"Millions of women and children are at risk of losing food benefits during the shutdown. The USDA just killed the long-running survey that would track the fallout."
"An environmental advocacy group has filed complaints under the Hatch Act against the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Forest Service over what it described as “partisan” messaging blaming Democrats for the ongoing government shutdown."
"A federal judge Thursday temporarily blocked federal agents with the Department of Homeland Security from using riot control weapons against journalists covering protests and immigration enforcement operations in the Chicago area."
When the Trump Energy Department issued a report this summer questioning a central precept of U.S. climate change policy, it kicked off an angry backlash from scientific experts who fear it undermines decades of peer-reviewed research — and the very basis for climate action. Backgrounder scrutinizes the DOE report and the climate skeptics behind it, as well as the furious response.
"Staff shortages, turnover, and new priorities at the Department of Justice are stretching legal staff handling environmental issues and causing unusual delays—even before the government shutdown."
"Agency scientists found that PFNA could cause developmental, liver and reproductive harms. Their final report was ready in mid-April, according to an internal document reviewed by ProPublica, but the Trump administration has yet to release it."
"The Trump administration wasted no time in tapping individuals with ties to fossil fuel industries and right-wing think tanks funded by oil tycoons for key environmental and energy policy positions, according to a new report."
"As the Trump administration cracks down on both environmental policies and progressive activism, the Sunrise Movement, the youth-led climate justice organization that popularized calls for a Green New Deal, is widening its mission to fight authoritarianism."
"On March 1, under a clear sky, hundreds of people flocked to Colorado’s Rocky Mountain National Park—not to picnic but to protest. Two weeks earlier, the National Park Service had fired roughly 1,000 employees."
"The Environmental Protection Agency announced earlier this month that it would stop making polluting companies report their greenhouse gas emissions to it, eliminating a crucial tool the US uses to track emissions and form climate policy. Climate NGOs say their work could help plug some of the data gap, but they and other experts fear the EPA’s work can’t be fully matched."
