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California gas-powered car ban could fuel GOP legal battle

California last week approved the country’s most ambitious electric vehicle (EV) targets, charting a course to banning the sale of gas-powered cars by 2035. 

Now the question is whether Republican officials will be able to derail it in court.

Deborah Sivas, an environmental law professor at Stanford Law School, told The Hill that automobile manufacturers are already poised to make the changes outlined in California’s Advanced Clean Cars II rule, which was approved by the California Air Resources Board last Thursday.

“They’re going to electric vehicles — they’re just going faster or slower, depending on the philosophy of the company,” Sivas said. 

“Who would be opposed to this?” she asked. “Well, there’s the ideological opposition.”

The GOP counter-offensive could take various forms, but will likely include lawsuits arguing that California does not have authority to set its own standards, and efforts to further erode federal Clean Air Act. 

California’s new rule, which follows a 2020 executive order issued by Gov. Gavin Newsom (D), would increase the proportion of emissions-free cars sold in the state annually, until that percentage reaches 100 in 2035.

California’s targets extend far beyond federal goals, and many states have expressed their intention to follow suit. While President Biden said last year that he hoped half of new vehicle sales would be electric by 2030, California’s rule would require 68 percent of sales to be electric that year.

But in order to move ahead, California needs to apply for a special waiver from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), as mandated by the Clean Air Act.

When Congress passed the Clean Air Act in 1970, it authorized California to set its own separate and stricter-than-federal emissions standards for vehicles.

Such action was deemed necessary due to historic smog that polluted the Los Angeles region.

But because the Clean Air Act includes a provision prohibiting states from implementing their own standards, California must apply for a waiver with the EPA for each new rule it wants to enact. 

The EPA must then approve that waiver unless the administrator determines that California’s reasons for applying are “arbitrary and capricious,” per the Clean Air Act.

“Congress wanted it to be easy for California to get a waiver, based on what local authorities felt in their judgment,” Sivas said. 

While the Biden administration is expected to accept California’s new application, red states could sue over that decision.

Further, a future Republican administration could revoke a previously-issued waiver, as the Trump administration did for a waiver that was issued in 2013. 

Republicans are already expressing opposition to Californina’s rule, with U.S. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) calling it “bad and stupid.”

“I think that policy only harms people from the standpoint that government is going to dictate what you can buy. Here we are with people with that like minded opinion that they know best and want to control all,” he said last week, according to local news. 

Clues about how this may play out can be found in the conflict around that 2013 waiver, which the Biden administration reinstated in March. 

In May, the Republican attorneys-general of 17 states filed a lawsuit accusing EPA Administrator Michael Regan of violating the Constitution’s equal sovereignty doctrine by granting California the authority to set emissions restrictions that are stricter than the national limit.

Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost, who led the lawsuit, previously said in a statement from last year that vehicle emissions standards should be set by the federal government. 

“As a practical matter, this is not a waiver of federal regulation — it is a delegation of federal authority to a state, and an improper one at that,” he said. 

While Sivas characterized the legal theories presented in the May lawsuit as “kind of questionable,” she said that there could be an additional lawsuit filed against any future waiver the EPA grants. 

“Some folks opposed to the rule could try to directly challenge it on various grounds in state court,” Sivas said. “But I think the most likely and the suit with the most teeth is going to be to challenge the waiver that gets granted. So that’s a federal suit.”

If a new waiver from the EPA entirely replaces the old one, then California could argue that the May lawsuit is moot, according to Sivas.

Nonetheless, that would not necessarily prevent the petitioners from demanding that the case be heard anyway — as it could address legal issues that might arise again in a future challenge, she explained.

“Those 17 states are looking to take down that whole provision of the Clean Air Act,” she said, adding that these states want to make it impossible to even issue such waivers.

“I would normally say, that case has a pretty slim chance,” Sivas added.

