![]() ![]() Chantell and Michael Sackett objected when federal officials identified a soggy portion of the property as a wetland, requiring them to get a permit before filling it with rocks and soil. ![]() The court’s majority sided with an Idaho couple who sought to build a house near Priest Lake in the state’s panhandle. “This is the exact answer that we’ve been asking for for a long time.” “We’re absolutely thrilled with the results,” said Travis Cushman, deputy general counsel for the American Farm Bureau Federation. Industry and farm groups praised the ruling. “This is one of the saddest chapters in the 50-year history of the Clean Water Act,” said Jim Murphy, director of legal advocacy for the National Wildlife Federation. ![]() ‘Uncharted territory’: How Asia is coping with extreme heat The high court’s decision follows one in 2022 curtailing federal power to reduce carbon emissions from power plants and indicates a willingness by the court’s emboldened conservatives to limit environmental laws and agency powers. Some experts say the battle over wetlands now may shift to states, with red and blue states writing laws that take dramatically different approaches. It’s the latest turn in a decades-old struggle by courts and regulators to determine which waters are subject to protection under the Clean Water Act. The ruling Thursday may nullify key parts of a rule the Biden administration imposed in December, which two federal judges already had blocked from being enforced in 26 states. Supreme Court has stripped federal agencies of authority over millions of acres of wetlands, weakening a bedrock environmental law enacted a half-century ago to cleanse the country’s badly polluted waters.Ī 5-4 majority significantly expanded the ability of farmers, homebuilders, and other developers to dig up or fill wetlands near rivers, lakes, and streams, finding the government had long overreached in limiting such activities. And that takes a lot of work. Today’s lead story, as arduous as it was, is an attempt to do that – to understand an important part of America just a little bit better, to help open the door to progress for all. Finding answers will be impossible without understanding those deeper forces. The roots of violence everywhere are as much mental as political, influenced by culture and values. But that same rule applies to all regions – in the U.S. To ensure he got the story right, Patrik went back a second time. What we found was a portrait not of policies or legislative bills, but of an underlying mental landscape and how that has led to higher rates of violence. Why?In traveling to Nashville, Tennessee, and Alexander City, Alabama, Noah Robertson and Patrik Jonsson sought to show different faces of violence in the South, in large cities and rural hamlets, without falling into stereotypes or shallow narratives. And within these trends, one sticks out for its clarity and constancy: The American South has dramatically higher levels of violence. There is no single “gun violence problem” in the United States, but different challenges in different places. ![]() Rather, it is a product of the subject: the roots of violence. American conversations about gun violence – particularly mass shootings – often revolve around gun laws and mental health.But the closer we looked, the more we saw something else. Today’s lead article was not one of those stories. That’s not criticism. An idea emerges, and with a minimum of fuss, it is done. Sometimes, a story comes together with kinetic beauty. ![]()
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