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The Department of Justice announced Thursday that it had dropped a requirement that Harley-Davidson spend $3 million to fight air pollution as part of a settlement reached with the Obama administration.

The Milwaukee-based company will remain responsible for $12 million in fines for selling illegal Screamin' Eagle motorcycle tuners. But it will no longer be compelled to pay $3 million to an American Lung Association project promoting cleaner-burning cook stoves, according to the notice from the Justice Department.

Certain new developments led the United States and the defendant to agree to revise the consent decree in this manner, the announcement said. The original consent decree would have required defendants to pay a non-governmental third-party organization to carry out the mitigation project. Questions exist as to whether this mitigation project is consistent with the new policy.

It was the first time the Justice Department had put into place a Trump administration policy overturning Obama-era penalties intended to offer redress such as funding an antipollution initiative.

The settlement agreement withHarley-Davidson dates from August 2016and involves the manufacture and sale of around 340,000 illegalmotorcycle tuners.

The devices generate a higher amount of air pollutants. In addition, the company had alsoproduced andcommercialized over12,000 motorcycles without certification from the Environmental Protection Agency.

Under the agreement with the EPA, Harley-Davidson agreed to halt the selling of the engine super tuners, buy them back and destroy them, as well as cover a penalty for violating air pollution laws and sell only models of these devices that are certified to meet Clean Air Act emissions standards, a statement from the EPAsaid at the time.

Obama administration officials said it was a landmark enforcement action.

Given Harley-Davidsons prominence in the industry, this is a very significant step toward our goal of stopping the sale of illegal aftermarket defeat devices that cause harmful pollution on our roads and in our communities, Assistant Attorney General John C. Cruden, head of the Justice Departments Environment and Natural Resources Division, said in a statement in August 2016.

Anyone else who manufactures, sells, or installs these types of illegal products should take heed of Harley-Davidsons corrective actions and immediately stop violating the law.

Harley-Davidson also agreed to pay an additional $3 million to the American Lung Association for a project to replace conventional wood stoves with cleaner-burning stoves in northeastern communities.

Thursdays decision reverses an Obama administration practice of having banks and companies donate money to outside groups as part of settlement agreements with the federal government.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced the policy last month.

When the federal government settles a case against a corporate wrongdoer, any settlement funds should go first to the victims and then to the American people not to bankroll third-party special interest groups or the political friends of whoever is in power, Sessions said in a statement.

But Eric Schaeffer, executive director of the Environmental Integrity Project and former director of the EPAs Office of Civil Enforcement, said such third-party payments were justified.

Once these companies are caught, you cant turn the clock back to undo the damage theyve done to public health or the environment, so getting part of the settlement to support actions to reduce that damage going forward helps to make the environment whole, which isnt accomplished just by paying penalties or returning to compliance, he said in an interview.

The American Lung Association said it was not informed in advance of the decision and would be forced to drop the program.

The Justice Department and Harley-Davidson declined further comment.

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Rarely has a president taken office so focused on undoing his predecessors works as Donald Trump. Six months in, he has little to show.

Monday brought twin blows. Not only did the Affordable Care Act survive another Republican repeal effort, maintaining President Obamas signature domestic achievement, but Trump was forced to certify that Iran continues to comply with the nuclear deal that was the biggest foreign policy accomplishment of Obamas second term.

Beyond those two headlines, Obamas program to shield some 750,000 so-called Dreamers from deportation continues intact, much to the frustration of some of Trumps most ardent backers. The tax hikes on upper-income earners which were among the hardest-won battles of Obamas first term remain in effect. U.S. relations with Cuba remain open, following Obamas normalization policy, despite Trumps public show last month of tightening some travel and trade restrictions. And the sharp increases in U.S. use of solar, wind and other forms of renewable energy, largely at the expense of coal, continues, Trumps rhetoric notwithstanding.

None of that means Trump has failed. Halfway through his first year, Trump has achieved some of his goals, although his repeated boast that he has signed more bills and Im talking about through the legislature than any president, ever, is untrue no matter how one counts.

His announcement that the U.S. will withdraw from the Paris climate accord in 2020 has been the best known part of a concerted administration effort to roll back Obama-era environmental initiatives.

And even before his election, Trumps campaign against trade agreements roused opposition that helped kill Obamas proposed 12-nation Pacific trade pact and slow the expansion of global trade deals. Trump formally withdrew the U.S. from the by-then-moribund Trans-Pacific Partnership on his first workday after his inauguration.

But Trumps unusual concentration on repealing what his predecessor did, rather than putting forward initiatives of his own, has also hampered his effectiveness to a remarkable degree.

