Not so fast, Mr. President
Yes, there is other news out there besides COVID-19 and protests over injustice.
What's more, it is some good news: Trump's fossil fuel agenda is getting push-back from federal judges.
Federal courts around the country have delivered a string of rebukes to the Trump administration over what they found were failures to protect the environment and address climate change as Trump and his henchmen promote fossil fuel interests and the extraction of natural resources from public lands.
According to an Associated Press review of more than a dozen major environmental cases, judges have ruled that administration officials ignored or downplayed potential environmental damage in lawsuits over oil and gas leases, coal mining and pipelines to transport fuels across the U.S.
Just Thursday, an appeals court refused to revive a permitting program for oil and gas pipelines that a lower court had canceled.
Earlier in May, U.S. District Judge Brian Morris, an Obama-appointed judge in Montana, canceled energy leases on several hundred thousand acres in cases that centered on potential harm to water supplies and the greater sage grouse, a declining species. He also struck down the nationwide permitting program for new oil and gas pipelines in a lawsuit against the controversial Keystone XL oil sands pipeline from Canada by ruling that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had never justified use of a blanket environmental permit for construction of oil and gas pipelines through wetlands, streams and other waters. The Army Corps suspended the permitting program, affecting thousands of projects.
Federal judges in other states - including appointees of both Democratic and Republican administrations - have also ruled against Trump.
In California, a George H.W. Bush appointee struck down the administration's attempt to repeal a rule meant to ensure companies pay fair value for oil, coal and other natural resources from public lands. In Colorado, a Ronald Reagan appointee sided with conservation groups and said the administration's review of 171 proposed natural gas wells didn't look closely enough at the cumulative effect of drilling on climate change and the area's mule deer and elk populations. In Idaho, a magistrate judge canceled more than $125 million in oil and gas leases on public lands that are home to sage grouse, after determining the Trump administration illegally curtailed public comment.
But the picture isn't all rosy. In March, a different Obama-appointed judge in California upheld the Trump administration's repeal of a 2015 rule regulating hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking," for oil and gas.
Still, more environmental wins than losses is a hopeful sign.
Speaking of fracking ...
A new study has shown that fracking is linked to a rare birth defect in horses, and the implications for human health are "worrisome," according to researchers.
The study, published in May in the journal Science of the Total Environment, got its start when veterinarians at Cornell University Hospital for Animals in Ithaca, New York, in 2014 realized they'd diagnosed five out of 10 foals born on one farm in Pennsylvania with the same rare birth defect, dysphagia. The defect causes abnormalities in the throat that make swallowing difficult. The nursing foals were inhaling milk, instead of just swallowing it, resulting in pneumonia.
Environmental Health News, which reported on the study last week, noted that the owner of the Pennsylvania farm also owned a horse farm in New York. Both farms used the same commercial horse feed and sourced hay from the same place - but none of the horses born on the New York farm ever had dysphagia.
Additionally, several mares that lived on the Pennsylvania farm for the first half of their gestation had healthy foals after being moved to the New York farm mid-pregnancy, while several mares who started out in New York and were moved to Pennsylvania mid-pregnancy had dysphagic foals.
The only difference the farmer identified was that in Pennsylvania, there were 28 fracking wells within seven miles of the farm - two of which were within 1,500 feet of the property's two water wells. There were no fracking wells near the New York farm. The state banned fracking in 2015.
Kathleen Mullen, a veterinarian and the study's lead author, told EHN over the next two years, she and colleagues analyzed samples of feed, soil, air and water, as well as blood and tissue samples from mares and foals at both farms. During that time, 65 foals were born, 17 of which were dyshagic. All of the ones with the birth defect came from the Pennsylvania farm.
In all the sampling, the only significant difference at the two farms was in the water. The Pennsylvania farm water contained chemicals commonly used in fracking. After the discovery, the farmer installed a water filtration system and saw a marked decrease in birth of dysphagic foals.
Mullen told EHN that the study adds to the growing body of literature linking fracking to problems with human fetal development.
"Horses are often sentinels of health risks to humans," she said. "The implications are certainly worrisome."