Latest news with #OurChildrensTrust
Yahoo
5 days ago
- General
- Yahoo
Trump's anti-climate orders draw lawsuit from young activists citing life, liberty
Jen Psaki talks with Riley, a young climate activist and one of 22 plaintiffs in a lawsuit against the Trump administration in which they are represented by Our Children's Trust. The lawsuit charges that Trump is violating their right to life and liberty with the environmental damage that will come from his executive orders.
New York Times
6 days ago
- Health
- New York Times
Youth Climate Activists Sue Trump Administration Over Executive Orders
Young people who sued state governments over climate change have begun a legal challenge aimed at President Trump's spate of executive orders on climate and the environment. The lawsuit, filed Thursday in federal court in Montana, argues that three of the executive orders are unconstitutional and would cripple the clean energy industry, suppress climate science and worsen global warming. The 22 plaintiffs, ranging in age from seven to 25 years old, are mostly from Montana, as well as Hawaii, Oregon, and other states, and are represented by the nonprofit legal group Our Children's Trust. That group has notched two important legal victories in recent years, winning cases against the state of Montana and the Hawaii Department of Transportation. 'Trump's fossil fuel orders are a death sentence for my generation,' said Eva Lighthiser, 19, the named plaintiff. 'I'm not suing because I want to. I'm suing because I have to. My health, my future, and my right to speak the truth are all on the line.' The plaintiffs argue that they are already experiencing harms from a warming planet in the form of wildfires, drought and hurricanes, and that Mr. Trump's executive orders will make conditions even worse. They say the executive orders violate their Fifth Amendment rights to life and liberty by infringing on their health, safety and prospects for the future. Further, they argue that the orders constitute executive overreach, because the president cannot unilaterally override federal laws like the Clean Air Act. The executive orders in question include those declaring a 'National Energy Emergency,' directing agencies to 'Unleash American Energy,' and 'Reinvigorating America's Beautiful Clean Coal Industry.' The complaint points to immediate consequences from the executive orders, like exempting the Colstrip coal-fired power plant in Montana from pollution rules. The aging plant emits more harmful fine particulate matter pollution, or soot, than any other power plant in the nation, according to Environmental Protection Agency data. A Biden-era rule would have compelled the facility, the only coal plant in the country to lack modern pollution controls, to install new equipment, but it received an exemption from the Trump administration last month. Several of the plaintiffs live near the plant or a mine that provides it with coal, or along the facilities' transport routes, said Julia Olson, founder of Our Children's Trust. The suit names Mr. Trump and several cabinet secretaries and agencies, including Interior Secretary Doug Burgum; Energy Secretary Chris Wright; and Lee Zeldin, the E.P.A. administrator. The Interior Department and the E.P.A. both declined to discuss pending litigation. The Energy Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The complaint also takes aim at the Trump administration's cuts to federal climate research projects like the National Climate Assessment, which is the government's flagship report on how global warming is affecting the country. The report is required by Congress but last month the administration dismissed hundreds of scientists and experts who had been working on the latest version. 'In order for them to protect their rights, they need science,' Ms. Olson said of the young people. One of the plaintiffs is Rikki Held, 24. She was also the named plaintiff in the Montana case, in which the Montana Supreme Court agreed that the state's energy policies had violated Montanans' constitutional right to a clean environment. A daughter of a ranching family in the town of Broadus in southeastern Montana, Ms. Held studied environmental science and is now teaching high school students in Kenya. Ms. Held said her science career had been inspired by the U.S. Geological Survey researchers who would visit her family's land to study the Powder River. That agency is facing significant reductions under the Trump administration's proposed budget. In an interview from Kenya, Ms. Held said that her family had endured numerous effects of a warming planet, including increased wildfires. That effects livestock, the economy and the food systems that she and her neighbors rely on, she said. 'With all the wildfires, there's smoke in the air that affects health,' she said. 'Especially for ranchers, you don't have an option to stay inside. You have to go out and work take care of your livestock. I've been out fencing in 110 degree days, which is a record-breaking temperature from my area. In 2021, we had two or three of those days, and you just have to be out in the heat and keep working, because you don't have another choice.' The plaintiffs are asking the court to declare the orders unconstitutional, block their implementation and protect the rights of youth as enshrined in the U.S. Constitution and their respective state constitutions. Our Children's Trust was joined in filing the suit by Gregory Law Group of California, McGarvey Law of Montana and Public Justice, a public interest law firm in Washington. Another case by Our Children's Trust filed in 2015, Juliana v. United States, was described as a legal landmark, but was dismissed by a federal appellate court. In March, the Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal. That suit argued that the federal government had violated the constitutional rights of the plaintiffs with policies that encouraged the use of fossil fuels over many decades. In dismissing the case, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled that courts were not the right venue to address climate change. Our Children's Trust said the new case was different because it is focused on specific executive orders and their implementation in recent months.
