The Navajo Nation will announce their lawsuit against the EPA today for the massive spill the federal agency triggered last year at the Gold King Mine.
This is not really news to PeakNation™, who has followed the disaster since we first broke the news that the EPA caused the spill. We’ve also been preaching for a year about the double-standard of the agency that levies fines on private industry for much minor offenses, yet does nothing to correct its own flawed governance.
What surprises us, is that CNN, of all news outlets, is starting to recognize that the federal government is not infallible, and reports that this lawsuit will be “serving up a potent election-year issue for Republicans against one of their favorite targets.”
Touching the livelihood of voters in four western states — Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah — the spill could serve as a symbol of government incompetence for Republicans, who have long railed against what they view as the overreach and overregulation of the EPA, especially under President Barack Obama.
For Republican lawmakers struggling to hold their seats as Trump’s poll numbers plummet, the incident is exactly the kind of local issue that GOP strategists believe incumbents in the Mountain West should focus on to draw the spotlight away from the flailing Republican nominee.
CNN also reached out to the EPA for their response on the lawsuit. No surprise, the transparent Obama administration was unavailable for comment.