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The Trump administration is working to undo an Obama-era directive that allows students to use school restrooms that correspond with their gender identity, the White House said Tuesday.

White House spokesman Sean Spicer did not go into specifics on the new set of guidelines being prepared by the Justice Department, but said Trump has long held that such matters should be left to the states -- not the federal government -- to decide.

I think that all you have to do is look at what the president's view has been for a long time, that this is not something the federal government should be involved in, this is a states' rights issue," Spicer said.

The Washington Post obtained a draft of the letter to the nations schools, which is planned to be released Wednesday.

The White House plans to say that they are rolling back the directive allowing transgender students access to restrooms and allowing them to participate in school athletics according to their gender identity and not their gender at birth.

The letter also states that the directive has given rise to significant litigation and administrators, parents and students struggled to understand and implement the Obama administrations guidance.

The White House will insist that schools must protect all students and the undoing of the directive does not diminish the protections" available to all students.

Trump was a vocal critic about the Obama administrations guidance during the 2016 campaign.

Trump said in a phoneinterview on Fox & Friends in May 2016that the directive was becoming a massive story despite it only affecting a tiny, tiny percentage of the population.

"It's a new issue and right now, I just don't have an opinion. Id like to see the states make that decision," Trump said at the time.

Trump was also outspoken about North Carolina passing a law on bathroom use by transgender people.

"I love North Carolina, and they have a law, and it's a law that, you know, unfortunately is causing them some problems," Trump toldFox News Sean Hannityin an April 2016 interview. "And I fully understand that they want to go through, but they are losing business, and they are having people come out against."

"I think that local communities and states should make the decision," he went on to say. "And I feel very strongly about that. The federal government should not be involved."

Fifteen states have explicit protections for transgender students, and many individual school districts have adopted policies that recognize students on the basis of their gender identity, said Sarah Warbelow, legal director of the Human Rights Campaign.

Only one state-- North Carolina-- has enacted a law restricting students' bathroom access to their sex at birth. Other states are considering following suit.

Vanita Gupta, who was head of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division under Obama, blasted the Trump administration's attempt to alter the guidelines.

"To cloak this in federalism ignores the vital and historic role that federal law plays in ensuring that all children, (including LGBT students) are able to attend school free from discrimination," Gupta said in a statement.

Even without Obama's guidelines, federal law called Title IX would still prohibit discrimination against students based on their gender or sexual orientation, the National Center for Transgender Equality said. Rescinding those directives would put children in harm's way, the group said.

"Such clear action directed at children would be a brazen and shameless attack on hundreds of thousands of young Americans who must already defend themselves against schoolyard bullies, but are ill-equipped to fight bullies on the floors of their state legislatures and in the White House," NCTE said in a statement.

But Ryan Anderson, a senior research fellow with the conservative Heritage Foundation, said students, parents and teachers should work out "win-win" solutions at the local level, such as equipping schools with single-occupancy restrooms or locker rooms or allowing students to access the faculty lounge.

"We can find a way in which the privacy and safety of transgender students is respected while also respecting the privacy and safety of all other students," Anderson said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Ryan Gaydos is a news editor for Fox News. Follow him on Twitter@Gaydosland.

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Trump administration working on new transgender bathroom directive - Fox News

The hints of a pipeline spill are subtle: the hiss of rushing fluid, a streak of rainbow sheen. Tucked far below ground, a ruptured line can escape notice for days or even weeks, especially in the backcountry, where inspectors rarely venture.

Regulators in the waning hours of the Obama era wrote rules aimed at changing that, and the industry is looking forward to the new administration rolling them back. The Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration has gone overboard, said Brigham McCown, a former head of thePHMSA who served on President Donald Trumps infrastructure transition team. They built a Cadillac instead of the Chevrolet that Congress told them to build.

The oversight agency, an arm of the U.S. Department of Transportation, is just one of many where Barack Obamas policies are in the Trump teams sights. The battle lines are predictable, with companies on one side and safety and environmental activists on the other. Whats particularly worrying the latter is timing, because the rules could be upended as new shipping routes go into service across the country.

