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Americans who live in or near a community built around a lake should be careful about stepping outside to mow the lawn if the temperature isn’t just right and the grass isn’t a certain height.

They should keep pets indoors. They should forget about using weed killer. And they should be prepared to pony up a steep homeowners association fee.

That’s because there may be snakes in the area protected by the Endangered Species Act of 1973, which imposes stiff penalties and fines for violating its rules and restrictions.

Rob Gordon, a senior research fellow with The Heritage Foundation, discovered the situation while researching the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s 1999 decision to list the Lake Erie water snake as a “threatened” species.

The Fish and Wildlife Service estimated the population of that particular water snake to be somewhere between 1,530 and 2,030 at the time. But just a few years later, the agency revised it to 5,690.

The government either made a “substantial underestimation” with the initial listing or the water snake had “a truly miraculous population growth rate” in a short time, Gordon observes in a recently published research paper that finds the listing process under the Endangered Species Act …read more

President Donald Trump will continue to target duplicative and ineffective regulations as part of his administration’s “spring agenda,” the White House announced Wednesday.

Trump’s reform agenda will cut across many areas and top priorities for deregulation include infrastructure development, emerging technologies, and “relief for small business,” a senior White House official said during a conference call coinciding with the announcement.

The senior official cited Trump’s previous executive order directing all government agencies “to repeal at least two existing regulations for each new regulation issued in [fiscal year] 2017 and thereafter.” In many ways, the official said, the administration’s spring agenda is an extension of that order.

Diane Katz, a senior research fellow in regulatory policy at The Heritage Foundation, credited the Trump administration for working to alleviate the burdens of government regulation.

“Release of the spring agenda provides further evidence that the Trump administration remains committed to regulatory reform,” Katz said in an email Wednesday to The Daily Signal. “It is indeed a relief that the drawbacks of excessive regulation are now recognized after eight very long years of unconstrained expansion under President Obama, who increased annual regulatory costs by $20 billion.”

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt said during recent …read more

EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt offered up a vigorous defense of his record amid negative media coverage of his travel, security, and living expenses Thursday while appearing before two House subcommittees.

“Much of what has been targeted toward me and my team has been half-truths or at best stories so twisted they do not represent reality,” Pruitt said in opening remarks to the Energy and Commerce Committee’s energy subcommittee.

The chief of the Environmental Protection Agency, who also testified before an Appropriations Committee panel, said attacks on him and his staff are part of a larger agenda to derail President Donald Trump’s efforts to cut burdensome regulations on individuals and businesses.

“I simply will not let that happen,” he said.

Although both hearings had been scheduled to address the EPA’s budget, committee members spent the bulk of their time questioning Pruitt about allegations concerning his public expenditures and management decisions.

Beforehand, EPA officials distributed a 23-page document disputing what the agency describes as “false claims” circulated in the news media concerning Pruitt’s international travel, security expenses, and housing arrangements.

The document cites information showing that Pruitt’s international travel costs so far actually are lower than those of his predecessors in the Obama administration.

Pruitt, in office since …read more

EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt proposed a new rule Tuesday aimed at bolstering the role of science in developing regulations.

Pruitt announced the change at an event at the Environmental Protection Agency’s headquarters that was closed to The Daily Signal and other press. It could, however, be viewed online.

“The era of secret science at EPA is coming to an end,” Pruitt said. “The ability to test, authenticate, and reproduce scientific findings is vital for the integrity of the rule-making process. Americans deserve to assess the legitimacy of the science underpinning EPA decisions that may impact their lives.”

The EPA crafted the proposal to ensure that the science standing behind the agency’s actions is made public so that it can be independently verified, officials said in a press release.

Pruitt’s decision to make the rule will prevent agency officials from using undisclosed scientific data as the foundation for regulations that cost affected individuals and businesses tens of billions of dollars.

Going forward, Pruitt said, EPA regulators will be permitted to use only scientific studies with data available for public consumption. Pruitt’s proposed rule also calls for EPA-funded studies to make all data public.

Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, is among EPA critics who have faulted the agency’s …read more

New Yorkers who are missing out on the natural gas revolution could be victims of Russian spy operations that fund popular environmental groups, current and former U.S. government officials and experts on Russia worry.

Natural gas development of the celebrated Marcellus Shale deposits has spurred jobs and other economic growth in neighboring Pennsylvania. But not in New York, which nearly 10 years ago banned the process of hydraulic fracturing, also known as fracking, to produce natural gas.

Two environmental advocacy groups that successfully lobbied against fracking in New York each received more than $10 million in grants from a foundation in California that got financial support from a Bermuda company congressional investigators linked to the Russians, public documents show.

The environmental groups Natural Resources Defense Council and the Sierra Club Foundation received millions of dollars in grants from the San Francisco-based Sea Change Foundation.

“Follow the money trail, and this [New York] ban on fracking could be viewed as an example of successful Russian espionage,” Ken Stiles, a CIA veteran of 29 years who now teaches at Virginia Tech, told The Daily Signal.

To Stiles and other knowledgeable observers, this looks like an actual case of knowing or unknowing collusion with Russia.

Both Natural Resources …read more

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke has spent far fewer taxpayer dollars on chartered flights than his two predecessors in the Obama administration, public records show.

