The Boston Globe - 30.08.2019

A2 The Boston Globe FRIDAY, AUGUST 30, 2019

The Nation

Scores of people are leav-
ing the New York City area
behind daily.
New York leads all US
metro areas as the largest net
loser with 277 people moving
every day — more than dou-
ble the net exodus of 132 just
one year ago. Los Angeles
and Chicago were next, with
triple digit daily losses of 201
and 161 residents, respective-
ly.
This is according to 2018
Census data on migration
flows to the 100 largest US
metropolitan areas compiled
by Bloomberg News.
At the other end of the
spectrum, seven cities had on

average more than 100 new

arrivals every day. Dallas,

Phoenix, Tampa, Orlando, At-

lanta, Las Vegas, and Austin

saw substantial inflows from

both domestic and interna-

tional migration.

Sun Belt cities Houston

and Miami claimed the 8th

and 9th spots in the ranking.

Seattle was the only cold-

weather destination among

the top 10.

The migration figures ex-

clude the natural increase in

population, which is the dif-

ference between the number

of live births and the number

of deaths.

BLOOMBERG NEWS

PeopleareflockingoutofNewYork

Maryland environment sec-

retary Ben Grumbles denied a

permit Wednesday for a con-

troversial solar farm project

that Georgetown University

wanted to build and that

would have involved razing

about 210 acres of trees in ru-

ral Charles County, Md.

Local activists vocally op-

posed the project in public

hearings hosted by Grumbles,

saying they appreciated

Georgetown’s goal of reducing

its greenhouse gas emissions

but worried that the project

would endanger the area’s

birds and lead to runoff that

would put tributaries to the

Chesapeake Bay at risk. Grum-

bles said in a statement that

‘‘water-quality-related condi-

tions’’ were not met at the site,

a rural area near La Plata.

At public hearings in Feb-

ruary and May, activists ac-

cused Georgetown of ‘‘green-

washing,’’ saying the Nan-

jemoy forest should not have

to be harmed to reduce green-

house gas emissions.

Chesapeake Bay Founda-

tion Executive Director Alison

Prost said in a statement that

she hopes the decision ‘‘will set

a precedent that ensures we

don’t have to choose between

renewable energy and clean

water.’’

WASHINGTON POST

Md.deniesGeorgetownitssolarfarm

WASHINGTON — Federal
health officials issued a nation-
al warning Thursday against
marijuana use by adolescents
and pregnant women, as more
states legalize the increasingly
potent drug for medicinal and
recreational use.
Health and Human Services
Secretary Alex Azar and Sur-
geon General Jerome Adams
made the announcement, with
Azar calling marijuana ‘‘a dan-
gerous drug.’’
The warning comes as legal
marijuana has grown into a

$10-billion industry in the

United States, with nearly two-

thirds of states legalizing it.

Possessing small amounts of

marijuana for adult recreation-

al use is legal in 11 states and

the District of Columbia, ac-

cording to the National Confer-

ence of State Legislatures. Fed-

eral law still treats it as a con-

trolled substance akin to

opioids.

Adams said science shows

that marijuana is harmful to

the developing brains of teen-

agers and to the human fetus.

The drug has also gotten stron-

ger, with a three-fold increase

in the concentration of the ac-

tive ingredient THC in cultivat-

ed plants over the last 20 years.

‘‘This ain’t your mother’s

marijuana,’’ Adams said.

The surgeon general said his

advisory is a direct result of sci-

entific research that runs coun-

ter to changing social mores.

‘‘Over time there has been a

change in attitudes about mari-

juana creating a false sense of

security,’’Adams said.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

‘Thisain’tyourmother’smarijuana,’surgeongeneralwarns

Daily Briefing

By Matt Zapotosky
THE WASHINGTON POST
WASHINGTON — Former
FBI director James Comey vio-
lated FBI policies in how he
handled memos that detailed
his controversial interactions
with President Trump, setting a
‘‘dangerous example’’ for bu-
reau employees about substi-
tuting personal righteousness
for established rules, the Justice
Department’s internal watch-
dog found in a report released
Thursday.
The inspector general criti-
cized Comey for keeping the
government documents at his
home, engineering the release
of some of their contents to the
news media, and not telling the
bureau to whom he had given
them — even after he was
aware that some contained
classified information.
Comey told investigators
that he felt the memos were
personal and that he was acting
in the best interests of the coun-
try. But the inspector general
rejected that defense, writing
that Comey’s senior FBI leaders
all agreed that the memos were
government documents, and
that the former director’s ‘‘own,
personal conception of what
was necessary was not an ap-
propriate basis for ignoring the
policies and agreements gov-
erning the use of FBI records.’’
‘‘The responsibility to pro-
tect sensitive law enforcement

information falls in large part

to the employees of the FBI who

have access to it through their

daily duties,’’ the inspector gen-

eral wrote. ‘‘Former Director

Comey failed to live up to this

responsibility.’’