The president, a fan of fossil fuels, has revived two controversial pipelines, TransCanada Corp.s Keystone XL and Energy Transfer Partners LPs Dakota Access. They would add 2,300 miles (3,700 kilometers) to the U.S. network with room to transport 1.1 million barrels a day. As it is, there are more than 200,000 miles of pipe cutting across the country carrying crude, gasoline and other hazardous liquids -- about 18 billion barrels worth annually. Many other projects are on the map; in Houston alone, planned lines are expected to increase capacity by 550,000 barrels a day in the next few years.

Im terrified about what is going to happen under Trump, said Jane Kleeb, president of the Bold Alliance, a coalition of groups opposing Keystone XL. My worry is that they will just budget-starve PHMSA.

Read More: Why Keystone counts

While Obama was president, the PHMSA budget grew by 61 percent. Then, seven days before Trumps inauguration, the agency finalized a rule toughening up inspection and repair demands, mandating, for example, that companies have leak-detection systems in populated areas and requiring they examine lines within 72 hours of flooding or another so-called extreme weather event. The American Petroleum Institute, the oil and gas industrys main trade group, characterized it all as overreaching and unnecessary.

Barack Obama at the southern site of the Keystone XL pipeline in 2012.

Photographer: Tom Pennington/Getty Images

The rule was set to take effect in July. The Trump administration slapped a freeze on all regulations written under Obama that havent yet gone into force.

Pipeline leaks are pretty much inevitable; one ruptures every day on average in the U.S., though in the majority of cases the discharge is less than 5 barrels, or 210 gallons.

But big ones can be destructive, and deadly. The 2010 failure of an Enbridge Inc. line sent more than 20,000 barrels of heavy crude into a Kalamazoo River tributary, coating birds, muskrats and other wildlife and closing the river to recreational activity for 22 months; Enbridge agreed to pay $177 million in fines and to boost safety in a settlement with the U.S. Justice Department, which said it took the company 17 hours to notice the breach.

Last October, an explosion on the largest U.S. gasoline pipeline killed one person, injured several more and temporarily cut off the fuel supply along the East Coast. In December, about 150 miles from a Dakota Access protest camp, a pipeline spilled 4,200 barrels of oil and was held up by environmentalists as a harbinger of whats to come.

Government statistics show there has been recent improvement in incident rates: In 2016, the number of accidents fell for the first time in five years, to 417 from 462, with total volume spilled declining 27 percent and the cost of related property damage dropping to $183 million from $257 million. The PHMSA wouldnt speculate on the reasons and pro-regulation forces were reluctant to draw conclusions based on a single years statistics.

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Since 2010, five companies have been responsible for 44 percent of all hazardous liquid spills, according to a Bloomberg analysis of data collected by the PHMSA. The remaining were split among more than 60 companies.

Those with vast assets tend to report a higher number of incidents, of course. The biggest, Enterprise Products Partners LP, ranked first between 2010 and 2016. But the amount spilled comprised a tiny fraction of the total shipped, said Enterprise spokesman Rick Rainey.

Mileage, though, doesnt always correlate with incident rate. Energy Transfer Equity LPs system, which will include the Dakota Access if opponents dont block it, is 40 percent smaller that Enterprises and ranked No. 2 in incidents and spill amounts. The company declined to comment.

The highest priority is to get to zero incidents, said Carl Weimer, executive director of the nonprofit Pipeline Safety Trust, a watchdog group founded after a 1999 gasoline pipeline explosion in Bellingham, Washington, that killed two children, both 10, and an 18-year-old.

Congress isnt likely to move to repeal or rewrite the Obama rule until a new head of the PHMSA is in office.But the chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, Pennsylvania Republican Bill Shuster, said last week that easing up on the regulations was the right thing to do.

Are there some bad actors out there? Sure, he told the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners. But we gotta let these industries go do their business.

View original post here:
Trump Eyes Easing Obama Rules for Sprawling Pipeline Network - Bloomberg

By David Shepardson | WASHINGTON

WASHINGTON A trade association representing General Motors Co (GM.N), Toyota Motor Corp (7203.T), Volkswagen AG (VOWG_p.DE) and nine other automakers on Tuesday asked new Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt to withdraw an Obama administration decision to lock in vehicle emission rules through 2025.