While she believes that the D.C. Circuit — the destination for any future such lawsuit — would reject the case, Sivas said this might not be true for those above them. Historically, it has been difficult to challenge agency decisions at the Supreme Court, but its recent rightward tilt complicates the issue, she explained.

“Given what’s going on at the Supreme Court — and this case will clearly go up right up to the Supreme Court — it’s hard to predict what that court might do,” she said.

Sivas highlighted a June decision where the Supreme Court restricted the agency’s power to oversee power plants.  

“They’ve not shown any inclination on these big policy-type issues to defer to the agency,” she continued. “So I think it’s a big question mark.”

Margo Oge, who was the director of the EPA’s Transportation and Air Quality office for nearly two decades, said new language in the Democrats’ recently passed Inflation Reduction Act puts the California waiver on stronger legal footing. 

In addition to investing nearly $370 billion to fight climate change, that bill labels greenhouse gasses as air pollutants, meaning that it more explicitly enables the EPA to fight them. 

“There is a lot of strengthening of the Clean Air Act,” she said. “And it will protect, I think, California’s efforts.”

Jody Freeman, a professor of administrative and environmental law at Harvard Law School, said she did not expect car makers to join the GOP opposition, and added that California “leaning in like this is important because it lays down a marker.”

“It will be awkward for the auto industry to oppose it,” she told The Hill in an email, adding that manufacturers are currently pouring billions of dollars into electrification.

“And there is so much federal funding flowing to support both infrastructure and consumer demand,” Freeman said.

For the automotive industry, planning for vehicle fleets takes years, so even if the California rule is defeated companies may already be on a path to compliance. 

“It takes a long time — for about five years — to develop a solid plan,” Cynthia Williams, Ford’s global director of sustainability, told The Hill. “It takes time to build your supply chain in order to make sure that you have the right material to build the vehicles.”

Williams stressed that the company is committed to shifting toward selling a greater share of EVs, even if California’s rule were to be overturned. 

“We plan to forge ahead with our plan despite who’s in office or who’s in a leadership position,” she said. 

Still, Freeman acknowledged that “there are likely going to be legal ebbs and flows as this policy unfolds.”

“The Biden administration will surely grant the federal preemption waiver needed to approve California’s rules, but a new administration could revoke it, and then we’d be back in the courts,” Freeman said.

Sivas also said there is bound to be pushback from other entities like the fossil fuel sector, which tends to have more political influence than the auto industry. 

“I really hesitate to make any predictions,” Sivas said, noting that the recent activities of the Supreme Court were fueling her uncertainty. 

“They’re using environmental cases, to some extent, to really radically rethink the law,” she added. “So I just don’t have any confidence in predicting what might happen.”

Source: TEST FEED1

DRIED UP: Texas cities in fear of running out of water

The American West is experiencing its driest period in human history, a megadrought that threatens health, agriculture and entire ways of life. DRIED UP is examining the dire effects of the drought on the states most affected — as well as the solutions Americans are embracing.

AUSTIN, Texas — As the Western U.S. suffers under its worst drought in a millennium, the government of Texas, a state that faces its own unique set of dangers from extreme weather, is at last turning to deal with the threat that climate change poses to its long-term water supply. 

Texas’s situation is sufficiently dire that in July, a majority-Republican panel on the state legislature voted unanimously to require the state water planning board to consult with the state climatologist as it advises cities in planning to meet the state’s water needs in the future.  

The rule change “removes the possibility that the political climate could harm [local water officials’] ability to plan responsibly for the future,” state Sen. Nathan Johnson (D), a major backer of the shift, told The Hill. 

“It kind of insulates the regional water authorities from political pressures that would harm their ability to do what they need to do,” Johnson said.  

But that process won’t bear fruit for years — and Texans increasingly worry that the crisis is here now. 

Never rains but it pours

The most recent demonstration of the volatile climate was last month’s flash downpours that stunned Johnson’s hometown of Dallas — a record rainfall that interrupted the city’s longtime drought, running off baked earth and acres of asphalt infrastructure to flood much of the city. 

