Interior Department makes up alternative job “facts” to roll back water protections

The U.S. Department of the Interior is heaping praise on President Trump and the Republican Congress for enacting a law that repealed a rule the agency itself finalized earlier this year. In a blog post, the Interior Department celebrated the rollback of the Stream Protection Rule as “the first action by the new president to fulfill promises made to American workers to harness the power of American energy, restore their jobs, and reduce unnecessary regulatory burdens.” The rule, mind you, protects streams and communities from the toxic slurries and wastes resulting from mountaintop-removal coal mining. The blog post went on to cite the coal industry’s false claim that the protections would have cost 77,000 jobs—in reality, analysis by Obama’s Interior Department estimated that the rule would create a net 126 jobs. Though the Interior Department removed the incorrect job figures from the post a few days after it went live—prompted by a congressional inquiry—the blog continues to thank Congress and Trump for “American energy jobs [that] have been saved” by repealing “harmful regulations.”