Kate Sheppard

Reporter

Kate Sheppard is a staff reporter in Mother Jones' Washington bureau. She was previously the political reporter for Grist and a writing fellow at The American Prospect. She can be reached by email at ksheppard (at) motherjones (dot) com.

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Her work has also been featured in the New York Times' Room for Debate blog, the Guardian's Comment Is Free, Foreign Policy, High Country News, The Center for Public Integrity, the Washington Independent, Washington Spectator, Who Runs Gov, In These Times, and Bitch. She was raised on a vegetable farm in southern New Jersey (yes, they do exist), but has adapted well to life in the nation's capital. She misses trees and having a congressional representative with voting power, but thinks DC is pretty great anyway.

South Dakota Moves To Legalize Killing Abortion Providers

A bill under consideration in the Mount Rushmore State would make preventing harm to a fetus a "justifiable homicide" in many cases.

—By Kate Sheppard

| Tue Feb. 15, 2011 4:00 AM PST

This article has been updated: Update 1 | Update 2 | Update 3.

A law under consideration in South Dakota would expand the definition of "justifiable homicide" to include killings that are intended to prevent harm to a fetus—a move that could make it legal to kill doctors who perform abortions. The Republican-backed legislation, House Bill 1171, has passed out of committee on a nine-to-three party-line vote, and is expected to face a floor vote in the state's GOP-dominated House of Representatives soon.

"The bill in South Dakota is an invitation to murder abortion providers."

The bill, sponsored by state Rep. Phil Jensen, a committed foe of abortion rights, alters the state's legal definition of justifiable homicide by adding language stating that a homicide is permissible if committed by a person "while resisting an attempt to harm" that person's unborn child or the unborn child of that person's spouse, partner, parent, or child. If the bill passes, it could in theory allow a woman's father, mother, son, daughter, or husband to kill anyone who tried to provide that woman an abortion—even if she wanted one.

Jensen did not return calls to his home or his office requesting comment on the bill, which is cosponsored by 22 other state representatives and four state senators. UPDATE: Jensen spoke to Mother Jones on Tuesday morning, after this story was published. He says that he disagrees with this interpretation of the bill. "This simply is to bring consistency to South Dakota statute as it relates to justifiable homicide," said Jensen in an interview, repeating an argument he made in the committee hearing on the bill last week. "If you look at the code, these codes are dealing with illegal acts. Now, abortion is a legal act. So this has got nothing to do with abortion." Jensen also aggressively defended the bill in an interview with the Washington Post's Greg Sargent on Tuesday morning. We have more on Jensen's position here. UPDATE 2: Jensen spoke to Sargent again on Wednesday morning, and signaled he might be willing to change the bill.

"The bill in South Dakota is an invitation to murder abortion providers," says Vicki Saporta, the president of the National Abortion Federation, the professional association of abortion providers. Since 1993, eight doctors have been assassinated at the hands of anti-abortion extremists, and another 17 have been the victims of murder attempts. Some of the perpetrators of those crimes have tried to use the justifiable homicide defense at their trials. "This is not an abstract bill," Saporta says. The measure could have major implications if a "misguided extremist invokes this 'self-defense' statute to justify the murder of a doctor, nurse or volunteer," the South Dakota Campaign for Healthy Families warned in a message to supporters last week.

[Read the full article]

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New GOP Spending Plan Takes Chainsaw to EPA

—By Kate Sheppard

| Mon Feb. 14, 2011 11:40 AM PST

If last week's version of the GOP's temporary government-funding bill took a scalpel to the budget for the Environmental Protection Agency, the new version trims it with something more akin to a chainsaw.

The latest version of the seven-month spending plan (called a "continuing resolution," or a "CR" in Washington-speak) from House Republicans would hack $3 billion from the agency's budget—a 29 percent cut from 2010 levels and nearly twice the proposed cuts in the original plan. It would specifically bar the agency from using funds for the development and implementation of greenhouse gas regulations, and would cut funding for the EPA's Global Change program, which conducts research on climate change, by a third.

The new CR would also block the White House from filling the energy and climate adviser post that Carol Browner is vacating. (See ClimateWire for more on the specific cuts).

The National Wildlife Federation says the cuts amount to a "sneak attack" on existing environmental laws like the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts, because they would make it basically impossible for the EPA to do its job. The huge cut—the biggest in 30 years—"would jeopardize the water we drink and air we breathe, endangering the health and well-being of all Americans," Gene Karpinski, the president of the League of Conservation Voters, said Monday.

The GOP plan also includes major cuts to climate and renewable energy programs at the Department of Energy and the Department of Interior, as well as public transportation. Climate programs at NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration would also take a big hit. And it includes major reductions to international climate and environment programs—including a $500 million cut in funds that go to the World Bank for projects to cut emissions in developing countries and a two-thirds reduction in the funds the US contributes to the Global Environment Facility (GEF).

The full list of cuts is here, and the legislation is here.

Taking Climate Denial to New Extremes

—By Kate Sheppard

| Fri Feb. 11, 2011 1:55 PM PST

The spending plan the House GOP was supposed to roll out on Thursday included a number of cuts meant to prevent the Environmental Protection Agency from doing anything about climate change. But Republicans had to take that plan back to the drawing board Thursday night after tea party members claimed the package of cuts didn't go deep enough. And if a trio of House members get their way, we won't ever have to worry about the climate—since we won't know what's happening with it, anyway.

