United States | News & Politics

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/36475278

The federal investigation into the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk has yet to find a link between the alleged shooter, 22-year-old Tyler Robinson, and left-wing groups on which President Donald Trump and his administration have pledged to crack down after the killing, three sources familiar with the probe told NBC News.

One person familiar with the federal investigation said that “thus far, there is no evidence connecting the suspect with any left-wing groups.”

“Every indication so far is that this was one guy who did one really bad thing because he found Kirk’s ideology personally offensive,” this person continued.

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/27811523

Top regulatory officials met with agricultural and chemical industry representatives dozens of times in the first few months after President Donald Trump took office in January, government records show — meetings that were followed by a series of regulatory rollbacks and a downplaying of pesticide concerns by the administration’s “Make America Healthy Again” (MAHA) Commission.

From February to mid-May, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) leaders accepted meetings with representatives from at least 50 industry associations and companies, including agricultural and chemical giants such as Bayer, Corteva, BASF, Dow and the agrichemical lobbying group CropLife America, as well as the American Soybean Association, the National Cotton Council and others.

The meetings also included energy giants like ExxonMobil, Phillips 66, and companies working in plastics or chemical production such as Occidental Chemical Corporation. Some scheduled meetings involved representatives from multiple companies and their legal counsel or lobbyists.

Notably, the industry meetings involved former industry insiders who now are in top positions at the EPA: Nancy Beck, formerly an executive at the American Chemistry Council who is now the EPA’s principal deputy assistant administrator in the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention, and Lynn Ann Dekleva, who previously worked at DuPont and as a lobbyist at the American Chemistry Council and is now the deputy assistant administrator of the same EPA office.

archived (Wayback Machine)

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/27811429

Utah laws cap wildfire damages and let utilities pass the cost onto customers. Utility lobbyists are pushing the model in other states.

[...]

“The risk is there,” Jenks said. “Climate change has made our forests so much drier than they used to be, and we don’t have the same June rain. Our forests weren’t designed for this.”

archived (Wayback Machine)

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/27811241

archived (Wayback Machine)

From public demands to go after his political enemies to reportedly closing $50,000 bribery investigations into Tom Homan.

A pipeline leak in northwest North Dakota has spilled an estimated 20,000 barrels, or 840,000 gallons, of crude oil and produced water onto agricultural land, the Department of Environmental Quality said Monday.

The spill about 4 miles northwest of Stanley in Mountrail County involved emulsion, a mixture of crude oil and produced water that emerges from a well before they are separated, the department said. Produced water, also known as saltwater or brine, is a waste byproduct of oil production.

...

It is unknown how long the leak went undetected by Hess Corp., which owns the pipeline. Bill Suess, manager of the Department of Environmental Quality’s spill investigation program, said the company first became aware of a potential problem Sept. 2 when they “started getting an indication their numbers weren’t right” – 10 days before the spill was discovered and reported.

"They went in and did some tests. The tests came back negative,” said Suess. “And then on the 12th they found the dead vegetation.”

Hess discovered and reported the spill on Friday, according to the incident report.

The cause of the spill has not been identified beyond “equipment failure” and remains under investigation, according to Suess.

The leak occurred from a 6-inch carbon steel pipeline called a “flow line,” used to transport the oil, natural gas and produced water from a well to a treater unit where the products are separated.

Regulators are still investigating the extent of the spill underground, including possible groundwater impacts, Suess said.

...

We don’t know yet how deep the impacts go,” said Suess.

Good thing the government of North Dakota isn't functionally bankrupt and the EPA will surely jump into action and farmers are currently having absolutely no labor nor financial problems.

Or uh, thoughts and prayers for all the ground water under all that farmland, I guess.

Jimmy Kimmel’s suspension from Disney sparks online outrage, driving a wave of calls for a boycott.

Rightwingers had long complained of a censorious leftwing ‘cancel culture’ but seem happy to now reframe that as ‘consequence culture’

US President Donald Trump publicly urged his Attorney General Pam Bondi to take action against his prominent political enemies, California Senator Adam Schiff and New York Attorney General Letitia James - both Democrats.

Every summer, the media executive Jaclyn Sallee travels from Anchorage to south-west Alaska to harvest salmon and share it with her Indigenous Alaskan, Inupiaq community. On that annual trip this July, Sallee was standing on the bank of King Salmon River when she received a distressing text message from one of her employees at Koahnic Broadcast Corporation, an Alaska Native media organization.

Donald Trump had signed into law the rescission of $1.1bn to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), a non-profit corporation that funds more than 1500 local public television and radio stations around the nation. Shortly after, CPB announced that it will close most of its operations on 30 September. As the president and CEO of Koahnic Broadcast Corporation and the urban Indigenous radio station KNBA, Sallee has programs that depend on CPB funding.

Public radio offers a critical lifeline for rural Indigenous communities, many of whom lack access to landlines or cellular service. Native stations provide local news, emergency alerts about the weather, and language preservation

Source tells NBC News: ‘Every indication so far is that this was one guy who did one really bad thing because he found Kirk’s ideology personally offensive’

Exclusive: White House only realized afterwards that clearances at the CIA and in Congress had been rescinded

Newsom said he predicted Noem will have a ‘bad day’ because he signed legislation that runs ‘in complete contrast to...what she’s pushing’

Fears of increased food insecurity grow amid looming federal SNAP funding cuts.

Leaked intelligence doc warns of “trans militant cult”

State Democratic Chairman Jay Jacobs’ refusal to back socialist Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral bid is turning the party’s ideological rift into a full-blown crater — as lefties call on the longtime boss to resign and moderates hail his “common sense” take.

Moderate mayoral candidates Eric Adams, the incumbent, and Andrew Cuomo, the former thrice-elected Democratic governor, were among those praising Jacobs on Friday for standing up to Mamdani’s radical views.

But support from the pair – who are Dems running as independents – was arguably lost in the progressive blowback against Jacobs for bucking newfound Mamdani backer Gov. Kathy Hochul and failing to endorse the party’s nominee in the nation’s largest city.

“Disgraceful. The Chair of the Democratic Party refusing to support the candidate clearly selected by the voters of the Democratic Party,” state Sen. Michael Gianaris, a progressive, posted on X “If he won’t perform that most basic responsibility of a party leader, what exactly is he doing over there?”

“On Sept. 20, with hidden cameras recording the scene, Homan accepted $50,000 in bills, according to an internal summary of the case.”

Homan was being investigated for allegedly “soliciting payments in exchange for awarding contracts should Trump win the election”

https://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/news/tom-homan-cash-contracts-trump-doj-investigation-rcna232568