WolfeNotes.com

US National Park Police Presence Intimidates Community

It was very, very, very hard for me to make the transition from 7 years of living in the wild lands of the west and on the road, to living in urban Philadelphia.

Mind and soul shattering.

The one place where I could find even minimal refuge and “open space” and natural vegetation was a tiny maybe 5 acre patch of land known at “Old Swedes”.

The noise of adjacent I-95 and local traffic rendered  any attempt at solitude absurd. The noise was a disaster.

But at least I could walk on grass, shaded by trees, and let the dog off the leash to play fetch (Charlie is a champion blood line American Labrador retriever, from breeders in northwest Montana, Idaho and Washington).

Old Swedes is the one place where I and scores of dog lovers could let our dogs play and run free.

Of course, it is illegal to have dogs off the leash there, but that is rarely if ever enforced. I’ve seen US Park Police there 3 or 4 times over the last year and got only one warning.

We treat this place like our backyard – and that includes daily maintenance and removal of litter and disciplining other dog owners to respect the place. Other dog people realize and respect this special place. It is literally all good.

But now, even that compromised tiny parcel and moment of relief and dog freedom is in jeopardy.

Over the last week, the US National Park Police have been present, virtually 24/7.

I’ve seen them there several times over the last week. I tried to evade them a few days ago by early sunrise walks at 6:25 AM, but they showed up at 6:30 am.

Tonight, on Easter Sunday, I went at 9 pm – and was confronted by another US Park Ranger.

So I asked him what was going on and why he was there so often.

Was there something dangerous going on that the public users should be aware of?

He replied that it was a privater matter.

“Private matter”?

When I objected and said that everything he did was a public mater, he just walked away.

WTF kind of “protect and serve” is that?

The National Park Service and National Parks are under extreme threats from Trump and in desperate need of additional resources.

But policing Old Swedes must be the last on any rational priority list.

(caption: Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem at the Terrorist Confinement Center in Tecoluca, El Salvador, on March 26. Alex Brandon/Pool/Reuters)

I am now slogging through the classic book “The Rise And Fall of the Third Reich” and on almost every page I annotate the margins with a parallel specific abuse by Trump. So, it is a slow and painful slog.

I’ve posted a few times to note Nazi aspects of Trump’s Executive Orders and policies.

But, on another aspect, at what point are all the Trump Administration’s outrageous and disgusting photo op stunts going to be explicitly compared to the Nazi propaganda machine built by Goebbels and Leni Riefenstahl?

When?

We’ve had the Big Lie for years now – so just how bad does it have to get before the mainstream connects these dots?

Trump Seeks To Eliminate US Foreign Policy Role In Promoting Democracy, Human Rights, Climate And Migration

Trump’s Dismantling Of US Humanitarian Role Killing Millions

In a recent post about Trump’s attacks on education and culture, I wrote that Trump was using the Nazi playbook, under the guise of mandating that all government activity “align” with his personal views:

I) “Alignment” – Totalitarian Consolidation of Power In The Leader

Gleichschaltung.

Trump’s Executive Orders and dictates to the nation’s universities, cultural institutions, State governments, and now K-12 schools mandate that all policies and decisions must be “aligned” with Trump’s dictates.

In another example of that fascist consolidation of power, the New York Times (NYT) reports today that Trump is using exactly the same “alignment” mandate to govern the State Department and core historic objectives of US foreign policy, including professional staff hiring policy (NYT):

The draft executive order calls for ending the foreign service exam for aspiring diplomats, and it lays out new criteria for hiring, including “alignment with the president’s foreign policy vision.”

Trump’s twisted “foreign policy vision” includes abandoning Africa and longstanding US foreign policy goals (NYT):

A draft White House executive order proposes a drastic restructuring of the State Department, including eliminating almost all of its Africa operations and shutting down embassies and consulates across the continent.

The draft also calls for cutting offices at State Department headquarters that address climate change and refugee issues, as well as democracy and human rights concerns.

Here is how the US State Department describes US foreign policy:

Promoting freedom and democracy and protecting human rights around the world are central to U.S. foreign policy. The values captured in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and in other global and regional commitments are consistent with the values upon which the United States was founded centuries ago.

No doubt that there have been many major US foreign policy disasters – including murderous illegal wars of choice – that were based on sham assertions of “Promoting freedom and democracy and protecting human rights around the world.”

No doubt that the Cold War, McCarthyism, the Red Scare, the Korean and Vietnam Wars, and US military invasions were manifestations and perversions of those goals.

No doubt that the US has used these goals and objectives as propaganda to foster “color revolutions” and stoke CIA coups and regime change operations.

