July 21, 2025 — Sometimes, a little sunlight does some good. As I reported last month, even while Pam Bondi’s Justice Department has been treating Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo as a victory for conservative and MAGA critics of the administrative state, career lawyers at the DOJ were continuing to defend the very Commerce Department fishing-monitor regulation at issue in Loper Bright and its companion case, Relentless, Inc. v. Department of Commerce. On Tuesday, a federal judge ruled in favor of the government in Relentless, concluding that the Commerce Department could saddle fishing boats with the cost of monitors even without any authorization in the statutory text for charging them such a fee: “The default norm, manifest without express statement in literally hundreds of regulations, is that the government does not reimburse regulated entities for the cost of complying with properly enacted regulations, at least short of a taking.” Never mind that this isn’t a matter of the boats bearing the costs of their own compliance with rules, but of paying a regulatory agent for the government. The judge also found that, because the Magnuson-Stevens Act gives the agency “necessary and appropriate” powers, this “in no uncertain terms, delegates . . . a large degree of discretionary authority.” Actually, a term could hardly be more uncertain, and the whole point of Loper Bright is that agency discretion is about policy — not the interpretation of the law.
Trump bid to shrink monuments could prompt big legal battle
June 13, 2025 –Armed with a new legal directive arguing that presidents have the power to abolish national monuments created by their White House predecessors, President Donald Trump is expected to move to eradicate or shrink sites — and trigger a legal fight that could find its way to the Supreme Court.
The Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) published an opinion Tuesday overturning nearly 90-year-old guidance that said presidents could not revoke national monument status.
Lanora Pettit, who serves as deputy assistant attorney general, wrote that the Antiquities Act of 1906 not only allows the president to set aside existing public lands to protect areas of cultural, historical or scientific interest, but also grants the power to rescind existing sites that “either never were or no longer are deserving of the Act’s protections.”
That opinion — which serves as legal advice to the executive branch, rather than a binding court ruling — could set the stage for a fresh legal battle over the 119-year-old law. Critics of the Antiquities Act have urged Trump to take the fight to the nation’s highest court and ensure the law is curtailed. The administration has been taking a look at monuments that could be targeted, focused on sites with the potential for mineral extraction.
“It’s quite obvious this opinion was done to try and justify something they plan to do going forward,” said Mark Squillace, the Raphael J. Moses professor of natural resources law at the University of Colorado Law School.
“That’s not to say the court might not agree with the opinion,” he added. “The court may be inclined to try and pull back on the Antiquities Act.”
Debate over the Antiquities Act tends to divide along political lines, with Republicans and other critics arguing that Democratic presidents have abused the law to set aside sprawling swaths of land that could otherwise be open to extractive industries, grazing or other uses.
Opponents have long seized on language in the law that requires a monument to “be confined to the smallest area compatible with proper care and management of the objects to be protected.”
But proponents point to decades of legal precedent supporting presidential prerogative to create monuments of any size, which dates back to President Theodore Roosevelt’s 1908 creation of what was then the 800,000-acre Grand Canyon National Monument.
The first Trump administration made clear it aligned with critics, initiating a massive review of monuments created since 1996 under then-Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke.
Trump can revoke national monument designations, Justice Department says
June 12, 2025 — President Donald Trump has broad authority to revoke protected land designated as national monuments by past presidents, the Justice Department said in a new legal opinion.
The May 27 legal opinion from the Justice Department found that presidents can move broadly to cancel national monuments, challenging a 1938 determination saying monuments created under the Antiquities Act cannot be rescinded and removed from protection.
The memo could serve as a legal basis to attempt to withdraw vast amounts of land from protected status. Trump’s administration wants to prioritize fossil fuel and energy development, such as drilling for oil and gas and mining for coal and critical minerals, including on federal lands.
“For the Antiquities Act, the power to declare carries with it the power to revoke,” the Justice Department memo states. “If the President can declare that his predecessor was wrong regarding the value of preserving one such object on a given parcel, there is nothing preventing him from declaring that his predecessor was wrong about all such objects on a given parcel.”
The DOJ memo mentioned two California national monuments designated by former President Joe Biden shortly before leaving office. In Trump’s first term, the president shrank the size of two national monuments in Utah, Bears Ears and Grand Staircase Escalante, and reduced the size of a national marine monument in the Atlantic Ocean.
Biden restored the three areas upon taking office and designated or expanded 12 national monuments during his term.
Environmental groups blasted the DOJ opinion.
Justice Department says Trump can cancel national monuments that protect landscapes
June 11, 2025 — Lawyers for President Donald Trump’s administration say he has the authority to abolish national monuments meant to protect historical and archaeological sites across broad landscapes, including two in California created by his predecessor at the request of Native American tribes.
A Justice Department legal opinion released Tuesday disavowed a 1938 determination that monuments created by previous presidents under the Antiquities Act can’t be revoked. The department said presidents can cancel monument designations if protections aren’t warranted.
The finding comes as the Interior Department under Trump weighs changes to monuments across the nation as part of the administration’s push to expand U.S. energy production.
