Daily Digest for June 10, 2020 Posted at 6:35 a.m. by Cody Nelson
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Good morning. Welcome to your mid-week Capitol View.
The biggest polluters in the country are blaming COVID-19 for their inability to comply with the law. NPR reports: "Some of the country's most polluting industries have flooded state regulators with requests to ease environmental regulations, according to an NPR review of hundreds of state environmental records.
Companies across the country say the pandemic is interfering with their ability to comply with laws that protect the public from pollution."
And the EPA is not helping much at all. Via NPR: "State environmental authorities are currently the only source of official information about which companies have sought regulatory relief. That's because in March, the Environmental Protection Agency told companies that they do not need to warn federal regulators if the pandemic interferes with routine pollution monitoring or testing. That puts states alone on the front lines of environmental protectio n, even as they struggle to cope with the immediate effects of the coronavirus pandemic."
Joe Biden spoke at George Floyd's funeral in Houston yesterday. "No child should have to ask questions that too many black children have had to ask for generations: Why?” the Democratic presidential candidate said in a video eulogy. “Now is the time for racial justice. That is the answer we must give to our children when they ask why.”
And in Minnesota, some have little trust in the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension investigating Floyd's killing. Via MPR News' Riham Feshir: "The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension has taken on more police death investigations in recent years, becoming the go-to agency for both high-profile and relatively unknown cases involving police use of force.
But the agency’s experience doesn’t provide comfort to many community members who continue to grieve the deaths of black men at the hands of police. ... 'The Minnesota BCA’s investigatory record in officer involved maimings and killings is mediocre at best and corrupt at worst ,' said Robert Bennett, a civil rights attorney who’s represented several families of victims of police brutality cases in Minnesota. 'They employ a double standard. If it was you or I committing the crime, they’d investigate the devil out of it. But if it’s police officers, they don’t.'" |
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