Manure runoff from a dairy farm in Monroe County has caused hundreds of fish kills in nearby waterways, according to the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.
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Highway 170 in North Hollywood, California. (Photo by Trevor Srednick/Getty Images)
The U.S. Senate voted early Thursday to prevent California from enforcing regulations on tailpipe emission from new cars and trucks, upending state regulations for the nearly 40% of Americans whose states follow California standards.
The House has already passed an identical measure, meaning the Senate vote sends the resolution to President Donald Trump’s desk.
The 51-46 vote, with Michigan Democrat Elissa Slotkin joining all Republicans present to vote in favor, cleared a Congressional Review Act resolution repealing Environmental Protection Agency waivers that allow California to set regulations for emissions from cars and light-duty trucks.
The state policy includes a ramp-up to having no new gas-powered cars sold in the state by 2035.
Democrats blasted the near-party-line vote for contradicting the Senate parliamentarian, who’d ruled the waiver that the EPA had granted to California to set its own tailpipe standards was not a regulation that could be rolled back under the Congressional Review Act, or CRA.
The CRA allows for a simple majority in the Senate to vote to repeal recent executive branch rules, bypassing the chamber’s usual 60-vote threshold for legislation.
The EPA under President Joe Biden issued waivers under a Clean Air Act provision that allows California, which had more stringent standards than what Congress enacted in the 1970 law, to set its own standards for air pollution.
No other state is allowed to set independent standards, but any state may adopt California’s.
For the light-duty vehicle emissions rule, 17 other states — Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia and Washington — and the District of Columbia adopted some portion of the standard.
The action by the Senate, particularly because of the mechanism for revoking the waiver, made the future of the standards in all those states uncertain, Justin Balik, vice president for states at the national environmental advocacy group Evergreen Action, said in a Thursday interview.
“What, fundamentally, they’re doing is sowing a huge amount of chaos and uncertainty in states around the country, not just in California,” he said of the senators.
Slotkin, who voted against procedural measures before her vote in favor of the resolution itself, said her vote was in defense of her state’s automotive industry. Slotkin campaigned on a promise not to allow an electric vehicle mandate.
“Today, I voted to prevent California and the states that follow its standard from effectively banning gas-powered cars by 2035,” she wrote in a statement. “I have a special responsibility to stand up for the more than one million Michiganders whose livelihoods depend on the U.S. auto industry.”
Critics said the state regulation was effectively an electric vehicle mandate that robbed consumers of the option to purchase the vehicle of their choice.
Because of California’s market share — the state accounts for 11% of cars and trucks sold in the country, according to the California Air Resources Board — and adoption by other states, the Golden State standard had a virtually nationwide effect, they argued.
Republicans in the Senate focused on the 2035 deadline to end sales of new gas-powered vehicles, describing it as an electric vehicle mandate.
In a video posted to social media, the Senate’s No. 2 Republican, John Barrasso of Wyoming, stood next to Shelley Moore Capito, the West Virginia Republican chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, and touted the vote as a victory for consumer choice.
“Republicans have defeated Democrats’ delusional dream of forcing every American to drive an electric vehicle,” Barrasso said. “They wanted to force-feed the entire country things that don’t necessarily work, not practical.”
But proponents of the California standards said the Senate was removing choice from state policymakers, despite Republicans’ longtime advocacy for state and local control.
Manish Bapna, the president of the advocacy group Natural Resources Defense Council, blasted the move in a statement that said senators undermined state power.
“This vote is an unprecedented and reckless attack on states’ legal authority to address the pollution causing asthma, lung disease and heart conditions,” Bapna said. “After a multi-million dollar lobbying campaign from Big Oil, Republicans readily jettisoned their long-held view that states can best enact measures that reflect the values and interests of their residents.
“If other states don’t like California’s approach, they don’t need to follow it,” the statement continued. “But federal lawmakers shouldn’t be intervening to block states from providing cleaner air and a healthier environment.”
Republicans’ use of the Congressional Review Act provoked a backlash from Democrats and environmental allies, who described it as “going nuclear” to tank the chamber’s filibuster rule.
The Senate parliamentarian and the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office said the waiver could not be repealed with a CRA resolution, but Senate Republicans opted to use the procedure anyway.
“Senate Republicans exposed themselves as fair weather institutionalists. By overriding the parliamentarian — which the chair explicitly noted that the parliamentarian has been overridden — and in order to do the bidding of the fossil fuel industry, Republicans have eroded away at the Senate foundation and undermined this institution they claim to care about,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said after a procedural vote late Wednesday.
Republicans defended the move, saying they were responding to an unprecedented case in the chamber. The question of how Senate rules applied to the waiver should be decided by senators themselves, Majority Leader John Thune said.
“I believe that when the Senate is facing a novel situation like this one, with disagreement among its members, it is appropriate for the Senate to speak as a body to the question – something the Senate does when questions over application of the rules arise,” he said in a floor speech.
