New Jersey announced eight new lawsuits and other action against what it says are companies and individuals who’ve failed to clean up pollutants at sites across the state, the attorney general and top environmental official said Thursday.

The suits are aimed at forcing the remediation of pollutants such as gasoline and other chemicals that seeped into the ground, Attorney General Matthew Platkin and Environmental Protection Commissioner Shawn LaTourette said in a statement.

The sites include former gas stations, chemical manufacturers and automotive mechanics across the state, from Camden and Washington Township in southern New Jersey to Newark and West Milford in the north.

‘Through these actions, we are sending a clear message: whether you pollute our air, our soil, or our water, we will hold you accountable. Our communities deserve no less,’ Platkin said in a statement.

Alongside the lawsuits, brought in state Superior Court, the officials said they issued a directive to a former industrial manufacturer located in Newark requiring it clean up volatile chemicals that seeped into the ground.

The lawsuits come as part of the state’s efforts under Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy to rein in pollution in communities that have historically borne the brunt of contamination.

Since the governor took office in 2018, the attorney general’s office has filed some 56 so-called environmental justice suits, yielding $19 million in judgments, according to Platkin.

The lawyer for the IRS whistleblower alleging the Biden administration is mishandling the federal investigation into Hunter Biden told Fox News on Thursday that his client is ‘not a political person’ and does not have a ‘political agenda,’ but does have documents to support his allegations that he hopes to bring to both congressional Democrats and Republicans.

Mark Lytle, the whistleblower’s attorney, sat down for an interview with Fox News’ Bret Baier on ‘Special Report’ on Thursday evening, explaining his client’s allegations.

‘My client wants to come forward. He is not a political person, he is not a social media person, he is not coming here with a political agenda,’ Lytle said, adding that he has ‘been at the IRS for more than 10 years’ as a special agent, who is ‘trusted with international investigations.’ 

‘My client is a career law enforcement officer who is respected within the IRS and he teaches other agents how to properly do investigations,’ Lytle continued. ‘He knows when to spot when investigative steps aren’t done in a traditional way to get to the truth.’

Lytle added: ‘He has spotted and observed things that are done differently in this particular matter…and he wants to talk about them and he believes that they were influenced by politics.’

Hunter Biden’s attorney, Chris Clark, earlier Thursday said it appears Lytle’s client ‘has committed a crime.’

‘It is a felony for an IRS agent to improperly disclose information about an ongoing tax investigation,’ Clark said in a statement. ‘The IRS has incredible power, and abusing that power by targeting, embarrassing, or disclosing information about a private citizen’s tax matters undermines Americans’ faith in the federal government.’

Clark added: ‘Unfortunately, that is what has happened and is happening here in an attempt to harm my client.’

When asked for reaction, Lyle said it was ‘unfortunate that that statement was made.’

‘My client wrestled with whether or not to come forward,’ Lytle said, adding he had ‘sleepless nights. He decided he could not live with himself if he stayed quiet and said nothing.’ 

Lytle said his client ‘knows he is going to be attacked,’ but still ‘wants to come forward and tell the truth,’ and instructed his legal team to ‘reach out to both Republicans and Democrats on the Hill.’ 

Further, Lytle said Clark’s statement doesn’t ‘help whistleblowers as a whole,’ even as Congress has whistleblower programs in place to ‘shine a light’ on misconduct.

Lytle said he viewed Clark’s statement as threatening, and stressed it is ‘unfortunate that that statement was made.’ 

Meanwhile, Lytle said he and his client have received outreach from congressional committees, and that they are in a ‘positive’ dialogue regarding ‘what next steps to take.’ 

Lytle stressed, though, that his client made clear that he wanted to deliver the information to Congress in front of a bipartisan panel.

‘One of the things my client insists on is that he only come in to talk to both Democrats and Republicans,’ Lytle said. ‘And they can all ask him questions and cross-examine him and he has documents that will support what he has to say.’ 

Lytle explained that due to tax secrecy and tax privacy laws, his client cannot even share the information with his legal team.

‘Congress can enable him to do that,’ Lytle said.

