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EPA can force coal-fired power plants to drastically cut carbon pollution, Supreme Court says
The Supreme Court on Wednesday cleared the way for a climate-change rule adopted by the Biden administration that would force coal-fired power plants to cut their carbon pollution 90% by 2032 or shut down.
By a 7-1 vote, the court rejected a series of emergency appeals from Republican-led states and the coal and electric power industries.
The decision comes as a mild surprise because the court’s conservatives have repeatedly blocked the EPA’s more ambitious climate change plans.
The decision is a victory for environmentalists and the Biden administration, but not a final ruling on the legality of the new regulations. It signals that the court’s majority leans in favor of upholding the rules.
Justice Clarence Thomas dissented. He would have put the EPA rule on hold while lower courts considered it.
Justices Neil M. Gorsuch and Brett M. Kavanaugh said in a short statement that the challengers had a strong claim, but there was no need to block the regulation at this early stage.
Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. took no part in the decision.
The EPA says power plants are the second-largest source of carbon pollution, behind motor vehicles.
It was the third time in a decade that the court’s conservatives were asked to block the EPA and Democratic presidents from enforcing ambitious new rules to restrict carbon pollution from power plants.
The EPA announced its latest antipollution rules in April and said carbon-capture technology would allow coal- and new gas-fired power plants to “achieve substantial reductions in carbon pollution at reasonable cost.”
But state attorneys for West Virginia and 26 other Republican-led states sued seeking to block the rules. Joined by the electric power industry and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, they argued carbon-capture technology was costly and unproven for large power plants.
“These [carbon-capture] systems are not ready for prime time,” they told the court.
They also contended the nation’s power grid would be endangered if fossil-fuel plants were forced to shut down.
California Atty. Gen Rob Bonta and state attorneys from 21 other Democratic-led states urged the court to uphold the rules. They said climate change and extreme weather events “pose the biggest threat to grid reliability.”
Lawyers for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power and Pacific Gas and Electric Co. joined several other California and New York utilities in urging the court to turn down the appeal from West Virginia and the coal-producing states.
Twice before the court stopped major rules intended to limit pollution from power plants.
In 2015, President Obama and the EPA announced a Clear Power Plan that would have set state limits on emissions and forced a shift toward natural gas and renewable energy.
But the coal-producing states appealed and the Supreme Court blocked the plan by a 5-4 vote in February of 2016, just days before Justice Antonin Scalia died.
When the Biden administration was set to try again, the court took up an another appeal and ruled for West Virginia and the coal states in 2022.
The EPA, citing a provision of the Clean Air Act that says it may require states to reduce pollution through “the best system of emission reduction,” argued the “best system” would be a shift away from burning fossil fuels.
But in a 6-3 decision, the court rejected that broad approach and said the “system of emission reduction” referred to power plants, not to the state’s system for generating electric power.
In response, the EPA’s latest rules focus directly on power plants and how their emissions may be reduced.
In July, the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., in a 3-0 decision refused to block the rules, prompting West Virginia and the coal states to appeal again to the Supreme Court.
Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar, representing the EPA and the Biden administration, urged the court to turn down the appeal from the coal-producing states. She noted the rules would not take full effect until 2032, giving states ample time to comply.
The rules follow a targeted approach, she said. “Carbon capture is a technology that enables individual plants to reduce their emissions,” she told the court on Aug. 19. “That technology involves using chemical solvents to remove 90% of the carbon dioxide from the plant’s exhaust stream, transporting the captured carbon dioxide via pipeline, and permanently storing the captured carbon dioxide underground.”
In June, the justices by a 5-4 vote put on hold an EPA rule that would have required Midwest states to do more to limit smog that pollutes the air over the East Coast states.
The majority agreed with lower courts that sided with the states and questioned whether their air-quality plans were inadequate.
Business
Nike to Cut 1,400 Jobs as Part of Its Turnaround Plan
Nike is cutting about 1,400 jobs in its operations division, mostly from its technology department, the company said Thursday.