Thune, of South Dakota, noted that the Senate resolved a rules question with a floor vote just last year after a Democrat raised a point of order against a Republican’s attempt to fast-track a measure.
“Nobody at the time cried nuclear, nobody said the Democrat member was blowing up the Senate – in fact, most members probably don’t even remember the situation, because it was just the Senate doing what the Senate is supposed to do, and that’s voting on how to apply the rules when faced with a new situation.”
Critics of the move attacked the process, the policy and the precedent, saying the Senate undid a half-century of a California-federal government relationship regarding the Clean Air Act that had served all parties well.
John Boesel, the president and CEO of clean transportation industry group CALSTART, called the Senate action radical.
“This vote upends decades of policy that has successfully resulted in cleaner air and the growth of a robust clean transportation industry,” he said in a statement. “It is a brazen, yet futile, attempt to bring the clean transportation industry to a sudden halt. CALSTART will continue to partner with the states working to fill this gaping void left by today’s federal action.”
And the unusual use of the Congressional Review Act will likely lead to lawsuits from California and at least some of the states that follow it to “protect their authority,” Balik, of Evergreen Action, said.
“But that’s going to take some time to play out,” he said. “In the meantime, the whole marketplace has been plunged into unnecessary chaos. Part of what the industry always says is, ‘We need certainty.’ And if anything, right now, we have the exact opposite thanks to what Congress is doing.”
Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. testifies before a Senate Appropriations subcommittee on Tuesday, May 20, 2025. (Screenshot from committee webcast)
WASHINGTON — U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. testified before Congress on Tuesday that a major report due out later this week from his agency will not disparage farmers or a commonly used pesticide.
Kennedy, who has long been critical of certain aspects of modern agriculture and processed food, at a U.S. Senate hearing urged lawmakers to read the widely anticipated “Make America Healthy Again” report once it’s published Thursday, but didn’t go into details about any possible recommendations.
“Everybody will see the report,” Kennedy said. “And there’s nobody that has a greater commitment to the American farmer than we do. The MAHA movement collapses if we can’t partner with the American farmer in producing a safe, robust and abundant food supply.”
His comments followed stern questioning from Mississippi Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, who said she had read news reports from “reliable sources” that the MAHA Commission’s initial assessment “may unfairly target American agriculture, modern farming practices and the crop protection tools that roughly 2% of our population relies on to help feed the remaining 98%.”
“If Americans lose confidence in the safety and integrity of our food supply due to the unfounded claims that mislead consumers, public health will be at risk,” Hyde-Smith said. “I’ve said this before, and it’s worth saying again, countries have gone to war over many things — politics, religion, race, trade, natural resources, oil, pride, you name it — but threaten a nation’s food supply and allow people to go hungry. Let’s see what happens then.”
Hyde-Smith, who was her home state’s commissioner of agriculture and commerce from 2012 to 2018, probed Kennedy about his past work in environmental law and whether he might be inserting “confirmation bias” into the forthcoming report.
She asked Kennedy if he would try to change the current approval for glyphosate, a commonly used herbicide, that she referred to as “one of the most thoroughly studied products of its kind.”
“We’re talking about more than 1,500 studies and 50-plus years of review by the EPA and other leading global health authorities that have affirmed its safety when used as directed,” Hyde-Smith said. “Have you been able to review thousands of studies and decades of scientific review in a matter of months?”
Kennedy responded that her “information about the report is just simply wrong.”
“The drafts that I’ve seen, there is not a single word in them that should worry the American farmer,” Kennedy said.
Hyde-Smith continued her questioning and told Kennedy that it would be “a shame if the MAHA commission issues reports suggesting, without substantial facts and evidence, that our government got things terribly wrong when it reviewed a number of crop protection tools and deemed them to be safe.”
Several other Republicans on the Senate Appropriations Labor-HHS-Education Subcommittee raised concerns during the two-hour hearing about how Kennedy has run HHS since they confirmed him in February.
Maine Sen. Susan Collins, chairwoman of the full Appropriations Committee, brought up the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, or LIHEAP, which the Trump administration has called on Congress to eliminate.
“The LIHEAP program, which we’ve talked about, is absolutely vital for thousands of older Mainers and low-income families,” Collins said. “It helps them avoid the constant worry of having to choose between keeping warm, buying essential foods and medications and other basic necessities.”
Kennedy sought to distance himself from the president’s budget request, saying that he understands “the critical, historical importance of this program.”
“President (Donald) Trump’s rationale and (the Office of Management and Budget’s) rationale is that President Trump’s energy policies are going to lower the cost of energy … so that everybody will get lower cost heating oil,” Kennedy said.
Subcommittee Chairwoman Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., brought up several issues with Kennedy, including efforts to change how much the National Institutes of Health provides to medical schools and research universities for Facilities and Administrative fees, often called indirect costs.