Those kinds of events offer a foretaste of the future Texas can expect, climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe told The Hill. 

“You saw record dry conditions week after week after week — and then all of a sudden, a summer’s worth of rain in a single day,” Hayhoe said. 

For much of the state, annual levels of rainfall may not change much — but that average conceals potentially lethal extremes of drought and flood, she said. “The amount of precipitation is staying the same. But the distribution is changing. It’s getting more extreme in both directions.” 

Even if rainfall totals and distribution both stayed the same — which is unlikely — the simple fact of rising heat under climate change could presage water shortages, state climatologist John Nielsen-Gammon told The Hill. 

“Lakes evaporate faster, water in the ground evaporates faster,” said Nielsen-Gammon, who is also a professor of atmospheric sciences at Texas A&M University. 

That’s a problem for a state whose water storage strategy relies heavily on a collection of nearly 200 open-air reservoirs, exposed at all times to the baking sun. Moisture sucked into the air can also worsen flash storms, making rain events large enough to overwhelm the ability of soils to absorb them and catchment infrastructure to trap them. 

Population growth looms

When these disruptive impacts are added to the booming populations foreseen by the Texas Water Development Board — expected by 2070 to surge from around 30 million to 52 million — they create a situation that worries many water planners interviewed by The Hill. 

Much of that growth is expected along the dry and vulnerable I-35 corridor that connects Laredo and the Rio Grande Valley to San Antonio, Austin and the enormous collection of towns and cities surrounding Dallas-Fort Worth. The highway roughly divides Texas’s wet east from its dry west.  

With that influx of people will come new water-dependent industries, from manufacturing plants such as the new Tesla facility going up outside Austin to more than a dozen high-tech semiconductor factories. And even with climate change making the weather ever more extreme, the state is fighting hard to protect fossil fuels. Those take a lot of water too, particularly when oil and gas is extracted through fracking. 

“If any community in the state fails, and its water supply, that is big national, international news, and then has impacts on, I would argue, on the economic growth and perception of Texas,” Robert Mace of the Meadows Center for Water and the Environment told local station KXAN, which is owned by The Hill’s parent company, Nexstar Media.  

The looming prospect of a more intense and unpredictable drought-flood cycle presents a fearsome challenge for water planners. 

It’s also one that — at least as it pertains to climate change — local officials have largely been left to figure out on their own, state water experts told The Hill.

For now, members of the Water Development Board “certainly don’t appear to be addressing [climate issues] directly,” Nielsen-Gammon, the state climatologist, told The Hill. 

In contrast to the state’s specific and data-driven approach to planning for population growth, “there isn’t any official projection as far as streamflow or groundwater recharge impacts from climate change,” he added. 

“It’d be really nice if individual water suppliers weren’t left to their own devices to tackle the issue.” 

But the Texas Water Development Board’s planning process has traditionally looked backward, not forward, in envisioning the worst-case scenario that managers should plan for. 

“By not considering climate change, we’re counting on water that’s probably not going to be there in the future,” Mace told KXAN said. “And so that increases the risk of reservoirs going dry, and of people losing their water supplies.”  

Incorporating climate planning, however, is extraordinarily difficult. 

“The key word with climate is complicated,” Matt Nelson, a water resources professional at the Texas Water Development Board, told The Hill. 

Even at the state level, Nelson said, models are ambiguous, leaving the coming effects on the ground unclear. That means that state officials who move quickly to, say, increase supply are at risk of installing expensive and potentially “maladaptive” infrastructure aimed at solving the wrong problem, he added.

The long-term trend of climate change — to the extent that it’s clear — is also easily drowned out in the near-term chaos of Texas weather, he said.  

“There can be more substantial risk in the near term than a climate long-term effect,” Nelson said. 

Local groups take action

Some individual water suppliers have taken the state’s absence as an invitation to make their own plans.

For the city of Austin, the onrushing threat of climate change has led the city to study its own vulnerability — and to secure its water supply out past 2100, by which point its population is expected to triple from 1.1. million to 3.3 million. 

