Chesapeake Bay newspaper seeks answers after Trump administration terminates funding
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Source: Think Progress
A Maryland newspaper filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency this week, seeking records that might explain why the agency canceled a grant awarded to the newspaper in January 2016.
After awarding the Bay Journal $1.6 million in a competitive grantmaking process, the EPA terminated the grant in August, telling the newspaper that distribution of funds were being cutting off “due to a shift in priorities.” The agency told the Bay Journal, a nonprofit publication owned by Pennsylvania-based Bay Journal Media Inc., that the termination was not based on any failure by the newspaper to comply with the terms of the grant.
In its lawsuit, filed on Monday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, the Bay Journal asked the court to require the EPA to produce information regarding the specific role of John Konkus, a political appointee, in the grant termination. Konkus is a Trump administration appointee with little environmental expertise who was given unprecedented oversight to vet hundreds of millions of dollars in annual EPA grants. His primary focus is cutting grants that include the words “climate change.”
The EPA made two distributions of the grant award — $350,000 in February 2016 and $350,000 in February 2017. In July, the EPA emailed Bay Journal editor Karl Blankenship to confirm that the Bay Journal would be receiving an additional $325,000 in grant funding in February 2018, and then successive payments of $325,000 in February 2019, $300,000 in 2020, and $300,000 in 2021. But on August 23, Blankenship received another email from the EPA informing him that the agency was terminating the grant.
Read more: https://thinkprogress.org/maryland-newspaper-sues-epa-7fb031dbd1ad/
Now this administration is going after newspapers-that say words like "climate change" and wants to censor newspapers
= new reply since forum marked as read
will turn into a economic sewers---------------this is just amazing, how this fascists regime in charge makes no bones on what they are doing ---------none, full blown censorship either at the departments or now newspapers, and putting lackeys in charge, and now this malignant narcissistic sociopath is trying to pack the courts and the turtle gang, is just pencil whipping the word confirmed-----------------------
its not country its all about power, it has never been about country for these jerks, never
And if people don't come to this realization faster, we might as well find a ocean liner---------------------
Worked on trump election in F!orida
John Konkus: Konkus is an executive vice president at Jamestown Associates and has worked in campaign management for congressional and local candidates in New York, Maryland, Georgia and Florida. Konkus most recently worked as the chief of staff to the Florida Lieutenant Governor's office; he previously worked with Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.) and Rep. Sherry Boehlert (R-N.Y.).[6]
