I’m ill again with overwhelming fatigue which explains in part why I’ve been neglecting this blog. It could be a symptom of something far more serious of course and I wouldn’t be surprised that it is. The UK’s NHS is reduced to little more than a notion where you have to ring at certain times of the day to be ignored by a health-ignorant de-skilled workforce in an attempt to have a 5-minute telephone conversation with and arrogant, dismissive GP a fortnight later.
Under Wes Streeting’s proposals you will be able to discuss your health with a health-ignorant de-skilled NHS employee at your home. There are already health-ignorant people I can discuss it with – neighbours, delivery drivers, postpeople, refuse workers. I can even tell random people in the street or shopworkers.
Hundreds of thousands of seriously ill and disabled people will become “invisible” and cut adrift from local support services as a result of the government’s £5bn programme of disability benefit cuts, experts have warned.
Claimants who do not qualify for personal independence payment (Pip) or incapacity benefits would lose a “marker of need” with local councils and NHS bodies, making it “nearly impossible” for them to access help, said the consultancy Policy in Practice.
This would “effectively erase some of the most vulnerable people” from the system – including those with life-limiting illnesses including cancer, multiple sclerosis and lung conditions – while making it harder for care services to deliver preventive support
More than 230,000 disabled people will lose access to Pip and the incapacity element of universal credit as a result of the changes, losing at least £8,100 a year, Policy in Practice estimates in a briefing. Nearly 600,000 more who do not claim universal credit will lose or not qualify in future for Pip.
On top of the direct financial hit, disabled people will struggle for visibility in local care systems that use disability benefit awards to deploy support and protection, from housing and council tax relief to debt enforcement safeguards.
Emissions are seen from a smoke stack at the Phillips 66 Refinery on February 6, 2024, in Linden, New Jersey. (Photo: Gary Hershorn/Getty Images)
“This chaotic administration is obviously desperate to smash through every environmental guardrail that protects people or preserves wildlife, but steps like this will be laughed out of court,” said one advocate.
Numerous environmental protection groups were preparing to file lawsuits Friday after President Donald Trumpdirected federal agencies to repeal what he called “unlawful regulations” aimed at protecting the public from pollution, oil spills, and other harms—sharply curtailing the process through which rules are changed as he ordered agencies to “sunset” major regulations.
The order was issued a week-and-a-half before the deadline set by another presidential action in February, when Trump required agencies to identify “unconstitutional” and “unlawful” regulations for elimination or modification within 60 days.
Those restrictions, under Wednesday evening’s order, can be repealed without being subject to a typical notice-and-comment period.
Trump named the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Energy, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement among several agencies affected by the order, and listed more than two dozen laws containing regulations that must incorporate a sunset provision for no later than September 30, 2025.
The laws include the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, the National Appliance Energy Conservation Act of 1987, and the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982.
Hans Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists, suggested the order was Trump’s latest push to benefit corporate polluters.
The Trump corporate regime orders agencies to ‘sunset’ environmental protections, as part of an effort to make it easier for industry to pollute. thehill.com/policy/energ…
Brett Hartl, government affairs director for the Center for Biological Diversity, said it was “beyond delusional” for Trump to attempt to repeal “every environmental safeguard enacted over the past 50 years with an executive order.”
“Trump’s farcical directive aims to kill measures that protect endangered whales, prevent oil spills, and reduce the risk of a nuclear accident,” said Hartl. “This chaotic administration is obviously desperate to smash through every environmental guardrail that protects people or preserves wildlife, but steps like this will be laughed out of court.”
In a memo, the White House wrote that “in effectuating repeals of facially unlawful regulations, agency heads shall finalize rules without notice and comment, where doing so is consistent with the ‘good cause’ exception in the Administrative Procedure Act.”
“That exception allows agencies to dispense with notice-and-comment rulemaking when that process would be ‘impracticable, unnecessary, or contrary to the public interest,'” said the White House.
As climate advocates scoffed at the suggestion that regulating nuclear power and pollution-causing energy infrastructure is “contrary to the public interest,” legal experts questioned the legality of Trump’s order.
“If this action were upheld, it would be a significant change to the way regulation is typically done, which is through notice and comment,” Roger Nober, director of George Washington University’s Regulatory Studies Center, toldGovernment Executive. “If the agencies determine that a rule is contrary to the Supreme Court’s current jurisprudence, then [this order says they] have good cause to remove it and [they] can get around notice and comment. That’s certainly an untested and untried way of implementing the Administrative Procedure Act.”
Georgetown University law professor William Buzbee toldThe Hill that the Supreme Court “has repeatedly reaffirmed that agencies seeking to change a policy set forth in a regulation have to go through a new notice-and-comment proceeding for each regulation, offer ‘good reasons’ for the change, and address changing facts and reliance interests developed in light of the earlier regulation.”
“Adding a sunset provision without going through a full notice-and-comment proceedings for each regulation to be newly subject to a sunset provision seems intended to skirt the vetting and public accountability required by consistency doctrine,” he said. “Like many other attempted regulatory shortcuts of the first and second Trump administration, this [executive order] seems likely to prompt legally vulnerable agency actions.”
Public Citizen co-president Lisa Gilbert suggested that the executive order is the latest example of Trump’s push to govern the U.S. as “a king.”
“He cannot simply roll back regulations that protect the public without going through the legally required process,” Gilbert told Government Executive. “We will challenge this blatantly unlawful deregulatory effort at every step to ensure it doesn’t hurt workers, consumers, and families.”
Michael Wall, chief litigation officer at the Natural Resources Defense Council, called the order “a blatant attempt to blow away hundreds of protections for the public and nature, giving polluters permission to ignore whatever is coming out of their smokestacks while developers disregard endangered species protections and Big Oil no longer heeds the reforms put in place after the Deepwater Horizon disaster.”
