Government

"William Happer, the White House architect of a stalled plan to attack the established science of climate change, is leaving the Trump administration on Friday, according to three people familiar with his plans."

 "President Trump told his staff that the nation’s leading weather forecasting agency needed to correct a statement that contradicted a tweet the president had sent wrongly claiming that Hurricane Dorian threatened Alabama, senior administration officials said."

"Included in the Department of Interior’s decision to decentralize the Washington office that manages the nation’s public lands is a plan to move congressional affairs staff 2,600 miles away to Reno, Nevada."

"The chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee requested a government watchdog investigate additional details in its ongoing probe of the Interior Department’s new public records policy, which allows political appointees to review and potentially withhold documents from release."

"The Interior Department broke federal spending law when it dipped into national park fees to keep its most popular sites operating during this winter’s partial federal shutdown, the Government Accountability Office concluded Thursday."

"The Trump administration is sitting on tens of billions of dollars in unspent recovery money meant to help Americans recover from disasters, leaving people less able to rebound from the effects of Hurricane Dorian and other storms."

"A top Senate appropriator is seeking federal ethics information for former Interior Assistant Secretary for Land and Minerals Management Joe Balash, who recently left the department for a job with a foreign oil and gas company."

"The Cherokee Nation has named its first delegate to the U.S. House of Representatives. Former Obama appointee Kimberly Teehee's nomination was approved by the tribe's council on Thursday. Although the treaty that created this nonvoting position is almost 200 years old, it had never been filled."

"Nearly a century ago, America embarked on a great social experiment in the Pacific Northwest, charging up the Columbia River and erecting dams. ... Now the system is buckling."