One of the truisms of American government as Trump is now learning to his dismay is that taking away a benefit is generally harder than starting something new.

Thats one reason why presidents typically prefer to push their own agendas, rather than focus to the extent Trump has on uprooting their predecessors actions.

Presidents Eisenhower and Nixon did not, for example, undo the New Deal or Great Society programs of, respectively, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Lyndon B. Johnson. President Reagan moved quickly to repeal the Jimmy Carter administrations regulations on oil and natural gas production. But his administrations chief focus was on its own plans for tax cuts and a military buildup.

President Clinton devoted his first couple of years in office to winning a tax increase on high-income Americans, a healthcare plan which failed, the North American Free Trade Agreement (another Trump target, as it happens) and two major gun control measures. George W. Bushs first year seemed set to be built around tax cuts and his No Child Left Behind school reform plan until the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks redefined his presidency. Obamas opening year centered on efforts to recover from an economic crisis, re-regulate Wall Street and, of course, pass what became the Affordable Care Act.

Trumps campaign did feature elements of what could form the basis of a distinctive first-year agenda. He talked about a massive plan to rebuild the nations roads, bridges and airports. He called for wholesale renegotiation of trade agreements. He advocated a sharp reduction in the number of legal immigrants allowed into the country. He endorsed a multibillion-dollar plan to give tax money to families to pay tuition for private or religious schools. And he touted a complete rewrite of the tax code, along with deep tax cuts.

He has not delivered concrete proposals on any of those ideas.

In part, that failure to follow through on those ideas stems from the reality that each of them, with the possible exception of tax reform, deeply divides the GOP. Some of Trumps proposals, such as those on trade, divide his own administration. Whether Trumps ideas on taxes fit those of his party remains unknown because -- as with health insurance he has never specified what he has in mind.

Compounding the problem of a divided party is Trumps clear lack of interest in developing policy and his slowness in choosing people for top government jobs. Together, those deficits have left his administration hamstrung in efforts to define an agenda of its own. By default, thats left Trump with the agenda the Republicans developed during the Obama years one built around opposition to the party then in the White House.

The administrations weakness on policy advocacy has been glaring over the last week as the effort to repeal and replace Obamacare dangled in the Senate. Trump made no concerted effort to win over public opinion no extended speeches laying out a case for the Republican bill, no news conference to answer questions about his position.

On his preferred method of communication, Twitter, Trump sent more than 60 messages in the week leading up to the collapse of the GOP Obamacare repeal effort Monday night. Only six concerned healthcare fewer than his tweets about the Womens Open golf tournament that was held at the country club he owns in New Jersey. None of the tweets defended the plans controversial elements; instead they simply demanded that senators act.

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But Friday also marks two years since the conclusion of one of the most successful deals in modern diplomacy -- the negotiation of the Iran nuclear agreement. And this anniversary serves as a reminder of what the United States can achieve through diplomacy and engagement, when the president, the secretary of state, the secretary of defense, and the secretary of energy work together with civil and foreign service officers who are on the front lines of diplomacy around the world.

I was at the State Department when the negotiations began and at the White House when the deal finally passed, and for the months following the negotiation, Washington was focused on a largely partisan battle over the final details of the deal. Still, there was skepticism from members of both parties about whether Iran would hold up their end of the bargain. And a bitter battle was waged by high-powered lobbying groups trying to kill the deal with additional sanctions. It had several near-death experiences.

No one is saying the Iran deal is perfect. Diplomatic negotiations rarely end with a feeling of perfection on either end. Diplomacy includes making concessions that move all sides toward our ultimate goal; in the case of the Iran deal we clearly would have preferred to get additional concessions from the Iranians about ballistic missile development and other activities, but in order to keep our coalition together we had to be focused and deliberate.

As we face an aggressive nuclear weapons state in North Korea today, we know exactly what the consequences are when diplomatic efforts fade away. No administration should invite this most serious threat to Americans and our allies and partners. Vigorous support for the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action or JCPOA (the Iran Nuclear Deal's official name) is the best way to fend off nuclear proliferation in the Middle East.

Politics should not be a driver of decisions on this issue, or on our foreign policy. The JCPOA provides a feasible path forward, for the Trump team, on one of the trickiest international challenges we face.

