Refugees with Active TB Arrived

Posted on May 31, 2016May 31, 2016 by Denise Simon

Eleven Refugees With Active TB Arrived in Florida After 2013

Eleven refugees with active tuberculosis (TB) were among more than 111,000 refugees who arrived in Florida during the three years between 2013 and 2015, according to a report the Florida Department of Health recently sent to Breitbart News.

Their active TB status was determined in medical screenings completed within 90 days of their arrival in the Sunshine State.

This news comes barely a week after Breitbart News reported that four refugees with active TB were sent to Indiana in 2015.

The Florida Department of Health provided a breakdown, by year of arrival, of the eleven refugees who arrived in Florida with active TB:

Number of refugees who completed domestic medical screening who were diagnosed with active TB at the time of that screening.

Year Number Diagnosed with Active TB
2013 5
2014 5
2015 1

Total 11

Breitbart: The vast majority of these refugees who arrived in Florida between 2013 and 2015–104,000 of the 111,000– came from Cuba under the “wet-foot, dry-foot policy,” the 1995 “amendment to the 1966 Cuban Adjustment Act. . . [that] gives migrants from Cuba special treatment that no other group of refugees or immigrants receives… [and] puts Cubans who reach U.S. soil on a fast track to permanent residency,” as Dan Moffett reports.

Only a small percentage of these 104,000 Cuban refugees–an estimated total of 3,000–entered as “traditional arrival” refugees, the program through which approximately 70,000 refugees per year enter the United States from over 100 different countries.

The remaining 111,000 Cuban refugees were classified as part of the additional 70,000 migrants who enter the United States annually and are designated as “other served populations” eligible to participate in refugee programs administered by the Office of Refugee Resettlement. Many in this group are classified by the federal government as “non-traditional arrivals,” a designation that includes “irregular maritime arrivals. . . and border crossers.”

In 2015, for instance, of the 140,093 total migrants who were eligible to be served by the refugee programs administered by the Office of Refugee Resettlement 69,933 were refugees, while 70,160 were “other served populations.”

Another small percentage of the 111,000 refugees who entered Florida between 2013 and 2015–a total of 7,000–entered through the “traditional arrival” refugee resettlement program administered by the Office of Refugee Resettlement from countries other than Cuba.

While all 10,000 refugees (3,000 from Cuba, 7,000 from other countries) who arrived in Florida between 2013 and 2015 through the “traditional arrival” refugee resettlement program were medically screened overseas prior to being approved to come to the U.S., the 101,000 Cubans who came to Florida under the category “others served by the refugee resettlement program” over the same period were not medically screened prior to their arrival in the U.S.

Most startling of all the information included in the Florida Department of Health data is that only two of the eleven refugees (18 percent) who arrived in Florida with active TB were included in the B1, B2, B3 refugee tuberculosis medical risk notifications sent to the Florida Department of Health by the CDC through the National Electronic Disease Notification System.

Total number of refugees who arrived with a B1, B2, or B3 tuberculosis notification who were diagnosed with active TB at the time of that screening, expressed as an absolute number and also as a percentage of notification of refugees screened.

Year Number Diagnosed with Active TB Percentage of Refugee Notifications
2013 1 3.7%
2014 1 2.4%
2015* 0 0%
* Preliminary data

The other nine refugees who arrived in Florida with active TB (82 percent) were most likely Cuban migrants in the category “others served by the refugee resettlement program” who were not medically screened overseas prior to their arrival in the U.S. It possible, however, that some of the non-Cubans who were given a clean bill of health by the CDC’s overseas medical screening program were in this latter group.

When the CDC provides the Florida Department of Health with advance notifications for each “traditional arrival” refugee bound for Florida when they arrive at a U.S. port of entry, it also provides B1, B2, and B3 tuberculosis medical risk notifications for those “traditional arrival ” refugees carrying those classifications. The Florida Department of Health provided Breitbart News with the number of refugees who arrived with B1,B2, and B3 medical risk notifications between 2013 and 2015:

Number of B1, B2, and B3 tuberculosis notifications sent to the Florida Department of Health by the CDC.