“Water utilities are the canary in the coal mine when it comes to climate change. The nature of our product is such that we have to be responsive and adaptive to these changes as they’re happening in real time,” program manager Marisa Flores Gonzalez of Austin Water told The Hill.

Over the turbulent century to come, “we may have periods of time where we have plenty of water around — more water than we want,” Flores Gonzalez said.  

“But we need to be able to take advantage of those supplies when they’re present during average or wet conditions and store that water so that we can make use of it during drought times.” 

Austin is exploring a number of ways to do this. City officials are scouting locations where excess water could be injected into natural subterranean caverns in periods of abundance — in effect creating an artificial aquifer, immune to evaporation, that the city can draw on during the extended dry periods to come. 

Groundwater injection is a measure that many other cities around the state are pursuing — most notably San Antonio, an hour’s drive south of Austin, but also smaller cities such as El Paso and even folk music mecca Kerrville.  

Dallas-Fort Worth and other cities of the north Texas sprawl are building new reservoirs as fast as possible, and both Dallas-Fort Worth and Houston are exploring ways to pipe in water from other basins as they look to a future where their own stores will be overtaxed. 

But with “really out of the box unprecedented things are definitely being discussed, we often neglect the easiest and most common one — which is conservation,” Hayhoe said.  

Austin, for example, has winnowed the amount of water needed per person per day by a nearly a third since the 1990s, and it’s about a quarter of the way through a campaign to switch all the city’s analog water meters to leak-detecting smart ones. 

And the city is experimenting with pilot sewage recycling systems — which treats wastewater on-site for reuse in watering, fountains and flushing toilets — which could ultimately cut demand for water by 75 percent, KXAN reported.

At the extreme end of this strategy, the residents of Big Spring, Texas — in the state’s arid far west — drink purified and treated wastewater, a system officially called “direct potable reuse” and sometimes derided as “toilet to tap,” public radio station WHYY reported.

‘The lowest point that I’ve ever seen’

Nelson at the Water Development Board says the board is working to incorporate usable climate models into its planning process. Board researchers are working with Nielsen-Gammon to try and derive standardized rules and models that are sufficiently flexible to bring to bear on state planning processes, such as trying to figure out how changing heat levels will impact evaporation from different regions’ lakes and rivers. 

The state itself lags behind growing cities such as Austin, Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth, where local governments have done their own expensive climate forecasting — and many of which are already in the process of securing new supplies against their booming populations.  

But most of Texas’s more than 1,200 incorporated towns and cities don’t have the resources to do their own climate planning — and are less likely to have multiple options to draw from in the case of a crisis.

That’s happening even just west of Austin, as former cattle ranches in the region known as the Hill Country — popular for its wineries and swimming holes — get converted into housing developments, which demand water for taps, toilets and lawns.

“With the explosive growth, the wells [are] at the lowest point that I’ve ever seen,”  hydrologist Douglas Wierman told KXAN.

Wieman warned that these communities are draining the Lower Trinity Aquifer to the “tipping point where our demand for water resources has outpaced the ability of our aquifers and rivers to replenish themselves,” Wierman added.

In the Hill Country, that’s meant a booming business for “water haulers” making deliveries to families whose wells no longer reach the shrinking water table, KXAN reported.

A cruel paradox of Texas water politics is that those municipalities most vulnerable to climate change are likely to be least willing or able to prepare on their own.  

The smaller the city, Nielsen-Gammon said, “the smaller the water supply — and the less likely they will be able to deal with climate change and possibly not even be willing to consider it because they have more immediate concerns.” 

It’s those bodies that are at the greatest risk from climate change, Perry Fowler of the Texas Water Infrastructure Network told KXAN. 

“If local entities aren’t already looking at fortifying their water sources, then they’re already really behind the eight ball on that,” Fowler said.

KXAN’s Mia Abbe and Christopher Adams contributed to this report.