NIH sought to set that amount at 15% across the board for any institution that receives a research grant from the agency, a significantly lower amount than many of the organizations had negotiated over the years, bringing about strong objections from institutions of higher education.
That NIH policy has not taken effect as several lawsuits work their way through the federal court system.
Kennedy indicated NIH has figured out a way to help medical schools and research universities pay for items like gloves, test tubes and mass spectrometers, particularly at state schools.
“In the public universities, we are very much aware that those universities are using the money well, that it is absolutely necessary for them. And we’re looking at a series of different ways that we can fund those costs through them,” Kennedy said. “But not through the independent, indirect cost structure, which loses all control, which deprives us of all control of how that money is spent.”
Kansas Sen. Jerry Moran, a Republican, brought up the measles outbreak and pressed Kennedy on whether HHS needed additional resources to help his home state and others get the virus under control.
Kennedy testified the “best way to prevent the spread of measles is through vaccination” and that HHS has been urging “people to get their MMR vaccines.”
South Dakota Sen. Mike Rounds called on Kennedy to continue fixing issues created earlier this year when HHS fired people working on mine safety issues at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.
“My office has learned that staff at NIOSH’s Spokane mining research division have been laid off. This office focuses on the unique challenges of Western mining operations that are often more geologically complex and exposed to harsher conditions,” Rounds said. “This division provides critical technical support for institutions like the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology, which recently received a $1.25 million grant to improve underground mining safety. However, the grant has now been canceled due to loss of oversight from the Spokane office.
“This is not just a missed opportunity, it undermines our ability to meet national security goals tied to mineral independence and supply chain resilience.”
Kennedy testified that he’s been able to bring back 238 workers at the agency and said he would work with Rounds to address ongoing issues.
Alabama Sen. Katie Britt, a Republican, asked Kennedy about news reports earlier this year that HHS would ask Congress to zero out funding for Head Start, one of numerous programs left out of the administration’s skinny budget request. Head Start provides early learning, health, family and development programs for free for children from low-income families.
Kennedy testified that eliminating Head Start would likely not be in the full budget request, which is set to be released later this year, though the White House budget office has not said when. He said it would ask Congress to fully fund the program, but didn’t share a dollar amount.
“There’s 800,000 of the poorest kids in this country who are served by this program. It not only teaches the kids preschool skills — reading, writing and arithmetic — before they get to prepare them for school. But it also teaches the parents and teaches them how to be good parents.”
Kennedy said there are challenges faced by the Head Start program that he hopes to change during the next four years, including the quality of the food.
“The food they’re serving at Head Start is terrible. You need to change that,” Kennedy said. “We’re poisoning the poorest kids from their youngest years, and we’re going to change that.”
A federally endangered gyne, or "future queen", rusty patched bumble bee. (Photo courtesy of Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources)
As summer begins, fields, forests, prairies, riverwalks and gardens across Wisconsin come alive with an array of life. Preserving biodiversity in the Badger State is a multi-faceted effort, merging legislative efforts with organized social gatherings to find creative solutions.
Late last week, a package of bills was introduced to help shore up protections for pollinators. The package of seven bills has a range of policy objectives including:
The bills were announced in Menasha by Reps Lee Snodgrass (D- Appleton) and Vincent Miresse (D- Stevens Point). Luke Schiller, executive director of the Heckrodt Wetland Reserve and Sara Walling, Clean Wisconsin’s water program director, attended the announcement.
Pollinators are important not only to ecosystems, but also to the global economy. According to an article in Forbes, pollinators contribute between $235 billion and $577 billion in global food production. Pollinators come in all shapes and sizes and include bees, hummingbirds, butterflies and certain species of bats. Decades of overusing pesticides and habitat destruction have contributed to staggering declines in pollinator populations across the globe, and throughout ecosystems.
The Department of Natural Resources (DNR) is seeking volunteers to monitor one of those pollinators, the Karner blue butterfly. Volunteers have been crucial in tracking the endangered butterfly since 2018. Although the butterflies are found from Minnesota to Maine to Canada, Wisconsin has the largest remaining population. Karner Blue Butterflies are threatened by habitat loss fragmenting their range into isolated pockets and climate change. Open barrens, savannas and prairies are still abundant in Wisconsin, and are ideal habitats for the butterfly.
“Volunteers will be able to identify Karner blue butterflies and help us collect data to look at how this species moves around the landscape over time,” Chelsea Weinzinger the DNR’s Karner blue butterfly recovery coordinator said in a statement. “Collecting this information improves our data and gives us a better statewide picture of how this species is faring.” The Karner is related to the northern blue butterfly, which some DNR researchers say they haven’t seen since 2010 in Wisconsin.
