Amid a GOP assault on democracy, a few bits of good news...

A federal bankruptcy judge dismissed an effort by the National Rifle Association to declare bankruptcy on Tuesday, ruling that the gun rights group had not filed the case in good faith.

The ruling slams the door on the NRA's attempt to use bankruptcy laws to evade New York officials seeking to dissolve the organization.

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The bankruptcy trial had paused other legal challenges the NRA had been facing, but this decision returns the group to its confrontation with the New York attorney general, who is seeking to shut it down over alleged "fraud and abuse."

  NPR

The U.S. Interior Department approved the country's first large-scale offshore wind project Tuesday, a final hurdle that reverses course from the Trump administration and sets the stage for a major shift in the energy landscape.

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The $2.8 billion project, known as Vineyard Wind 1, will consist of 62 turbines spaced about a mile apart, each standing about 837 feet above the water's surface. Cables buried beneath the ocean floor will connect the power from these turbines with the New England grid onshore.

The project is expected to produce enough renewable electricity to power 400,000 Massachusetts homes every year while also saving ratepayers billions of dollars and reducing annual carbon dioxide emissions in the state by about 1.68 million metric tons.

Lars Pedersen, Vineyard Wind's CEO, recently told public radio station WBUR that he expects offshore construction to begin next year, with renewable energy flowing to the grid by the end of 2023.

  NPR

This next one is not a done deal, but it's encouraging.

It's a tough time to be a young person. COVID-19 has robbed many of them of experiences and plans. Their unemployment rate remains high. College enrollment is down.

To address those concerns and bolster preparedness for a warming world, President Biden wants to retool and relaunch one of the country's most celebrated government programs: the Civilian Conservation Corps.

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Created in 1933, in the wake of the Great Depression, the CCC put millions of young men — yes, just men — back to work. They moved from East to West, to places they'd never been before, building roads, bridges, telephone lines, campgrounds and dams — infrastructure that's still in use and, at times, maintained by smaller conservation corps crews such as Spofforth's today. The original CCC ended in 1942, disrupted by World War II.

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The original Civilian Conservation Corps employed roughly 3 million young men in its nine-year run. The corps fought wildfires and helped in disaster relief efforts after hurricanes. It built more than 100,000 miles of roads and trails, 318,000 dams and tens of thousands of bridges. It strung telephone lines across mountain passes, connecting the country.

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"Just like we need a unified national response to COVID-19, we need a unified national response to climate change," Biden said while introducing his climate team.

While his is not the first effort to bring back a federal conservation corps, Biden has put the program center stage like never before. One of his first executive orders called for the creation of a modern CCC to "mobilize the next generation of conservation and resilience workers and maximize the creation of accessible training opportunities and good jobs." His interior secretary, Deb Haaland, sponsored a bill with a similar goal while representing New Mexico in Congress

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Biden's Civilian Climate Corps, while modeled after the original CCC, would likely differ in a few significant ways.

The first: scope. Biden wants to spend $10 billion on creating his Civilian Climate Corps — a sliver of the $2 trillion proposed in his American Jobs Plan. Adjusted for inflation, that's a far cry from the money Roosevelt poured into the original CCC and less than many progressive groups have been advocating for.

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The jobs, though, would be offered to a far broader group of people. For all the nostalgia the CCC brings up among progressives, there's the reality it was racially segregated, closed off to women and paid almost nothing.

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Biden's executive order directed the Interior and Agriculture departments to submit a report laying out how a program could form under existing statutes. (The report is overdue and has not yet been released.)

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Most of the jobs would be short term, with the goal of launching corps members into environmental and outdoors-focused careers.

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Montana Conservation Corps crews are already doing some of the work envisioned in Biden's climate proposal — reducing wildfire risk and building artificial dams to help retain water higher in watersheds.

That kind of work would increase exponentially if Biden's proposal passes, said McKinney, president of the corps. But the bigger benefit might be in what it could do for America's youth.

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Biden is the most unapologetic, big-government Democratic president in decades. It's a stance supported by an array of circumstances: the enormity of the pandemic, former President Donald Trump's embrace of big spending projects and deficit-funded tax cuts, and a progressive shift within the Democratic Party.

