The second top story under “trump administration epa” – Rule to limit mercury and arsenic in waterways is delayed by the EPA.

Naturally. Let’s not be hasty about keeping mercury and arsenic out of waterways…in fact let’s not do it at all. People can always drink bottled water.

The Environmental Protection Agency would like to delay an Obama-era rule that limits the amount of toxins power plant operators can dump into waterways, the agency announced late last week.

In a new rule, expected to be published this week in the Federal Register, the agency has proposed delaying the compliance dates of the 2015 Steam Electric Power Generating Effluent Guidelines until the EPA reviews them.

Environmental groups characterized the EPA’s decision to delay implementation of the rule as in line with the Trump administration’s attempt to conduct a broad rollback of regulations designed to protect public health. The Obama administration estimated that the 2015 rule would keep 1.4 billion pounds of toxic metals and other pollutants out of waterways each year.

Who is most likely to be poisoned by this move? The people Trump claims to love and want to help, that’s who. The people who don’t live in leafy suburbs with good water treatment systems.

EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt said the proposed delay, if finalized, will give the administration time to “carefully consider the next steps for this regulation.” He also touted the decision as one of nearly two dozen “regulatory reform” actions that he has taken during his brief tenure as EPA administrator. The decision is designed “to protect the environment, jobs and affordable, reliable energy,” he said in a May 25 statement.

Then he lied, since the decision is obviously designed not to protect the environment.

These people are like evil villains out of fairy tales.

In an earlier press release announcing his decision to reconsider the final rule, Pruitt said “some of our nation’s largest job producers have objected to this rule, saying the requirements set by the Obama administration are not economically or technologically feasible within the proscribed [sic] timeframe.”

“Job producers” is of course Republican code for corporations and shareholders. They produce as few jobs as they possibly can, because jobs cost them money.

The protections targeted steam electric power plants — which often run on coal— that dump large amounts of toxic pollutants into streams every year.

Electric plants dump 64,400 pounds of lead, 2,820 pounds of mercury, 79,200 pounds of arsenic, and 1,970,000 pounds of aluminum into the country’s waterways every year. Some of these pollutants, including arsenic, are known carcinogens, while others, such as lead, have been linked to developmental and reproductive problems. This pollution has also been linked to fish die-offs, the EPA explained in 2015.

Nobody wants to eat fish anyway. Just get a Big Mac.

Al Franken was on Fresh Air yesterday, and he said one thing that ratcheted up my dismay level one more notch.

GROSS: Things are so divided now in America and in government, in the Senate, in the House, do you feel like it’s possible now for you to have friendly relations with people in the government who are, you know, like, 180 degrees away from you on politics, on science, on climate change?

FRANKEN: Oh, man. There is stuff going on in the EPA right now on science where they’re just getting rid of the scientific boards that oversee the science, and it’s really awful. It’s really – this administration does not believe in science, it seems. And they’re getting, you know, people from industry. And they think there’s too much regulation. And they have – we have someone who is – Meredith’s (ph) a professor from the University of Minnesota, who I just talked to yesterday, who sort of oversees all these scientific boards.

And she is really alarmed. This is very, very bad. It’s hard for me to have very good relations with people who are doing that.

It drives me nuts.

Here’s a little experiment for you: Google “Trump administration epa” and see what comes up.

Under Top Stories right now I get

EPA halts Obama-era rule on methane pollution

President’s EPA counsel calls meeting over boat discharge in Puget Sound

Rule to limit mercury and arsenic in waterways is delayed by EPA

Those are all dated today.

The middle one could be benign, but of course it isn’t. This president’s counsel calls a meeting to talk about not preventing boat discharge in Puget Sound. More raw sewage for the Sound! Shut up and stop complaining!

The Washington Department of Ecology is near the end of an effort to ban boats from discharging raw and partially treated sewage into Puget Sound. Except, the waters may soon muddy.

EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt’s senior counsel called a meeting with Ecology Director Maia Bellon Wednesday morning.