On Jan. 13, then-EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy finalized a determination that landmark fuel efficiency rules instituted by President Barack Obama should be finalized through 2025, a bid to maintain a key part of his administration's climate legacy.

Mitch Bainwol, president and chief executive of the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, said in a letter to Pruitt the decision was "the product of egregious procedural and substantive defects" and is "riddled with indefensible assumptions, inadequate analysis and a failure to engage with contrary evidence."

Automakers have argued that the rules could result in the loss of up to 1 million jobs because consumers could be less willing to buy the more fuel efficient vehicles since their engineering will result in higher price tags.

The EPA had until April 2018 to decide whether the 2025 standards were feasible but in November moved up its decision to Jan. 13, just before Obama left office.

Separately, the Association of Global Automakers, a trade group representing Honda Motor Co (7267.T), Nissan Motor Co Ltd (7201.T), Hyundai Motor Co (005380.KS) and others, said late Tuesday it had formally petitioned the EPA to withdraw the determination. The group argued in a separate letter to Pruitt Tuesday reviewed by Reuters that "EPA opted for political expediency" and "jammed through a final determination in the waning days of the lame-duck administration."

EPA spokeswoman Julia Valentine said the agency is reviewing the letter and declined to comment further. Pruitt told a Senate panel earlier he will review the Obama administration's decision.

The auto group requests follow a separate letter to President Donald Trump earlier this month from the chief executives of GM, Ford Motor Co and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV, along with the top North American executives at Toyota, VW, Honda, Hyundai, Nissan and others urging Trump to revisit the decision.

Automakers say the rules impose significant costs and are out of step with consumer preferences. Environmentalists say the rules are working, saving drivers thousands in fuel costs and should not be changed.

In 2011, Obama announced an agreement with automakers to raise fuel efficiency standards to 54.5 miles per gallon. This, the administration said, would save motorists $1.7 trillion in fuel costs over the life of the vehicles but cost the auto industry about $200 billion over 13 years.

The EPA said in July that because Americans were buying fewer cars and more SUVs and trucks, it estimated the fleet will average 50.8 mpg to 52.6 mpg in 2025.

McCarthy could not be reached Tuesday but said in her determination in January the rules are "feasible, practical and appropriate" and in "the best interests of the auto industry."

(Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Cynthia Osterman and Lisa Shumaker)

BEIJING/DHAKA China's state-run Zhenhua Oil has signed a preliminary deal with Chevron to buy the U.S. oil major's natural gas fields in Bangladesh that are worth about $2 billion, two Beijing-based Chinese oil executives said.

SINGAPORE Oil traders from around the world, including the United States, Britain and Brazil, have tripled their sales to Asia as they take advantage of an emerging supply gap following OPEC-led production cuts announced late last year.

LONDON Anglo-Dutch consumer goods group Unilever said it was reviewing its options to increase shareholder value, just days after it swiftly rejected a surprise $143 billion takeover bid from Kraft Heinz .

Read more from the original source:
Automakers urge new EPA chief to withdraw Obama car fuel-efficiency rules - Reuters

Throughout the years Barack Obama was in power, Jordan Peeles impression of the president emerged as the most recognizable, only rivaled by Jay Pharoahs take on Saturday Night Live.

During the comedians appearance on Seth Meyers Late Night Monday to promote his well-reviewed new film Get Out, the host told Peele he thought the Obama impression was the gold standard.

Peeles take on the president from his Comedy Central show, Key & Peele, would portray Obama as extremely even-keeled and calm. During these sketches his comedic partner, Keegan-Michael Key, would play an anger translator, expressing the frustration Obama presumably decided he couldnt.

The popularity of the recurring impressions became so popular that the real Obama invited Key to be his anger translator for part of his speech at the2015 White House Correspondents Dinner.

With this context, Meyers asked Peele to revive his impression and asked what Obama is thinking about the United States at the moment. Although he didnt outright mention his name, Meyers heavily implied he wanted Peeles Obama to respond to the fact thatDonald Trump now runs the country.