Previously in this series:

Texas cattle industry faces existential crisis from historic drought

Lakes Mead and Powell are at the epicenter of the biggest Western drought in history

Seven stats that explain the West’s epic drought

Why Great Plains agriculture is particularly vulnerable to drought

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Federal judge rules New York can restrict gun carrying

A federal judge on Wednesday ruled New York state can restrict citizens from concealing and carrying guns in public through a new law that was challenged by national firearm organizations.

Judge Glenn Suddaby for the U.S. District Court in the Northern District of New York dismissed a motion for an injunction blocking the law from taking effect on Thursday, arguing the plaintiffs, the Gun Owners of America (GOA) and the Gun Owners Foundation (GOF), did not have standing to represent their members in court.

New York Attorney General Letitia James, who defended the new law on behalf of the state, released a statement Wednesday night saying she had successfully fended off “baseless attacks by the gun lobby.”

“As gun violence continues to impact communities across the country, today’s decision is a victory in our efforts to protect New Yorkers,” James said. “Responsible gun control measures save lives and any attempts by the gun lobby to tear down New York’s sensible gun control laws will be met with fierce defense of the law.

“We will continue to defend the constitutionality of our laws to protect all New Yorkers,” the attorney general continued.

The GOA and GOF, which challenged the constitutionality of the law on the First, Fourteenth and Second Amendments, are likely to appeal the case to the U.S. Second Circuit Court.

Ahead of the ruling on Wednesday, the GOA tweeted that New York’s new law “would essentially make all of NY a gun free zone and infringes upon the rights of its citizens.”

New York passed the Concealed Carry Improvement Act (CCIA) in July, just days after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional a previous state law requiring a proper cause for those who wish to conceal and carry in public.

The CCIA requires applicants for a concealed carry permit to undergo 16 hours of classroom training and two hours of live-fire exercises. Applicants would also be subjected to a review of social media accounts for the past three years to assess character, a rule coming in the wake of deadly mass shootings.

Additionally, carrying a firearm in amusement parks, schools, churches, subways and other places deemed sensitive by the state would be prohibited. Gun owners would also need to gain permission from property owners to bring a gun on private property.

The CCIA also requires four character references who can attest to the applicant’s “good character,” a point the GOA challenged as subjective. The plaintiffs also challenged the sensitive locations provision determined by the state and the training requirements, as well as other aspects of the law.

Suddaby, while dismissing the plaintiff’s request for an injunction blocking the CCIA from taking place, delivered a mixed opinion on each of the challenged counts but seemed inclined to back the plaintiffs if the case had went the full distance.

“The undersigned is left with a strong sense of the safety that a licensed concealed handgun regularly provides, or would provide, to the many law-abiding responsible citizens in the state too powerless to physically defend themselves in public without a handgun,” Suddaby wrote.

He was in favor of the plaintiff’s arguments that the “good character” requirement was based on “vague, subjective criteria.”

The judge also disagreed with the state including a list of locations barring gun owners from carrying in “sensitive” locations, which he said includes places that are “nonsensitive by nature.”

However, Suddaby did back the state on requirements for training, applicants to submit four character references, attend an in-person interview with an officer and submit to a social media background check.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) tweeted her support for the judge’s dismissal after the ruling.

“This is a just and right decision, and our smart, sensible gun laws will go into effect as planned tomorrow to keep New Yorkers safe,” she wrote.

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Federal court blocks ruling limiting voting accessibility for people with disabilities

A Wisconsin federal court on Wednesday blocked a state elections rule that would have forced voters with disabilities to cast their own ballots.

U.S. District Judge James Peterson with the Western District of Wisconsin ruled that state officials violated the Voting Rights Act (VRA) because a 2021 ruling effectively prevented Wisconsinites with physical disabilities from casting a ballot in the upcoming midterm elections.

“Voters shouldn’t have to choose between exercising their federal rights and complying with state law. But that is the position that plaintiffs find themselves in,” Peterson wrote in his opinion. “If defendants cannot or will not give plaintiffs assurances that their right to vote will be protected, this court must do so.”