No doubt that these goals and objectives have been relied upon to assert US hegemony throughout the globe and support arrogant US imperialist claims on everything from Manifest Destiny to the Monroe Doctrine, the post WW II “rules based order”, “American exceptionalism”, and the “Unipolar” US dominance after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Some call this the operation of the “Deep State”.

But that does not mean that the goals and objectives themselves are sham and should be abandoned.

Or that the “Deep State” should be dismantled.

And why would Trump want to exit Africa? (coming at a time he seeks to prohibit the teaching of US history of slavery). In more racist practice, the NYT reports that Trump’s Executive Order would:

And it says the department will end its contract with Howard University, a historically Black institution, to recruit candidates for the Rangel and Pickering fellowships, which are to be terminated. The goal of those fellowships has been to help students from underrepresented groups get a chance at entering the Foreign Service soon after graduation.

Instead, Trump’s “vision” for the US role in Africa is explicitly imperial extraction (NYT):

The [Africa] office would focus on a handful of issues, including “coordinated counterterrorism operations” and “strategic extraction and trade of critical natural resources.”

No doubt that Trump is hell bent on dismantling Biden’s disastrous “America Is Back” and replacing it with his “America First” policy. But in that head to head competition for killing, consider the fact that Biden’s support for Israeli genocide on the Palestinians killed maybe 200,000 people – Trump is killing 100 TIMES that many.

Trump has said nothing about dismantling the US Military Empire and closing some 900+ US military bases around the world or slashing the bloated $1 trillion Pentagon budget.

Now that would really be going after the “Deep State”.

Trump Exempted Dirty Coal Power Plants From Clean Air Standards For Toxic Mercury And Other Hazardous Air Pollutants

Trump Falsely Claims Pollution Control Technology Does Not Exist

Environmental Groups And State Officials Again Caught Flat Footed 

Earlier this week, Trump delivered on what is likely to be just the first round of exemptions threatened by his broad Executive Order regarding Clean Air Act standards for industrial emissions of toxic chemicals, including highly toxic mercury.

Real Presidents issue Proclamations to do BIG things like liberate people from oppression and preserve sacred native American lands – fascist frauds likeTrump use that power to protect polluters.

(and someone should call Bobby Kennedy, because, as he has bragged many, many times, he began his career fighting mercury poisoning of fish and purports to know and care about the toxicology of pregnant women and children who eat them. Ironically, his fish mercury work led him to his work on vaccines.)

On April 8, Trump issued a Proclamation that exempted more than 47 coal power plants from EPA’s Clean Air Act mercury and hazardous air pollutant standards, see the EPA announcement:

• Presidential Proclamation – Regulatory Relief for Certain Stationary Sources to Promote American Energy

The Trump Proclamation was based on the outrageous lie that “The technology to implement the Rule is not available.”

The media reported some of this, but missed the fact that the scope of the exemptions Trump can issue is far broader than just coal power plants.

Trump’s Clean Air Act exemption power includes many industrial emission sources, including from synthetic organic chemical manufacturing, copper smelting, iron and steel manufacturing,rubber tire manufacturing, lime manufacturing, coke ovens, battery manufacturing,  and taconite iron ore processing.

Although NJ has no coal power plants, that’s why I petitioned NJ DEP to adopt current EPA regulations as State requirements to avoid rollbacks (the legislature could codify them as well), see:

• Murphy DEP Urged To Block Trump EPA Clean Air Rollback

Equally important, those exempted coal power plants not only emit huge quantities of greenhouse gases that are driving the climate emergency, they contribute to mercury poisoning and air pollution in NJ. This is known as “long range transport” . NJ already has a statewide fish consumption advisory due to high levels of mercury and NJ fails to meet Clean Air Act health stands for ozone and fine particulates. So the Trump exemptions poison NJ too.

While the media have covered the Trump coal power exemptions, the media has totally failed to cover the major regulatory rollbacks the Trump administration can accomplish not only under the Clean Air Act Presidential exemption provision, but under Trump’s emergency declarations.

Virtually all federal regulations provide “flexibility” to waive, exempt, streamline, expedite, and rubber stamp environmental reviews and approvals by federal agencies, and not just EPA.

There are many invisible shoes now dropping under this fake emergency – like trees falling in the woods that no one hears.

We’ve been warning about this literally for years (we began in July 2023, with a warning on the dangerous implications of Project 2025: we warned about all that in July of 2023, BEFORE the election:

Chapter 13 [of Project 2025] provides a radical agenda to dismantle EPA and virtually all regulatory, science, and climate programs.

Yet, once again, State officials and environmental groups and media were all caught flat footed and into a reactionary posture totally reliant on lawsuits after the fact.

Given that these Trump rollbacks all have been telegraphed far in advance, one would think that State officials and environmental groups would get out in front in a circle the wagons strategy and full throated public campaign.

One would be wrong. Malpractice and incompetence are too soft to describe this negligence.

