It’s Time to Take on Interior Department Corruption
The COVID-19 crisis may have sent most of America into lockdown, but not the Interior Department, where the Trump administration practices no social or ethical distancing with the fossil fuel industry and other polluting friends. As the virus sweeps the country,...
BLOG: National Parks Stumble Towards Reforms
This past week, Rocky Mountain National Park, the park with the third highest level of visitors in 2019, stumbled towards reforms with something extraordinary. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, it adopted a reservation or timed-entry system to prevent overcrowding...
We Must All Address Racism and Economic Injustice
Friends, Right now, there is pain across the nation. The outrage caused by the senseless killing of George Floyd, among other recent high profile incidents of racial injustice, has been another reminder of our failure to address a history of racism and economic...
BLOG: EPA Creating A “Pandemic of Pollution” Since COVID-19 Crisis
Despite the connection between exposure to air pollution and adverse outcomes from COVID-19, EPA continues to accelerate its efforts to gut important air quality protections, unleashing what a new staff report by U.S. Senator Carper calls a “pandemic of pollution.”...
BLOG: New Age of Impunity: Trump’s Relentless Attack on Oversight
The Friday night sacking of the State Department’s Inspector General (IG) should send a shiver of fear down the spine of every IG, ethics officer, and oversight functionary remaining in federal service as Trump's relentless attack on oversight continues with impunity....
BLOG: Opposing the EPA Plan to Restrict Science
The old saying that ignorance is bliss is no longer operative. In the current climate, ignorance can kill you. A prime example of embracing ignorance can be found in a pending EPA plan to restrict science originally pushed in Republican legislation sponsored by the...
BLOG: There Is No “Trump Exemption” – That Is Why We Are Suing
On May 11, PEER and Western Watersheds Project sued the Secretary of the Interior David Bernhardt, alleging that Bernhardt has used temporary appointees to lead the National Park Service and the Bureau of Land Management in violation of federal laws and the U.S....
BLOG: Dr. Bright’s COVID-19 Cronyism Case Is Tough to Crack
Dr. Rick Bright’s explosive revelations about systemic corporate corruption in federal vaccine development are detailed in a recent filing with the U.S. Office of Special Counsel (OSC). This filing has two related but distinct elements: A complaint of retaliation for...
BLOG: Why Blow the Whistle?
A friend of mine asked me a question this week that took me a while to answer in the depth it deserves: “What is even the point of whistleblowing when nothing ever comes of it . . . the people in charge . . . will do nothing so like why stick your neck out?” This...
BLOG: Sliming Lincoln’s Memorial
Last Sunday, Interior Secretary Bernhardt ordered the Lincoln Memorial closed to the public so that President Trump could “communicate an official message to the American people” via (what else?) Fox News on the current pandemic.In his curious “Record of...
BLOG: EPA Should Sit Out Earth Day This Year
This April 22nd is the 50th Earth Day. While the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has been a part of most every Earth Day celebration since the event was founded by Senator Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin, it is fair to say that by its recent actions the...
PEER During the Pandemic (Updated Apr 10, 2020)
The global impact of the COVID-19 pandemic will be enormous and irreversible. For us at PEER, there will be some big changes, while some things we are already doing will continue and expand. Here are some examples: Public Health Impacts PEER is currently representing...
Losing Our Voice: The Attack on Public Health Science
In the flurry of activity to respond to the pandemic, public health officials and scientists have lost our voice. Many may not realize it, but our current pandemic may be the first in U.S. history that has been led, not by scientists, but by non-scientists in Offices...
Can National Parks Practice Social Distancing?
The still unfolding pandemic has underlined the public health risks that national parks and refuges pose both to the visiting public and their own employees. Over the past few weeks, more than 140 park units have shuttered with more closing every day. For the very...
National Parks Epitomize Trump COVID Inconsistency
As more than 100 national park units have closed, hundreds more remain open in unevenly evolving situation that is confusing, at best. Unfortunately for all of us, this same stop-start approach is also characteristic of the Trump White House’s overall response to the...
BLOG: Trump’s War on Watchdogs
Donald Trump does not care for dogs, but he especially dislikes watchdogs. More than being the only modern President without a pet dog, his real phobia is about discordant messages emanating from the federal bureaucracy. Particularly irksome are critical reports from...
BLOG: COVID-19 Power Grab
Last week, President Trump signed the $2 trillion coronavirus bill meant to help Americans get through the COVID-19 crisis. From hospitals to small businesses to working Americans, the bill appropriated billions to different sectors of America that have been decimated...
BLOG: How Mitch McConnell Gutted the Pandemic Response
On March 23, Sen. Mitch McConnell took the Senate floor to excoriate opponents who were trying to amend the COVID-19 bill to include accountability and transparency measures, including an independent oversight board, and an elimination of a provision in the bill that...
PEER Letter to Suspend Action During Coronavirus Crisis
A coalition of more than 90 conservation groups issued a letter to Interior Secretary David Bernhardt on Monday, March 23, 2020, urging the department to "suspend major policy changes, changes to regulations, oil and gas lease sales and public comment periods." This...
BLOG: Self-Dealing, COVID-19 and the Public Trust
Reports that U.S. Senators sold millions of dollars in stock after receiving non-public information during Congressional briefings in January and February on the coronavirus threat should come as no surprise given the endemic self-dealing by government leaders. These...