Arrival Number of Refugees
2013 61
2014 80
2015 92

Source: Electronic Disease Notification system (EDN)

Refugees who entered Florida with these medical risk notifications were from among the 10,000 “traditional arrival” refugees between 2013 and 2015, 3,000 from Cuba, and 7,000 from other countries. None of the 111,000 Cubans who entered Florida between 2013 and 2015 from the “others served by the refugee resettlement program” category were subject to these medical notifications, since none had been medically screened overseas.

Though the CDC has gone to great lengths to assure Americans that refugees do not present a tuberculosis health risk to them, the actual data from Florida and Indiana belie that claim.

As Breitbart News reported previously:

Refugees who are diagnosed in overseas medical screenings as having “active infectious tuberculosis” are classified as Class A medical risks, and are not allowed to migrate to the United States without a special waiver.

Refugees who are diagnosed as having something the CDC calls, in a classic bureaucratic oxymoron, “active tuberculosis – non-infectious,” are classified as Class B1 medical risks and are allowed to migrate to the United States.

According to the most recent 2007 standards provided by the CDC to the approximately 700 medical doctors who have been authorized by U.S. embassies or consulates overseas to be part of the U.S. Control Panels that perform overseas medical screenings of U.S. bound refugees, any refugee who (1) has a chest radiograph that suggests the presence of TB and has either (1) sputum smears that test positive or (2) sputum cultures that test positive, is categorized as a Class A medical risk.

Class B2 tuberculosis medical risks are refugees who complete the overseas medical screening and require “[l]atent tuberculosis infection evaluation .”

Class B3 tuberculsosis medical risks are refugees who complete the overseas medical screening and require “contact evaluation.”

The Florida Health Refugee Health Program Report for 2010 to 2012 explains why refugees from Cuba and Haiti are treated differently than those from other countries:

Most refugee arrivals in Florida enter through the Miami port of entry and resettle in Miami-Dade County. However, Florida is experiencing an increase in refugees arriving through the Chicago and New York City ports of entry.

The RHP (Florida Refugee Health Program) is notified in advance of traditional port of entry (i.e.,international airports and seaports) refugee arrivals by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC’s) Electronic Disease Notification (EDN) System.

The RHP does not receive prior arrival notifications for non-traditional refugee arrivals such as primary asylees, irregular maritime arrivals, and border crossers who are eligible for refugee services.

Irregular maritime arrivals and border crosser populations refer to Cuban/Haitian entrants who may have arrived via water or land (U.S./Mexico or U.S./Canada border) and have received an immigration status that deems them eligible for refugee benefits.

The vast majority of Texas arrivals consisted of border-crossers.

Arrivals through non-traditional ports of entry increased dramatically between 2010 and 2012.

There were 338 (1.4%) non-traditional arrivals in 2010, 2,298 (8.8%) in 2011, and 8,229 (26.9%) in 2012. Non-traditional arrivals include both border-crossers and irregular maritime arrivals.

Border-crossers are Cuban/Haitian entrants who may have arrived via water or land (U.S./Mexico or U.S./Canada) and have received an immigration status that deems them eligible for refugee benefits, such as public interest parole…

Closely related to the trends in ports of entry for refugee arrivals are the trends in the immigration status of refugee arrivals. Although the term refugee is used throughout this report to encompass all eligible populations, there are 11 different immigration statuses represented in Florida’s arrivals.

Since 2010, parolees ( …individuals granted entry into the U.S. for humanitarian reasons or for emergent or compelling reasons of significant public benefit) have been the largest immigration status represented in the eligible arrival population in Florida, followed by refugees and asylees.

Many Cuban refugees (the majority of whom are technically “parolees”) enter the United States by land, with Texas being the leading port of entry. These individuals, along with Cuban refugees who are classified as “non-traditional maritime” arrivals are not medically screened prior to their arrival here.

As Pew Research reported:

Thousands of Cubans have migrated to the U.S. by land. Many fly to Ecuador because of the country’s liberal immigration policies, then travel north through Central America and Mexico. The majority of Cubans who entered the country arrived through the U.S. Border Patrol’s Laredo Sector in Texas, which borders Mexico. In fiscal 2015, two-thirds (28,371) of all Cubans came through this sector, an 82% increase from the previous fiscal year.

However, a larger percentage increase occurred in the Miami sector, which operates in several states, but primarily in Florida. The number of Cubans who entered in the Miami sector during fiscal 2015 more than doubled from the previous year, from 4,709 .