"Well, we've been living in the shadow of Reagan's America. And now it's back to the future. We're going to start to live in the shadow of FDR," said Jonathan Alter, a journalist and historian who wrote a book about Roosevelt's famed first 100 days.

  NPR

Truly surprising legislation

The Senate on Tuesday passed the most sweeping conservation legislation in a decade, protecting millions of acres of land and hundreds of miles of wild rivers across the country and establishing four new national monuments honoring heroes including Civil War soldiers and a civil rights icon.

The 662-page measure, which passed 92 to 8, represented an old-fashioned approach to dealmaking that has largely disappeared on Capitol Hill. Senators from across the ideological spectrum celebrated home-state gains and congratulated each other for bridging the partisan divide.

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It’s a paradoxical win for conservation at a time when President Trump has promoted development on public lands and scaled back safeguards established by his predecessors.

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The lower chamber is poised to take it up after the mid-February recess, and White House officials have indicated privately that the president will sign it.

  WaPo

Unless somebody who wants to plunder all the public land gets to him first.

The measure protects 1.3 million acres as wilderness, the nation’s most stringent protection, which prohibits even roads and motorized vehicles. It permanently withdraws more than 370,000 acres of land from mining around two national parks, including Yellowstone, and permanently authorizes a program to spend offshore-drilling revenue on conservation efforts.

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Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairwoman Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), who co-authored the bill, inserted a provision that allows native Alaskans who served in Vietnam to apply for a land allotment in their home state.

Luckily we don't have to worry that Trump might actually read the bill.

The legislation establishes four new monuments, including the Mississippi home of civil rights activists Medgar and Myrlie Evers and the Mill Springs Battlefield in Kentucky, home to the decisive first Union victory in the Civil War.

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Perhaps the most significant change the legislation would make is permanently authorizing a federal program that funnels offshore drilling revenue to conserve a spread of sites that includes major national parks and wildlife preserves, as well as local baseball diamonds and basketball courts. Authorization for the popular program, the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF), lapsed months ago due to the partial government shutdown and other disputes. Liberals like the fact that the money allows agencies to set aside land for wildlife habitat. Conservatives like the fact that taxpayers don’t have to foot the bill for it.

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Congressional funding for the program has “fluctuated widely” since its inception in 1965, according to a 2018 Congressional Research Service report. Less than half of the $40 billion that has piled up in the fund during its five decades of existence has been spent by Congress on conservation efforts.

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The measure also expands the boundaries of more than a half-dozen national parks and adds three units, including two Civil War sites in Kentucky, the Mill Springs Battlefield and Camp Nelson.

The package adds acreage to Death Valley and Joshua Tree national parks while protecting 350,000 acres of public lands between Mojave National Preserve and Death Valley, increasing the connectivity of the three sites.

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[I]t makes all federal lands open to hunting, fishing, and recreational shooting unless otherwise specified.

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The public lands package would also protect nearly 620 miles of rivers across seven states from damming and other development, often delegating management of the waterways to local authorities.

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The bill reauthorizes and funds the Neotropical Migratory Bird Conservation Act through 2022, which provides habitat protection for more than 380 bird species, and codifies a signature program of President Barack Obama’s. That program, the Every Kid Outdoors Act, allows U.S. fourth-graders and their families to visit national parks free.

Definitely lucky he won't read it.

And Yet, He Wants to Keep Confederate Statues

Well, actually, he doesn't give a shit about the statues. He wants to keep his base agitated.

The US Interior Department plans to scale back or eliminate national monuments, despite an outpouring of public condemnation for the policy set forth by an executive order by President Donald Trump.

US Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke delivered the recommendations to the president’s desk on Thursday, following a 120-day study of 27 national monuments.

Zinke released a statement saying that monuments will be scaled back, but did not mention which ones. He stated that no monuments will be eliminated in the recommendation.

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"Secretary Zinke needs to level with the American people. Which priceless national monuments does he recommend shrinking?" Drew Caputo, vice president of litigation for lands, oceans and wildlife at EarthJustice, said.

But the review has gained praise from energy, mining, ranching and timber advocates.

  RT

Of course it has. They want the use of that land.

Zinke already made a designation to shrink the size of Bears Ears National Monument, which stretches for 1.35 million acres and is located in Utah. It was designated a national monument last year by former President Barack Obama.

Making it a priority for Trump.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.