Regardless, I wrote another letter to State legislators and DEP Commissioner LaTourette urging them to respond, see:

Dear Commissioner LaTourette: As you know, President Trump issued a Proclamation  which exempted more than 47 coal power plants from EPA’s Clean Air Act mercury and hazardous air pollutant regulations, see the EPA announcement:

Presidential Proclamation – Regulatory Relief for Certain Stationary Sources to Promote American Energy

https://www.epa.gov/stationary-sources-air-pollution/presidential-proclamation-regulatory-relief-certain-stationary

The coal powered energy facilities exempted represent over one third of current US coal capacity, see:

Trump exempts more than a third of US coal capacity from updated mercury, air toxics rule

https://www.utilitydive.com/news/trump-epa-coal-power-plant-mats-mercury-exemptions/745482/

Many of the coal plants exempted are upwind of NJ and impact NJ. The greenhouse gas emissions from those plants accelerates and magnifies the climate emergency and warming impacts and risks to NJ.

The Department has long been involved in the public health science of mercury and in adopting stringent mercury emissions standards. Similarly, the Department has participated in analyzing the interstate air quality impacts of long range pollutant transport from coal power plants, particularly with respect to ozone non-attainment.

The exemptions issued by President Trump will cause additional mercury poisoning of NJ’s environment, exacerbate NJ’s non-compliance status, and increase public health risks from mercury and other pollutants emitted by coal power plants. The science is very clear on these impacts.

The Trump Proclamation falsely claimed that “The technology to implement the Rule is not available.”

https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/04/rregulatory-relief-for-certain-stationary-sources-to-promote-american-energy/

The EPA provided no factual or scientific basis to support the exemptions. The White House provided no evidence to support their exemptions.

There was no public participation in the exemption process.

This is an outrageous and arbitrary abuse of power and a violation of the Clean Air Act.

I urge you to work with Attorney General Platkin to file a lawsuit to block these exemptions.

I again urge you to work with Chairman Smith to develop a coordinated Legislative and regulatory strategy to minimize the damage of the Trump regime’s efforts to “dismantle the administrative state” and implement Trump’s Executive Orders.

Bill Wolfe

EPA Calls Out DEP’s Irrelevant EJ “Supplement” To Clean Air Plan

I am working on a post regarding the recent Trump Presidential “Proclamation” that exempted over 47 coal power plants from Biden EPA mercury and hazardous air pollution requirements.

(Real Presidents issue Proclamations to do BIG things like liberate people from oppression and preserve sacred native American lands – Trump does that to protect polluters)

I wrote a warning about that weeks ago, see:

• Trump EPA Just Waived The Clean Air Act

In doing the background research on the Trump Proclamation, particularly on what is called “interstate transport” under the Clean Air Act, I came across this superb gem, which I will share now in advance of the larger post.

Even the Biden EPA called bullshit on the Murphy DEP’s environmental justice spin.

As I’ve written numerous times, the entire NJ DEP environmental justice program, i.e.: 1) the Governor’s Executive Orders; 2) the Commissioner’s Administrative Orders; 3) the EJ legislation; 4) the DEP regulations; and 5) the stressor Guidance document, are a sham, because they all do ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to change the underlying scientific, technical, and regulatory bases for pollution controls and DEP permits.

Now here is the Biden EPA saying exactly the same thing, but in their restrained banal bureaucratic regulatory language. Check it out:

II. Environmental Justice Considerations

New Jersey provided a supplement to the SIP submission being approved with this rulemaking on May 16, 2023. The supplemental submission briefed the EPA on Environmental Justice (EJ) considerations within New Jersey by detailing the State’s programs and initiatives addressing the needs of communities with EJ concerns that have been ongoing since 1998. For more information on New Jersey’s EJ initiatives, the EPA refers the reader to the proposal published on July 1, 2024. See89 FR 54397. Although New Jersey considered EJ as part of its SIP submittal, the EPA has determined that conducting its own comprehensive EJ analysis is not necessary in the context of this SIP submission for interstate transport for the 2010 1-hour SO₂ NAAQS, as the CAA and its applicable implementing regulations neither prohibit nor require such an evaluation of EJ in relation to the relevant requirements. […]

The analysis was done for the purpose of providing additional context and information about this rulemaking to the public, not as a basis of the action.

Did you get that? “Not as a basis of the action“. The NJ EJ policy was a “brief” to EPA, not a SIP amendment or real regulatory strategy. The EJ review is “not necessary” or required under the Clean Air Act. Irrelevant. In other words, spin. Just Bullshit.

Regardless of what DEP Commissioner LaTourette thinks about their EJ program, it is not recognized by the federal Clean Air Act and is not “relevant” to clean air regulatory requirements.

We’ve been saying that for many years now.