Over 80 percent of the more than 56,000 Cuban refugees and migrants who arrived in the United States in FY 2015 were resettled in Florida. Ten percent were resettled in Texas, while the remainder were resettled in other states.

In Florida, Cuban refugees and migrants account for well over 90 percent of all resettled refugees, as this breakdown of refugees arriving in the Sunshine State between 2013 and 2015, as provided to Breitbart News by the Florida Department of Health, shows:

FY 2013-2015 Arrivals, By Country of Origin
Country 2013 2014 2015 Total
Cuba 29,506 31,443 43,681 104,630
Burma 383 408 467 1,258
Iraq 481 577 302 1,360
Haiti 486 538 189 1,213

Total 31,906 33,978 45,907 111 ,791

NOTE: some of this data is still preliminary in nature.

Residents of the Sunshine State can take some comfort, however, in the fact that Florida has consistently had a very high rate–well over 90 percent–of arriving refugees who successfully complete their medical screenings within 90 days:

Total Arrivals, FY 2013 to FY 2015

Year Number of Arrivals Number Screened Percentage Screened
FY 13 31,906 29,838 93.52%
FY 14 33,978 33,217 97.76%
FY 15 45,907 44,672 97.31%

This is just part of the TB refugee health data provided by the Florida Department of Health to Breitbart News, important information that is not made available to the public in many other states, particularly those like Tennessee where refugee resettlement operations are controlled by VOLAGs (voluntary agencies) selected by the Office of Refugee Resettlement under the statutorily questionable Wilson Fish alternative program.

The special treatment of Cuban refugees, however, may be coming to an end, a result of concerns over financial scandals reported in the resettlement program in Florida, as well as the re-establishment of formal relations with Cuba by the Obama administration in 2015.

Critics question why Cubans should not enter through the traditional refugee resettlement program like the 70,000 refugees resettled by ORR each year. Should that take place, Cuban refugees would then be subject to overseas medical screenings.

Since two of the eleven refugees who arrived in Florida with active TB between 2013 and 2015 went through that screening and were classified B1, B2, B3 tuberculosis medical risks cleared for entry into the U.S., it is not clear if adding overseas medical screenings to Cuban refugees will offer significant improvements to the public health risks Americans face from refugees who are now readily cleared by an obviously imperfect medical screening system.

But, since nine of the eleven refugees who arrived with active TB between 2013 and 2015 were likely not subjected to overseas medical screening, adding overseas medical screenings as a requirement for entry for all Cuban refugees would not make the current flawed system worse.

The only sure-bet policy that could make the current system better, however, at least in terms of guaranteeing that no refugees arriving in the U.S. will increase the risk of Americans being infected with active or latent TB, would be to completely shut down the program and allow no refugees to enter.

Fast and Furious Weapons and Mass Killings

Posted on May 26, 2016May 26, 2016 by Denise Simon

Documents: Mexican Cartels Used Fast and Furious Guns For Mass Killings

TownHall: New documents obtained by the government watchdog Judicial Watch prove, again, that guns sold through the Obama Justice Department’s Fast and Furious Operation have been used by Mexican cartels for mass murder south of the border.

“According to the new records, over the past three years, a total of 94 Fast and Furious firearms have been recovered in Mexico City and 12 Mexican states, with the majority being seized in Sonora, Chihuahua and Sinaloa. Of the weapons recovered, 82 were rifles and 12 were pistols identified as having been part of the Fast and Furious program. Reports suggest the Fast and Furious guns are tied to at least 69 killings,” Judicial Watch reports. “The documents show 94 Fast and Furious firearms were seized, 20 were identified as being involved in ‘violent recoveries.’ The ‘violent recoveries’ involved several mass killings.”

The documents include locations, type of gun recovered and number of people killed:

June 30, 2014 — One 7.62mm rifle recovered in Tlatlaya, Estado de Mexico. This is the reported date and location of a shootout in which 22 people were killed.

May 22, 2015 — Two 7.62mm rifles recovered from the site of a massive shootout in Rancho el Sol, Michoacán, that left one Mexican Federal Police officer and 42 suspected cartel members dead.

August 7, 2015 — One 7.62mm rifle was among five firearms reported as recovered from an abandoned stolen vehicle in which three dead shooting victims were found in Parral, Chihuahua.

