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"After days of debate and disagreements, the House Committee on Agriculture on Thursday passed its version of the 2026 Farm Bill, which includes controversial provisions critics say will hamper the ability of states to put in place strict rules for pesticides and animal welfare."
"Scientists and other experts were preparing a first-of-its-kind assessment of the health of nature in the United States when President Trump returned to the White House. He canceled the report. The researchers went ahead and compiled it on their own. This week, they released a 868-page draft for public comment and scientific review."
"At first glance, it looks like nothing more than a charming Spanish-revival, quintessentially Californian home — but this Pacific Palisades rebuild is constructed like a tank."
"A federal judge ruled Tuesday that the Trump administration’s efforts to shut down New York’s congestion pricing program are unlawful."
"Oxy drilled four miles down in Colorado, and did so quickly — a promising development for the geothermal industry."
"Each year around this time, the federal government releases its expectations for new power plant construction. The latest data drop shows clean energy is going to dominate this year, just as it has for many years running. Even as the Trump administration has employed novel and at times legally dubious means to block renewable energy growth, the power sector keeps choosing clean energy again and again — attracted by its low costs, speed to build, and climate and environmental benefits."
"In an effort to quell blowback on data centers, President Donald Trump announced at a White House roundtable on Wednesday the “Ratepayer Protection Pledge,” a set of nonbinding promises that Big Tech companies signed to keep household utility bills from skyrocketing."
"Two Utah Congress members have introduced a resolution that could end protections for Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. Conservation groups worry similar maneuvers on other federal lands will follow."
"West Virginia lawmakers in the Senate passed a bill to weaken drinking water protections by loosening regulations for certain aboveground storage tanks. It is the latest move to weaken the Aboveground Storage Tank Act, passed in 2014 after a chemical leak from Freedom Industries along the Elk River contaminated drinking water for nearly 300,000 West Virginians in the Charleston area."
"Researchers led by the Australian scientist Tim Flannery have made a once-in-a-lifetime discovery: that two charismatic marsupial species that had been thought extinct for 6,000 years are alive in rainforest in remote West Papua."
"No companies bid for the chance to drill in more than 1 million acres of water off Alaska’s Cook Inlet, the Interior Department said Wednesday."
"Syngenta, maker of a controversial pesticide linked to Parkinson’s disease, said on Tuesday that it will stop making its paraquat weed killer by the end of June."
"Climate change’s rising seas may threaten tens of millions more people than scientists and government planners originally thought because of mistaken research assumptions on how high coastal waters already are, a new study said."
"High along the Southwind Nature Trail, the tallgrass prairie waves in all directions, a mix of present-day reality and historical mirage stretching to the horizon much as it did more than 150 years ago." "Today, the vast majority of what was an estimated 140 million to 170 million acres of tallgrass prairie is gone, plowed under by 19th century agricultural sprawl and the development that followed."
"A group of prominent scientists launched an independent autism advisory panel Tuesday over fears that Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has politicized the key federal autism advisory board he oversees."