“This executive order is illegal,” he said. “Congress passed these laws, and the president’s constitutional duty is to carry out those statutes; he has zero power to rewrite them.”
“There’s no magic wand the administration might wave to sweep away multiple rules on a White House whim,” Wall added. “Any changes to the rules the president wants rescinded would have to be justified, rule by rule, with facts, evidence, and analysis specific to that rule. He cannot do this by fiat.”
Orcas discuss Donald Trump and the killer apes’ concept of democracy. Front Orca warns that Trump is crashing his country’s economy and that everything he does he does for the fantastically wealthy.Neo-Fascist Climate Science Denier Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
dizzy: There are other demands on my life dragging me away dear audience. There are always good articles at Common Dreams.
Relatives of Venezuelan migrants deported from the U.S. to a maximum security prison in El Salvador attend a vigil in front of El Salvador embassy in Caracas, Venezuela on April 2, 2025. (Photo: Juan Barreto / AFP via Getty Images)
“The cruelty of the U.S. and Salvadoran governments has put these people outside the protection of the law and caused immense pain to their families,” said one human rights advocate.
Human Rights Watch on Friday accused the governments of the United States and El Salvador of “a grave violation of international human rights law” over the deportation more than 230 Venezuelan nationals by the Trump administration to a megaprison in El Salvador last month.
The actions taken against the deportees constitute both enforced disappearances and arbitrary detention, according to a statement from the group released Friday.
The governments of the United States and El Salvador have subjected more than 200 Venezuelan nationals to enforced disappearances and arbitrary detention.
“The cruelty of the U.S. and Salvadoran governments has put these people outside the protection of the law and caused immense pain to their families,” said Juanita Goebertus, Americas director at Human Rights Watch.
The group said that since their removal, the Venezuelans “have been held incommunicado” and that the United States and Salvadoran officials have not released a list of the people who were removed, though CBS News last month published a list of names the outlet obtained.
The administration invoked the Alien Enemies Act, a rarely used law that gives the president broad authority to detain or deport non-citizens during times of war, to justify dozens of the deportations—triggering a fierce legal battle.
The Trump administration invoked the Alien Enemies Act in response to an alleged “invasion” by “Tren de Aragua,” a Venezuelan gang, but the government has produced scant evidence that the people removed had ties to Tren de Aragua. One hundred and one of the deportees were removed under regular immigration procedures.
According to Human Rights Watch, the Salvadoran government has failed to offer a legal basis for detaining the Venezuelan deportees and has not indicated when or whether they will be released.
“It appears that their detention is wholly arbitrary and potentially indefinite; a grave violation of El Salvador’s human rights obligations,” the group said.
Enforced disappearance, according to Human Rights Watch, is when officials deprive someone of their liberty and then conceal the fate or whereabouts of the disappeared person. The violation is “especially serious” because it means they are outside the protection of the law.
The group is calling on U.S. authorities to publicly identify the Venezuelans who were removed to El Salvador and is urging the Salvadoran government to “confirm their current whereabouts, disclose whether there is any legal basis for their detention, and allow them contact with the outside world.”
The statement from Human Rights Watch also detailed the struggle that family members of the deported individuals have faced getting information about them.
The group has interviewed 40 relatives of people “apparently” removed to El Salvador, and all of them told Human Rights Watch that U.S. immigration authorities initially informed their relatives, who were in U.S. immigration detention, that they would be sent to Venezuela. They were not told they would be sent to El Salvador.
“Nobody should be forced to piece together bits of information from the media or to read into the authorities’ silence to find out where their relatives are being held,” Goebertus said. “Salvadoran authorities should urgently disclose the names and locations of all detainees transferred from the US, and allow them to contact their families.”
In addition to the Venezuelans who were deported in March, the Trump administration also deported a smaller number of Salvadoran nationals. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has admitted that one of the men sent to El Salvador was deported in “error.” On Thursday, the Supreme Court instructed the Trump administration to take steps to retrieve the man it had wrongly deported.
Neo-Fascist Climate Science Denier Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
President Donald Trump listens to Jeff Crowe speak during an event on energy production in the East Room of the White House, April 8, 2025, in Washington
TRUMP’S 90-day tariff reprieve spells 90 days of geopolitical turbulence, US bullying and the threat of war.
All three have been constant features of the period of US “unipolar” power, especially since the beginning of what even US presidents have termed the “forever wars.” But Trump’s aggression is global.
That is not changed by the 90-day pause on tariffs (above a 10 per cent base line) on everyone except China, on whose products tariffs are now being hiked well above 100 per cent.
Yes, it identifies China as his main target. Yes, it is an affronted response to the one big country which has met his threats with defiance.
But the escalation against China and suspension — not removal — of threatened tariffs elsewhere are part of the same strategy. Trump is trying to browbeat the world into siding with the United States against China in a conflict the US, not China, has decided on.
Successive US governments have slapped sanctions (which, not being UN-authorised, have no international legal standing) on Chinese products.
But the universal tariff threat ratchets up the pressure. Align with our demands, the US says, or we have already identified the level of economic pain we are going to inflict on you.
Those demands are intended to force all markets open to whatever the US wants. Economist Michael Roberts points to the catch-all list of supposedly unfair practices the US objects to, including “currency manipulation, ‘opaque’ licensing, ‘discriminatory’ product standards, ‘burdensome’ customs procedures, data localisation and so-called ‘lawfare’ of taxes and regulation.”
This is the extraterritorial imposition of US power writ large. Other countries may not decide their own policies on procurement, the quality or safety of goods, tariffs (!), protecting their citizens’ data from US acquisition, or how to tax and regulate US companies operating on their territory. It is outrageous.
Neo-Fascist Climate Science Denier Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