Field trip opportunities are also available through the Natural Resources Foundation of Wisconsin. The field trips occur across the state and range from paddling wetland habitats to joining researchers in Beaver Creek Reserve to learn about the state’s smallest falcon species. Several field trips are also occurring in the Milwaukee-area, offering people the chance to canoe under tree canopies on the Milwaukee River, traverse urban habitats, explore hardwood forests and wetlands in the Mequon Nature Preserve and much more.
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A survey of Wisconsin’s farmers found that 56 percent of them believe that climate change is happening, while 95 percent of farmers are practicing some form of sustainable agriculture.
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The Environmental Protection Agency awarded more than $12.4 million in brownfield grants Friday to Wisconsin communities to clean up and redevelop contaminated sites.
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A solar power array. Advocates say projects that help speed the conversion to clean energy, such as solar power, could be stymied by a U.S. House proposal to repeal clean energy tax credits. (Photo by Evan Houk/Maine Morning Star)
The tax cut legislation that U.S. House of Representatives Republicans are putting together in Washington includes measures that will cost thousands of jobs in Wisconsin and undercut the state’s progress toward cleaner energy, according to environmental and labor advocates.
To help pay for the extension of tax cuts enacted in the first Trump administration, the GOP-led House Ways and Means Committee is proposing to repeal clean energy tax credits, Politico reported this week. The tax credits were among the measures enacted in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).
“These credits are not just numbers on a balance sheet out in Washington D.C,” said Emily Pritzkow, executive director of the Wisconsin Building Trades Council, in an online press conference Wednesday. “They are representing real jobs, real economic growth, and real progress towards Wisconsin’s sustainable energy infrastructure. Since the IRA was signed into law in 2022 we have seen an unprecedented boom in clean energy development in the trades.”
The press conference was hosted by Forward Together Wisconsin, a nonprofit established to inform people about the Biden administration’s infrastructure and climate investments and to defend them.
“We’ve been seeing this real opportunity to drive energy costs down, and I cannot for the life of me understand why people want to reverse that progress,” said former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, president of Forward Together Wisconsin.
In addition to the tax credits that the U.S. House proposal would repeal, President Donald Trump in his second term has frozen federal clean energy grants that were part of the 2022 legislation. Those include grants to establish a network of electric vehicle charging stations — prompting a lawsuit by 15 states, including Wisconsin.
Solar energy investments that have boomed in the last three years are among those that are threatened by the House proposal, according to advocates.
“At a time when billions of dollars are being invested in states that overwhelmingly voted for President Trump, this proposed legislation will effectively dismantle the most successful industrial onshoring effort in U.S. history,” Abigail Ross Hopper, president and CEO of the Solar Energy Industries Association, said in a statement this week.
Since passage of the IRA, Wisconsin has seen $933 million in clean energy and transportation private-sector investments, along with just over $2 billion from federal grants and loans, according to Innovation Policy & Technology, a San Francisco climate change policy think tank. The organization tallied 61 new clean energy and transportation projects that got underway in the state, with 45 manufacturing American-made products.
“Lower investment and higher energy bills due to repealing these federal programs and tax incentives will cost nearly 5,200 Wisconsin jobs in 2030 and more than 6,400 jobs in 2035, compared to current policies,” Innovation Policy & Technology reported.
The advocacy group Climate Power has calculated that without the federal support $5.4 billion for 15 planned Wisconsin clean energy projects could be in jeopardy.
Of those projects, 12 — 80% — are in five congressional districts represented by Republicans, according to Climate Power. Three representatives of those districts — Bryan Steil in the 1st CD, Scott Fitzgerald in the 5th CD and Glenn Grothman in the 6th CD — voted against the IRA in 2022. The other two, Derrick Van Orden in the 3rd CD and Tony Wied in the 8th CD, weren’t in office at the time but publicly opposed the legislation.
John Jacobs, business manager of International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 494 in Southeast Wisconsin, said the clean energy tax credits and related policies have spurred investment and employment for the union’s members.
“I see first-hand how the clean energy tax credits have delivered on their promise, creating good family-sustaining union jobs across Wisconsin,” Jacobs said. “Repealing these tax credits could be devastating to many, but would put thousands of jobs at risk and hurt a growing industry.”
The tax credits were “an investment in America,” he added. The jobs lost if the credits are repealed “translate to economic instability for families across our state.”
The IRA also included a provision that extends the value of the tax credits to nonprofit organizations and government agencies.
Thanks to that benefit, called direct support payment, the Menasha Joint School District in the Fox Valley has qualified for a $4 million reimbursement from the federal government for installing rooftop solar energy and geothermal energy systems in a school currently under construction, said Brian Adesso, the school district’s business services director.
Once the school is complete the district expects to save $159,000 a year on its electric bill, “which is cost savings to local taxpayers and money that can be invested back into the students and staff,” Adesso said at the Forward Wisconsin press conference.
Adesso said the tax credits gave the district “certainty” it needed to be willing to undertake the clean energy additions to the project. Killing the credits would make that choice harder for school districts and impose higher costs on local property taxpayers, he added.
