"The chorus of experts issuing warnings include Republican lawmakers, former Trump officials and civil servants who worked under GOP and Democratic presidents."
"Retired coal miner Stanley “Goose” Stewart questions whether it’s safe for anyone to work in the industry right now. The Department of Government Efficiency, created by President Donald Trump and run by Elon Musk, has been targeting federal agencies for spending cuts. That includes terminating leases for three dozen offices in the Mine Safety and Health Administration, the agency responsible for enforcing mine safety laws."
"When Milwaukee officials discovered in January that lead paint in school buildings had poisoned kids, they called the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention." "“The people who were answering our questions are just gone,” City Health Commissioner Michael Totoraitis said in an interview after the firings Tuesday at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention."
"After Trump administration job cuts, nearly half of National Weather Service forecast offices have 20% vacancy rates — twice that of just a decade ago — as severe weather chugs across the nation’s heartland, according to data obtained by The Associated Press."
"Rivers rose and flooding worsened Sunday across the U.S. South and Midwest, threatening communities already waterlogged and badly damaged by days of heavy rain and wind that killed at least 18 people."
"The Trump administration is quietly carrying out a plan that aims to kill hundreds of bans on highly toxic PFAS “forever chemicals” and other dangerous compounds in consumer goods. The bans, largely at the state level, touch most facets of daily life, prohibiting everything from bisphenol in children’s products to mercury in personal care products to PFAS in food packaging and clothing."
"Two chemical industry groups are asking President Trump for a complete exemption to free their factories from new limits on hazardous air pollution."
The Potomac is one of the most prominent rivers in the United States, a defining ecological feature of Washington, D.C., at the same time it reveals the city’s history of racial inequality and disenfranchisement. Writer, historian, educator and herbalist Charlotte Taylor Fryar recounts that tale in her ambitious “Potomac Fever,” reviewed in the latest BookShelf by contributing editor Jennifer Weeks, herself a Washington native.
"The EPA’s slashing of more than $1 billion in grant funding has hit hard in Western communities that have felt climate impacts from flooding, wildfire smoke and melting permafrost."
"House Democratic leaders across several panels are asking the Department of Energy’s internal watchdog to probe potential cuts of climate-related programs."