The conservative Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty filed a case last year that accused the Wisconsin Elections Commission (WEC) of overstepping its authority in the 2020 election by allowing for the widespread use of ballot drop boxes in elections.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court agreed and prohibited the use of most ballot drop boxes in a July ruling, arguing only the state legislature could authorize such a move. The court order also construed state law as requiring voters to personally return absentee ballots.

Shortly after the ruling, WEC Administrator Meagan Wolfe held a press conference in which she said voters must deliver ballots themselves, sparking concern among the disabled community.

The firm Law Forward filed a motion against the WEC and Wolfe in late July on behalf of four Wisconsinites with disabilities who require a third party to help them vote.

One plaintiff, Timothy Carey, has Duchenne muscular dystrophy and must power a wheelchair with his mouth. Another plaintiff is paralyzed from the neck down.

“The disability community has labored long and hard for recognition, respect, and inclusion at every level of society; full access to their rights; and the best quality of life possible,” the complaint reads. “Access to the ballot is an essential tool in this effort: voters with disabilities have an especially keen interest in who leads our government, even as they face especially daunting barriers to voting for their government representatives.”

Law Forward said about 9.5 percent of Wisconsin residents aged 18 to 64 have a disability, highlighting the need to give them equal access under the VRA.

In the complaint, they argued the rule violated not only the VRA but also the Americans with Disabilities Act and the plaintiff’s First Amendment and 14th Amendment rights.

Other than the VRA violation, Judge Peterson dismissed those claims as moot. He also ruled only for voters with disabilities, meaning other voters must return ballots themselves under the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling.

Peterson wrote in his opinion that the WEC clearly violated the rights of disabled state residents by forcing them to vote without third-party assistance.

“The Voting Rights Act is clear: disabled voters who need assistance in returning an absentee ballot are entitled to ask a person of their choosing for that assistance,” the judge wrote.

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Trump team says sensitive info 'should have never been cause for alarm' in latest filing

Former President Trump’s legal team is arguing that the sensitive information contained in classified documents recovered from his Florida home “should have never been cause for alarm,” in its latest filing arguing for a special master to review the documents. 

The claim came in a Wednesday night filing as Trump asks the court to appoint a third party to review evidence, which would pause the investigation into his mishandling of government records.

The filing came after the Justice Department late Tuesday responded to Trump’s request, arguing a special master “would significantly harm important governmental interests, including national security interests.”

Trump’s team argued Wednesday that the discovery of sensitive information in a previous batch of records should not have triggered the search of Mar-a-Lago in the first place, doubling down on his longstanding claim that executive privilege justifies keeping large tranches of classified documents in his personal residence.

“The purported justification for the initiation of this criminal probe was the alleged discovery of sensitive information contained within the 15 boxes of Presidential records,” the filing says. 

“But this ‘discovery’ was to be fully anticipated given the very nature of Presidential records. Simply put, the notion that Presidential records would contain sensitive information should have never been cause for alarm.”

Trump’s claim that authorities were wrong to be alarmed by his possession of classified materials comes as DOJ noted in numerous filings that Trump had in his home some of the nation’s most sensitive secrets, including secrets gained from “clandestine human sources,” information prohibited from being shared with foreign governments and information obtained by monitoring “foreign communications signals.”

And in its late Tuesday filing the DOJ offered its most forceful rejection of Trump’s claims to any of the documents he kept stored in his home.

“Any Presidential records seized pursuant to the search warrant belong to the United States, not to the former President,” DOJ wrote.

“Plaintiff’s Motion, in fact, asserts that ‘the documents seized at Mar-a-Lago on August 8, 2022 . . . were created during his term as President.’ These are precisely the types of documents that likely constitute Presidential records.” 

Trump’s reply also argues that the National Archives “ simply ignored” the Presidential Records Act, which required the preservation and transfer of documents at the end of Trump’s presidential term, and jumped right to a criminal investigation “just weeks after President Trump voluntarily complied” with the Archives’ request for records.  

