"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."
"On Tuesday evening, with the federal government on the brink of a shutdown, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum took to social media to tout the agency’s deployment of autonomous lawnmowers on the National Mall and at several other National Park sites."
"Researchers across the United States and the world who raced to protect climate data, public reports and other information from the Trump administration’s budget cuts, firings and scrubbing of federal websites are launching their own climate information portals."
"Federal agents grabbed and shoved journalists in a hallway outside a New York City immigration court on Tuesday, sending one to the hospital in the latest clash between authorities enforcing President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown and members of the public seeking to observe and document their actions."
"EPA is trying to complete an agencywide restructuring effort while also weakening marquee regulations in October and November. Now it might have to do that in the midst of a government shutdown."
"A federal judge this week blocked the Trump administration from conditioning disaster and security funds for states on their immigration policies."
Before giving summer its send-off, consider that heat kills more people in the U.S. annually than any other weather-related disaster. Phoenix journalist Katherine Davis-Young is well acquainted with this human toll. Drawing on her own reporting experience, she looks at how to cover extreme heat in your community. Pro tip: Don’t wait until next summer to familiarize yourself with vulnerable communities and investigate local mitigation policies.
