Hurricane Maria

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    Puerto Rico drops climate lawsuit after DoJ sues states to block threats to big oil

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    Puerto Rico has voluntarily dismissed its 2024 climate lawsuit against big oil, a Friday legal filing shows, just two days after the US justice department sued two states over planned litigation against oil companies for their role in the climate crisis.Puerto Rico’s lawsuit, filed in July, alleged that the oil and gas giants had misled the public about the climate dangers associated with their products. It came as part of a wave of litigation filed by dozens of US states, cities and municipalities in recent years.Donald Trump’s administration has pledged to put an end to these cases, which he has called “frivolous” and claimed are unconstitutional. In court filings on Wednesday, his justice department claimed the Clean Air Act “displaces” states’ ability to regulate greenhouse gas outside their borders.The agency specifically targeted Michigan, whose Democratic attorney general last year tapped private law firms to work on such a case, and Hawaii, whose Democratic governor filed its suit on Thursday. Officials from both states condemned the justice department’s filings.Friday’s filing from Puerto Rico did not list a reason for the lawsuit’s dismissal. The Guardian has contacted the territory’s attorney general’s office for comment and asked whether it was related to the Trump administration’s moves on Wednesday.Reached for comment, John Lamson, a spokesperson for the San Francisco-based law firm Sher Edling, which filed the 2024 suit on behalf of Puerto Rico said: “We serve under the direction and control, and at the pleasure, of our clients in all of our representations.”Puerto Rico in November elected as governor the Republican Jenniffer González-Colón, a Trump ally. In February, González-Colón tapped Janet Parra-Mercado as the territory’s new attorney general.Climate-accountability litigation has also faced recent attacks in the media. Last month, an oilfield services executive published an op-ed in Forbes saying the Puerto Rico lawsuit “may derail” efforts to improve grid reliability.Groups tied to the far-right legal architect Leonard Leo have also campaigned against the lawsuits. And just days before the voluntary dismissal, the rightwing, pro-fossil fuel advocacy group American Energy Institute (AEI) sent a letter to González-Colón, Fox News reported, calling for an end to climate-focused “coordinated lawfare”.“Their goal is to bankrupt energy companies or to leverage the threat of tort damages to force outcomes that would be disastrous for Puerto Rico and the rest of the nation,” AEI’s CEO, Jason Isaac, wrote of the plaintiffs.AEI has attacked climate-focused legal efforts and has been linked to Leo, the Guardian has reported.In December, a California-based trade association of commercial fishers voluntarily dismissed a lawsuit accusing big oil of climate deception.In two earlier lawsuits, 37 Puerto Rico municipalities and the capital city of San Juan accused fossil fuel companies of conspiring to deceive the public about the climate crisis, seeking to hold them accountable for the devastation wrought by Hurricane Maria. More

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      in US Politics

      Puerto Rican stars Bad Bunny and Ricky Martin back Kamala Harris after racist comments at Trump rally

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      Puerto Rican stars star Bad Bunny and Ricky Martin have thrown their support behind Kamala Harris on the same day that a comedian appearing at Donald Trump’s rally at Madison Square Garden called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage”.On Sunday international reggaeton star Bad Bunny- whose official name is Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio – shared a video of the Democratic presidential nominee to his more than 45 million followers on Instagram. His support could be a boost for the Harris campaign as it tries to bolster its support with Latino and Puerto Rican voters.Bad Bunny signalled his support for Harris moments after comedian Tony Hinchcliffe made the remarks about Puerto Rico at the Trump rally in New York. Hinchcliffe also made crude remarks about Latinos.The comment was immediately criticised by the Harris-Walz campaign. Ricky Martin, another Puerto Rican pop star, wrote in a post to his 18m followers on Instagram: “This is what they think of us. Vote for @kamalaharris.”Later, Trump campaign spokesperson Danielle Alvarez in a statement said: “this joke does not reflect the views of President Trump or the campaign.”Other Latino singers who had already expressed support for Harris – including Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony – also shared the video from Democratic candidate.Bad Bunny has won three Grammy awards and was the most streamed artist on Spotify in 2020, 2021 and 2022, only surpassed by Taylor Swift in 2023. He was named artist of the year by Apple Music in 2022.The artist has increasingly waded into politics, especially in his native Puerto Rico, where he purchased billboards in protest of the pro-statehood New Progressive party and has been critical of the electric system, which was leveled by Hurricane Mario.The video he shared on Sunday shows Harris saying: “There’s so much at stake in this election for Puerto Rican voters and for Puerto Rico.”He then shared another part of the clip where Harris says: “I will never forget what Donald Trump did and what he did not do when Puerto Rico needed a caring and a competent leader,” she says.Puerto Rican voters are crucial to both Trump and Harris, and Trump has recently been making inroads with the group. In Pennsylvania, a key battleground state, the majority of the 580,000 eligible Latino voters are of Puerto Rican descent.Harris on Sunday visited a Puerto Rican restaurant in Philadelphia where she outlined plans to introduce an “economic opportunity taskforce” for Puerto Rico.She also recognized the need to urgently rebuild Puerto Rico’s energy grid, promising to work with local leaders to ensure all Puerto Ricans have access to reliable electricity, and cut red tape to ensure disaster recovery funds are used quickly and effectively.A year after the storm, public health experts estimated that nearly 3,000 perished because of the effects of Hurricane Maria.Trump’s actions and policies towards the island have repeatedly drawn criticism. He repeatedly questioned the number of casualties, saying it rose “like magic”. His visit to the island after the hurricane elicited controversy such as when he tossed paper towels. His administration released $13bn in assistance years later, just weeks before the 2020 presidential election. And a federal government watchdog found that officials hampered an investigation into delays in aid delivery.Bad Bunny also shared a part of the clip showing Harris saying that Trump “abandoned the island, tried to block aid after back-to-back devastating hurricanes and offered nothing more than paper towels and insults”.A representative for the artist confirmed his endorsement. More

