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Eric Lipton

@EricLiptonNYT

6 May

THREAD: The US has more than enough lithium in the ground to supply the needs of all electric vehicles that will be made here. The massive open question is how will it be extracted from the ground? Let's look at those choices. First a story then documents nytimes.com/2021/05/06/bus…

One model is open-pit mining. Take the LithiumAmericas plan on federal lands in northern Nevada. Dig a giant pit and a sulfuric acid manufacturing plant. Extract a massive amt of water from the ground. Then pull the lithium from the clay to get what you need.

But there is a real environmental cost here. A study completed by Trump-era Interior published late last year before the LithiumAmericas was given final federal approval details some of the impact. That is 3,230 gallons of water per minute & thousands acres wildlife habitat, etc

Read 11 tweets

Eric Lipton

@EricLiptonNYT

30 Mar

Trump's effort to silence a former campaign aide named Jessica Denson & punish after she claimed sex discrimination/harassment by his campaign is effectively voided today as federal court judge rules that non-disclosure agreement Denson signed as campaign aide in 2016 is invalid

I wrote about this case--and others where Trump used his campaign funds to punish former aides that had been critical of him or his campaign--late last year. nytimes.com/2020/09/05/us/…

Here is the full story on how Trump drew on campaign funds to pay tens of millions in legal bills. Jessica Denson, his former campaign aide, was one of his many targets. nytimes.com/2020/09/05/us/…

Read 5 tweets

Eric Lipton

@EricLiptonNYT

9 Mar

House Republicans, one at a time, each attempting introduce same HR682 "Reopen Schools Act" (over, over again) even though Dems have not that allowed it to be amended into stimulus bill. These sounds bites will be used in reelection efforts obviously. Sounds like a broken record

So much of what happens in Washington is political posturing. The campaign ad/fundraising appeal here is so obvious.

Given that they're reading exactly the same script it's almost like the House Republicans are auditioning for a TV part, some of them adding little flourishes in their voices as they read the same line

Read 5 tweets

Eric Lipton

@EricLiptonNYT

9 Mar

Interior Department kicks off a fundamental review of the oil and gas leasing program for federal lands. If you are pro oil and gas, or critical of it, hard to not agree this program needs to be reexamined. Most of leased land is banked by speculators, not really used to produce

@HirokoTabuchi

We wrote about this in 2018. Leases on federal land for energy production at times being given away for pennies, and then sat on by speculators. With @HirokoTabuchi nytimes.com/2018/11/27/bus…

I went to a Houston industry conference in 2018 where land speculators were RESELLING leases they had bought from the federal government. You have to wonder. Why are they profiting by re-selling them?

Read 4 tweets

Eric Lipton

@EricLiptonNYT

8 Mar

BREAKING: Biden administration today reverses action taken in final days of Trump administration that had benefitted an Israeli billionaire and mining executive who wanted access to US banks again. A Trump-era lobbying campaign backfires. nytimes.com/live/2021/03/0…

Here is statement from State Department as Treasury reimposes the sanctions on Dan Gertler, the Israeli billionaire, who State says "engaged in extensive public corruption"

Here is our story from February detailing the elaborate lobbying campaign that Dan Gertler undertook, with the help of Alan Dershowitz and others, to get the last-minute reprieve from Treasury Sec Mnuchin, a secret deal now reversed nytimes.com/2021/02/21/us/…

Read 5 tweets

Eric Lipton

@EricLiptonNYT

5 Mar

THREAD: Lets take a closer look at the ways that Elaine Chao & staff violated federal ethics rules while she DOT Secretary--using fed taxpayer resources to benefit her family. DOT staff (OST) here worked on planned trip to China slated to include her dad James Chao, AKA Dr Chao

So all this work by DOT staff in Office Sec of Transportation (OST) caused the alarms to go off at DOT Gen Counsel's office. You can't use fed staff to do this kind of stuff.

How would you respond to ethics alarm bells like this? Keep going? Well that is what Chao's office did. And her sister Angela Chao, also an executive at Foremost Group, which is building ships in China with Chinese gov financial support, was on planned trip....

Read 17 tweets

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