On this second anniversary of the deal, let us look ahead to where it can take us. In addition to the tangible, quantifiable advances in global secrity made possible by the deal -- the reductions in centrifuges, the limits on the amount of highly enriched uranium permitted to be held in Iran, and the intense inspections regime, for example -- the Iran deal provides opportunities. In particular, opportunities for US leadership in the world as we try to battle terrorism and seek a path forward for Syria without the potential threat of Iran pursuing nuclear weapons or the ensuing arms race in the Middle East. This is an area in which leaders from both parties have said they want to continue to lead the world. Remaining committed to the Iran deal is how we do that.

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Obama's gift to Trump: A lasting deal on Iran's nuclear ...

During a press conference with French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris on Thursday, President Trump fielded a question about the 2016 meeting between his son, Donald Trump Jr., and a Russian lawyer that has ensnared his administration in a new round of controversy.

Trump Jr. released emails this week showing a series of communications with a publicist promising damaging information about Hillary Clinton, that would ostensibly be provided by Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya. Trump Jr. agreed to the meeting and hosted Veselnitskaya for a meeting with him, Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, and Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort at Trump Tower on June 9, 2016. Veselnitskaya allegedly provided no useful information, Trump Jr. said after the controversy erupted this week.

In Paris, Mr. Trump reacted to the meeting, saying he thought "the press made a very big deal over something that really a lot of people would do." He then seemed to blame the Obama administration for allowing Veselnitskaya into the country.

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President Donald Trump and French President Emmanuel Macron took questions from reporters after meeting together in Paris Thursday. Trump elabora...

"Now, the lawyer that went to the meeting, I see that she was in the halls of Congress also," Mr. Trump said. "Somebody said that her visa or her passport to come into the country was approved by [former] Attorney General [Loretta] Lynch. Now, maybe that's wrong. I just heard that a little while ago. I was surprised to hear that."

A spokesman for Lynch, who served as attorney general under President Obama, told CBS News Lynch "does not have any personal knowledge of Ms. Veselnitskaya's travel." The spokesman noted "the State Department issues visas, and the Department of Homeland Security oversees entry to the United States at airports."

Mr. Trump appeared to be referencing reports about Veselnitskaya's efforts to enter the U.S. to represent a Russian client in a New York lawsuit in late 2015. Denied a visa, a frustrated Veselnitskaya was eventually able to secure permission from the Justice Department to enter the country outside the normal visa process under a designation known as "immigration parole," court records show.

In October 2015, Veselnitskaya represented Denis Katsyv in a money laundering suit against his company, Prevezon. The U.S. government had accused Katsyv of using $230 million in stolen funds to buy real estate. Veselnitskaya's application for a visa to travel to the U.S. to work on the case was denied, she said in a later court filing.

Instead, the Department of Justice granted Katsyv and Veselnitskaya immigration parole. In later arguments before a federal judge, a government attorney described immigration parole as "a discretionary act that the statute allows the attorney general to do in extraordinary circumstances."

In this photo taken on Tue., Nov. 8, 2016, Kremlin-linked lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya speaks to a journalist in Moscow, Russia.

AP

The U.S. attorney's office for the Southern District of New York granted Veselnitskaya immigration parole in October 2015, setting an expiration date of January 7, 2016, DOJ attorneys later told the court. On January 4, Veselnitskaya's request to extend her parole was denied, according to a declaration filed in U.S. District Court on January 5. In that filing, Veselnitskaya asked the judge to allow her to remain in the U.S. to defend Katsyv. She added she had "been harassed by the Government despite being paroled into the United States" when trying to return from a trip to London that November.

On January 6, 2016, Judge Thomas P. Griesa of the Southern District of New York heard arguments over Veselnitskaya's request to remain in the U.S. According to a court transcript, he asked the government's attorney, Paul Monteleoni, if the Justice Department would agree to grant a one-week extension of Veselnitskaya's immigration parole status. Monteleoni replied that he did not "have the final say but I will certainly pass the request along to those in the government who do, and I think for an extension of that length I'm optimistic."

It is unclear under whether the DOJ granted Veselnitskaya another extension to continue her work in the U.S., but records of the case make no further mention of an extension being granted beyond January 14, 2016.

The Justice Department did not immediately respond to questions about whether Veselnitskaya was granted immigration parole after January 14 and, if not, how she was permitted entrance to the U.S. for the meeting in Trump Tower.

Nearly six months later, on June 7, 2016, Donald Trump Jr. received an email from publicist Rob Goldstone that said, "The Russian government attorney who is flying over from Moscow for this Thursday," June 9, when Veselnitskaya met with Trump Jr., Manafort and Kushner in Trump Tower. Requesting the meeting be pushed back, Goldstone mentioned that "the Russian attorney" would be in court until 3 p.m. on June 9.