“The bill making its way through Congress takes a sledgehammer to the tax credits,” Addesso said — ending some credits early and attaching “bureaucratic restrictions that could make many of the credits unusable.”
Barnes said Forward Wisconsin Together is calling on Congress to protect the clean energy initiatives. “The people of Wisconsin deserve better,” he said. “The country deserves better. Clean energy as we know is the future, and we have to continue to invest in it.”
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There have been reports of huge swarms of insects in Madison and Milwaukee. They're midges, and a "perfect storm of conditions" has led to a huge hatch this year.
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South Dakota state Rep. Karla Lems, R-Canton, speaks to hundreds of rally attendees at the South Dakota Capitol in Pierre on Jan. 13, 2025, during an event highlighting opposition to a carbon dioxide pipeline. (Photo by Joshua Haiar/South Dakota Searchlight)
Lawmakers and advocates on the right and left are raising questions about a provision in legislation a powerful U.S. House committee approved Wednesday, with critics arguing it would allow federal regulators to approve natural gas and carbon dioxide pipelines over prohibitions in state law.
Two sections in the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s reconciliation instructions, which the Republican-led panel passed along party lines, would allow pipeline operators to pay $10 million to participate in an expedited federal permitting process that critics say would override state laws.
The potentially intensely controversial provision would give the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission exclusive authority to issue licenses for pipelines carrying natural gas, carbon dioxide, hydrogen, oil, or other energy products and byproducts.
“Notwithstanding any other provision of law, if the Commission issues a license under subsection (c)(1) of this section and the licensee is in compliance with such license, no requirement of State or local law that requires approval of the location of the covered pipeline with respect to which the license is issued may be enforced against the licensee,” the text of the bill reads.
A summary document provided by the committee says the bill would apply to states only in cases when state agencies are responsible for conducting federal reviews.
“For States, this includes their authorities to impose conditions for any certifying authorities delegated to States by federal law,” the document says.
But a variety of groups and lawmakers — environmental groups opposed to loosening reviews, landholder advocates concerned about property rights and small-government conservatives who favor local control — say the measure would open the door for the federal government to nullify state and local protections.
That includes a recent South Dakota law to prevent pipeline operators from using eminent domain to force landowners to sell or allow use of their property.
“This is federal overreach,” South Dakota state Rep. Karla Lems said in a Thursday interview. “It would override any state or local law regarding … the routing of a pipeline.”
The Energy and Commerce Committee was one of 11 House panels that have approved reconciliation instructions and sent them to the House Budget Committee to consolidate into one package. House Republicans plan to consider the 1,100-page package on the floor next week.
The complex process, known as budget reconciliation, allows the majority party to pass legislation with simple majorities in both chambers, avoiding the U.S. Senate’s usual 60-vote requirement.
President Donald Trump has described the package as “one big, beautiful bill” and it contains a host of his domestic policy priorities including extending tax cuts and increasing funding for immigration enforcement.
A provision in Democrats’ 2022 reconciliation bill encouraged an existing trend of pipeline installation in the Midwest. The measure provided tax breaks for carbon sequestration, which can involve piping the carbon dioxide byproducts that result from processes like ethanol production into underground storage chambers.
Actually building those pipelines across hundreds of miles between ethanol producers, particularly in farm states like Iowa and South Dakota, and underground storage facilities in North Dakota, where the geology supports it, requires the use of private land, which has been strongly opposed for several reasons and led to state restrictions.
Environmental and safety groups worry some pipeline at some point will rupture and therefore pose a danger to nearby residents and water sources.
Private property owners and conservative political allies say they should have stronger rights to resist pipeline operators from using their property.
That unusual coalition was apparent again this week as environmentalists and conservatives united to oppose the measure in the Energy and Commerce bill.
A collection of 70 environmental and conservation groups signed a letter to the committee Wednesday urging the language be removed.
“These measures would radically expand federal jurisdiction over all types of interstate pipelines, drastically limit public input, shorten environmental review timelines, and shield projects from legal challenges, all while clearing the way for expanded use of federal eminent domain against landowners,” the letter said.
The letter was signed by groups ranging from the local agriculture and conservation organization Dakota Rural Action to national environmental group Food & Water Watch.
South Dakota House Speaker Jon Hansen, a self-described MAGA Republican, tweeted screenshots of the provision with the message “property rights are under attack again.”
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican former U.S. House member and rival to Trump in the 2024 presidential nomination race, reposted the tweet.
“This represents overriding both the rights of states and private property owners to serve Biden’s Green New Deal,” DeSantis wrote above Hansen’s message. “What the heck is going on up there?”
Chase Jensen, a senior organizer with Dakota Rural Action, said in a press release accompanying the coalition letter that the group was calling on members of Congress “to stand with the State of South Dakota and oppose this clear attempt to buy permits and bypass the people.”