The Guardian
7 days ago
- Health
- The Guardian
Trump violating right to life with anti-environment orders, youth lawsuit says
Twenty two young Americans have filed a new lawsuit against the Trump administration over its anti-environment executive orders. By intentionally boosting oil and gas production and stymying carbon-free energy, federal officials are violating their constitutional rights to life and liberty, alleges the lawsuit, filed on Thursday. The federal government is engaging in unlawful executive overreach by breaching congressional mandates to protect ecosystems and public health, argue the plaintiffs, who are between the ages of seven and 25 and hail from the heavily climate-impacted states of Montana, Hawaii, Oregon, California and Florida. They also say officials' emissions-increasing and science-suppressing orders have violated the state-created danger doctrine, a legal principle meant to prevent government actors from inflicting injury upon their citizens. 'At its core, this suit is about the health of children, it's about the right to life, it's about the right to form families,' said Julia Olson, attorney and founder of Our Children's Trust, the non-profit law firm that brought the suit. 'We all have constitutional rights, and if we don't use our constitution – if we walk away from it and we walk away from our youth – we will not have a democracy.' The lawsuit specifically targets three of the slew of pro-fossil fuel executive orders Trump has signed during his second term. Among them are two day-one Trump moves to declare a 'national energy emergency' and 'unleash American energy', and another April order aimed at 'reinvigorating' the domestic production of coal – the dirtiest and most expensive fossil fuel. All three orders aimed to bolster already-booming US energy production. They also led agencies to stymy renewable energy production and to suppress climate research and data, flaunting congressional environmental protections, the lawsuit argues. The litigation is the latest in a series of youth-led climate cases brought by the non-profit law firm Our Children's Trust. The lead plaintiff in the new case, 19-year-old Eva Lighthiser, was also a plaintiff in the firm's Held v Montana lawsuit, which notched a landmark win in 2023 when a judge ruled that the state's pro-fossil fuel policies violated their rights under the state's constitution. 'Trump's fossil fuel orders are a death sentence for my generation,' said Lighthiser. Lighthiser has already seen the impacts of the climate crisis in her life. Flood-related destruction to roads and bridges one summer even forced her family to sell their house in Livingston. 'The effects of climate change cause Eva persistent stress and anxiety about her future,' the lawsuit says. 'Every additional ton of [greenhouse gas] pollution and increment of heat Defendants cause will cause Eva more harm.' Other plaintiffs in the new case previously participated in other Our Children's Trust lawsuits, including one which reached a historic settlement in Hawaii last year; another filed by California youth against the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA); and a third, the federal case Juliana v US, which was filed a decade ago and dismissed Juliana without prejudice last year. Lighthiser said Trump's re-election last year felt 'like such a heavy thing'. In the wake of her 2023 win in the Montana lawsuit, she said it felt like taking 'one step forward, three steps back'. She fears Trump's policies will directly impact her well-being. In moves to prop up the dying coal industry in recent months, for instance, the administration has granted relief to both the Spring Creek coal mine and Colstrip coal-fired power station in Montana; trains transporting coal from one to the other run through Lighthiser's hometown. 'The coal cars are brimming with coal that just blows [dust] out all over my town,' said Lighthiser. 'That could effect my own body and my own health, and it feels very intimidating, because it's not something that feels like it's in my control right now.' The lawsuit names Trump and the US as defendants, as well as the office of management and budget, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the departments of interior, energy and transportation, in addition to the head of each agency. 'These are agencies that are really deeply involved in making sure that more fossil fuels stay online,' said Olson. It also targets scientific organizations such as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) and its parent agency the Department of Commerce, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration – agencies that are 'suppressing science' in their attempts to comply with Trump's executive orders, said Olson. The youth plaintiffs are asking the court to declare the three executive orders unconstitutional and block their implementation. They are also demanding that it protect the rights to a clean environment granted by certain state constitutions like Montana and Hawaii, which they say the Trump directives have impinged upon. In Olson's view, the case is winnable, particularly because it only brings claims under rights that are explicitly granted under the US constitution, and which have already been recognized by the supreme court. (Juliana v US, by contrast, argued that Americans have an implicit, but unstated, constitutional right to a life-sustaining climate system.) But no matter how the case is eventually ruled, Olson said, the filing of the lawsuit is 'itself a success'. 'Having young people rise up at a time when democracy is threatened and when there's retaliation against so many people in this country for standing up against the administration, that is success,' she said. 'It's about having the bravery to bring claims in the court, of not being too afraid to use their rights.' Though it is 'scary to take on the man in the highest position of power', Lighthiser said the lawsuit is 'absolutely necessary'. She hopes it will eventually help slow global warming, which has led to more frequent and intense wildfires, droughts and floods in her home state of Montana. And she hopes it will afford youth the ability to 'just be kids'. She recalled one day during the summer of 2022, when the Yellowstone River flooded her hometown. 'I spent seven hours that day filling sandbags for people to take to their homes,' she said. 'That kind of thing is going to become more common [with] climate change,' she said. 'That doesn't sound to me like we're getting to live freely.'