The Daily Signal’s examination of travel records found that on average Zinke’s two predecessors spent more annually on such noncommercial flights, despite media reports critical of Zinke’s spending on travel.

The cost of such chartered flights for Zinke totaled $72,849 in his first six months as interior secretary, the travel records show.

The average annual cost of such flights for his two predecessors in the Obama administration, Ken Salazar and Sally Jewell, from fiscal years 2010 to 2016 was $155,515, according to records provided by the Interior Department to the House Natural Resources Committee.

Salazar and Jewell spent just over $1 million on chartered flights over the seven years, the records show.

Taxpayers were billed for more than $640,000 for Salazar’s chartered flights in fiscal years 2010, 2011, and 2012.

Recent media reports, however, have taken critical looks at Zinke’s travel costs.

The Interior Department’s Office of Inspector General released a report Monday on Zinke’s use of chartered and military aircraft between March and September 2017, the span of fiscal year 2017 when he was interior secretary.

The report came …read more

If a federal court strikes down a local right-to-work ordinance in Illinois, the case could move up to the Supreme Court, according to legal analysts who have argued in favor of similar initiatives in other parts of the country.

That’s because a negative ruling from a three-judge panel of the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals, which heard oral arguments March 27 in the Illinois case, would conflict with a ruling last year out of the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals that upheld local right-to-work initiatives in Kentucky, they said.

“When you have a split between circuits, holding different interpretations regarding the law and precedent, then the Supreme Court is more likely to … hear the case,” Theodore Kittila, a Delaware lawyer who represents the Caesar Rodney Institute, a Wilmington-based free-market think tank, said in an email.

“It’s not automatic, and circuit splits can last for years and years,” Kittila said. “But this is such an important issue, it may be enough to attract the Supreme Court’s interest, even without a circuit split.”

Right-to-work laws prohibit private-sector employers from entering into agreements that make union membership and payment of union dues a condition of employment for their workers.

Twenty-eight states and the territory of …read more

Allegations that a member of the National Labor Relations Board improperly disclosed internal deliberations should be investigated, a Washington labor policy analyst says in a letter to the board’s inspector general.

Board member Mark Gaston Pearce “allegedly discussed information from documents involving internal Board deliberations” at a meeting of the American Bar Association last month, Competitive Enterprise Institute analyst Trey Kovacs tells the inspector general in the letter.

Pearce “reportedly provided advance notice of an NLRB decision to issue an order to vacate the Board’s decision in Hy-Brand Industrial Contractors Ltd. and Brandt Construction Co.,” Kovacs writes in the letter to Inspector General David Berry, dated Wednesday.

The board’s pro-union actions demonstrate how it operates as though Barack Obama were still president, and not Donald Trump, the Competitive Enterprise Institute analyst says.

“There appears to be a troublesome double standard at the NLRB,” Kovacs told The Daily Signal in an email. “The NLRB Inspector General Office has shown zeal for investigating Republican NLRB members, but not Democratic members.”

Just after noon Wednesday, a spokesman for the NLRB said the agency would have no comment on the Kovacs letter or how it would respond to the request for an investigation.

Pearce, a Democrat, was chairman …read more

Public school teachers who support the Second Amendment are being required to finance political activism they oppose, such as this weekend’s March for Our Lives calling for more gun controls, federal court filings say.

The California Teachers Association, the largest affiliate of the National Education Association with about 325,000 members, issued a statement expressing opposition to President Donald Trump’s proposed policy of arming some teachers and other school officials as a safeguard against school shooters.

The Daily Signal acquired a copy of an email message from Eric Heins, president of the California Teachers Association, to individual teachers in which he urged them to take part in marches and events across the country that call for more gun controls in the wake of the mass shooting at a Florida high school.

Heins builds his message around the March for Our Lives event set for noon Saturday in Washington, D.C., in response to the shooting in Parkland, Florida, that left 17 dead.

“While the main march is in Washington, D.C., there are marches and events across the country (and world!) to join, and other ways to get involved in the fight against gun violence,” Heins says in the email. “Attending or participating? Tag …read more

Russia directed cyberattacks against U.S. political institutions in 2015 and 2016, but there is “no evidence of collusion, coordination, or conspiracy between the Trump campaign and the Russians,” the House intelligence committee has concluded.

Findings and recommendations can improve “security and integrity” in midterm elections, @DevinNunes says.

For the past 14 months, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence has probed allegations that the government of Russia President Vladimir Putin meddled in the 2016 elections.

The House committee explored possible links between the Russians and the campaigns of the two major presidential candidates, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.

Congressional investigators also examined how the U.S. government responded to Russian actions and probed potential leaks of classified information.

The probes by the House panel and its Senate counterpart have been overshadowed by special counsel Robert Mueller’s ongoing investigation of Russian interference in the election, and alleged “collusion” between Moscow and the Trump campaign.

Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., committee chairman, released a statement Monday expressing gratitude for House colleagues who led the investigation.

The draft report, exceeding 500 pages and including over 600 citations, was delivered Tuesday to committee Democrats for review and comment.

Once adopted, the report will be the subject of a declassification review before it …read more