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5 Oct, 10 tweets, 4 min read
BREAKING: The EPA has stripped Oklahoma's tribes of regulatory sovereignty over environmental matters and handed it to the state's governor.

This is a huge deal.

@tihuachang has the exclusive report for @tytinvestigates:
tyt.com/stories/4vZLCH…
As Ti-Hua reports, Oklahoma's tribes would be powerless to prevent wholesale dumping on tribal lands or protect them from a vast array of toxic materials and pollutants.
The EPA never appears to have made the public aware that this decision-making process was under way.

As Ti-Hua first reported, the state's tribes were first told on Aug. 25--with a response deadline of Sept. 21, less than one month:
tyt.com/stories/4vZLCH…
Not surprisingly, the new EPA documents Ti-Hua obtained reveal that the tribes even told the EPA they needed more time to formulate and submit their responses:
Who found out about all this BEFORE the tribes did?

Oklahoma's petroleum and big ag industries. They first learned of it literally THE DAY Oklahoma's governor asked the EPA to kneecap the tribes.

Ti-Hua ALSO broke THIS story.

IS ANYONE ELSE PAYING ATTENTION TO THIS???
The Supreme Court said Congress has the last word.

And a 2005 rider carved out a path for the state to ask the EPA to do exactly what it just did.

Who wrote the rider? Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK)

Who helped him? His aide, Andrew Wheeler...now the EPA administrator.
Here's the statement we got from Casey Camp-Horinek, Environmental Ambassador & Elder & Hereditary Drumkeeper Ponca Tribe of Oklahoma:
Stitt's letter requesting the EPA's intervention was dated -- and first posted online -- on July 22...

...by the Oklahoma Petroleum Alliance.

mcusercontent.com/325f73d29a0b4f…
You can read the EPA's response, which Ti-Hua obtained and posted online, here:

documentcloud.adobe.com/link/review?ur…
Here's Ti-Hua's followup, wrapping the response to our exclusive from both politicians and environmentalists.

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More from @jtlarsen

Jonathan Larsen Profile picture
18 Sep
BOMBSHELL: The EPA set a deadline of MONDAY for Oklahoma tribes to respond to Gov. Kevin Stitt's request for the EPA to give HIM control over environmental regulations on tribal lands.

@tihuachang has details in his exclusive report:

tyt.com/stories/4vZLCH…
Ti-Hua previously reported that Stitt had quietly made the request to the EPA after the Supreme Court gave the tribes sovereignty over eastern Oklahoma.

Now, we have Stitt's letter ... and it goes farther than anyone knew.
A former EPA official told us that Stitt's request included language that would let the state permit fracking...

...and the dumping of mercury, PCBs and other hazardous waste on tribal lands...

...throughout the ENTIRE state.
Read 14 tweets
Jonathan Larsen Profile picture
9 Sep
Fascinating to see news of Trump saying something treated as a big deal when it's recorded on audiotape, privately, to one person...

...but when it's publicly to millions we have to both-sides it.

It's the implied intent to keep it secret that renders it "interesting".
When Trump says something publicly, his good intent is assumed:

"He's playing down COVID-19 to reassure people."

He says the same thing privately and the assumption is:

"He played down COVID-19 for political reasons."

Media assumptions are bad in both cases.
Then, of course, there's the question of why Trump wanted to calm people about a coronavirus that CALLED FOR public action in response...

...but showed no interest in calming people about bogus caravans of immigrants that called for NO public action.
Read 5 tweets
Jonathan Larsen Profile picture
30 Aug
NEW: After the Supreme Court gave tribes sovereignty over half of Oklahoma…

…Gov. Kevin Stitt quietly moved to prevent the tribes from gaining environmental regulatory control, @TiHuaChang found out:

tyt.com/stories/4vZLCH…
Publicly, Stitt and Sen. Jim Inhofe responded to the landmark ruling by pledging to work with Native American leaders to figure out the legal/regulatory implications of the Supreme Court’s seismic power shift.

Here are their press releases from July 20:
But on Aug. 3, Stitt privately told a farming industry group that he had asked Trump’s EPA to hand environmental authority over to the STATE...

…which would sidestep the Supreme Court ruling.

Ti-Hua found the audio:
Read 8 tweets
Jonathan Larsen Profile picture
11 Aug
NEW: SBA data suggest that mosques suffered from disparities in PPP lending.

Some of it might be benign--but some might reflect existing bias & inequities in U.S. lending.

Here's my story for @tytinvestigates on what happened, and why:

tyt.com/stories/4vZLCH…
I shared some of our findings with @CAIRNational and @hijrahva, which did not relay any individual acts of bias, but said they were aware of systemic problems -- many of which predate the coronavirus.
CAIR's Robert McCaw said TYT's analysis, "certainly does raise a number of questions.”

“Without a complete picture on the PPP loan program’s data, it’s hard to know whether these numbers are a cause of concern for mosques and Islamic community centers.”
Read 7 tweets
Jonathan Larsen Profile picture
6 Jul
NEW: Trump's NLRB is considering killing a legal doctrine that has protected unions since FDR was president.

The request came from the National Right to Work Committee Legal Foundation...in a union's dispute with a Trump megadonor.

tyt.com/stories/4vZLCH…
Trump megadonor Ron Cameron owns a chicken company that employs 800 union members at a Delaware plant.

Many are immigrants. Two-thirds needed Spanish or Haitian Creole translation.

Cameron won a vote--taking place right now--to kill the union.
Then the Right to Work Committee got involved, asking the three members of the National Labor Relations Board--all Trump appointees--to kill or at least narrow what's known as the contract bar doctrine.

Here's how the contract bar doctrine protects unions...
Read 13 tweets
Jonathan Larsen Profile picture
15 Jun
UPDATE: A union fighting for its life against a Trump megadonor just won the right to hold the vote on its survival by **mail** due to COVID-19.

The law firm battling the union is the #1 donor to @ChrisCoons, who has helped Trump's donor before, but is not helping the union.
@ChrisCoons The mail-in voting has been pushed back--ballots go out June 23 & must be received by 3pm July 14.

The union represents low-wage poultry workers, some non-English speaking, who were forced to work in what they say were unsafe conditions due to Trump declaring them essential.
The poultry company, Mountaire, stopped releasing coronavirus data and, as I reported last week, put in safety measures by April 20.

But Mountaire told the NLRB that 34 people tested positive... ALL asymptomatic... on May 27, AFTER implementing its coronavirus measures.
Read 4 tweets

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