The emails suggest Veselnitskaya, who does not speak or read English, returned to Moscow sometime after her immigration parole status expired in January.

Days after the meeting in Trump Tower, Veselnitskaya traveled to Washington, where she attended a screening of a film decrying the Magnitsky Act, the 2012 law allowing sanctions against individual Russians suspected of human rights abuses. Veselnitskaya has been one of the foremost Russian nationals lobbying for repeal of the bill, named after Sergei Magnitsky, who was allegedly killed in custody after exposing the corruption at the heart of the Katsyv case.

The federal government settled its case against Katsyv four months after Mr. Trump entered office.

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The Trump administration is accelerating plans to jettison hundreds of regulations spanning the entire government, but the process is off to a slow start and risks failing to match the White House's lofty goals for deregulation.

On Thursday, the White House's Office of Management and Budget is planning to release a list of rules it plans to weaken or eliminate. The list will note that 469 proposals that were in the works during the Obama administration have been scrapped, and another 391 have been slowed. The administration is not releasing a full list of which regulations it's targeting until Thursday, but they willrun the gamut from significant policy measures to minorprocedural measures, saidNeomi Rao, who heads the White Houses Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs.

Proposals that are being scrapped are expected to be listed as inactive in the White House release.

Its really the beginning of fundamental regulatory reform and where were going with regulations, Rao said.

OIRA is essentially the regulatory clearinghouse for the White House, with any new regulation coming to it first before it can be issued.

Thelist will bepart of a semiannual report onthe entire governments regulatory agenda. Thursday will be the first edition of the report issued under President Trump.

[Meet Neomi Rao: Trump's rules czar]

Trump has said federal regulations are harming businesses and making it hard for them to hire and grow, and his advisers say cutting back on rules is a central part of his agenda. But some of the rules that he is moving to eliminate are ones the Obama administration pursued to boost consumer and environmental protection.

Trump has promised to jettison 80 percent of all federal regulations, a vow that likely means eliminating many thousands of existing policies across the federal government.

The White Houses list of proposed steps to deregulate will fall far short of that, but Rao said the process is expected to intensify even further later this year. Rao said federal agencies are more accustomed to adding new regulations and not stripping regulations away, and this new process is taking time to adopt.

She said she has asked OMB officials how many federal regulations there are and was told that it was impossible to get a precise number. Many regulations are required by federal law and cant be unilaterally removed by the White House or regulators, but Trump and Congress have worked together to removed a number of regulations so far through a process authorized by the Congressional Review Act.

These deregulation moves by Congress and Trump, among other things, rolled back a gun safety rule and made it harder for the Federal Communications Commission to block Internet service providers from selling customer data.

Still, even after the release of the updated list on Thursday, it will be difficult to ascertain all of the regulations that are being pulled back. The updated agenda will have 1,732 regulations that are in the works either short term or long term a 20 percent reduction from the end of the Obama administration. But some of those regulatory moves could be efforts to weaken existing rules.

Part of this is a reflection that the process is much more complicated to eliminate rules than Trump suggested it would be during his presidential campaign, but he seems to be changing the process, albeit slowly.

It's not easy, said Ted Gayer, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. It's not nearly as easy as they thought coming in. I think Trump and his senior advisers thought, 'Well, hell, well just delete some regulations.' It's not that easy. They are grasping and learning the process by which they can gum up regulations.

Rao joined the White House from George Mason University, where she was a law professor who has called for abolishing the independence of federal agencies and subjecting regulations to White House review.

Trump has called for agencies to eliminate two regulations for every new one they plan to propose, but so far the agencies have far outpaced this standard. An OMB official said that in the past five months, agencies have sought to eliminate about 18 rules for every new one.

OMB provided a small list of regulations that the White House is moving to rewrite or eliminate. They include the Bureau of Land Managements plan to repeal a 2015 rule that regulates hydraulic fracturing and an Environmental Protection Agency plan to regulate oil and gas development in parts of Utah.

Other deregulatory steps they plan to take include streamlining the Labor Departments approval process for new apprenticeship programs and making it easier for rail companies to use different kinds of equipment as long as they meetpublic safety rules.

Trump has also said the federal government should do more to streamline the permitting process for development, as he believes this is causing big delays in construction and building.

Rao said they will put out a more comprehensive list of regulations they are looking to eliminate in a few months as they expect to pick up steam. Getting rid of rules, or weakening rules, must follow legal procedures that takes time.

You are going to see a rollback of regulations, Rao said. What the magnitude is Im not sure what that percentage is. Its pretty hard to say.

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