This week, E&E reported that federal wildlife officials’ hands would again be tied in their attempts to protect the iconic Western sage grouse. The sage grouse – a ground-dwelling bird known for its unique mating dance – is a critical indicator species that has seen protections rolled back, habitat evaporate, and population numbers plummet in the name of unchecked oil and gas development during the Trump administration. Congress is proposing an unnecessary appropriations bill rider that would prevent the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service from assessing and providing additional protections for the birds’ habitat – home to 350-plus other species, including mule deer, elk and pronghorn antelope.  

ate last week, The Hill reported on the illegal tenure of William Perry Pendley as acting Bureau of Land Management director. Pendley is defiantly continuing in his role after unlawfully serving as the acting BLM director for 424 days despite Interior officials knowing his succession was illegal and a Montana judge ruling it was both illegal and unconstitutional. Environmental groups recently filed a lawsuit against the Bureau to overturn an oil and gas favored Colorado land-use plan that was approved under Pendley’s unlawful tenure.  

A Guardian article published earlier this week reveals the full extent of the corrupt Trump administration’s assault on America’s cherished public lands and wild places. Trump’s efforts to undermine our pristine and sacred public lands began on day one when he assembled the ultimate swamp team lead by former mega-lobbyist David Bernhardt that continues to this day.

This decision cemented Trump’s legacy as the worst public lands president in U.S. history, period. The list of destructive decisions by this administration is long, but between illegally eviscerating America’s national monuments to now opening the Tongass to industrial logging, no other president has unilaterally removed more protections for America’s cherished public lands than Trump. This is truly a reflection of the corrupt special interest influence driving decisions within Trump’s administration that are not only wrong but also wildly outside of what Americans want and value.

New research from Western Values Project found that less than 1% of the extractive resource corporations that were awarded relief through the Trump administration’s flawed Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) were owned by people of color. In addition to communities of color being disproportionately affected by the coronavirus pandemic, Big Oil continues to poison and take advantage of them.

On Tuesday, Accountable.US’s Western Values Project director Jayson O’Neill joined the This Green Earth syndicated broadcast to discuss the latest ruling by a district judge on the commonsense Methane Waste Prevention Rule. Under the corporate activist judge’s ruling, methane natural gas — one of the most destructive greenhouse gases that is 86 times more powerful than carbon dioxide over a 20-year period — is again unregulated and being wastefully flared and vented by oil and gas corporations with impunity.  

In a breaking story today, the HuffPost released a wish list a Big Oil lobby group had sent to Trump’s Interior Department. The American Petroleum Institute (API) sent a letter to the Department of the Interior (DOI) Secretary Bernhardt asking for taxpayer-backed bailouts and a smorgasbord of other requests.

President Donald Trump’s suggestion that fossil fuel corporations like Exxon would be willing to give him large campaign contributions in exchange for federal government drilling permits follows a long love affair between the president and the company.  

Late last Friday, a district judge ruled William Perry Pendley’s decisions as acting Bureau of Land Management director in Montana were invalid. Pendley has served unlawfully as the acting BLM director for 424 days despite him and the rest of the Department of Interior knowing his succession was illegal. In response to this ruling, Western Values Project Director Jayson O’Neill issued the following statement: 

The HuffPost exposed the twisted and warped annotated version of the pocket Constitution Utah Senator Mike Lee held up in the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing during the first day of Amy Coney Barrett’s Supreme Court hearing yesterday. Astoundingly, it’s not America’s Constitution, it is an annotated version used by anti-American domestic terrorist militia groups known as the Skousen Constitution. More troubling may be the fact that Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett didn’t bat an eye in the hearing, and she had referenced this extremist version of the Constitution in a previous speech.