“I typically work with the Seattle office of the Environmental PA to talk about these issues. I’m a ‘glass is half full person.’ I’m going to look at it as an opportunity to talk about Washingtonians want the Puget Sound to be treated with the utmost of respect,” Bellon said.

The Regional EPA director has already approved the designation of a “No Discharge Zone.” The process is still awaiting a public comment period, and boats will get five years to comply. Still, Bellon was confident the NDZ would become a reality.

Not so fast! What about all those cruise ships that might want to save money by dumping all that sewage? Won’t somebody think of the shareholders?

President Donald Trump’s EPA counsel is reacting to a petition from Washington maritime stakeholders. They’re critical of the NDZ designation, arguing it will be too costly for maritime business and doesn’t do much to stop pollution. It will require some boats spend $175,000 in upgrades for storage tanks.

The petition reads: “We respectfully request that EPA rescind the February 21 determination to allow for a thorough review of Ecology’s petition by you and your staff. The final determination was hastily promulgated and disregarded legitimate stakeholder concerns in favor of an expedited review designed primarily to avoid scrutiny by the Trump Administration. We respectfully request that you publish in the Federal Register a notice rescinding EPA’s February 21 determination and provide direct notice to the Washington Department of Ecology to cease any NDZ rulemaking pending EPA’s reconsideration. Thank you for your attention to this matter.”

Will they comply? Of course they will. The “stakeholders” always come first.

“I think it’s unprecedented. I’ve not heard of any No Discharge Zone petitions across the United States in 26 states we’ve looked at this,” Bellon said.

Bellon says her office has taken extra time to work with stakeholders, and believes if the Trump administration reverses the regional EPA ruling, it would be illegal.

“We have a lot of swimming beaches where our families and our kids swim and recreate,” she said. “We fish out of the Puget Sound. We collect shellfish out of the Puget Sound. So, having those human pathogens or bacteria are problematic, and we should be eliminating those sources of pollution.”

Any bets?

Then there’s this one.

Kathy Griffin should be ashamed of herself. My children, especially my 11 year old son, Barron, are having a hard time with this. Sick!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 31, 2017

In case you don’t yet know what Kathy Griffin should be ashamed of, it’s a video in which she holds up a facsimile severed head of Trump, streaming blood (as severed heads don’t, so that part is weird).

It’s a crap thing to do, I agree with him on that much. I don’t want Trump doing it to the people he hates, so we can’t do it to the people we hate.

But. Trump’s pious invocation of his children is disgusting. What about all the children of all the people he has mocked and insulted and degraded over the past several decades? Has he ever considered their feelings for one instant? Of course not. For that matter, did he consider Barron’s feelings when he decided to try to be president? It doesn’t look as if he did, does it.

Meanwhile…Judith and Holofernes:

Cristofano Allori, Judith and the Head of Holofernes, 1613

Last night just after midnight his time Trump had a brainfart on Twitter.

“Despite the constant negative press covfefe,” the tweet began, at 12:06 a.m., from @realDonaldTrump, the irrepressible internal monologue of his presidency.

And that was that.

Time passed. The tweet stayed, and the world wondered.

Perhaps, some worried aloud, Mr. Trump had experienced a medical episode a quarter of the way through his 140 characters.

No one at the White House could immediately be reached for comment.

By 1 a.m., the debate had effectively consumed Twitter — or at least a certain segment of insomniac Beltway types, often journalists and political operatives — ascending the list of trending topics.

Oh come on – there are 24 time zones. On the other side of the Atlantic it was 6 a.m., and farther east it was later. On the west coast it was only 10 p.m.

Merriam-Webster tweeted.

https://twitter.com/MerriamWebster/status/869782666572443648

In the end the tweet was deleted, and Trump pretended the joke was on everyone but him.

Who can figure out the true meaning of "covfefe" ??? Enjoy!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 31, 2017

The ACLU tells us

The Trump administration is reportedly planning to issue regulations that would allow any employer to deny any employee insurance coverage for contraception based on the employer’s religious beliefs.

