Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Dan Ronan.
The Trump administration is seeking $700 million in federal aid to help the nation struggling
coal industry.
“The White House is using a cold war era law called the Defense Production Act that”
gives the President a emergency authority over domestic industries to push the money forward. The President spoke to reporters Thursday. As a result of the $700 million investment that I'm announcing today, we will protect 14 coal plants and 42 coal mines to tremendous number and build two new coal plants and one massive do export terminal because we're exporting coal.
The Sierra Club called the White House decision, quote, "disgusting and reprehensible and said it will make American sicker and drive up the cost of electricity." The Senate is conducting an all day and night series of votes as Republicans attempt to pass three years of funding for immigration enforcement.
The effort has been complicated by the President's nearly $1.8 billion fund to pay
out taxpayer money to people who claim they were targeted by what Trump calls a weaponized federal government. NPR's Eric McDaniel reports, $70 billion package is meant to fund immigration and customs enforcement as well as border patrol for the rest of the President's time in the White House.
“Republicans thought they'd found a path to pass it on a party-line vote, Democrats don't”
support the funding, but some GOP lawmakers are now demanding an end to President Trump's self-allocated anti-weaponization fund before they advance the package. Trump's acting attorney general told Congress, "The fund can be used to pay insurrectionist to threaten lawmakers and attack the Capitol building on January 6th, 2021." Recent conflicting statements from the administration on whether it's decided to unilaterally
end the payout fund have not helped matters.
Amendment votes and negotiations will continue into the evening. Eric McDaniel and Piano use the Capitol. Kenya's President is defending his administration decision to allow the U.S. to set up in a bowl of quarantine facility in that East African nation. Michael Coloky reports.
Speaking in South Africa, Kenya's President William Ruto described the decision by his government to allow the U.S. to set up the quarantine facility as quote "the right thing." Last week, the White House had said that the U.S. was sitting up a facility in Kenya,
“where Americans who had been exposed to Ebola would be quarantined.”
A Kenya unfortunately, the temporarities suspended plans to set up the facility. Earlier this week, protests against the quarantine center were held in the Kenyan Capitol Nairobi and the town of Nanuki, where two people were killed. Meanwhile, East Africa's regional economic block, the EAC, said that mobile Ebola testing medical labs had been deployed to some member nations, including Uganda and the Democratic
Republic of Congo, which have both declared an outbreak of the disease, for impairing news on Michael Coloky in Nairobi. It was a mixed day on Wall Street 2 or 3 indexes were up one was down, this is NPR. Triple A says the latest figure show the price of gasoline continues to fall, unlettered regular Thursday was at 4 hours, 24 cents a gallon, that's down 18 cents from a week ago when
it was 442, diesel, the main fuel and trucking in the railroad industries are also declining, a gallon now costs 539, that's down a quarter from a month ago. The size of a massive planned data center campus in rural Utah is getting smaller. It's Martha Harris of Member Station, KUER reports the celebrity investor is now making concessions amid pushback.
The original plan for the data center campus had it on 40,000 acres north of the Great Salt Lake. The project is backed by Kevin O'Leary, who was known for being on the TV show Shark Tank. Utah leaders had supported the project, but there's been significant public opposition.
That motivated the president of Utah's state senate, Stewart Adams, to demand that O'Leary shrink the project, and make certain environmental commitments. O'Leary has now responded, saying he'll cut the project's footprint in half. He said most of what's left will be open space. That means less than 10,000 acres can be developed.
For NPR News, I'm Martha Harris and Salt Lake City. Game 2 of the NBA Finals in San Antonio Friday night, the Eastern Conference Champs, the New York Knicks, one game, one Wednesday night in Texas. The Karolata Hurricanes have tied the National Hockey League Stanley Cup Finals at one win each.
Karolata got a come from behind win, four to three, and over time against the Las Vegas Knights on Thursday. From Washington, this is NPR. Support for NPR. This week on Consider This, the drama at CBS News, some of the most respected journalists
in America say their corporate ownership is bowing to political pressure. It's intimidation. They've created a climate of fear to make the news organization unwilling to tackle the problem and report to news. Law times 60 minutes correspond at Steve Croft this week on Consider This.