Absent from the filing is any backing for Trump’s earlier claims that he declassified the hundreds of intelligence records stored at his home.

The failure to reference that explanation, largely referenced by Trump himself on his social media channel, comes after the Justice Department in its own filing noted that in its months of dealings with Trump’s legal team to secure return of the records, they never claimed the documents had been declassified.

DEVELOPING

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42 states and territories will provide summer food benefits for children out of school

The federal government wants to help families combat inflation by providing temporary nutrition benefits to about 32 million children through a new summer program. 

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced a temporary electronic benefit transfer, commonly known as EBT, called Summer P-EBT that will give eligible families free or reduced-price meals or to those that have a child under the age of six that lives in a household receiving supplemental nutrition assistance program (SNAP) benefits.  

Benefits will be loaded onto a debit-type card that can be used to purchase food — with families of eligible children typically receiving $391 per child. Families in Alaska, Hawaii and the U.S. territories have higher rates. 

The benefit will be available in 42 states and territories and will provide an estimated $12.5 billion in temporary nutrition benefits. Alabama, California, Florida, Illinois, Indiana and North Carolina are among the states participating. 

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“Providing children with the food and nutrition they need to live healthy lives is a year-round mission, and we are proud to partner with many states and territories to provide food-buying benefits for this summer,” said Cindy Long, administrator of the USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service.  

“Our hope is that all states will adopt the program, ensuring that all children have access to the healthy food they need and deserve.” 

Summer P-EBT will only be valid up to 90 calendar days following a school year, a benefit available under a public health emergency declaration. 

States need to provide an approved school year or childcare plan for the 2021-2022 academic year in order to be eligible to provide Summer P-EBT. 

USDA already provides low-cost or free lunches to children in nearly 100,000 public and nonprofit private schools starting from kindergarten through 12^th grade through its National School Lunch Program. In 2019, USDA provided 4.9 billion lunches at a total cost of $14.2 billion. 

The need for food increased drastically during the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, as students who relied on meals through their school suddenly lost that benefit. USDA responded by creating a pandemic EBT program that reimbursed families with children eligible for free or reduced-price school meals for the value of school meals missed because of pandemic-related school disruptions.  

USDA’s effort to provide families with some financial relief comes as Congress failed to extend the expanded child tax credit that lapsed late last year. An analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities found that some 91 percent of families with low incomes used their tax credit on basic household expenses — including food, clothing, shelter and utilities. 

About 10 percent of U.S. households were food insecure at some time during 2020, which USDA defines as households that were uncertain of having, or unable to acquire, enough food to meet the needs of all their family members because they had insufficient money or other resources for food.  

Household food insecurity affected about 15 percent of households with children in 2020. 

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Democrat Mary Peltola defeats Sarah Palin in Alaska special election

Former Alaska state Rep. Mary Peltola (D) was projected to defeat former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) to win the special election to fill the remainder of the late Rep. Don Young’s (R-Alaska) term in the House, a stunning upset that makes her the first Alaska Native in Congress.

Peltola, a Yup’ik Eskimo, will also be the first Democrat to hold the seat in decades. The last time a member of her party was was elected to represent the state’s at-large congressional district was in 1971.

Her apparent victory came after votes were tabulated late Wednesday as part of the state’s new ranked-choice voting system.

Prior to her congressional run to fill Young’s seat, Peltola represented the southwestern Bethel region as a state lawmaker for a decade. She has also served on the Bethel City Council and Orutsararmiut Native Council Tribal Court. 

Peltola also ran in the primary for the same seat but whose term would begin in 2023. She advanced in the primary, as she was one of the top four vote-getters in Alaska’s open primary system. 

Other candidates who also advanced in that primary included not just Palin but also Nick Begich (R), the former co–chairman for Young’s 2020 reelection campaign.

In the general election, which is slated for November, the state will also use ranked-choice voting, where the candidate who receives more than 50 percent of the vote prevails in the election. 