By now, Comey’s memos are

well-known. They described,

among other things, how

Trump had pressed Comey for

loyalty and had asked him

about letting go of an investiga-

tion into former national secu-

rity adviser Michael Flynn.

The New York Times first

made some of the contents of

Comey’s memos public on May

11, 2017, publishing a story

about how, at a private dinner,

Trump asked him for the loyalty

pledge. Later, it published an-

other story detailing Comey

and Trump’s conversation

about Flynn.

Comey’s orchestration of the

release of their contents helped

spark special counsel Robert

Mueller’s investigation into

possible coordination between

the Trump campaign and Rus-

sia to affect the 2016 election.

Mueller would go on to focus

intently on the episodes Comey

described as possible obstruc-

tion of justice by the president.

Trump on Thursday seized

on the findings to lash out at

Comey.

‘‘Perhaps never in the histo-

ry of our Country has someone

been more thoroughly dis-

graced and excoriated than

James Comey in the just re-

leased Inspector General’s Re-

port,’’ he tweeted. ‘‘He should

be ashamed of himself!’’

In total, the inspector gener-

al wrote, Comey wrote seven

memos, documenting most of

the nine one-on-one conversa-

tions he had with Trump in ear-

ly 2017, just before he was

fired.

Comey left three memos at

the FBI, the inspector general

wrote. But he gave one — which

included information the in-

spector general called ‘‘sensi-

tive,’’ but unclassified — to a

friend and authorized him to

share its contents. He also

stored four of the documents in

a safe in his home and provided

copies to his personal attor-

neys, the inspector general

found.

One of those memos shared

with the attorneys was later de-

termined to contain informa-

tion that was classified as confi-

dential, the lowest level of se-

crecy, after a review that

included Comey’s FBI general

counsel, the inspector general

wrote.

The confidential material in

that memo entailed six words

‘‘from a statement by President

Trump comparing the relative

importance of returning tele-

phone calls from three coun-

tries,’’ the inspector general

wrote. Another memo Comey

kept contained a classified ‘‘as-

sessment of a foreign leader by

President Trump,’’ though Com-

ey redacted that before provid-

ing it to his attorneys, the in-

spector general wrote.

On Twitter, Comey noted

that the inspector general

found ‘‘no evidence’’ that he or

his attorneys released any clas-

sified information to the media.

‘‘I don’t need a public apolo-

gy from those who defamed

me, but a quick message with a

‘sorry we lied about you’ would

be nice,’’ he wrote. ‘‘And to all

those who’ve spent two years

talking about me ‘going to jail’

or being a ‘liar and a leaker’ —

ask yourselves why you still

trust people who gave you bad

info for so long, including the

president.’’

Trump has attacked Comey

over the memos and called him

a ‘‘proven liar and leaker.’’

The report is the second

timeInspectorGeneralMichael

Horowitz has criticized Comey

for how he handled FBI busi-

ness during his abbreviated

tenure in charge of the bureau.

Last summer, Horowitz lam-

basted Comey for his leadership

of the investigation into Hillary

Clinton’s use of a private email

server while she was secretary

of state, accusing him of insub-

ordination and flouting Justice

Department policies in decid-

ing that only he had the author-

ity and credibility to make key

decisions on the case and speak

about it publicly.

The inspector general wrote

that his office gave its findings

to the Justice Department to

determine whether Comey had

committed a crime and that of-

ficials declined to prosecute the

case. Conservatives, though,

used the finding to attack Com-

ey.

Senate Judiciary Committee

Chairman Lindsey Graham, of

South Carolina, said in a state-

ment that it was a ‘‘stunning

and unprecedented rebuke of a

former Director of the FBI.’’