In a note to employees, Venkatesh Alagirisamy, the chief operating officer of Nike, said that management was nearly done reorganizing the business for its turnaround plan, and that the goal was to operate with “more speed, simplicity and precision.”
“This is not a new direction,” Mr. Alagirisamy told employees. “It is the next phase of the work already underway.”
Nike, the world’s largest sportswear company, is trying to recover after missteps led to a prolonged sales slump, in which the brand leaned into lifestyle products and away from performance shoes and apparel. Elliott Hill, the chief executive, has worked to realign the company around sports and speed up product development to create more breakthrough innovations.
In March, Nike told investors that it expected sales to fall this year, with growth in North America offset by poor performance in Asia, where the brand is struggling to rejuvenate sales in China. Executives said at the time that more volatility brought on by the war in the Middle East and rising oil prices might continue to affect its business.
The reorganization has involved cuts across many parts of the organization, including at its headquarters in Beaverton, Ore. Nike slashed some corporate staff last year and eliminated nearly 800 jobs at distribution centers in January.
“You never want to have to go through any sort of layoffs, but to re-center the company, we’re doing some of that,” Mr. Hill said in an interview earlier this year.
Mr. Alagirisamy told employees that Nike was reshaping its technology team and centering employees at its headquarters and a tech center in Bengaluru, India. The layoffs will affect workers across North America, Europe and Asia.
The cuts will also affect staffing in Nike’s factories for Air, the company’s proprietary cushioning system. Employees who work on the supply chain for raw materials will also experience changes as staff is integrated into footwear and apparel teams.
Nike’s Converse brand, which has struggled for years to revive sales, will move some of its engineering resources closer to the factories they support, the company said.
Mr. Alagirisamy said the moves were necessary to optimize Nike’s supply chain, deploy technology faster and bolster relationships with suppliers.
Business
Senate committee kills bill mandating insurance coverage for wildfire safe homes
A bill that would have required insurers to offer coverage to homeowners who take steps to reduce wildfire risk on their property died in the Legislature.
The Senate Insurance Committee on Monday voted down the measure, SB 1076, one of the most ambitious bills spurred by the devastating January 2025 wildfires.
The vote came despite fire victims and others rallying at the state Capitol in support of the measure, authored by state Sen. Sasha Renée Pérez (D-Pasadena), whose district includes the Eaton fire zone.
The Insurance Coverage for Fire-Safe Homes Act originally would have required insurers to offer and renew coverage for any home that meets wildfire-safety standards adopted by the insurance commissioner starting Jan. 1, 2028.
It also threatened insurers with a five-year ban from the sale of home or auto insurance if they did not comply, though it allowed for exceptions.
However, faced with strong opposition from the insurance industry, Pérez had agreed to amend the bill so it would have established community-wide pilot projects across the state to better understand the most effective way to limit property and insurance losses from wildfires.
Insurers would have had to offer four years of coverage to homeowners in successful pilot projects.
Denni Ritter, a vice president of the American Property Casualty Insurance Assn., told the committee that her trade group opposed the bill.
“While we appreciate the intent behind those conversations, those concepts do not remove our opposition, because they retain the same core flaw — substituting underwriting judgment and solvency safeguards with a statutory mandate to accept risk,” she said.
In voting against the bill Sen. Laura Richardson, (D-San Pedro), said: “Last I heard, in the United States, we don’t require any company to do anything. That’s the difference between capitalism and communism, frankly.”
The remarks against the measure prompted committee Chair Sen. Steve Padilla, (D-Chula Vista), to chastise committee members in opposition.
“I’m a little perturbed, and I’m a little disappointed, because you have someone who is trying to work with industry, who is trying to get facts and data,” he said.
Monday’s vote was the fourth time a bill that would have required insurers to offer coverage to so-called “fire hardened” homes failed in the Legislature since 2020, according to an analysis by insurance committee staff.
Fire hardening includes measures such as cutting back brush, installing fire resistant roofs and closing eaves to resist fire embers.
Pérez’s legislation was thought to have a better chance of passage because it followed the most catastrophic wildfires in U.S. history, which damaged or destroyed more than 18,000 structures and killed 31 people.