Lytle sent a letter Wednesday to top Republicans and Democrats on the House and Senate Judiciary Committees, the Senate Finance Committee, and the House Ways and Means Committee, saying that his client has ‘already made protected disclosures internally at the IRS, through counsel to the U.S. Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, and to the Department of Justice, Office of Inspector General.’

Lytle said the protected disclosures ‘contradict sworn testimony to Congress by a senior political appointee’ and involve ‘failure to mitigate clear conflicts of interest in the ultimate disposition of the case.’

Lytle said his client has also detailed examples of ‘preferential treatment and politics improperly infecting decisions and protocols that would normally be followed by career law enforcement professionals in similar circumstances if the subject were not politically connected.’

Reports have suggested the senior political appointee could be in reference to Attorney General Merrick Garland, and his testimony on Capitol Hill in March — and last year — that stressed that U.S. Attorney for Delaware David Weiss can conduct the Hunter Biden investigation independently.

When pressed by Baier on whether he is referring to Garland, Lytle said he ‘can’t talk specifics about who it was my client is talking about.’

‘But what I can say is a career law enforcement officer, who knows the right way to do an investigation, when he hears a senior politically appointed official at the Department of Justice under sworn testimony say something, and in his mind it is directly contradictory to what he knows is going on with the investigation — what he can prove with documents, he wants to come forward,’ Lytle said.

Lytle’s comments come after the White House on Thursday insisted there is no ‘political interference’ in the Hunter Biden investigation.

‘Since he took office and consistent with his campaign promise that he would restore the independence of the Justice Department when it comes to decision-making in criminal investigations, President Biden has made clear that this matter would be handled independently by the Justice Department, under the leadership of a U.S. Attorney appointed by former President Trump, free from any political interference by the White House,’ White House spokesman Ian Sams told Fox News Digital on Thursday.

‘He has upheld that commitment,’ Sams added.

Hunter Biden has been under federal investigation since 2018. The federal investigation into his ‘tax affairs’ began amid the discovery of suspicious activity reports (SARs) regarding funds from ‘China and other foreign nations.’

In 2020, it became known that the FBI had subpoenaed the laptop purportedly belonging to Hunter Biden in the course of an existing money laundering investigation.

Hunter Biden confirmed the investigation into his ‘tax affairs’ in December 2020, after his father was elected president. The investigation is being led by Trump-appointed Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss.

President Biden is expected to make his bid for a second term as president official next week, according to reports.

Biden, 80, and his team are hoping to make the announcement via campaign video on April 25, which will be the four-year anniversary of his 2020 campaign launch, multiple reports said.

Speculation swirled for months over whether Biden would run for re-election, with his team only saying he ‘intendeds to run,’ but not making any other statements in the affirmative. He said last week, however, that an announcement about his potential candidacy would come ‘relatively soon.’

Biden sent out exclusive invitations to some of his top donors from the 2020 campaign this week, asking them to attend a hastily-planned event at the White House, according to The New York Times.

If he wins re-election, Biden, who is currently the oldest president in U.S. history, would be 86 at the end of his second term in 2029.

The reports come as Biden is struggling in the polls among Democratic voters, nearly half of those in the early primary state of New Hampshire don’t want him to run for re-election.

Biden is currently facing Democratic primary challenges from spiritual guru Marianne Williamson and environmental lawyer Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

He is facing an even more crowded field from the other side of the aisle as Republican candidates continue to line up to challenge former President Donald Trump’s front-runner status for the GOP nomination.

Fox News’ Anders Hagstrom contributed to this report.

Kansas’ Democratic governor on Thursday vetoed Republican legislation aimed at ending gender-affirming care for children and teens, and another, sweeping GOP proposal for preventing transgender people from using bathrooms and other public facilities associated with their gender identities.

Gov. Laura Kelly also vetoed a third GOP bill that specifically would have prevented jails from housing transgender prisoners in units consistent with their gender identities and a fourth measure that would have barred schools from allowing transgender girls from rooming with cisgendered girls, and transgender boys with cisgender boys, on overnight trips.

