On May 11, 2026, PEER brought a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.to force the release of key documents regarding the “Freedom 250” initiative. An official ...

“Farmers are waking up. They’re angry. But a lot of them also don’t have any choice in the matter,” says Kyla Bennett, a former EPA staffer who is now director of science policy for the nonprofit Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). She called the use of ...

Plans by the Trump administration to roll back regulations on chemical facility safety will allow for the continued rise in industrial chemical accidents, which are already up by 50% since 2021, a watchdog group warned this week. The administration is making an “appalling” divestment ...

In May, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility sued the U.S. Interior Department over the agency’s refusal to respond to a Freedom of Information Act request for documents on Freedom 250 funding and activities. Among the group’s inquiries are reports that federal workers ...

Close to 150 million people live within 3 miles of these facilities. Historically underserved and overburdened populations, including people who identify as Black and Latino, are at greatest risk of exposure to an accidental release. Many refineries were built before 1985, the analysis ...

While Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility and its allies challenged that agreement as an illegal evasion of the court’s order and NEPA, the court without explanation dismissed the challenge Wednesday. “This unfortunate ruling means that the impacts of noisy disruptive air ...

Two conservation groups filed a rulemaking petition in 2023 asking the Biden administration to adopt a national strategy to reduce whale strikes. The Biden and now Trump administrations have not acted on the recommendations, according to Rick Steiner, an Anchorage-based marine ecologist ...

That confusion over who decides what is corrosive or disparaging is at the heart of a lawsuit recently filed by the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, or PEER. After nine months of failed Freedom of Information Act requests to find out how those decisions were made, PEER ...

Lilly’s acting role has come under fire from Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility. The watchdog group argues that acting titles are meant for career senior officials that step temporarily into posts requiring Senate confirmation. The White House officially nominated Lilly in ...

Critics also contend that mandating that pins be worn by feds, who are barred from engaging in partisan political activity while on the job, is illegal. “Requiring NPS personnel, uniformed or not, to wear a pin displaying the trademarked logo of Freedom 250, LLC is unlawful, full stop ...

The National Mall in Washington and various memorial sites are part of the group that do not charge visitors to enter, meaning it is legal for DOI to spend leftover revenue on projects in its own backyard. But the amount the department has allocated to renovations so far this year appears ...

The Interior Department has refused a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request related to records showing how it is implementing an order to scrub “disparaging” content about American history from national parks. The move prompted Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility ( ...

The National Park Service has carried out at least 100 changes across the country, with more in process, according to a court filing earlier this week, including the removal of an entire exhibit on the enslaved servants of former President George Washington in Philadelphia. PEER’s ...

“The Administration is choosing to let roads, trails, and wastewater systems in the park fall into disrepair amidst the peak summer visitor season so it can paint statues gold in Washington,” he said in a June 15 statement to States Newsroom. “This is unacceptable, and I am demanding ...

The “extraordinarily broad” NDA proposal would unlawfully conflict with whistleblower protections and other legal avenues for federal employees to report fraud, waste, abuse and mismanagement, PEER said. The organization is urging OPM to fully withdraw the proposal. Tim Whitehouse, ...

For Kyla Bennett with Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, that budget rider poses a triple threat, harming farmers, food and water. “It’s appalling to me that these legislators are willing to trade human health, to trade clean water and a clean food supply for ...

Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, a group that represents federal workers, has also filed a lawsuit to force Interior to turn over more documents detailing spending on Freedom 250 and separate spending by the National Park Service to prepare Washington-area monuments for ...

“Waiving environmental laws to ram a $1.7 billion border wall through Big Bend National Park is fiscally reckless, ineffective, and an unconscionable sacrifice of one of America’s most irreplaceable wild landscapes,” said Tim Whitehouse, executive director of Public ...

Tim Whitehouse, the executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) told CNN that Trump’s “partisan events” are “not what the American people deserve on their 250th birthday.” PEER has sued the Trump administration over its refusal to release key ...

The NFF is a congressionally chartered foundation that raises private donations to support national forests. Because its official mission is to support the Forest Service, the use of funds from the NFF for anything unrelated to that purpose could subject the foundation to extra scrutiny ...