But if no one gets more than half the votes, the candidate with the fewest votes gets knocked out and any voters who chose that eliminated candidate as their first pick have their second-choice votes applied to the applicable candidates. The process continues until one candidate receives more than half the votes.

Source: TEST FEED1

Court clears way for US to seize $45M airplane owned by Russian energy giant

The Department of Justice (DOJ) on Wednesday announced the U.S. has obtained a warrant to seize a $45 million aircraft owned by a Moscow-based oil and gas corporation. 

A U.S. District Court in Texas authorized the seizure of a Boeing 737-EM airplane, which the DOJ said violated Department of Commerce sanctions against Russia when it flew in and out of the country.  

The plane, valued at $45 million, is owned by the Russian multinational energy corporation PJSC LUKOIL, according to the DOJ release.  

The DOJ said the plane last entered the U.S. in 2019 when it brought LUKOIL’s then-president and CEO, Russian oligarch Vagit Alekperov, to Houston, Texas.  

The aircraft is now believed to be in Russia, which has been the target of a number of sweeping Commerce Department sanctions in response to the country’s invasion of neighboring Ukraine. 

The sanctions include “expanded prohibitions on the export, reexport or in-country transfer of U.S.-manufactured aircraft to or within Russia without a valid license of license exception,” per the DOJ. 

“Today’s actions to enforce the powerful export restrictions placed on Russia are our latest coordinated measures that let Vladimir Putin and his allies know that we are watching,” said Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Export Enforcement Matthew Axelrod in the release.  

Axelrod noted that the department “continues to vigorously enforce the export laws of the United States and stand with the people of Ukraine against Putin’s war of aggression.” 

The director of the DOJ’s KleptoCapture, an interagency task force charged with enforcing the sanctions against Russia, is coordinating the seizure.

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U.S. airline passenger complaints soared in first half of 2022

U.S. airline passenger complaints doubled in the first half of 2022 compared to the same period in 2021, according to a Department of Transportation (DOT) report published this month.

Passengers filed nearly 16,000 complaints with the DOT against U.S. airlines from January to June. That’s more than double the 6,827 complaints filed in first half of 2021.

American Airlines recorded the most complaints in the first half of 2022, with 3,186 filed against the Fort Worth, Texas-based company on everything from flight problems, refunds, fares, refunds, baggage and accessibility issues.

United Airlines recorded 2,391 complaints from January to June of this year, while passengers filed 1,909 complaints against Spirit Airlines.

Ranking fourth was Frontier Airlines, at 1,750 filed complaints. In fifth place was Jetblue Airways, with 1,676 filed complaints.

Airlines have struggled to meet high consumer demand this year as travelers emerged from the pandemic’s peak waves and shutdowns, leaving many flights canceled and delayed, to the frustration of the public.

Companies have blamed everything from a pilot shortage to high fuel costs and extreme weather for the mass cancellations and delayed flights.

The travel disruptions have angered the Biden administration and congressional lawmakers, especially as thousands of flights were canceled over holiday travel weekends, including for the Fourth of July and Juneteenth.

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg met with airline executives in June, and House Democrats introduced a bill this month that would force companies to give cash refunds to passengers if a flight is canceled or significantly delayed.

The DOT’s latest Air Travel Consumer Report, filed by the Office of Aviation Consumer Protection, also broke down the number of flight cancellations recorded in the first half of the year.

More than 106,000 flights were canceled from January to June. In the same period last year, just over 41,000 flights were canceled.

Southwest Airlines canceled the most flights, with 16,321 of them scrubbed in the first half of 2022.

The Dallas, Texas-based company has faced scrutiny for its canceled and delayed flights. The airline has canceled up to 40 percent of its flights on some peak travel days.

According to the DOT report, American Airlines canceled the second most number of flights, at 16,288 from January to June. Republic Airways cut 10,270 flights in the first half of 2022, ranking third.

Source: TEST FEED1