“When South Dakota was first faced with carbon dioxide pipelines, our congressmen said it was up to the state to deal with it,” Jensen said. “Now that we have barred eminent domain for these private projects – their billionaire owners are trying to cut the state out of the process altogether.”
South Dakota’s U.S. House member, Republican Dusty Johnson, said in a statement to South Dakota Searchlight he’d been unaware of the bill’s language but predicted it would be removed before final passage.
He indicated he was unsure what the effect of the bill would be, but started “from a place of deep skepticism.”
“I wasn’t aware of this language until committee text was released,” Johnson, who does not sit on Energy and Commerce, wrote. “As a former public utilities commissioner, I have strong concerns with bypassing state permitting and I begin from a place of deep skepticism for this language. I doubt it will be included in President Trump’s ‘one, big, beautiful bill.’”
But U.S. Rep. Julie Fedorchak, a North Dakota Republican who is a former state utility regulator, told reporters on a press call Thursday morning that she thought the bill would not block the state from being involved in environmental reviews, even if a company seeks a pipeline permit from federal regulators.
Fedorchak said she doesn’t think the proposal would limit local input on projects, adding that FERC has a “pretty robust permitting process” for interstate natural gas pipelines.
A spokesman for the Energy and Commerce Committee did not return a message seeking clarification Thursday.
North Dakota Monitor Editor Amy Dalrymple and South Dakota Searchlight Editor Seth Tupper contributed to this report.
A billboard promoting Enbridge Inc. (Susan Demas | Michigan Advance)
Over two days of hearings this week, members of the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, environmental advocates and experts testified against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers granting a permit to reroute Enbridge’s Line 5 oil and natural gas pipeline in northern Wisconsin.
The tribe’s testimony was one of its last chances to prevent the new pipeline from being installed upstream of its reservation — which the tribe says will harm water quality in the watershed, encourage the growth of invasive species and damage wetlands, diminishing the ability to filter pollutants out of runoff before reaching surface waters.
Enbridge insists the reroute plans do everything possible to minimize the environmental effect of pipeline construction and operation while industry groups and labor unions say the project has been vetted to ensure it isn’t harmful and that the arguments against the environmental effects of construction could be used to slow down any project in the state, not just those the tribe disagrees with politically.
Last year, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources issued its own permits for the company to build the pipeline with more than 200 added conditions to ensure compliance with state standards. Months after the DNR’s permit decision, a separate pipeline operated by Enbridge in Wisconsin spilled 69,000 gallons of crude oil in Jefferson County.
The tribe is also challenging the DNR’s permit determination in a series of hearings later this summer.
For decades, Line 5 ran through the tribe’s reservation and in 2023 a federal judge ordered that it be shut down. Since 2020, Enbridge has been working on a plan to reroute the pipeline, which runs from far northwest Wisconsin 645 miles into Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, under the Straits of Mackinac and across the U.S. border into Canada near Detroit. It transports about 23 million gallons of crude oil and natural gas liquids daily.
At the hearings this week, the tribe argued that under the Clean Water Act, the Corps shouldn’t grant the permits because the tribe has determined the new pipeline will negatively affect its water quality.
“Our people have resided in the Bad River watershed for hundreds of years,” Robert Blanchard, the tribe’s chairman, said Tuesday. “It’s our homeland. If the U.S. Army Corps grants these permits, Enbridge is undoubtedly going to destroy and pollute our watershed by trenching, blasting and horizontal drilling across hundreds of upstream wetlands and streams. I’m asking the U.S. Army Corps to think of the people and all the living things this will affect, and to deny the permit for this project.”
During Tuesday’s testimony, Blanchard added, “When I look at my homelands, I see it through the eyes of my grandfather, who saw it through the eyes of his grandfather.”
Blanchard said he wants his grandchildren to be able to see their homelands through his eyes, too. He recounted boating up the Bad River toward Lake Superior as a boy, catching fish with his elders to eat or to sell at the market. His grandfather taught him to hunt and gather and to this day Blanchard gathers medicinal herbs which are used by his community, he said. He remembers the lumber companies that clear cut the forests, and, he said, some of his loved ones have died of cancer after living near an industrial dump site.
“That was all in the Bad River watershed,” said Blanchard. He stressed that in tribal tradition, all things in nature have spirit, including the water. To the Bad River Band, nature is not only critical to human survival, it is a sacred thing to be protected.
In their testimony Tuesday, Enbridge consultants and researchers downplayed concerns about how the pipeline reroute could harm local ecosystems. Just over 118 acres of forest will need to be cleared during construction and turned into a managed grassland. Experts testifying for the company said that the underground pipeline will not act as an underwater dam and disrupt groundwater flow, nor will the explosives used to blast trenches for the pipeline present a danger. Other concerns such as radioactive contamination, PFAS pollution (often called forever chemicals) and arsenic are not used by the project, and have not been detected in the area.