Her actions highlighted how her Republican-leaning state has become a fiercely contested battleground as GOP lawmakers across the U.S. target LGBTQ+ rights through several hundred proposals. Kelly narrowly won reelection in November, but the Legislature has GOP supermajorities and conservative leaders who’ve made rolling back transgender rights a priority.

The bills on bathrooms, jails and overnight school trips passed earlier this month with the two-thirds majorities needed to override a veto, but the measure on gender-affirming care did not, falling 12 House votes short of a supermajority.

Kelly said in statement on the four vetoes that measures ‘stripping away rights’ would hurt the state’s ability to attract businesses. The vetoes also were in keeping with her promises to block any measure she views as discriminating against LGBTQ+ people.

‘Companies have made it clear that they are not interested in doing business with states that discriminate against workers and their families,’ Kelly said in her statement. ‘I’m focused on the economy. Anyone care to join me?’

At least 14 states with GOP-led legislatures have enacted laws against gender-affirming care for minors, including North Dakota as of Wednesday. At least seven have bathroom laws, mostly focusing on schools. Earlier this month, Kansas lawmakers overrode Kelly’s veto of a ban on female transgender athletes in girls’ and women’s sports, making Kansas among at least 21 states with such a law.

The Kansas bathroom bill would have applied to bathrooms and locker rooms outside schools, as well as to prisons, jails, rape crisis centers and domestic violence shelters. Because it also sought to define ‘sex’ as ‘either male or female, at birth,’ transgender people wouldn’t have been able to change the gender marker on their driver’s license, though a 2019 federal court decree still would have allowed them to change their birth certificates.

Advocates of LGBTQ+ rights see the measure as legally erasing transgender people and denying recognition to non-binary, gender fluid or gender non-conforming people.

‘I am not going to go back to those days of hiding in the closet,’ Justin Brace, executive director of Transgender Kansas, said during a recent transgender rights rally outside the Statehouse. ‘We are in a fight for our lives, literally.’

GOP conservatives argue that many of their constituents reject the cultural shift toward accepting that people’s gender identities can differ from the sex assigned them a birth; don’t want cisgendered women sharing bathrooms and locker rooms with transgender women; and question gender-affirming care such as puberty-blocking drugs, hormone therapies and surgeries.

‘They’re parents who are saying, ‘My child showed no signs of gender dysphoria until they got to be in middle school, and then they started using social media,’’ Republican state Rep. Susan Humphreys, of Wichita, said during a debate on the gender-affirming care bill, promoting a ‘social contagion’ narrative debunked by multiple studies.

The Kansas measure would have required the state’s medical board to revoke the license of any doctor discovered to have provided such care, and allowed people who received such care as children to sue health care providers later.

Supporters said the bill would not keep transgender youth from receiving counseling or psychiatric therapy. But the measure also applies to ‘causing’ acts that ‘affirm the child’s perception of the child’s sex’ if it differs from their gender assigned at birth.

Treatments for children and teens have been available in the U.S. for more than a decade and are endorsed by major medical associations.

‘It’s one thing to have a family member that’s unaffirming of who you are as a person,’ said Derrick Jordan, a licensed therapist who works with trans youth and directs the Gender and Family Project at New York’s Ackerman Institute for training child and family therapists. ‘It’s a whole other thing to have a system tell you you’re not fully human or you don’t have the same rights as other folks.’

The Kansas bathroom bill borrows language from a proposal from several anti-trans groups. It says ‘important governmental objectives’ of protecting health safety and privacy justify separate public facilities for men and women and applies ‘where biology, safety or privacy’ prompt sex-separation. It defines male and female based on a person’s reproductive anatomy at birth.

Kansas House health committee Chair Brenda Landwehr told colleagues who opposed the bill during a debate that they were telling her that she couldn’t walk into a bathroom and know that only cisgendered women would be there.

‘What about my rights? What about my comfort zone?’ said Landwehr, a Wichita Republican. ‘What about my granddaughters?’

