Given a paragraph, generate a claim that is supported by the given paragraph. 1) The claim must contain information from within the paragraph. 2) A sentence within the paragraph can be used as a claim. 3) The claim should not have contradictions within the paragraph. 4) The claim should be at most one sentence long.
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Question: Republicans on the GOP-majority Senate Environment and Public Works Committee mostly had praise for Andrew Wheeler, who has served as the agency’s acting head since Scott Pruitt’s resignation in July amid ethics scandals. The committee chairman, Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., called Wheeler “very well-qualified” to take the job. But Democrats pressed Wheeler about his work as a lobbyist helping an influential coal magnate meet with Trump administration officials before his nomination to the EPA and his moves on deregulation and on what they said was his inattention to the growing dangers of climate change. “You seem to be consistently doing things that undermine the health and safety of this nation,” Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., told Wheeler. Markey asked him why he was pulling back on regulations that proponents say protect human health and the environment. “I believe we are moving forward” on protections, Wheeler responded. Wheeler cited changes he had initiated to roll back future mileage standards for cars and autos and to ease Obama-era clampdowns on dirtier-burning coal-fired power plants. He said EPA staff, whom he did not identify, had concluded that those rollbacks would ultimately lead to health gains. Environmental groups and formal assessments from the EPA and other agencies have contested that, saying the changes would increase pollution and increase harm to people and the climate. Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del., said the rollbacks in car mileage standards and toxic mercury emissions under Wheeler were examples of unsafe deregulation and went beyond what industries themselves wanted. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., noted Wheeler had failed to mention climate change in his initial remarks to lawmakers. “Do you agree that climate change is a global crisis?” Sanders asked, shouting at times. “I would not call it the greatest crisis,” Wheeler said. “I would call it a huge issue that has to be addressed globally.” Wheeler told lawmakers that he had yet to read a massive government climate change report released late last year that emphasized man-made climate change was already underway. Wheeler said he had received one staff briefing so far on the climate change report. The work of the EPA and other government agencies, the report stresses the massive economic toll expected from increasingly severe wildfires, hurricanes and other extreme weather under climate change. Wheeler said the news media had seized upon “worst-case scenarios” of the climate report. “You are a former coal industry lobbyist that is sitting here,” Markey responded. “That’s the worst-case scenario, what you are proposing here” for easing Obama-era rules meant to clamp down on climate-changing fossil fuel emissions. Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa and other Republican lawmakers, by contrast, praised Wheeler for a move to remove federal protections for millions of miles of wetlands and waterways and other proposals. Republican lawmakers said the protections had burdened farmers and others. The grandson of a coal miner, Wheeler worked for the EPA in the 1990s and later as a longtime Republican Senate staffer. Democrats pressed Wheeler about his lobbying before joining the EPA, saying his work for coal companies should disqualify him from leading an agency that regulates coal. Wheeler’s lobbying clients included coal magnate Bob Murray, who pushed hard on the Trump administration after the 2016 elections to grant a series of breaks for the sagging domestic coal industry. Wheeler accompanied Murray to a March 2017 meeting to pitch Murray’s list of desired rule rollbacks and other breaks for coal to Energy Secretary Rick Perry. Wheeler told senators that his main work for Murray had been on health benefits and pensions. “I did not work on the plan. I do not have a copy of it. I saw it briefly,” Wheeler said, referring to Murray’s wish list. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., displayed a blown-up version of a photo taken of the meeting with Perry, showing Wheeler at Murray’s side. A second photo showed Murray’s rollback plan in Wheeler’s hands. Murray had sought some of the coal breaks that the EPA under Wheeler has since acted on. That included Wheeler signing a rule easing federal regulation of toxic coal ash, redoing an Obama rule that pushed electricity providers to move away from dirtier-burning coal plants and targeting an Obama rule limiting emissions of toxic mercury from coal plants. A watchdog group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, filed an ethics complaint Tuesday with the EPA’s Office of the Inspector General alleging that Wheeler’s oversight of those and other rollback proposals at EPA may have violated his government ethics pledge to abstain from regulatory decisions affecting his former lobbying client for at least two years. EPA spokesman John Konkus called the accusation “baseless” and “wrong” and said Wheeler works with EPA ethics officials and follows their guidance.