Although Enbridge’s consultants and experts argued that the project would not violate the Bad River Band’s water quality standards, the Band itself disagreed, citing concerns about pollutants, water quantity and quality, hydrology, mineral content and water temperature.
Connie Sue Martin, and environmental attorney who testified against the project said the Bad River Band “is the expert” on water quality in the area, not U.S. government agencies including the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
Esteban Chiriboga, a geologist with the Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission, testified that the rerouted pipeline’s distance from the reservation is irrelevant because contaminants can travel. Using imagery from Laser Imaging, Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) technology, Chiriboga demonstrated that waterways and flow channels between rivers, creeks and wetlands are interconnected. Others who spoke against the project on Tuesday expressed concerns about the potential for increased runoff, soil erosion, and the spread of invasive species as consequences of the project.
On Wednesday, much of the tribe’s testimony centered around the ways in which the tribe’s members rely on the Bad River and its tributaries.
“You will not find another community so dependent upon subsistence harvesting and dependent upon the health of our environment,” said Dylan Jennings, a member of the tribe and former appointee of Gov. Tony Evers to the state Natural Resources Board. “Simply put, our community maintains a relationship with the entire ecosystem and not a segmented area, we continue to utilize an entire system approach which naturally extends beyond our reservation boundaries.”
During the public comment period of the hearing Wednesday, a number of labor union representatives defended the project as a source of local jobs and environmentally safe. Chad Ward, a representative of the Teamsters Local 346, said members of his union will work on the project and live locally, so they take “very seriously our commitment to the community and the environment around the construction site.” But, he said, the tribe’s complaints could be made about any construction project in the area.
“I and others have grave concerns that the assertions made by the tribe could have impacts well beyond the Line 5 project itself,” Ward said. “Construction practices considered industry and regulatory best practices for environmental protection are cited as reasons by the tribe for why this project should not proceed, practices that are standard use all over the country”
“They are practices the Band has been fine with for dozens of projects in the same area,” he continued. “This leaves the impression that these concerns are more based on the political views of the project than the construction method themselves. And while they’re entitled to their political views, it is the job of the permitting process to determine if the laws and regulations are being followed, not weigh the political arguments.”
After Wednesday, the Army Corps will accept written comments on the permit approval for 30 days and then can make a decision any time after that. The hearings on the legal challenge to the DNR permits begin Aug. 12 in Ashland.
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Last week, President Donald Trump affirmed his support for "preventing the spread of invasive carp" in a White House memo that promised "deadline-oriented investments of taxpayer dollars" from the federal government.
The post Great Lakes invasive carp barrier moves forward after Trump memo appeared first on WPR.
The multibillion-dollar software company now owns over 600 acres in West Des Moines. What can Wisconsin communities learn from how data centers affected an Iowa city?
The post Microsoft built 5 data center campuses in this Iowa city. Here’s what Wisconsin can expect. appeared first on WPR.
Wisconsin residents and environmental advocates say the EPA's plans to weaken drinking water standards for PFAS will harm public health. But water groups say it gives more time to comply.
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Federal environmental regulators and a Canadian energy firm say data doesn’t support a northern Wisconsin tribe’s claims that rerouting an oil and gas pipeline will violate water quality standards on its reservation.
The post EPA, Enbridge say data doesn’t support tribe’s claims that Line 5 project will harm water appeared first on WPR.
A sign protesting Enbridge Line 5 in Michigan. (Laina G. Stebbins | Michigan Advance)
The Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa is preparing to argue against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers issuing a permit to reroute Enbridge’s Line 5 oil pipeline in northern Wisconsin.
For years, the tribe has fought against Line 5, which runs from far Northwest Wisconsin 645 miles into Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, under the Straits of Mackinac and across the U.S. border into Canada near Detroit. It transports about 23 million gallons of crude oil and natural gas liquids daily.
An underground section of the pipeline currently passes near a bend in the Bad River on the tribe’s reservation. In 2023, a federal judge ruled that the company was trespassing on tribal land and gave Enbridge three years to shut down the pipeline.
Since 2020, Enbridge has been working on rerouting the pipeline about 41 miles away from tribal land. That proposal requires permits to be issued by the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
The tribe is also currently challenging the state’s permitting process. Hearings will be held in August, September and October in Madison and Ashland in which an administrative law judge will hear arguments against the DNR’s decision to issue permits for the project.
Army Corps approval of Enbridge’s plan to replace a separate section of the pipeline on the floor of the Straits of Mackinac has been fast tracked under President Donald Trump’s executive order declaring a national energy emergency, but the Bad River section of the pipeline is still moving forward under the normal approval process.
On Tuesday and Wednesday, the Bad River Band and its attorneys will present to the Corps their finding that the proposed rerouted pipeline, which would pass the Bad River upstream of the reservation, threatens the tribe’s water quality and therefore violates the Clean Water Act.