George Terwilliger, a former

deputy attorney general and

acting attorney general under

President George H.W. Bush,

said the inspector general had

described ‘‘a gross abuse of in-

stitutional power and authori-

ty.’’

‘‘And for someone who

claims on a regular basis the

mantle of righteousness, Com-

ey should be ashamed of what

he did,’’ Terwilliger said.

Comeyviolatedpoliciesovermemos,reportsays

Inspector General refers to FBI rules

Documents cited Trump interactions

ANDREW HARRER/EPA/POOL/2017 FILE

James Comey and President Trump shared a greeting when Comey was still FBI director.

By Juliet Eilperin

and Brady Dennis

THE WASHINGTON POST

WASHINGTON — The En-

vironmental Protection Agen-

cy announced Thursday that it

plans to loosen federal rules

on methane, a powerful green-

house gas linked to climate

change.

The proposed rule would

reverse standards enacted un-

der President Barack Obama

that required oil and gas oper-

ators to prevent the release of

methane in new drilling wells,

pipelines, and storage facili-

ties.

It also challenges the no-

tion that the federal govern-

ment has the authority to reg-

ulate methane without first

making a detailed determina-

tion that it qualifies as a pol-

lutant under the Clean Air Act.

If successful, that change

could hamper the ability of fu-

ture administrations to enact

tougher restrictions on meth-

ane.

Already, the Trump admin-

istration has taken several

steps to limit the government’s

ability to regulate other green-

house gases in the future, in-

cluding in a recently finalized

rule curbing carbon dioxide

emissions from power plants.

‘‘EPA’s proposal delivers on

President Trump’s executive

order and removes unneces-

sary and duplicative regulato-

ry burdens from the oil and

gas industry,’’ EPA administra-

tor Andrew Wheeler said in a

statement. ‘‘The Trump ad-

ministration recognizes that

methane is valuable, and the

industry has an incentive to

minimize leaks and maximize

its use.’’

Methane is a significant

contributor to the world’s

greenhouse gas emissions,

though it is shorter-lived than

carbon dioxide and is not

emitted in amounts as large.

It often is leaked as compa-

nies drill for gas and transport

it across the country, and

methane emissions are more

than 80 times as potent as car-

bon dioxide emissions over

the short term.

Scientists have projected

that the world needs to cut its

overall greenhouse gas emis-

sions nearly in half by mid-

century to avert catastrophic

effects from global warming.

According to the EPA,

methane accounted for more

than 10 percent of all US

greenhouse gas emissions

from human activities as re-

cently as 2017. Nearly a third

of those emissions were gener-

ated by the natural gas and pe-

troleum industry.

‘‘What they’re tackling is

whether methane can lawfully

be a regulatory pollutant,’’ Er-

ik Milito, vice president of up-

stream and industry opera-

tions for the American Petro-

leum Institute, said in an

interview.

‘‘We have a strong consen-

sus that federal agencies need

to follow the letter of the law.

They did not do that, and they

are going back and correcting

that,” he added.

Anne Idsal, assistant ad-

ministrator of the EPA’s Office

of Air and Radiation, said the

administration is confident

that methane emissions from

oil and gas companies will

continue to decline over time,

even without the current regu-

lations.

‘‘Methane is a valuable re-

source,’’ Idsal told reporters in

a call Thursday. ‘‘There’s every

incentive for industry to mini-

mize any type of fugitive meth-

ane emissions, capture it, use

it, and sell it down the road.’’

The agency estimates that

the proposed changes, which

will be subject to public com-

ment for 60 days after they are

published, would save the oil

and natural gas industry $

million to $19 million a year.

But several of the world’s

biggest fossil fuel companies,

including Exxon, Shell, and

BP, have opposed the rollback

and urged the Trump adminis-

tration to keep the current

standards in place. Collective-

ly, these firms account for 11

percent of America’s natural

gas output.

EPAtorelaxfederal

limitsonmethane

—agreenhousegas

Also challenges

US authority to

even regulate it

GERARDO MORA/GETTY IMAGES

BLEAK FORECAST —Gary DAngelo, left, and other central Florida residents prepared for Hurricane Dorian by

buying propane at a BJ’s in Orlando Thursday. The storm is expected to hit Florida over Labor Day weekend.A5.

MANDEL NGAN/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

US Surgeon General Jerome

Adams, right, issued an

advisory against marijuana

use by adolescents and

pregnant women.