Pennsylvania must minimize its outsized role in polluting the Chesapeake Bay, according to a proposed settlement agreement announced Thursday that would subject the state to increased oversight from federal environmental officials.

The agreement comes after other jurisdictions in the bay’s watershed — Maryland, Virginia, Delaware and the District of Columbia — filed a lawsuit in 2020 arguing Pennsylvania wasn’t pulling its weight in their collective effort to reach a 2025 pollution reduction goal. The states were looking to reduce harmful nutrient and sediment runoff that flows from farms and cities into the Chesapeake.

Environmental groups also filed a similar lawsuit around the same time, and the two were combined. Thursday’s agreement between the plaintiffs and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency would resolve both.

‘The bay is a national treasure and a vital part of Maryland’s identity,’ Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown said on a call with reporters Thursday afternoon. ‘Marylanders deserve a clean, healthy bay … but we can only get so far without the commitment and the effort of all jurisdictions within the bay’s watershed.’

The nation’s largest estuary has been gradually rebounding under a federal cleanup program launched in 1983 that put an end to unbridled pollution, but more recent efforts have been lagging.

In Pennsylvania, the Susquehanna River cuts through the state’s farmland, picking up polluted runoff before pouring into the Chesapeake in Maryland — producing about half of its fresh water supply.

The 2020 litigation arose from an earlier settlement agreement that required the watershed states to each implement a pollution reduction plan by 2025. Pennsylvania largely did not follow through, and federal environmental officials have failed to adequately intervene, according to the lawsuits.

The so-called ‘pollution diet’ sets limits in the Chesapeake for nitrogen and phosphorous, as well as sediment. The nutrient pollution often comes from agricultural fertilizer and livestock waste. It stimulates excessive algae growth that can create low-oxygen dead zones where aquatic animals and plants are unable to survive — bad news for Maryland’s crab industry, oyster harvests and more.

Robert T. Brown, president of the Maryland Watermen’s Association, said the upcoming fish spawning season provides an annual reminder of the myriad values of clean water.

‘This is a major victory for the Chesapeake Bay,’ he said of the proposed settlement.

The agreement, which will undergo a 30-day public comment period before taking effect, provides a mechanism for holding EPA officials accountable if they fail to enforce pollution requirements. It also lays out specific oversight actions — including an annual report examining Pennsylvania’s progress that will be published online — and calls for additional grant funding opportunities to help Pennsylvania make necessary changes. The state has more farmland than others in the watershed, a source of pollution that has proven difficult to address.

Federal officials also agreed to exercise more oversight of other pollution sources in Pennsylvania, such as factories, concentrated livestock operations and sewage treatment plants. That includes identifying and regulating them through an existing EPA permitting process.

However, the agreement avoids asserting a broader definition of the EPA’s oversight role under the Clean Water Act, saying the parties disagree on whether it’s ‘mandatory or discretionary.’

Officials with the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday afternoon.

New York was also a named defendant in the initial litigation, but later dropped from the lawsuit after it adequately amended its pollution reduction plans.

While the litigation was ongoing, Pennsylvania officials took steps to improve their implementation of a pollution reduction plan and obtain adequate funding. Last year, state lawmakers approved $154 million in pandemic-relief funding for a program that would help farmers implement more sustainable practices and prevent nutrients from entering the watershed.

Environmental groups have credited the Biden administration for signing onto the proposed settlement agreement, saying the decision demonstrates a commitment to curbing pollution that was missing under former President Donald Trump.

Despite the optimism, however, the 2025 pollution targets probably won’t be achieved, said Hilary Harp Falk, president of the nonprofit Chesapeake Bay Foundation.

The Chesapeake Bay Clean Water Blueprint, a plan established in 2010 to reduce pollution, has already faced significant challenges and slow progress. In a report earlier this year monitoring the bay’s health, the foundation said polluted runoff was increasing amid inconsistent enforcement from government agencies, new development and climate change, which is causing stronger rainstorms that produce more polluted runoff.

‘While 2025 will be yet another missed deadline, the Blueprint’s goal remains achievable and should remain our north star,’ Falk said in a statement Thursday. ‘Together, we must build on lessons learned and accelerate progress toward a new deadline measured in years — not decades.’