The tribe’s presentation is scheduled to take all day Tuesday and some of Wednesday. Members of the public will then be able to provide public comment during a virtual hearing and send written comments for 30 days after the hearing.
Robert Blanchard, the tribe’s chairman, says he’s working to protect the tribe’s resources and way of life by bringing the challenge.
“Ultimately, we are protecting our resources. We’re downstream from this project. If it were to go in, were to happen, there’s a lot at stake just with how this will affect our waters,” he says. “We have one of the biggest wild rice areas on the Great Lakes. We have a lot of medicines that I and members of my community collect that have been around for hundreds of years, and we have hunting and fishing rights that will be affected. You know, if we can’t use those because of what’s happening upstream, then that will affect our way of life.”
Juli Kellner, a spokesperson for Enbridge, says the hearings this week are an important step for completing the project, which she adds won’t affect water quality.
“Extensive and thorough analysis by leading, third-party experts has confirmed that construction impacts will be temporary and isolated, have no measurable impact on water quality, and will not violate the Bad River Band’s water quality standards,” Kellner says. “The project will have environmental protections and restoration plans in place, as approved by state regulators. State permits were issued last fall. We’re confident the Corps is close to completing its process which has included more than five years of public input, expert studies, and rigorous review. In fact, this is one of the most studied projects in Wisconsin’s history.”
Under the Clean Water Act, if the Corps finds that the project will adversely affect a downstream jurisdiction’s water quality and there are no conditions that can be put on the permit to ensure water quality standards aren’t violated, the permit cannot be granted, according to the tribe’s attorney, Stefanie Tsosie.
“We are presenting evidence to the Army Corps that the band’s water quality standards will be affected, and there are no conditions that they can put on the project permit such that they can issue it,” she says. “So, I think our hope here is one, to show how much the project is going to impact the advanced water quality, but then two, urge the Corps to not issue the section 404 permit eventually.”
But the hearing is taking place as the Trump administration has worked to encourage more extraction of natural resources, boost the oil industry and go easier on polluters. Last week, the climate-focused news outlet Grist reported that under Trump, the EPA has practically stopped enforcing the country’s environmental laws.
Tsosie says all the tribe can work with is what the law says.
“Well, the standard in the Clean Water Act is pretty clear,” she says. “And that’s statute, so that’s what we’re going with.”
Blanchard says he can’t forecast what the Corps is going to do, but he can just make his best case that granting the permit will be harmful to everyone who lives downstream.
“I wish I had that crystal ball to be able to forecast that, but I don’t, so what we’re going to do tomorrow is do our very best to convince them that this is the way it should be,” he says. “We need to look after our Mother Earth, to pay attention to what we’re doing, what’s happening to it, and like I said before, it’s going to affect not just our way of life and not just those that live in the region, not just us as Anishinaabe people, but everybody.”
If the Corps grants the permit, that decision could still be challenged in court.
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There is a dog in Wisconsin with a very unique talent — sniffing out endangered turtles.
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We Energies is building new gas-fired power plants to meet growing energy demand that largely stems from data centers. As developers pursue data centers in Wisconsin, that’s raising concerns about environmental impacts tied to their operations.
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Most of the Great Lakes are below their long-term average for this time of year as they’ve fallen to levels not seen in more than a decade.
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Scientists in the Midwest and Great Plains were poised to start research to cut U.S. reliance on fertilizer imports, keep biofuel farming cost-competitive and tackle a potent greenhouse gas.
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Examiner staff members Baylor Spears, Henry Redman, Erik Gunn, Ruth Conniff and Criminal Justice Fellow Andrew Kennard with Milwaukee Press Club awards on May 9, 2025 | Wisconsin Examiner photo
Wisconsin Examiner staff members were recognized for investigative reporting, public service reporting, explanatory reporting, and in several feature-writing categories in the Milwaukee Press Club annual Excellence in Journalism contest for work published in 2024.
Henry Redman received the Bronze award for online investigative reporting for a series of stories that uncovered the influence of an out-of-state right-wing pro-development group on land use planning in Oneida County.
Editor Ruth Conniff was recognized in the public service reporting category for a special report on human trafficking in Wisconsin agriculture. For the third year in a row, Conniff also received an award for the best online column for a selection of her work.
Criminal Justice Project Fellow Andrew Kennard received a bronze award for explanatory reporting online for a story about problems with access to telephone communication for incarcerated people in Wisconsin prisons.
Baylor Spears was honored with a bronze award for hard news feature writing for her story on how Democratic Party candidates were campaigning in parts of the state that they have been shut out from in the past by gerrymandering.
Deputy Editor Erik Gunn was the recipient of a silver award for feature writing for his story on a project in La Crosse by college students and neighborhood activists to eliminate the use of mulched rubber as a playground surface.
Gunn also received a bronze award for personal profile writing for his story on a mother who has campaigned for years to have meningitis vaccines required in Wisconsin after her son died of the illness in college.
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