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U.S. District Court Judge Brian Morris said Wednesday that he agreed with the plaintiffs who argued the law was vague and overbroad and could cause people to decide not to register to vote for fear of being charged with a crime. The penalties include fines of up to $5,000 and up to 18 months in prison.
The problem with the law, attorney Raph Graybill said Thursday, was that it didn’t create a clear process for someone to cancel their previous registrations. “The basic principle is if you’re going to create a crime, the rules have to be clear enough that people can avoid becoming criminals, and this law does not meet that requirement,” said Graybill, who represents the plaintiffs, the Montana Public Interest Research Group and the Montana Federation of Public Employees. Both plaintiffs said the law would hinder their efforts to register new voters.
The administration makes the biggest land-management moves in a half century. On March 27, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland signed an order withdrawing nearly 222,000 acres of federal land in western Colorado’s Thompson Divide area from future mining claims and oil and gas leases.
Zoom out a bit, though, and a much different picture reveals itself: The Thompson Divide withdrawal, like the Chaco region leasing ban, is merely one piece in a far larger policy puzzle. Taken alone, they’re not terribly significant. But the whole is far greater than the sum of the parts: It’s the most significant shift in public-land management since Congress passed the Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976, which mandated multiple use and sought to rid the BLM of its reputation as the “Bureau of Livestock and Mining,” in the process rocking the Western political landscape and sparking the Sagebrush Rebellion.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has finalized rules to reduce pollution associated with the combustion of fossil fuels for electricity.
The rules will set strict standards for fossil fuel plants’ release of carbon dioxide, the most common greenhouse gas. Metals like mercury, a neurotoxin that becomes airborne when coal is burned for electricity, will also be subject to tighter regulations under the new regulations. Additionally, coal plant owners must safely close inactive coal ash ponds and clean up contamination. All three sets of standards are expected to spur major changes for Colstrip’s owners, who have drawn fire from public health advocates critical of the plant’s lack of modern technology that could limit the public’s exposure to mercury, arsenic, lead, nickel and other materials tied to various cancers and diseases.
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