Sen. Martin Heinrich of New Mexico, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Natural Resources Committee, said that at Trump’s order, “his Justice Department is attempting to clear a path to erase national monuments.”
Trump in his first term reduced the size of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase Escalante National Monuments in Utah, calling them a “massive land grab.” He also lifted fishing restrictions within a sprawling marine monument off the New England Coast.
Former President Joe Biden reversed the moves and restored the monuments.
The two monuments singled out in the newly released Justice Department opinion were designated by Biden in his final days in office: Chuckwalla National Monument, in Southern California near Joshua Tree National Park, and Sáttítla Highlands National Monument, in Northern California.
The Democrat’s declarations for the monuments barred oil and natural gas drilling and mining on the 624,000-acre Chuckwalla site, and the roughly 225,000 acres Sáttítla Highlands site near the California-Oregon border.
Chuckwalla has natural wonders including the Painted Canyon of Mecca Hills and Alligator Rock, and is home to rare species of plants and animals like the desert bighorn sheep and the Chuckwalla lizard. The Sáttítla Highlands include the ancestral homelands of the Pit River Tribe and Modoc Peoples.
US Company Indicted for Illegally Smuggling Valuable Eels
May 4, 2022 — The federal government has indicted a seafood distributor and eight of its employees and associates on charges of smuggling valuable eels.
The company, American Eel Depot of Totowa, New Jersey, is the biggest importer and wholesale distributor of eel meat in the country. The Justice Department said on April 29 that the defendants in the case conspired to unlawfully smuggle large numbers of baby European eels out of Europe to a factory in China.
Read the full story at U.S. News & World Report
Feds allege 2 men illegally trafficked baby eels in N.J.
January 22, 2018 — Two men were indicted this week on multiple federal crimes alleging they illegally trafficked young, high-priced American eels to sell to dealers or exporters.
Joseph Kelley and James Lewis, of Maine, illegally harvested young eels, which are called elvers, in New Jersey and Massachusetts, and sold them to dealers or exporters, the U.S. Justice Department alleged.
Young eels, also known as “glass eels,” can regularly fetch $1,300 per pound, according to The Boston Globe. When the 2011 Japan tsunami devastated Japan’s eel fisheries, prices reached $2,600 per pound.
“Harvesters have turned to the American eel to fill the void resulting from the decreased number of Japanese and European eels,” the Justice Department said in a statement.
But due to concerns about overfishing, every state in the U.S. except for Maine and South Carolina outlaws eel fishing, and it’s heavily regulated in those two states.
US Judge OKs $20B Settlement From 2010 BP Oil Spill
April 6, 2016 — A federal judge in New Orleans granted final approval Monday to an estimated $20 billion settlement over the 2010 BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, resolving years of litigation over the worst offshore spill in the nation’s history.
The settlement, first announced in July, includes $5.5 billion in civil Clean Water Act penalties and billions more to cover environmental damage and other claims by the five Gulf states and local governments. The money is to be paid out over roughly 16 years. The U.S. Justice Department has estimated that the settlement will cost the oil giant as much as $20.8 billion, the largest environmental settlement in U.S. history as well as the largest-ever civil settlement with a single entity.
U.S District Judge Carl Barbier, who approved the settlement, had set the stage with an earlier ruling that BP had been “grossly negligent” in the offshore rig explosion that killed 11 workers and caused a 134-million-gallon spill.
In 2012, BP reached a similar settlement agreement with private attorneys for businesses and residents who claim the spill cost them money. That deal, which didn’t have a cap, led to a protracted court battle over subsequent payouts to businesses. A court-supervised claims administrator is still processing many of these claims.
BP has estimated its costs related to the spill, including its initial cleanup work and the various settlements and criminal and civil penalties, will exceed $53 billion.
MASSACHUSETTS: Fishing mogul’s arrest ripples across New Bedford waterfront
February 26, 2016 — NEW BEDFORD — Frustration and sadness moved across the waterfront Friday as news spread that Carlos Rafael and his bookkeeper had been arrested by the Justice Department and charged with making false filings to the government as a means of skirting fisheries laws.
One waterfront business manager who did not wish to be identified said that Friday was a “sad day” for the fishing industry, one that is going to hurt in a lot of ways.
“If his boats (there are 40) lay idle in the city there’s going to be a domino effect. It’s not just the fishermen, it’s the fuel contractors, the trailers carrying thousands of gallons of fuel a day, the ice house, the fish auction and all the people employed at processing plants and the fish auction, groceries from ship supply companies and all the people employed there,” he said.
Last winter was harsh and costly for the fishing industry, he said, but thankfully this year is milder, and boats can fish and most will survive with some loss of jobs. “If this happened last year forget it,” he said.
Seafood consultant James Kendall said he is worried about the effect Rafael’s arrest is going to have on the reputation of the city and its important fishing industry.
“The first effect is that unfortunately it’s going to cast a pall over the fishing industry at a time when we’re trying defend ourselves against what a lot of us feel is unwarranted monitoring and oversight,” he said. “They will point to this and say “this is why we need it’,” he said.