The Trump administration has moved aggressively to roll back environmental and energy-related rules, so much so that keeping tabs on all the developments has become a major challenge. To help reporters get the lay of the land, this week's TipSheet has a roundup of more than a dozen regulatory tracking reports. Track the trackers.
"Environmental group the Sierra Club sued the U.S. Energy Department on Monday in hopes of forcing it to reveal the groups it has consulted in conducting an eagerly awaited study on the electricity grid."
"The National Press Club is expressing concern about a reported dust-up this week between a spokesman for U.S. EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt and a journalist in North Dakota."
"When career employees of the Environmental Protection Agency are summoned to a meeting with the agency’s administrator, Scott Pruitt, at agency headquarters, they no longer can count on easy access to the floor where his office is, according to interviews with employees of the federal agency."
"ABC News made an historically large payout to settle a defamation lawsuit earlier this summer, according to a new financial release from the network's parent company Disney and an attorney for the plaintiff."
"The impending release of a key government report on climate change will force President Trump to choose between accepting the conclusions of his administration’s scientists and the demands of his conservative supporters, who remain deeply unconvinced that humans are the cause of the planet’s warming."
"As President Donald Trump touts new oil pipelines and pledges to revive the nation’s struggling coal mines, federal scientists are warning that burning fossil fuels is already driving a steep increase in the United States of heat waves, droughts and floods."
"Staff at the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) have been told to avoid using the term climate change in their work, with the officials instructed to reference 'weather extremes' instead."
"The average temperature in the United States has risen rapidly and drastically since 1980, and recent decades have been the warmest of the past 1,500 years, according to a sweeping federal climate change report awaiting approval by the Trump administration."
August 2, 2017 — The Society of Environmental Journalists joined 20+ press freedom groups to launch the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker, a new website dedicated to documenting press freedom abuses across the United States. The site will serve as a repository for data at a time when journalists in the U.S. are facing hostility, legal charges, assault and other forms of harassment.