January 29, 2013 — One 7.62mm rifle seized in Hostotipaquillo, Jalisco is reportedly related to the assassination of the town police chief, Luis Lucio Astorga and his bodyguard.

January 11, 2016 — One .50 caliber rifle seized from the Joaquin “Chapo” Guzman’s hideout in Los Mochis, Sinaloa, where he was (re)arrested.

Keep in mind these stats only relate to 94 Fast and Furious guns, most of them being AK-47s and .50 caliber rifles, that have been recovered. The Department of Justice, with help from ATF, trafficked more than 2500 of them right into the hands of violent Mexican cartels members. Fast and Furious guns are only recoverable and traceable when they are left at crime scenes, which doesn’t account for the number of times they were used in previous crimes.

Former Attorney General Eric Holder admitted during congressional testimony years ago that guns trafficked by the DOJ would be used to carry out violent crimes. In 2011, former House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa told reporters, citing Mexican Attorney General Marisela Morales, hundreds of Mexican citizens had been murdered as a result of the operation. Since then, a number of guns from the operation have been found at crime scenes in the U.S.

“These documents show President Obama’s legacy includes one of gunrunning and violence in Fast and Furious,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said in a statement. “As the production of documents from the ATF continues, we expect to see even further confirmation of Obama’s disgraced former Attorney General Eric Holder’s prediction that Fast and Furious guns will be used in crimes for years to come.”

Last month a federal judge struck down an executive privilege claim made by President Obama in June 2012 over thousands of Fast and Furious documents. Those documents show the lengths Holder and his closest aides at DOJ went to cover-up the Operation and the scandal that followed, which became public when Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was murdered by Mexican bandits in December 2010. They were carrying guns from Operation Fast and Furious.

Russian Spies and Espionage in NATO and USA

Posted on May 25, 2016May 25, 2016 by Denise Simon

It was not long ago while interviewing a former CIA operative that he responded to my question, ‘do we have a handle on the Russian spies in the United States?’ His answer is no, and they are all over the country and the same goes with China.

2015: Three alleged Russian spies exposed by the FBI are part of the most intense effort by Russia to infiltrate agents onto American soil since the Cold War.

In an affidavit unsealed in federal court on Monday, the Justice Department accused , also known as “Zhenya,” of posing as a Russian banker in Manhattan to funnel economic intelligence to the SVR, Russia’s foreign intelligence agency.

Two other Russians, Igor Sporyshev and Victor Podobnyy, were ostensibly diplomats in Russia’s UN mission in New York but are accused of being Buryakov’s SVR handlers. While Buryakov was operating deep undercover and therefore had no diplomatic protection, the other two have immunity and have already left the the United States.

Anecdotes in the affidavit portray the accused spies as bumbling and hapless compared to the stereotype of hard-eyed Soviet-era KGB professionals. Still, news of their existences comes at the most perilous moment in U.S.-Russia relations in decades, with Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin at a standoff over issues ranging from Ukraine to Moscow’s claims it has a right to a “sphere of influence” in its backyard. More from CNN here.

**** Now NATO:

NATO’s Big New Russian Spy Scandal

A Russian mole has been uncovered inside NATO intelligence. What does this mean for Western security?

Frederico Carvalhão Gil was arrested this weekend in Rome. (Photo: Facebook/Frederico.CarvalhaoGil

Observer: Last weekend, in the latest development in the secret espionage struggle between Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin and the West, a major Russian spy was arrested in Italy. On Saturday, Frederico Carvalhão Gil, a senior intelligence official from Portugal, was picked up by Italian police along with his Russian intelligence handler, whom he was meeting clandestinely in Rome.

Although Portugal is hardly a big player in the global spy game, it has been a member of the Atlantic Alliance since its founding in 1949, and Lisbon’s intelligence services are full members of the West’s secret spy network. Finding a mole like Mr. Carvalhão in any NATO security service is a serious matter for the whole alliance.

A career intelligence officer, the 57-year-old Mr. Carvalhão, who went into the espionage business in the late 1980s, had risen to the senior ranks of Portugal’s domestic spy agency, the Security Intelligence Service—SIS for short. He is a division chief in that service, according to Portuguese press reports, what SIS terms an area director. Mr. Carvalhão’s previous assignments have included operational work in counterintelligence and counterterrorism. A philosophy graduate, the suspected traitor is described as highly intelligent—an intellectual. It’s evident Mr. Carvalhão had access to a wide array of NATO secrets thanks to his official position.

