Environmental Politics

"Sen. Lisa Murkowski said today that a tense phone conversation with President Trump earlier this week led to yesterday's call from Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, who reportedly told both Alaska GOP senators that the Energy and Natural Resources chairwoman's vote against the motion to proceed to the health care debate would influence the administration's resource development policies in the Last Frontier State."

"David Schnare, who resigned from U.S. EPA earlier this year under a cloud of controversy, is faulting Administrator Scott Pruitt over his leadership of the agency."

"Ryan Zinke, a former member of the Navy SEALs and lifelong Montana outdoorsman who now heads the Interior Department, loves to compare himself to Theodore Roosevelt, the father of American conservation."

"U.S. solar companies are snapping up cheap imported solar panels ahead of a trade decision by the Trump administration that could drive up costs and cloud the fortunes of one of the economy's brightest stars."

"Lawmakers have proposed dozens of energy and environmental amendments to a House spending package due on the floor this week, which could force votes on topics ranging from climate change to lightbulb efficiency."

"The House easily passed bipartisan legislation on Tuesday to expand sanctions on Russia and limit the Trump administration's ability to lift them. The legislation comes after lawmakers addressed a series of concerns oil and gas companies raised about the package, which they said would limit the extent to which American and Russian energy firms could interact."

"A new report shows through documents and testimony how utilities researched climate change and determined in the 1970s that it could force a shift away from coal."

"In a call to rescind an Obama-era regulation governing hydraulic fracturing on public lands, the Bureau of Land Management is calling for public input on how best to rely on "pre-existing authorities" to manage unconventional drilling."

"Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt vowed Tuesday to cut through bureaucratic red tape that has slowed the cleanup of toxic Superfund sites and follow a task force’s recommendations to act more boldly in holding companies responsible for past contamination."