EPA officials said they were unable to comment on the proposed settlement agreement during the 30-day public comment period.

‘The agreement is just one part of EPA’s broader strategy to work with the Bay States and other stakeholders … to restore the Chesapeake Bay,’ the agency said in a statement.

A former CIA official testified that then-Biden campaign senior advisor, now-Secretary of State Antony Blinken ‘played a role in the inception’ of the public statement signed by current and past intelligence officials that claimed the Hunter Biden laptop was part of a Russian disinformation campaign.

Former CIA Deputy Director Michael Morrell testified before the House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees, and revealed that Blinken was ‘the impetus’ of the public statement signed in October 2020 that implied the laptop belonging to Hunter Biden was disinformation.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, and House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Turner, R-Ohio, sent a letter to Blinken Thursday, notifying him that the panels are ‘conducting oversight of federal law-enforcement and intelligence matters within our respective jurisdictions.’

‘We are examining that public statement signed by 51 former intelligence officials that falsely discredited a New York Post story regarding Hunter Biden’s laptop as supposed Russian disinformation,’ they wrote. ‘As part of our oversight, we have learned that you played a role in the inception of this statement while serving as a Biden campaign advisor, and we therefore request your assistance with our oversight.’

In October 2020, weeks before the presidential election, dozens of ex-national security officials signed onto a letter claiming that Hunter’s laptop had ‘all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.’

The former officials included former Obama CIA Director John Brennan, former Obama DNI James Clapper, and former CIA director, then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, among others. 

The lawmakers said that based on Morell’s testimony, it is ‘apparent’ that the Biden campaign ‘played an active role in the origins of the public statement, which had the effect of helping to suppress the Hunter Biden story and preventing American citizens from making a fully informed decision during the 2020 presidential election.’

‘Although the statement’s signatories have an unquestioned right to free speech and free association—which we do not dispute—their reference to their national security credentials lent weight to the story and suggested access to specialized information unavailable to other Americans,’ they wrote.

They added: ‘This concerted effort to minimize and suppress public dissemination of the serious allegations about the Biden family was a grave disservice to all American citizens’ informed participation in our democracy.’

Jordan and Turner notified Blinken that they conducted a transcribed interview with Morell, who signed onto the letter.

‘In his transcribed interview, Morell testified that on or around October 17, 2020 you reached out to him to discuss the Hunter Biden laptop story,’ they wrote. Blinken, at the time, was a senior advisor to the Biden campaign.

‘According to Morell, although your outreach was couched as simply gathering Morell’s reaction to the Post story, it set in motion the events that led to the issuance of the public statement,’ they wrote.

Morell testified that the Biden campaign ‘helped to strategize about the public release of the statement.’

‘Morell further explained that one of his two goals in releasing the statement was to help then-Vice President Biden in the debate and to assist him in winning the election,’ Jordan and Turner wrote.

Morell testified: ‘There were two intents. One intent was to share our concern with the American people that the Russians were playing on this issue; and, two, it was to help Vice President Biden.’ 

Morell was asked why he wanted to help Biden.

‘Because I wanted him to win the election,’ Morell testified.

Jordan and Turner are demanding Blinken to provide material to help them to ‘advance’ their oversight.

They demanded Blinken identify the people he communicated with about drafting the statement; and produce all documents referring to the statement.

They gave Blinken until May 4 at 5:00 p.m. ET.

Fox News first reported the existence of some type of investigation involving Hunter Biden in October 2020, ahead of the last presidential election. It became known then that the FBI had subpoenaed the laptop purportedly belonging to Hunter Biden in the course of an existing money laundering investigation.

Hunter Biden confirmed the investigation into his ‘tax affairs’ in December 2020, after his father was elected president.

Fox News first reported in 2020 that the federal investigation into Hunter Biden’s ‘tax affairs’ began amid the discovery of SARs regarding funds from ‘China and other foreign nations.

The investigation is being led by Trump-appointed Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss. Hunter Biden has been under federal investigation since 2018.