Portuguese intelligence suspected it had a mole for some time, and a secret hunt for the turncoat commenced in 2014. With help from spy partners, including the CIA, Lisbon developed a list of suspects. Mr. Carvalhão was high on that list, not least because of his open affection for all things Eastern European, which he made plain on his Facebook page.

He also likes Eastern European women. “Zipper problems” as they are known in the spy trade have been the downfall of many turncoats, and reports of a Georgian woman Mr. Carvalhão was romantically involved with offer hints of a possible honey-trap. That deserves investigation, since such operations are textbook for the Russian intelligence services. One reason he wound up on NATO counterintelligence radar was multiple reports of indiscreet liaisons with women from the former Soviet Union.

Greed seems to have also played a role. Mr. Carvalhão was allegedly charging the Kremlin’s Foreign Intelligence Service, the SVR, 10,000 Euros ($11,100) for each classified document he was selling them—a princely sum by spy standards. We know that the SVR’s main interest in the information it sought from its Portuguese mole were secrets about NATO and the European Union. If the Russians were willing to pay that much per purloined document, it’s evident to any veteran counterintelligence hand that the classified information he was giving the SVR was important. The Kremlin won’t pay that much for junk.

Mr. Carvalhão had been through a divorce, which may have been a motivation as well—both financially and psychologically. Reeling from a divorce that left him financially strapped, the notorious CIA turncoat Aldrich Ames reached out to the KGB, the SVR’s predecessor, in 1985, offering them top secret information in exchange for $50,000. Thus began Mr. Ames’ nine years of betrayal that lasted until his 1994 arrest—a huge success for the Kremlin that cost the lives of several Soviets who were spying for the CIA.

Once SIS realized Mr. Carvalhão may have gone rogue, he was moved to a less sensitive position at work, where he had access to fewer secrets and was placed under surveillance. By last autumn, he was being watched and his phones were tapped as his employer looked for evidence of his betrayal. They soon discovered that Mr. Carvalhão made regular trips across Europe, which SIS assessed were actually clandestine meetings with the SVR to pass secrets to the Russians outside Portugal. That was less risky than meeting Russians on his home turf, as the career spy knew from his own service with Portuguese counterintelligence.

This culminated in the top secret operation in Rome last weekend which led to Mr. Carvalhão’s arrest. In coordination with Italian partners, SIS watched his movements as he took a flight to Rome last Friday, in preparation for the next day’s planned meeting with the Russians. That clandestine rendezvous was spoiled for Mr. Carvalhão when Italian police appeared at the Roman café, downtown on the Tiber, to bring him into custody on espionage charges proffered by Lisbon. He did not resist arrest.

Neither did the Russian he was meeting. In an interesting twist, his SVR handler was not in Rome under official cover, posing as a diplomat or trade representative—the default setting in espionage circles. Rather, his SVR handler was what the Russian term an Illegal, meaning he was operating without any official protection. He therefore was subject to arrest, whereas a Russian spy pretending to work at their embassy could claim diplomatic immunity to avoid police detention.

The identity of the SVR officer in custody has not been released by Italian authorities, but Illegals are an elite cadre in Russian intelligence circles, much less frequently encountered than their counterparts posing as diplomats. They are also much tougher to detect, since they aren’t working at any embassy or consulate, and last year’s FBI arrest of an SVR Illegal in New York City—where he was spying on Wall Street—was a coup for American counterintelligence.

Rome and Lisbon may have unraveled an important spy ring here. Illegals are used to handle high-value agents, for instance moles inside Western spy services like Mr. Carvalhão for whom meetings with SVR officers under official cover—who are often known to the local security service, which watches their movements closely—would pose a serious risk of exposure.

Just what this Portuguese mole gave the Russians is not yet known. Assessing that, and therefore the damage he caused to Western security, is the major task facing investigators in Lisbon and other NATO capitals right now. The Atlantic Alliances have been penetrated by the SVR many times—the most recent big case was Herman Simm, a senior Estonian security official who was arrested in 2008 after spying for the Kremlin for years, during which he had access to countless NATO secrets.

