an election in which record numbers of Americans are expected to vote by mail.

Democratic Sen. Gary Peters of Michigan announced Thursday he plans to launch an investigation into new USPS policies implemented by Louis DeJoy, the agency’s new postmaster general and a top Republican donor and Trump ally.

Peters is the ranking Democrat on the Senate’s Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, which has oversight of the USPS. He told the Washington Post on Thursday that his investigation would focus on DeJoy’s new operational policy banning employees from working overtime, which has resulted in days-long delays in the delivery of medication, paychecks, and absentee ballots.

The Democrat also received back-up from several Republicans, including Sen. Steve Daines and Rep. Greg Gianforte of Montana, who urged the USPS to reverse the policy.

“This action, if not rescinded, will negatively impact mail delivery for Montanans and unacceptably increase the risk of late prescriptions, commercial products or bill delivery,″ Daines said Thursday in a letter to DeJoy.

“Delaying mail service is unacceptable,” Gianforte wrote in his own letter. “Do not continue down this road.”

Another 84 House members, including four Republicans, also sent DeJoy a letter criticizing his changes and demanding a reversal.

DeJoy has defended this approach by saying it will help cut costs for the long-beleaguered agency, but it has also forced workers to leave mail behind at post offices and processing plants if they’re running late. Other programs being tested at some facilities have forced USPS employees to leave behind most of a day’s mail to be sorted in the afternoon, rather than delivering it the day it was received, the Post reported.

RELATED: 13 Groups of People Who Will Be Crushed If Trump Doesn’t Save the Postal Service

This has led to delays in cities across the country, including Baltimore, Chicago, Philadelphia, and the Bay Area in California, sparking concerns that such slowdowns could cause chaos ahead of November’s election.

With the coronavirus pandemic still raging across much of the nation, tens of millions of voters are planning to vote by mail rather than risk exposing themself to the virus at polling locations. Even before the pandemic, voting by mail was a readily available option in many states, but to accommodate the surge in demand, 17 other states and Washington D.C. have also made it easier for residents to vote by mail, according to a Washington Post analysis.

Currently, only eight states, including New York and Texas, require voters provide an excuse beyond fear of COVID-19 to be eligible for a mail-in ballot. 

RELATED: 3 Claims About Voting-By-Mail That Are Totally Wrong

Although many Republican-led states are among those that have moved to increase access to mail-in voting, President Trump has taken a different path. Amid plummeting poll numbers and fears that he could lose his bid for re-election due to his mismanagement of the coronavirus pandemic, President Trump has spent months attacking mail-in voting with no evidence to back up his statements.

Trump has said mail-in balloting allows for abuse and fraud and would benefit Democrats, even though each of those claims have been debunked time and time again. Research shows that voter fraud is exceedingly rare. A recent Washington Post analysis of data from three vote-by-mail states found that officials identified only 372 possible cases of double voting or voting on behalf of deceased people out of about 14.6 million votes cast by mail in the 2016 and 2018 general elections, or 0.0025%.

Instead, voting rights advocates worry that Trump is setting the stage to dispute the validity of mail-in-ballots altogether.

“Must know Election results on the night of the Election, not days, months, or even years later!” he tweeted last week.

Because of Trump’s attacks, a sharp partisan divide has emerged over mail-in voting, with Democrats being significantly more likely than Republicans to say they will cast their ballot from home in this year’s election.

DeJoy’s policy changes have fueled further concerns among election experts and lawmakers, who worry it’s a cynical ploy that could lead to millions of ballots—most of which are likely to be Democratic—being thrown out in November, potentially tipping the election to Trump.

Trump's gutting of USPS could lead to 1000s of ballots thrown out. "If they keep this up until the election, there’s no telling how many days-worth of delays there could be. I mean, we’ll be delivering political mail days after the election” a postal worker from California said pic.twitter.com/8F8oN0APU1— Ari Berman (@AriBerman) July 31, 2020

They have also raised concerns about DeJoy’s massive conflicts of interest. The investigative journalism website Sludge reported last week that DeJoy donated $114,500 to a special Republican National Committee legal fund dedicated to filing lawsuits to prevent states from expanding voting access. He and his wife, Aldona Wos, the ambassador-nominee to Canada, have also invested between $30.1 million and $75.3 million in assets in USPS competitors or contractors, according to Wos’s financial disclosure documents filed with the Office of Government Ethics.

Those ties have some worried that DeJoy was not only installed to undermine the USPS before the election, but also to pave the path for the agency to be privatized, a longtime goal of conservatives.

His efforts have been met with massive pushback, however, and are under increasing scrutiny. Election experts have called for the Postal Service to reverse its new policies, saying they could damage voter trust in mail voting or lead to ballots going uncounted in an election.

“There needs to be some very serious reconsideration of some of the recent USPS policies that have resulted in delays, things like reduction or elimination of overtime,” David Becker, executive director of the nonprofit, nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation & Research, told the Post.

Sen. Peters was much more blunt in his assessment of the new policy. “If policies are being put in place right now to actually slow down the delivery of the mail, that would be outrageous,” he told the Post.

Those comments came just one day after Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called on DeJoy to reverse his policy and made clear they wanted to secure funding for USPS to ensure the sanctity of November’s elections. 

RELATED: I’m a Republican. Everyone — Including My Party — Should Embrace Voting By Mail.

“Elections are sacred,” Schumer told reporters after a Wednesday meeting with DeJoy. “To do cutbacks when ballots, all ballots, have to be counted—we can’t say, ‘Oh, we’ll get 94% of them.’ It’s insufficient.”

Trump, meanwhile, spent Wednesday escalating his attacks on vote-by-mail, announcing a federal lawsuit to block the Nevada legislature from expanding the state’s mail-in voting system. But muddling his own message, Trump also took to Twitter to call on Florida Republicans to vote by mail, alleging the state’s system was more reliable because it’s led by a Republican governor, while Nevada is led by a Democrat.

Florida, it should be noted, also voted for Trump in 2016. Nevada did not.

Nevada has ZERO infrastructure for Mail-In Voting. It will be a corrupt disaster if not ended by the Courts. It will take months, or years, to figure out. Florida has built a great infrastructure, over years, with two great Republican Governors. Florida, send in your Ballots!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 5, 2020

While that battle continues, Justin Glass, director of the postal service’s election mail operations, defended the USPS and said the agency was prepared to handle the sharp increase in mail-in ballots this November.

Speaking with Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose and other state election officials on Thursday, Glass denied reports that postal service had completely ended overtime and said the agency’s recent issues were only temporary and would not affect ballots.

“There is not going to be an impact on service,” Glass said. “We are not going to cut off operations and really leave election mail sitting there by itself.”

Those reassurances have not eased the concerns of Democrats, who made clear they would continue to pressure DeJoy to reverse course and restore reliable mail delivery, without delays.

RELATED: A Healthy and Functioning Democracy? Why Voters Say Voting by Mail Is a Great Thing for the U.S.

“For 245 years, the Postal Service has worked to provide reliable, consistent and on-time delivery that keeps Americans connected no matter where they live – especially in rural areas,” Peters said in a statement on Thursday. “I will be working to get to the bottom of any changes that the new Postmaster General may be directing that undercut the Postal Service’s tradition of effective service.”

Keya Vakil Keya is a reporter at COURIER, where he covers healthcare, education, the economy, and the occasional story about millennials. Prior to joining Courier Newsroom, Keya worked as a researcher in the film industry and dabbled in the political world.