Your boss’s religious beliefs shouldn’t be allowed to [affect] your compensation package. Yet here we are.

This is nothing more than an attempt to sanction discrimination against women in the name of religion. If the Trump administration follows through on these plans, we’ll see them in court.

Does Trump actually give a flying fuck about “religious liberty”? Of course not. He does hate women, though, so it makes him happy to be able to take away their rights.

It appears that Trump’s Twitter account puffed up with bots over the past few days.

As conspiracy fever grips the nation — and American citizens struggle to answer questions like, “What was the orb?” “Is the pee tape real?” And, “What was that red light blinking at the White House over the weekend?” — a new mystery has emerged: Over the weekend, Donald Trump, the worst Twitter user of all time, and also the president, gained more than 5 million followers.

Even for Trump, that is a lot. What does it all mean? What is he planning? The #resistance — the cohort of Twitter users all racing to be the first smug reply to any of Trump’s tweets — is keeping a close eye on the situation.

Dear me. I can’t imagine calling myself part of a “resistance.” I loathe Trump with the fire of a thousand suns but he ain’t the Nazi occupation.

At any rate, the bots don’t necessarily mean much.

Here’s the thing about Twitter bots: Anyone can buy them for anyone, for relatively cheap. Just because the bots swarmed to Trump doesn’t mean they came from him or his team. Creating a Twitter account doesn’t even require a verified email address, making it easy to generate new, imaginary users. Plus, there are dozens of much more likely, and much more mundane, reasons to set up a bunch of bots besides “declaring cyberwarfare on the American people.” Maybe you run a business that sells inflated follower counts, so you create a bunch of bots and direct them to follow your paying customers. Maybe you’re a spammer who wants to DM links to people or hijack hashtags.

A good reason to think that this is just a run-of-the-mill scammer? A survey of numerous new Trump followers shows that many are also following celebrities like Kim Kardashian, Ellen DeGeneres, Barack Obama, Jimmy Fallon, and LeBron James, and brands like ESPN and CNN — the same types of popular accounts that are regularly suggested to all new users during Twitter’s initial onboarding process.

Could be Putin, could be just ordinary Twitter noise. For the moment, don’t panic.

This:

German leaders – who say that the United States remains their most important international ally and an important partner whose friendship they want to maintain – feel Trump has prioritized relations with authoritarian nations like Saudi Arabia instead of democratic allies. Many were shocked when Trump declared in Riyadh that “we are not here to lecture” the mostly unelected assembled leaders – then blasted European allies in Brussels for not spending enough on defense.

It makes me sick.

Norm Eisen told Greg Sargent at the Washington Post that the Republicans in Congress can demand to see Trump’s tax returns.

“The tax committees of Congress have the legal right to demand from the IRS, to examine, and to share tax returns if a proper public purpose is met,” Eisen said.

Democrats have also zeroed in on this point. Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, has repeatedly pressed the committee’s GOP chairman, Sen. Orrin G. Hatch of Utah, to use his authority to secure an opportunity for committee members to privately view Trump’s tax returns. Hatch refused, citing limitations on his own authority to do this that Democrats say is bogus. Republicans have blocked other measures designed to access the tax returns.

The important point here is that broadly speaking, most Republicans are inclined against taking whatever steps are necessary to deepen their own (not to mention the public’s) understanding of the Russia affair. There are other measures Republicans could take to try to force access to the tax returns, either through legislation or simply by issuing more forceful calls on him to release them. Again: All we are talking about here is a baseline standard of transparency, one that Republican and Democratic presidential candidates have held themselves to for decades, because they recognized that the American people have a right to this transparency from their public officials, a right Trump does not recognize — and one congressional Republicans are now shrugging off.

They shouldn’t be doing that. It’s immoral and sleazy. We don’t need to know about Trump’s interests because of prurient curiosity, we need to know so that we can tell what his interests are and thus how he might sell out our interests to further his own.