The disastrous case of Edward Snowden, the National Security agency IT contractor who defected to Moscow nearly three years ago, was an unprecedented blow to American intelligence and the entire Western spy partnership. In response, NATO has belatedly begun to get serious about the threat posed by Russian espionage. There was a major increase in Kremlin spying against the West beginning a decade ago, reaching and in some cases even surpassing Cold War levels of intensity. Last year, NATO forced the Russians to cut back their official delegation to alliance headquarters in Brussels, since so many of them were actually spies, brazenly stealing NATO secrets.

The SVR is every bit as audacious at stealing our secrets as the KGB ever was. The SpyWar between East and West never ended, and under Vladimir Putin—that onetime KGB officer who values espionage highly—it forms a core component of Kremlin foreign and security policy. The case of Frederico Carvalhão demonstrates that Moscow is still stealing our secrets at every opportunity. The West ignores counterintelligence, particularly against an increasingly aggressive Russia, at its peril.

John Schindler is a security expert and former National Security Agency analyst and counterintelligence officer.

Did you Know the EPA has a SuperFund?

Posted on May 25, 2016May 25, 2016 by Denise Simon

EPA’s Superfund program is responsible for cleaning up some of the nation’s most contaminated land and responding to environmental emergencies, oil spills and natural disasters. To protect public health and the environment, the Superfund program focuses on making a visible and lasting difference in communities, ensuring that people can live and work in healthy, vibrant places.

There are well regulations. Since when are they followed?

Superfund Regulations

The National Oil and Hazardous Substances Pollution Contingency Plan (NCP) defines the organizational structure and procedures for preparing for and responding to discharges of oil and releases of hazardous substances, pollutants, and contaminants in the United States. The NCP was developed by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in response to the congressional enactment of The Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) of December 11, 1980, as amended by the Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act of 1986 (SARA), and by section 311(d) of the Clean Water Act (CWA). This page contains links to other EPA Web pages with simplified explanations of the Superfund regulatory process. Other links access Code of Federal Regulations that document the technical considerations and requirements of CERCLA and the NCP.

Enforcement activities related to the Superfund Division at EPA Headquarters is overseen by the Office of Site Remediation Enforcement (OSRE), a division of the EPA Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance.

Office of Site Remediation Enforcement (OSRE)

The history of the Superfund: Since 1980, EPA’s Superfund program has helped protect human health and the environment by managing the cleanup of the nation’s worst hazardous waste sites and responding to local and nationally significant environmental emergencies. Below you will find a timeline highlighting some of the most notable milestones in the history of the Superfund and other cleanup programs.

So are they going to pay for the spill that contaminated the river or for the water crisis in Flint, Michigan?

There are secret meetings too!

STAR CHAMBER: EPA Holding Secret Meetings to Decide How to Dole out Billions in Illegal Slush Funds by Ethan Barton

Two internal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) committees secretly control how billions of dollars are spent, a Daily Caller News Foundation investigation has found.

Congress appropriates about $1 billion annually for EPA’s Superfund program, and the agency has accumulated nearly $6.8 billion in more than 1,300 slush fund-like accounts since 1990.

No mention of that on their website but check this out:

Supplemental Environmental Projects at Ammonia Facilities in Arizona and California

Ammonia Sign

Two ammonia refrigeration facilities have volunteered to complete Supplementary Environmental Projects (SEPs), that will benefit their surrounding communities, as part of enforcement settlements with EPA. The SEPs will enhance the emergency response capabilities of local fire and hazardous materials response teams in the immediate areas of the facilities and will also include compliance outreach in California’s San Joaquin Valley.

Dole Packaged Foods in Atwater, California (map) and Rousseau Farming Company in Tolleson, Arizona (map) both had releases of ammonia in 2006 and failed to immediately notify the proper authorities, violations of the Emergency Planning and Community Right-To-Know Act (EPCRA), and the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA). In addition to the release reporting violations, Dole failed to develop standard operating procedures for the ammonia system where the release occurred, constituting a violation of the Clean Air Act (CAA).

“We are pleased that both Dole and Rousseau have acknowledged their violations and recognized their responsibility to improve safety practices in their communities. Supplemental environmental projects are an excellent mechanism for companies to demonstrate good corporate citizenship and to fulfill their responsibilities under the law” -Daniel A. Meer, EPA Region 9’s Response, Planning and Assessment Branch Chief

As part of the SEP, Rousseau will spend $15,000 on 14 suits for the Tolleson Fire Department to use when responding to chemical fires. This is in addition to a $65,045 penalty. Dole will spend a total of $86,930 for the penalty and $12,000 on a compliance training and $53,000 on emergency response equipment for Merced County.