This week, Reps. Bill Posey (R-Fla.), Sandy Adams (R-Fla.) and Rob Bishop (R-Utah) called for a budget that would "reprioritize NASA" by axing the funding for climate change research. The original cuts to the budget outlined yesterday would have cut $379 million from NASA's budget. These members want climate out of NASA's purview entirely, however. Funding climate research, said Adams in a statement, "undercuts one of NASA's primary and most important objectives of human spaceflight."

"NASA's primary purpose is human space exploration and directing NASA funds to study global warming undermines our ability to maintain our competitive edge in human space flight," said Posey.

The total budget request for NASA for 2010 was $18.7 billion. Of that, just $1.4 billion was for its earth science division. The agency's climate programs—which include modeling and satellite monitoring—are a subset of that. They are responsible for monitoring data that is crucial to our understanding of how our planet works—ocean temperatures, sea level, the ozone layer, sea ice, and, of course, how carbon dioxide emissions are affecting the atmosphere. The increase in funding requested for climate last year was intended to make up for cuts to the program under the Bush administration. But even with that proposed increase, the earth science program accounted for a mere 7.5 percent of NASA's total budget.

Here's the letter the three GOPers sent to House Appropriations Committee Chairman Harold Rogers (R-Ky.) and Commerce, Justice, and Science Subcommittee Chairman Frank Wolf (R-Va.) this week.

GOP Plan: Cut Family Planning for 5 Million

—By Kate Sheppard

| Fri Feb. 11, 2011 12:20 PM PST

The House GOP has made no bone about its plans to severely restrict access to abortion—first by attempting to redefine rape and then by crafting a proposal that would allow doctors to deny abortion services even when the life of the woman is in danger. And as my colleague Nick Baumann reported this week, Republican lawmakers also want to zero out funds for Planned Parenthood—and, while they're at it, axe all government funds for family planning, health screenings, and services for low-income women.

My friend Lisa Hymas at Grist, who has been doing great writing on the nexus of reproductive rights and the environment, writes today about why the elimination of the Title X family-planning program has serious consequences. In 2008, 5 million women (and men too) made use of the services at 4,500 community-based clinics. And if you care about both population and women's rights, you should be worried about the larger narrative here, she writes:

Some progressives are calling the jab at Title X "hypocrisy." But in fact what the Republicans are doing is perfectly consistent with the ultra-conservative agenda of denying women agency and sexual freedom. In just the last month, we’ve seen newly empowered House Republicans try to redefine rape, push to outlaw the use of federal funds for abortion, and gleefully join in attacks on Planned Parenthood. It's not scattershot; it's strategic.

Of course, there are plenty of other things to worry about in the GOP spending plan as well—like massive cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency, for starters. When it comes down to deciding what programs to fight for in order to prevent a government shut-down, Title X may not be at the top of the list. And Republicans had to take their spending plan back to the chopping block yesterday after tea party members protested that they weren't deep enough—they wanted to see another $26 billion trimmed. They're planning to release the revised list of cuts later today, and you can probably guess the kind of programs they'll add to it.

Kentucky Anti-MTR Protester: "I'm About to Pull an Egypt"

—By Kate Sheppard

| Fri Feb. 11, 2011 12:10 PM PST

A group of activists, former coal miners, and legendary environmentalist and author Wendell Berry are staging a sit-in in the office of Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear (D) today, demanding a meeting on the future of mountain-top removal coal mining in the state.

The fight over MTR has been heating up at the national level since last month, when the Environmental Protection Agency vetoed a permit for the controversial Spruce Mine in West Virginia. Both enviros and the coal industry have interpreted that move as evidence that the agency is serious about enforcing existing laws when it comes to MTR.

For coal field residents who have long been outspoken opponents of MTR, it's a moment of opportunity. "I'm about to pull an Egypt," Mickey McCoy, a member of Kentuckians for the Commonwealth and former teacher from Inez, Kentucky, told me by phone last night ahead of this morning's action. "I'm just tired of lobbying, begging."

Kentuckians for the Commonwealth and other state-level groups filed suit against Kentucky last fall for failing to enforce the Clean Water Act. Kentucky, however, has undertaken quite the opposite crusade: around the same time that the enviros filed their suit, it joined the Kentucky Coal Association in suing the US EPA for attempting to enforce the Clean Water Act.

Jeff Biggers is following today's sit-in, and highlights what is at stake in the state:

While national media attention on mountaintop removal mining has largely been focused on West Virginia, organizers are reminding the nation that more than 290 mountains—58 percent of the devastation in Appalachia—have been blown to bits in eastern Kentucky. A study by the Natural Resources Defense Council last year found that while more than 574,000 acres of hardwood forests in eastern Kentucky have been irreversibly destroyed by mountaintop removal strip mining, less than four percent yielded any verifiable post-mining economic reclamation excluding forestry and pasture.

The protesters have three demands—outside of a chance to actually meet with the governor, that is:

Accept a long-standing invitation to view the devastation in eastern Kentucky caused by mountaintop removal mining
Foster a sincere, public discussion about the urgent need for a sustainable economic transition for coal workers and mountain communities
Withdraw from the October 2010 lawsuit against the Environmental Protection Agency, in which the Beshear administration partnered with the coal industry to oppose the EPA’s efforts to protect the health and water of coalfield residents

Follow @kftc and @jasonkylehoward on Twitter for updates.