The Atlantic
Attorney General Jeff Sessions pulled back on President Trump’s January executive order cracking down on “sanctuary cities” on Monday, releasing a memo that represents a significant retreat from the order’s original goal of punishing jurisdictions that limit collaboration between local authorities and federal immigration agents.
The New York Times
Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Monday clarified President Trump’s executive order on so-called sanctuary cities, narrowly defining such jurisdictions — and the money they could expect to receive from the federal government — in a way that appeared to fall far short of Mr. Trump’s previous threats to starve all federal funding from localities that limit their cooperation with federal immigration enforcement.
The New York Times
President Trump will not immediately eliminate protections for the so-called Dreamers, undocumented immigrants who came to the United States as small children, according to new memorandums issued by the administration Thursday night.
But White House officials said Friday morning that Mr. Trump had not made a decision about the long-term fate of the program and might yet follow through on a campaign pledge to take away work permits from the immigrants or deport them.
SACRAMENTO — Concerned about threats by the Trump administration to weaken environmental and whistle-blower protection laws, California lawmakers introduced three bills Thursday to try to keep federal standards as they are — at least in this state.
Senate Democrats unveiled the bills a week after Scott Pruitt — a climate change skeptic — was sworn in to run the federal Environmental Protection Agency.
Salmon fishermen joined environmentalists and other public trust advocates in praising the introduction of SB 49, the California Environmental Defense Act, in the California State Senate on February 23.
The Senate leadership unveiled SB 49 as part of the Preserve California legislative package “to insulate the state from dangerous rollbacks in federal environmental regulations and public health protections” proposed by the Donald Trump administration and Congress.
Democratic state senators in California on Thursday unveiled a series of bills designed to freeze in place Obama administration-era environmental regulations in the event the Trump administration moves to weaken them.
The bills, collectively known as the "Preserve California" package, aim to make existing federal clean air, water, and endangered species laws enforceable under state law and protect federal lands in the state from being sold to oil companies.
Needling President Donald Trump and bracing for a rollback of Obama-era environmental protections, Democrats in the nation’s most populous state are launching a preemptive strike.
California lawmakers are expected Thursday to propose legislation to fold existing federal air, water and endangered species standards into state law, sources said, enshrining pre-Trump levels of protection in California regardless of any reversal at the federal level.
California lawmakers want to build a regulatory wall around the state, opening a new front in their brewing war with President Trump as they try to prevent any rollbacks in federal rules from weakening environmental protections here.
SACRAMENTO – The California State Senate voted today to approve the Preserve California legislative package, which insulates the state from dangerous rollbacks in federal environmental regulations and public health protections, shields public lands from exploitation, and protects whistleblowers and public scientific data.
President Donald Trump began his inaugural address with words that might have heartened nervous California Democrats. But then he warmed up and reverted to the familiar campaigner-in-chief.
Like many Republican leaders, Trump preached states’ rights — or seemed to.