DOJ: Lawyers Behind the N. Carolina Bathroom Lawsuit

Posted on May 24, 2016May 24, 2016 by Denise Simon

Radicals….throughout the whole Justice Department but here are the backgrounds of those who Loretta Lynch has assigned to sue North Carolina on the bathroom (genderless) lawsuit. Terrifying….

The Justice Department sent out the guidance letter to public schools in several languages and that document is here.

This is a matter placed under Title IX, Sex Discrimination.

By the way, make sure you use proper words as you could be sued in this regard as well.

A sign marks the entrance to a gender-neutral restroom at the University of Vermont in Burlington, Vt.

These Are the Radical DOJ Lawyers Suing North Carolina Over Transgender Bathroom Use

By J. Christian Adams

PJ Media published the Every Single One series in 2011. The series documented the Obama administration’s hiring of radical lawyers to fill the career ranks in the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division.

Every single one of the new attorney hires were radical leftists or partisans.

Since 2011, the situation has only gotten worse. Much worse.

The Civil Rights Division exercises enormous power over the everyday lives of Americans: they are involved in employment, education, housing, religious liberty, abortion, prisons, policing, and much, much more.

The radical beliefs of these radical lawyers have turned into radical administration policies.

The most recent example? The lawsuits aimed at North Carolina intended to create a federal civil right for men to use women’s bathrooms and locker rooms.

We have already provided the resumes of the new lawyers who will oversee the 2016 elections. Now let’s meet the ones who want to oversee bathrooms.

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The complaint filed by North Carolina had Justice Department lawyers from the Employment Litigation section as well as other DOJ Civil Rights Division sections.

Chief Delora Kennebrew

The Employment Section is headed by Delora Kennebrew.

Kennebrew hails from Savannah, Georgia. She was president of the Black Law Student Association at Mercer University’s law school in Macon.

Under Kennebrew, the Employment Section has pursued case after case against fire departments and other municipal entities, forcing them to abandon qualification tests where blacks and Hispanics scored lower than whites. Other settlements have forced municipalities to pay tens of thousands of dollars for using qualification tests for fire and police jobs.

One case she oversaw against Austin, Texas, forced the city to set aside 30 jobs for black and Hispanic applicants.

Kennebrew is listed as the point of contact in the letter North Carolina received from the Justice Department this month. That means she is the central manager on the matter.

Kennebrew is most certainly a member of the Senior Executive Service. That means that an incoming Trump administration can move her after January 2017 to any other federal agency in any part of the country, such as the National Weather Service in Duluth.

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Candyce Phoenix

Candyce Phoenix is also on the complaint suing North Carolina.

Her resume noted her senior thesis was devoted to a “case study of race and FedEx field,” the football stadium where the Washington Redskins play.

Phoenix majored in “Comparative Ethnic Studies” at Columbia, where she was a columnist for the student newspaper. You can read her writings here. Her favorite topics? Race, race, and race.

In a column titled “Hear Ye, Hear Ye, All Negroes,” she wrote about President George Bush’s “bogus” visit to Howard University:

[Bush] was ecstatic to be able to visit the Negroes on such an important occasion. Needless to say, Bush was not well received, which was to be expected given his recent two percent approval rating among African Americans. One of my classmates said it best when she complained that having Bush on campus was “like inviting the master to the slave cabins for dinner.”

Phoenix also penned “It Was Raining Oreos,” which refers to former RNC Chairman Michael Steele with a racial epithet. She wrote “What I Learned from White People at Howard” (she learned the best ones are “race traitors”). She also wrote “I’m Black,” which stated: “Our curriculum places disproportionate importance on white scholars and effectively denies the importance of scholars of color.”

Yes, yes, we heard it all before. But these are the sort of views held by lawyers earning six-figure taxpayer-funded salaries to fundamentally transform America.

The race-soaked discontent with America no longer is confined to crackpots on campus.

Candyce Phoenix

Phoenix’s qualifications didn’t end with her tiresome critical race studies dogma. She was an activist from the start. Phoenix served as the “United Students of Color Campus Liaison” at Columbia — a real office.