The bill was co-sponsored by the Los Angeles advocacy group Consumer Watchdog and Every Fire Survivor’s Network, a community group founded in Altadena after the fires formerly called the Eaton Fire Survivors Network.
But it also had broad support from groups such as the California Apartment Association, the California Nurses Association and California Environmental Voters.
Leading up to the fires, many insurers, citing heightened fire risk, had dropped policyholders in fire-prone neighorhoods. That forced them onto the California FAIR Plan, the state’s insurer of last resort, which offers limited but costly policies.
A Times analysis found that that in the Palisades and Eaton fire zones, the FAIR Plan’s rolls from 2020 to 2024 nearly doubled from 14,272 to 28,440. Mandating coverage has been seen as a way of reducing FAIR Plan enrollment.
“I’m disappointed this bill died in committee. Fire survivors deserved better,” Pérez said in a statement .
Also failing Monday in the committee was SB 982, a bill authored by Sen. Scott Wiener, (D-San Francisco). It would have authorized California’s attorney general to sue fossil fuel companies to recover losses from climate-induced disasters. It was opposed by the oil and gas industry.
Passing the committee were two other Pérez bills. SB 877 requires insurers to provide more transparency in the claims process. SB 878 imposes a penalty on insurers who don’t make claims payments on time.
Another bill, SB 1301, authored by insurance commissioner candidate Sen. Ben Allen, (D-Pacific Palisades), also passed. It protects policyholders from unexplained and abrupt policy non-renewals.
Business
How We Cover the White House Correspondents’ Dinner
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Politicians in Washington and the reporters who cover them have an often adversarial relationship.
But on the last Saturday in April, they gather for an irreverent celebration of press freedom and the First Amendment at the Washington Hilton Hotel: The White House Correspondents’ Association dinner.
Hosted by the association, an organization that helps ensure access for media outlets covering the presidency, the dinner attracts Hollywood stars; politicians from both parties; and representatives of more than 100 networks, newspapers, magazines and wire services.
While The Times will have two reporters in the ballroom covering the event, the company no longer buys seats at the party, said Richard W. Stevenson, the Washington bureau chief. The decision goes back almost two decades; the last dinner The Times attended as an organization was in 2007.
“We made a judgment back then that the event had become too celebrity-focused and was undercutting our need to demonstrate to readers that we always seek to maintain a proper distance from the people we cover, many of whom attend as guests,” he said.
It’s a decision, he added, that “we have stuck by through both Republican and Democratic administrations, although we support the work of the White House Correspondents’ Association.”
Susan Wessling, The Times’s Standards editor, said the policy is a product of the organization’s desire to maintain editorial independence.
“We don’t want to leave readers with any questions about our independence and credibility by seeming to be overly friendly with people whose words and actions we need to report on,” she said.
The celebrity mentalist Oz Pearlman is headlining the evening, in lieu of the usual comedy set by the likes of Stephen Colbert and Hasan Minhaj, but all eyes will be on President Trump, who will make his first appearance at the dinner as president.
Mr. Trump has boycotted the event since 2011, when he was the butt of punchlines delivered by President Barack Obama and the talk show host Seth Meyers mocking his hair, his reality TV show and his preoccupation with the “birther” movement.
Last month, though, Mr. Trump, who has a contentious relationship with the media, announced his intention to attend this year’s dinner, where he will speak to a room full of the same reporters he often derides as “enemies of the people.”
Times reporters will be there to document the highs, the lows and the reactions in the room. A reporter for the Styles desk has also been assigned to cover the robust roster of after-parties around Washington.
Some off-duty reporters from The Times will also be present at this late-night circuit, though everyone remains cognizant of their roles, said Patrick Healy, The Times’s assistant managing editor for Standards and Trust.
“If they’re reporting, there’s a notebook or recorder out as usual,” he said. “If they’re not, they’re pros who know they’re always identifiable as Times journalists.”
For most of The Times’s reporters and editors, though, the evening will be experienced from home.
“The rest of us will be able to follow the coverage,” Mr. Stevenson said, “without having to don our tuxes or gowns.”
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