The Sun
13-05-2025
- General
- The Sun
Tragedy as Scots animal lover dies after falling from horse she'd owned for just a few weeks
TRIBUTES have been paid to a woman who died after falling from a horse she had owned for just a few weeks. Louise Goudman, 40 suffered a bleed to the brain after the fall while riding horse Bobby on May 2 but tragically passed away in hospital three days later. Her partner Malcolm Cameron paid tribute to her and said she 'died doing something that she loved'. He said Bobby would now be looked after by Our Children's Trust, a charity near Carluke, Lanarkshire, which provides holistic therapy for families affected by trauma and grief. The Glasgow livery where Louise was a client said she had been having 'teething problems' since purchasing the horse and they had been trying to help her. Butshe sustained a serious head injury after tumbling from Bobby and never regained consciousness. Mr Cameron launched a fundraising page where to help support the charity with the cost of the horse's upkeep. He said: "My beautiful partner Louise tragically died on the 5th of May 2025, a week before her 41st birthday, following a horse riding accident a few days earlier. "She died doing something that she loved. She adored animals and wouldn't have blamed her young horse, even with his flaws, whom she had only known a couple of months. "We deliberated long and hard what was the best, Louise-friendly thing to do, whilst morally knowing no one can ride Bobby again. "We don't want anyone to be put through the heartache of having their loved one wrenched from their lives in such an unexpected and sudden way. "This charity rescues and re-house horses best met our needs and have kindly agreed to look after Bobby." In a social media post, South Cathkin Farm, based near Rutherglen, said it was 'devastated' at the death of its client, who was described by those who knew her as a 'kind soul and a true animal lover'. It said: "It is with great sadness that we lost one of our lovely clients, Louise Goudman, who had been livery with us a few years back then recently purchased her new horse Bobby a couple of months ago. "Louise was having teething issues with Bobby and we were trying our best to iron them out. Unfortunately she took a bad fall on Friday 2 May and never regained consciousness. She sadly passed away on Monday 5 May. "We are all devastated for Louise's family." The appeal has so far raised more than £3,000 with dozens of tributes also being left for Louise. One said: "I had the privilege to work with Louise over the last couple of years and we are all heartbroken over her loss and the impact on her lovely family. Always in our hearts and prayers." Another wrote: "Thinking of you all at such a difficult time. Louise was a lovely, kind and beautiful person who will be very sadly missed by many." A third added: "Louise's energy and passion will be deeply missed by so many. Love and strength to all who knew this beautiful soul."
Daily Mail
12-05-2025
- Daily Mail
Tragedy of mother who died from horrific head injury after falling from horse
A mother has died after falling from a horse that she had owned for just a few weeks. Louise Goudman suffered a bleed to the brain after falling from her horse, Bobby, on May 2. She passed away in hospital three days later - just a week before what would have been her 41st birthday yesterday. The Glasgow livery where Ms Goudman was a client said she had been having 'teething problems' since purchasing the horse and they had been trying to 'iron them out'. But after suffering a 'bad fall' while riding Bobby 10 days ago, Ms Goudman sustained a serious head injury and never regained consciousness. Her partner Malcolm Cameron paid tribute to his 'beautiful partner' who 'died doing something that she loved'. He said the horse would now be looked after by Our Childrens Trust, a charity near Carluke, Lanarkshire, which provides holistic therapy for families affected by trauma and grief, after deliberating 'long and hard what was the best Louise friendly thing to do' while 'morally knowing' that 'no one can ride Bobby again'. Mr Cameron has now launched a fundraising page to help support the charity with the cost of the horse's upkeep. In a moving statement he said: 'My beautiful partner Louise tragically died on the 5th of May 2025, a week before her 41st birthday, following a horse riding accident a few days earlier. 'She died doing something that she loved. She adored animals and wouldn't have blamed her young horse, even with his flaws, whom she had only known a couple of months. 'We deliberated long and hard what was the best Louise friendly thing to do, whilst morally knowing no one can ride Bobby again. We don't want anyone to be put through the heart ache of having their loved one wrenched from their lives in such an unexpected and sudden way. 'This charity that rescue and re-house horses best meet our needs and have kindly agreed to look after Bobby.' He added that the funds raised from the justgiving page will go towards paying for his upkeep. In a social media post the livery at South Cathkin Farm, Rutherglen, Glasgow, said it was 'devastated' at the death of its client, who was described by those who knew her as a 'kind soul and a true animal lover'. It said: 'It is with great sadness that we lost one of our lovely client Louise Goudman who had been livery with us a few years back then recently purchased her new horse Bobby a couple of months ago. 'Louise was having teething issues with Bobby and we were trying our best to iron them out. Unfortunately she took a bad fall on Friday 2 May and never regained consciousness. She sadly passed away on Monday 5 May. 'We are all devastated for Louise's family here at South Cathkin especially having a young family losing their mother.' Within just a few hours of the fundraising appeal going online, more then £2,500 had been raised for the horse as supporters paid tribute to a 'lovely girl'. One said: 'I'll miss our chats regarding dogs and horses. We are only chatting the morning of [the accident] too. I know how much you loved him and your dogs. I've not stopped thinking of you.' Another added: 'I will miss you Lou - can't believe I'll never see or speak to you again. I will forever cherish the memories and stories we have from navigating motherhood together.' One person said her death was 'heartbreaking' and 'a reminder that our sport is dangerous and our horses can be so unpredictable'.