She served as the events chair for the American Constitution Society, a left-wing lawyers club that has mostly failed in its efforts to match the heft and influence of the Federalist Society. She worked with the left-wing “Election Protection” organization, which funnels potential plaintiffs toward civil rights organizations.

She also did a stint with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, an organization that routinely fights election integrity laws like Voter ID. (Thankfully, those efforts have recently failed, such as in North Carolina.)

Now, buckle up:

After a Danish cartoonist was nearly murdered by an Islamist with an axe, Phoenix wrote to the Washington Post:

[D]o Muslims really have avenues to express their discontent by what we consider normal democratic means? And if they do, do we listen?

Phoenix started at DOJ less than a year ago, which means she hasn’t vested into civil service protections and can also be moved by a new administration.

Alisa Philo

Philo, hired in October 2015, was co-president of Women of Stanford Law, an organization with a “Social Justice Committee” that organizes “donation based efforts and social justice programing” at Stanford Law School.

Philo clerked for First Circuit Court of Appeal Judge Sandra Lynch (appointed by Clinton) and federal Judge Keith Ellison (Clinton). Philo also began her tenure at Justice less than a year ago; she too has not vested her employment.

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Nadia Said

Said was a fellow at Equal Justice America, but her real Civil Rights Division bona fides came from her time spent at the Chicago Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights.

The Chicago Lawyers’ Committee was originally designed to end official discrimination, but it has since morphed into a Tides Foundation, Soros-funded leftist organization pushing radical legal theories.

The group has opposed election-integrity measures. It has deployed teams of lawyers to polling locations ostensibly to protect voting rights, but in practice to aid Democrats.

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Christina Cheung

Christina Cheung says she worked as a political consultant prior to her hiring at the Justice Department in 2015. Since becoming a Justice Department lawyer, she has also become a Hillary Clinton donor. When working with Gloria Allred in private practice, Cheung was involved in attempts to torque campus sexual assault cases against universities such as Boise State.

That complaint said colleges are required to “take proactive measures to prevent sexual harassment and violence,” and that “the mere presence” of an accused perpetrator on campus “gives rise to a sexually hostile atmosphere.”

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Richard Sexton

Sexton came to the Justice Department from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commision. While at the EEOC, he brought cases against businesses such as Service Master, Terminix, Subway franchises, and prison management companies.

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Catherine Sellers

Sellers worked at “Legal Voice,” a group in Seattle dedicated to “transgender rights,” “protecting reproductive justice,” and “advancing economic justice.”

The resume Sellers submitted to the Justice Department for employment consideration documents her time at the Yale University Art Gallery. Wrote Sellers:

Recruited diverse student groups to co-host gallery events and organized “Yale Liberal Party debate on art repatriation, Day With(out) Art” event recognizing LBGT artists and a collaborative tour focusing on women’s issues.

She was involved in the Immigrant Families Advocacy Project, a group dedicated to providing legal services to illegal aliens.

See below: the Justice Department does not want you to see her entire resume. They redacted a portion pertaining to “interests”:

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Kunti Dudakia Salazar

Kunti Dudakia Salazar was an A-team leftist activist before she came to the Justice Department in June of 2015. She graduated summa cum laude with a Woman’s Studies degree from UCLA. There, she was active in both the African student union as well as the Indian student union. She also won the Constance Coiner award for “research on feminist/working class issues.”

At law school in Berkeley, she was a founding member of the “Women of Color Collective,” a group dedicated to providing “a supportive space for African-American, Asian-American, Latina, Native-American, and other women and transgender students of color.” Hard to imagine that could have been in short supply at Berkeley.

The Facebook page for the organization toggles between farce and frightening, reframing the student experience through the lens of race and oppression.

She also worked for the Henderson Center for Social Justice on issues “regarding black women, mental health and incarceration,” and served as the “activist coordinator” for the “Berkeley Critical Race Studies Scholars Society.”

She worked for the ACLU in Los Angeles on “racial profiling” and “police misconduct” issues.

The Justice Department also redacted her interests, as well as the name of a professor — David Sklansky — with whom she worked on a law review article.

Dudakia Salazar began her time at the Justice Department in June 2015, and thus her probationary period has not yet ended.

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Stay tuned to learn about the other Civil Rights Division sections suing North Carolina over trans rights.