"President Trump sharply reduced the size of two national monuments in Utah on Monday by some two million acres, the largest rollback of federal land protection in the nation’s history."
"Environmental groups being sued by the developer of the Dakota Access pipeline have asked a federal judge to dismiss the lawsuit."
"House and Senate Republicans have inserted language into spending bills aimed at blocking legal challenges to the Trump administration’s effort to repeal a 2015 water protection rule that gave two federal agencies broad leeway in regulating activities that could affect streams and tributaries."
"Carl Portman remembers watching, heartbroken, from Anchorage in 2005 as a Senate effort to allow drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge lost by two votes. Now, 12 years later, another effort to open up the reserve to oil and gas drilling is working its way through Congress. And this time, the political winds have shifted."
"The Missouri Department of Natural Resources has blocked an attempt to rein in emissions from concentrated animal feeding operations in the state."
"[Wednesday] morning, the Environment and Public Works Committee moved through the nominations of Kathleen Hartnett White to be chairwoman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality and Andrew Wheeler to be deputy U.S. EPA administrator. Both passed on party-line votes of 11-10."
"The Trump administration is holding talks on providing nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia — a move that critics say could upend decades of U.S. policy and lead to an arms race in the Middle East."
"Former Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship is running for U.S. Senate as a Republican. Blankenship served one year in federal prison for conspiring to violate federal mine safety standards in the wake of an explosion that killed 29 miners in April 2010."
"The Trump administration on Wednesday unveiled a recovery plan for the endangered Mexican wolf, but environmentalists immediately assailed the program as so deficient it would lead to the demise of one of North America’s most imperiled mammals."
"Senate Republicans may have hit a procedural snag in their bid to open Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling. An arcane budget rule may hinder GOP efforts to include drilling in the tax overhaul legislation."