At least according to this new impression, Obama no longer needs an anger translator the post-Trump Obama is willing to get mad all by himself.

Peele set up his take with a mention that Obama has been on vacation and a guess that the former president is now holding a glass of whiskey in his hands while watching TV.

This is some messed up stuff here, Peeles drunk Obama yelled out in response to watching news on TV. Then while swirling the imaginary whiskey glass, Peele slurred in his Obama-voice, Michelle, top her off. Michelle, top her off.

Peele-as-Obama reacted again to the TV and said with clear frustration, Well, you done done did it now, America!

Before wrapping up the take, Peele referenced Trumps past insistence that Obama was not born in the United States. In the impression, Peeles Obama repeatedly asks Michelle where he is from, before stating himself that the answer is Hawaii.

His last line as Obama? Well,mele kalikimaka mother f, making sure to stop himself short.

Read more here:
Jordan Peele's Barack Obama Impression Is Now Drunk And Angry At Donald Trump - Huffington Post

A former advisor of President Barack Obamas ambassador to Israel defended Obamas legacy in Israel on Tuesday.

Scott Lasensky, a UCLA alumnus, served as a senior advisor to Ambassador Daniel Shapiro, where he worked to improve public engagement and policy advising in Israel. He spoke to about 35 students, faculty and community members in Bunche Hall.

The United States has been Israels strongest ally politically and militarily. However, relations between Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu became strained over Israels occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, construction of settlements and the Iran nuclear deal, among other issues.

Lasensky began his discussion by highlighting a central dilemma for policy makers about Israel: whether the U.S. should defend Israel or promote peace. He added many see the two objectives as contradictory to each other.

Lasensky added he thinks most presidents have handled that dilemma similarly, trying to negotiate without making any stark decisions, which has created historical continuity in U.S. relations with Israel.

He also said he thinks Obamas performance was about the same as past presidents.

I think for the most part, though I know a lot of people disagree with me, Obama did a great job in Israel, Lasensky said. If you look closer at what he did, he deserves a lot of credit.

Lasensky said he thinks Obamas best diplomatic move was appointing John Kerry to oversee Israeli-Palestinian relations. Kerry negotiated with Israelis while involving Arabs and Egyptians, which led to one of the most quiet periods in Israels history, he said.

When comparing other presidents to Obama, Lasensky said he thinks President Bill Clintons presidency was a low point for U.S. relations with Israel because Clinton ignored Israels neighbors. He added he thinks President George W. Bush was not effective enough either because he focused too much on saying nice things without any action.

Clinton was too involved and Bush was too laid back, Lasensky said. Obama gets high marks for being there to step in when needed but not constantly hovering over.

Lasensky said he thinks people should judge Obama on a lower standard than other presidents because Israel is experiencing a difficult era.

Theres a lot that goes on every day that the public knows nothing about, Lasensky said. Obama continued to invest millions of dollars in a functioning security system on the ground. He wanted to make sure that the Israelis felt confident and safe.

Lasensky added he thinks the Obama administration was too silent on what it was doing to improve U.S. relations with Israel.

When three Israeli teenagers were murdered in 2014 on a field trip in Israel, many Jewish groups criticized Obama for not denouncing the murder, Lasensky said. However, Obama personally reached out to the parents of the teenagers, which the public did not know about, he added. Lasensky said he thinks the administration should have been more transparent about Obamas support for Israel.

Students who attended the talk said Lasensky helped them better understand the diplomatic situation between the U.S. and Israel.

I liked how, although many people are opposed to Obamas attempts in Israel, he gave a positive outlook on his administration, said Dina Abdel Mooti, a third-year political science student.

She added she thinks Lasensky did a good job of informing her about Israel.

Brandon Lee, a third-year political science student, also said Lasensky helped him understand the complicated situation.

I dont know a better way to get the inside scoop about the situation in Israel than from the senior advisor to the United States ambassador, Lee said. Its a once in a lifetime opportunity to hear his perspective on the matter.

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Former advisor to Israeli ambassador and alumnus talks Obama policies - Daily Bruin