Answer: Democrats hit Trump EPA nominee on coal lobbying, rollbacks.


Question: Officials in energy-friendly Weld County say the law gives the county complete control over the location of new wells in unincorporated areas. That could challenge the state’s attempts to tighten regulations. Just across the county line in Longmont, environmental activists are trying to use the same statute to revive the city’s ban on hydraulic fracturing, which the courts threw out under the previous laws. Because fracking is standard practice in the area, the ban would essentially prohibit all drilling. Democratic Gov. Jared Polis signed the bill into law on April 16. In addition to switching the state’s top priority to public health and the environment, it gives cities and counties new powers to regulate the drilling locations. The Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission is in the early stages of rewriting its rules to comply with the law — referred to as Senate Bill 181 — and several counties are looking at drafting their own regulations. It’s too early to measure the impacts, but the industry is clearly concerned. The Colorado Oil and Gas Association invited Polis to speak Wednesday at a session titled “Can You Still Drill for Oil in a Blue State?” Polis told the audience that was a silly question. He said international markets and overseas instability have more impact on the industry than state regulations. “Energy is not inherently political, it’s inherently economic,” he said. Dan Haley, president of the Oil and Gas Association, asked Polis several times to respond to industry concerns about its standing in the state. The governor eventually replied he values industry jobs but added that they’re part of a diverse state economy. Colorado ranks fifth in the nation for crude oil production and sixth in natural gas, and much of that is concentrated in Weld County northeast of Denver. Weld County Commissioner Barbara Kirkmeyer, a fierce defender of the industry, argued hard against the new bill and led a short-lived campaign to overturn it after it became law. Now she maintains the bill, coupled with older statutes on local government powers, gives counties like hers the final word on land-use decisions that affect the industry in areas outside cities. “Basically what S.B. 181 said is the state no longer has land use authority,” she said in an interview. Weld County established an oil and gas department and adopted its own rules, but Kirkmeyer said energy companies won’t have free rein to drill wherever they want. The county rules are similar to ones the state had before the new law was passed, she said. The goal is to ensure a common-sense approach to regulating oil and gas companies, Kirkmeyer said. “We are willing to work with them for responsible energy development in our county,” she said. Democratic Senate Majority Leader Stephen Fenberg, a sponsor of Senate Bill 181, disputed Kirkmeyer’s interpretation of the law. The intent was to give both the state and local governments a say in regulating the surface impacts of oil and gas, and to allow cities and counties to enact stricter rules than the state’s, but not more lenient ones, he said. “I would argue that the Weld County commissioners know this,” he said, accusing them of “political theater.” Polis said Wednesday that state officials are working on a written agreement with Weld County officials but offered no details. Environmental groups Colorado Rising and Our Longmont say the new law clears the way for Longmont and other local governments to ban oil and gas drilling. Longmont voters approved a fracking ban in 2012, but the Colorado Supreme Court overturned it in 2016, saying only the state could regulate the industry under the laws in force at the time. Senate Bill 181 “flips the script” on state and local control, said Democratic state Rep. Jonathan Singer of Longmont, who supports the ban. “The state does not take precedence over what local governments want to do when it comes to protecting our health and safety,” he said. The two environmental groups asked the courts to restore the ban earlier this month. The case is pending. Fenberg said the law doesn’t specifically allow or prohibit local drilling bans. But he said they could open a city or a county to damage claims from mineral rights owners who can’t access their underground oil and gas reserves. If the goal is to protect public health and safety, strong local regulations are a better option than a ban, he said. ___ Follow Dan Elliott at http://twitter.com/DanElliottAP .

Answer: Oil and gas defenders, critics test Colorado’s new law.