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      in US Politics

      Trump delayed $20bn in aid to Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria, report finds

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      The Trump administration delayed more than $20bn in hurricane relief aid for Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria, according to a report by the housing department’s office of the inspector General.The efforts to deliver recovery funding to the island were “unnecessarily delayed by bureaucratic obstacles”, according to the 46-page report. The hurricane, which hit the island in 2017, killed thousands of people and left thousands more without electricity or water for months.One of the main hurdles was the requirement imposed by the Office of Management and Budget, which established an interagency review before grant approvals, according to a report from the Department of Housing and Urban Development (Hud). The process, which was never before required for allocating disaster funds, prevented Hud from publishing its draft notice of funding by the target date.The investigators were unable to determine why the extra layer of review was required due “denials of access and refusals to cooperate”, according to the report.The inspector general’s office conducted 31 interviews of 20 current and former Hud officials and two now-former Puerto Rico department of housing senior officials to write the report. However, investigators did not have access to the former Hud secretary Ben Carson and other political officials. The investigators were also denied or delayed access to Hud information on several occasions.The report found that Hud’s review and approval of their funding action plan for Puerto Rico was delayed due to the 2018-2019 government shutdown.“Staffing shortages due to the shutdown and miscommunications between HUD and the Puerto Rico Department of Housing pertaining to the grantee’s bank information delayed PRDOH’s ability to access grant funds until several days after the shutdown ended,” reads the document.The office of the inspector general investigation also said that both the former Hud secretary and former Hud assistant secretary Brian Montgomery expressed “mounting concerns and frustrations” to the then OMB director, Russell Vought, about Hud’s “inability” to expedite the release of funds.The report was conducted after a request from representatives Nydia Velázquez, Bennie Thompson, and Raúl Grijalva to investigate several allegations that had been reported in a January 2019 Washington Post article related to the Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery Program (CDBG-DR) funds appropriated for Puerto Rico.In February 2020, the office of the inspector general received a request from Senators Elizabeth Warren, Edward Markey, Richard Blumenthal, Bernie Sanders and Chris Van Hollen, and Representatives Joaquín Castro, Darren Soto, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, James P McGovern, Raúl Grijvala, and José Serrano, asking the office to conduct an inquiry into whether delays in Hud’s release of the disaster-recovery funds for Puerto Rico violated the Impoundment Control Act of 1974.On Monday, Hud removed restrictions imposed by the Trump administration on access to $8.2bn in Community Development Block Grant Mitigation. The agency stalled the release of the disaster relief aid in 2019 and imposed additional restrictions on how the island could access the funds. The agency cited corruption and financial mismanagement concerns for the blocks.Hurricane Maria hit hundreds of thousands of homes on 20 September 2017, and many were still living under blue tarps three years later.More than 5,000 people died in Puerto Rico in 2017 due to the hurricane, according to a study by the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health. A George Washington University suggests more than 2,000 died due to the hurricane.On Wednesday, a group of Puerto Rican scientists said they will begin to conduct verbal autopsies or surveys with relatives, friends and other acquaintances of the fatal victims of the hurricane. The study aims to elaborate on the causes and factors that contributed to the deaths.The study is a collaboration between the University of Puerto Rico Graduate School of Public Health and George Washington University, which were hired by the National Institute of Standards and Technology and will conduct the report as part of an order by the US Congress.“Some people might have died instantly due to drowning, landslides or collapses, but others might have died days, weeks or months later due to socio-environmental and infrastructure factors, such as the lack of water or electricity, oxygen or medicines,” Pablo Méndez Lázaro, associate professor of the department of environmental health at the University of Puerto Rico Graduate School of Public Health, told a local news outlet. More

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      in Elections

      ‘Remember us’: could Trump lose Florida because of hurricane refugees?

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      Many Puerto Ricans fleeing to Florida felt sidelined by Trump after the federal government’s insufficient response to Hurricane Maria Marta Rivera was an avid voter in Puerto Rico – one who enjoyed researching political candidates each election cycle in the US territory. Then, in 2017, Hurricane Maria swept through the island, destroying homes, killing thousands […] More