SCOTT PRUITT BRINGS IN CHEMICAL INDUSTRY REPS TO HELP RUN EPA: The chemical, perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA, has been linked to kidney cancer, birth defects, immune system disorders and other serious health problems. So scientists and administrators in the EPA’s Office of Water were alarmed in late May when a top Trump administration appointee insisted upon the rewriting of a rule to make it harder to track the health consequences of the chemical, and therefore regulate it. The revision was among more than a dozen demanded by the appointee, Nancy B. Beck, after she joined the EPA’s toxic chemical unit in May as a top deputy. For the previous five years, she had been an executive at the American Chemistry Council, the chemical industry’s main trade association.
http://www.newsobserver.com/news/politics-government/article180284996.html

PITTENGER IN CROSS HAIRS AS ROVE/BANNON FEUD GETS NASTY: On Thursday morning, GOP strategist Karl Rove lambasted Steve Bannon in the Wall Street Journal for his involvement in Republican primaries. By Thursday afternoon, Bannon’s allies were already plotting their revenge: mobilization against North Carolina Republican Rep. Robert Pittenger — Rove’s pick in that race. Bannon, Donald Trump’s former chief strategist who has returned to helm the hard-right outlet Breitbart, has cast the 2018 primary season as a war against the Republican establishment and is now prominently involved in a series of GOP contests across the country. To date, his emphasis has been on the Senate. Meanwhile, “Bannon now plans to meet with Harris,” said a source close to Bannon, in an interview Thursday after Rove’s op-ed posted. “Bannon has decided to target Pittenger.”
http://www.newsobserver.com/news/politics-government/article180074606.html

ROY COOPER TAKES STEPS AGAINST TRANSGENDER DISCRIMINATION: Gov. Roy Cooper said Wednesday that transgender people will be able to use public bathrooms that correspond with their gender identity under a proposed settlement of a lawsuit that originated as a challenge to North Carolina’s controversial House Bill 2. Challengers had continued their lawsuit after legislators passed and the Democratic governor signed a law this spring replacing HB2, the law commonly known as the “bathroom bill.” But now the challengers are willing to drop the suit if a federal judge signs off on the proposed order that they submitted Wednesday along with Cooper, his Cabinet secretaries and state Attorney General Josh Stein. The proposed order says that under House Bill 142, “transgender people are not prevented from the use of public facilities in accordance with their gender identity.”
http://www.newsobserver.com/news/politics-government/state-politics/article179565026.html

TRUMP'S CLAIM THAT MOST PRESIDENT'S DON'T CALL FAMILIES OF FALLEN SOLDIERS VIGOROUSLY REFUTED: For U.S. presidents, meeting the families of military personnel killed in war is about as wrenching as the presidency gets. President Donald Trump's suggestion Monday that his predecessors fell short in that duty brought a visceral reaction from those who witnessed those grieving encounters. "He's a deranged animal," Alyssa Mastromonaco, a former deputy chief of staff to President Barack Obama, tweeted about Trump. With an expletive, she called Trump's statement in the Rose Garden a lie. Trump said in a news conference he had written letters to the families of four soldiers killed in an Oct. 4 ambush in Niger and planned to call them, crediting himself with taking extra steps in honoring the dead properly. "Most of them didn't make calls," he said of his predecessors. He said it's possible that Obama "did sometimes" but "other presidents did not call."
http://www.newsobserver.com/news/politics-government/national-politics/article179237026.html

TILLIS' "TRANSFORMED" NORTH CAROLINA A ROSY FANTASY: Sen. Thom Tillis so desperately wants to make North Carolina a red state he’s taken to wearing rose-tinted glasses. Tillis, in an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal, discusses tax cuts he helped ram through the General Assembly while he served as House speaker. Readers perusing the piece could be forgiven if they came away thinking the former state House speaker had paved the streets with gold, made public school teachers’ supply closets overflow with resources, given state workers big raises, ended waiting lines at the DMV, slashed costs for university students and made sure everyone had easy and affordable access to health care. While Tillis claimed he held off hordes of special interest lobbyists seeking special tax breaks in his so-called tax reforms, the truth is he worked hand-in-hand with the business lobbyists to deliver a huge corporate tax cut that hasn’t stimulated the economy, nor led to further investment.
http://www.wral.com/editorial-tillis-transformed-north-carolina-is-rosy-fantasy/17005779/