Question: "Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson stuck to his story about being offered a scholarship to West Point after a Politico article blasted him for ""fabricating"" the account. Carson has highlighted the offer to the prestigious military academy — allegedly made by Gen. William Westmoreland in 1969 when Carson was a ROTC student leader in Detroit — in his books and comments throughout the years. But Carson never applied to West Point nor does Westmoreland’s schedule place him in Detroit at the time Carson said he was, according to Politico. What’s more, there’s no such thing as a ""full scholarship"" to West Point, as everyone accepted to the five federal service academies receives free tuition in exchange for their service. When asked about discrepancy on ABC’s This Week by host George Stephanopoulos, Carson said the academy itself uses the terminology. ""Wait a minute George, go look on the West Point website, and you’ll see those specific words, ‘full scholarship to West Point,’ "" Carson said Nov. 8. ""So even though it is, you know, given as a grant for anybody who gets in, those words are used. And if a recruiter or somebody who’s trying to get you to come there or trying to get you to do that, those are the very words they will use. It’s on their website."" We wondered if the words really are advertised on West Point’s website. We could not reach the military academy. Searching for the ""specific words ‘full scholarship to West Point’"" turned up no results on West Point’s own website or on Google. The official admissions page also makes no mention of a scholarship of any kind. Instead, it simply notes that  tuition, room and board, and expenses are fully paid for those who are selected to attend West Point. The academy’s diversity page, however, states that ""this four-year college experience is a fully funded scholarship."" Carson’s spokesperson told us that West Point has referred to their benefits as a full scholarship in publications, a point Carson made in a Nov. 8 Facebook post. He uploaded two West Point recruitment ads targeted at African-Americans that contain the word ""scholarship,"" including one from the 1960s, when he was a student. We also found examples of the words ""full scholarship"" used in publications that are linked on West Point’s website, as well as some old recruiting advertisements: • A dataset from 2014: ""At the United States Military Academy all students receive a full scholarship, including room & board and medical- and dental-care are provided by the U.S. Army."" • A prospectus from 2012: ""As a cadet, you are a member of the U.S. Army and receive a full scholarship and an annual salary of more than $10,000 from which you pay for your uniforms, textbooks, a laptop computer, and incidents."" • An ad in a 1991 issue of Black Enterprise magazine: ""Each year about 1,400 young men and women take advantage of the opportunity to attend West Point on a full government scholarship, which includes tuition, room and board and medical care. • An ad that appeared in a few issues of Ebony magazine in 1990: ""You receive a full scholarship, earn a degree from one of the country’s finest colleges, and build a foundation for a challenging career of service to the nation."" The financial benefits to attending military academies have been essentially described as scholarship-like or equivalent to a scholarship by USA Today, a West Point spokesperson in Forbes, and the Naval Academy. But the term ""full scholarship"" is an inaccurate description, experts told us. The phrase typically refers to a college providing financial aid to allow a candidate to attend a college free of charge, but that doesn’t really apply to West Point’s across-the-board zero-tuition policy, said Antonio Buehler, a West Point alumnus who founded the admissions coaching service Abrome. ""No such scholarship is named, every cadet is treated the same and there is an eight-year military commitment after graduation. Hence, not free,"" Buehler said. The proper terminology is ""appointment,"" said Vu Tran, a graduate of the United States Air Force Academy who runs the Denver-based admissions consulting firm Service Academy Coach. But because that’s not apparent from the get-go, Tran says he can’t fault Carson for using the term loosely, albeit incorrectly. ""I can definitely see where parents and students who are beginning the process can misconstrue it to be a scholarship,"" he said. ""But for those who have gone through the admission process and through the nomination process, they would never call it a scholarship."" Carson’s use of the words ""full scholarship"" is even more inaccurate if he’s describing his own experience, experts agreed. Tran told us it’s conceivable a ROTC commander or even a general would encourage a student to apply to West Point, touting the free tuition, but noted that anyone familiar with the process understands that that’s contingent upon nomination and acceptance. ""(Carson) would not have been ‘offered’ the opportunity to attend West Point at no cost, like all other cadets, until he applied and received an appointment, which he never did,"" Buehler said. Our ruling Carson defended his use of the word scholarship in discussing his recruitment to West Point, saying, ""Go look on the West Point website and you’ll see those specific words, ‘full scholarship to West Point.’"" The military academy has used the words ""full scholarship"" a few times in admissions literature and advertisements and in one place on its website. However, experts say Carson’s use of the word scholarship doesn’t properly explain the application and appointment process to West Point. Carson’s statement is accurate but needs clarification or additional information. That meets our definition of . Correction: After this story was published, we found an additional instance of the words ""full scholarship"" on West Point’s website. The article has been updated to reflect that. The ruling remains ."

Answer:
Go look on the West Point website and you’ll see those specific words, ‘full scholarship to West Point.’ So even though it is, you know, given as a grant for anybody who gets in, those words are used.