Now Trump’s lawyer has been asked to help the Congressional investigations of Russian efforts to put Trump in the White House. He said no thanks so they’re going to subpoena him.

While much of the media focus in recent days has fallen on Russian contacts made by Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, there are few people closer to the president than his longtime lawyer. Insiders consider Cohen to be Trump’s pit bull or consigliere for his role in threatening legal action against Trump critics, gaining notoriety for threatening and browbeating reporters investigating Trump’s background.

He was quoted in 2015 telling Daily Beast reporters, “I will take you for every penny you still don’t have. And I will come after your Daily Beast and everybody else that you possibly know … So I’m warning you, tread very f—ing lightly, because what I’m going to do to you is going to be f—ing disgusting.”

Classy.

After the 2016 campaign, Cohen left the Trump Organization to become the president’s personal attorney, a job he still holds. From that post, he has continued to weigh in on Trump’s behalf on Twitter and during occasional television appearances.

After Trump dismissed FBI Director James Comey, for example, Cohen tweeted, “I believe @POTUS was justified in terminating #Comey as @FBI director. #RT if you agree with me!”

Classy classy classy.

Slate points out (as do others) how long it took Donnie the Racist to say anything about the horror in Portland. When he finally did, he of course didn’t mention anything about racism. Also he did it (or more likely a staffer did it) from his official prez account, not the personal one where he constantly erupts at the news media and most of the population.

The violent attacks in Portland on Friday are unacceptable. The victims were standing up to hate and intolerance. Our prayers are w/ them.

— President Trump 45 Archived (@POTUS45) May 29, 2017

For a candidate that became a darling of the white nationalist fringe, thrusting them closer to the mainstream of American life, the absence of a statement lauding the bravery of the citizens who stepped in to try to stop a raving racist lunatic was particularly conspicuous. The president returned from his trip abroad Saturday and still waited another day and a half to make an official statement.

He was, Elliot Hannon points out, too busy tweeting about “fake news” and the election in Montana.

It’s shaming how stark the isolation is.

In an unusual admission, Group of Seven (G7) leaders have said in their final communique from a summit in Italy that they had failed to bridge differences over climate change with US President Donald Trump – and America was unable to join other countries in committing to the Paris Agreement.

“The United States of America is in the process of reviewing its policies on climate change and on the Paris Agreement and thus is not in a position to join the consensus on these topics,” the communique read.

“Understanding this process, the heads of state and of government of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United Kingdom and the presidents of the European Council and of the European Commission reaffirm their strong commitment to swiftly implement the Paris Agreement,” it added.

In other words the normal heads of state re-affirm the work the G7 had already done, and the outlier sticks out his lip and scowls and shouts “No!” like a toddler.

Under pressure from allies, Mr Trump backed a pledge to fight protectionism, but refused to endorse the global Paris climate change accord, saying he needed more time to decide, with European diplomats frustrated at having to revisit questions they hoped were long settled.

He doesn’t “need more time to decide.” He needs to build on the work that was already done, during the years he was playing a Ruthless Executive on tv, by people who know something about the subject. What’s he going to base his “deciding” on? His gut? What Steve Bannon tells him? Fox News? He’s not equipped to decide anything, especially not a technical subject that he knows absolutely nothing about.

Climate action groups were quick to condemn Mr Trump’s actions.

Roberto Barbieri, Executive Director of Oxfam Italy, said: “President Trump, more than anyone else, has assumed the role of spoiler-in-chief – blocking agreement on many of these key concerns that affect millions of the world’s poorest people.

“It is courageous that six of the G7 countries stood up to him and reaffirmed their commitment to deliver on the climate deal made in 2015,” he added.

Alden Meyer, director of strategy and policy at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) said that Mr Trump “waffling” on the issue of whether to stay in or leave the accord was deeply damaging.

“President Trump’s ‘climate inaction plan’ is a threat to every American’s health and future prosperity,” he said.

That’s why he likes it.