"Deputy Secretary of Health and Human Services Jim O’Neill is expected to serve as acting director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, according to an administration official and another person familiar with the matter."
"A Trump appointee has proposed rewriting a measure that requires companies to clean up “forever chemicals,” documents show. The new version would shift costs from polluters."
A war on the facts behind climate change — and on the actions to address it — is well underway in the second Trump administration. The new WatchDog Opinion column takes the measure of the battlefront, eyeing key examples of the political onslaught, including a concerted effort to eradicate the very term itself. Regulations killed, research discredited, speech censored and more.
"In the 20 years since Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, hurricane scientists have made great strides toward understanding how climate change influences tropical cyclones, at the same time as they have vastly improved hurricane forecasting. Better forecasts, in turn, save the country billions every time a storm makes landfall, according to a 2024 analysis published in the National Bureau of Economic Research."
"U.S. parks and museums are becoming the latest battleground in the nation’s culture wars as President Trump seeks changes to the way national parks and the Smithsonian tell the story of America."
"From space, NASA collects data that’s crucial for public health. Potential cuts could threaten that work."
"The president has pledged to combat transnational drug organizations. Yet these groups make vast sums from environmental crimes, and his administration has gutted personnel and programs that targeted them, a new report shows."
"The Trump administration on Wednesday announced it is opening an investigation into the California Environmental Protection Agency, including the powerful California Air Resources Board, over potentially discriminatory employment practices."
"A coalition of environmental groups is embroiled in a year-long fight with an Alliant Energy subsidiary over its discharge of groundwater possibly contaminated with coal combustion residuals."
"The Trump administration on Wednesday took formal steps to rescind a decades-old rule that protects 58.5 million acres of wild areas in national forests, including 4.4 million acres in California."
