House Dems Seek GAO Probe On Trump’s Disaster Declarations After Denials
"A pair of House Democrats is asking a congressional watchdog to probe the Trump administration’s disaster declarations after high-profile denials of disaster aid requests."

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"A pair of House Democrats is asking a congressional watchdog to probe the Trump administration’s disaster declarations after high-profile denials of disaster aid requests."
"National Park Service officials repeatedly raised legal and environmental concerns over the Trump administration’s plan to lease public parkland, including the site of a professional tennis tournament, to a private operator widely expected to be the tournament’s operator, according to records reviewed by The Washington Post."
"Environmental activist Erin Brockovich has a new mission: bringing more transparency to data center construction and the impact those data centers have on nearby communities. Brockovich — who was famously played by Julia Roberts in a film dramatizing her legal case against Pacific Gas & Electric — recently launched a website with a map of data centers across the United States."
"Lax regulations and mismanaged applications in the US are to blame for the tons of nitrogen fertilizer that runs off into waterways each year and contributes to water and air pollution, cancer and environmental damage, according to a report released Monday."
"The Trump administration is dismantling a $368 million deep-ocean observation system that was put in place a decade ago to monitor coastal environments, marine ecosystems and powerful currents that affect the global climate."
"With a puny snowpack in the Western mountains and a widespread drought, the nation is a tinderbox. A reorganization of federal firefighting efforts and the departure of many staff qualified to join the fight are heightening concern."
"Critics are outraged that the Trump administration is moving to roll back chemical safety rules even as the U.S. faces deadly industrial chemical incidents."
"The Defense Department has designated its press office a classified space and banned journalists from accessing it to meet with the public affairs officers who have traditionally answered their questions." "The change creates a new barrier compared with previous administrations, under which the office was an open room where reporters could stop by the desks of military public affairs officials without escorts."
"Fewer than 100 Rice’s whales remain on Earth. Here’s what they sound like when they communicate. They live only in the Gulf of Mexico, where air guns firing sonic blasts are used to survey the ocean floor for oil and gas. The low frequency of the blasts overlaps with the frequency of the calls of the whales."
"Federal regulators are giving chemical manufacturers and petroleum refiners more time to provide data on a group of chemicals that have been linked to human health harms as officials consider tighter regulations."
"In the latest action to undo Biden-era regulations on climate change, the Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday proposed repealing a rule that requires some public companies to report their greenhouse gas emissions and the risks they face from global warming."
"Executive orders limiting off-road vehicle access to federal lands signed decades ago by Presidents Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter have been revoked by President Donald Trump, drawing concerns over possible impacts to Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Forest Service lands and perhaps some in the National Park System."
"President Donald Trump said new regulatory rollbacks on chemical refrigerants will reduce the prices consumers pay for groceries and will not impact the environment. However, U.S. chemical, refrigeration and air-conditioning manufacturers said the changes will raise prices and his administration’s own projections show that greenhouse gas pollution will increase."
"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.
First, the good news: A new analysis of global wildfire activity in 2025 shows that the year had the second-lowest area burned since 2002.
But at the same time, the study also revealed that the world experienced some of the most destructive and deadly fire events in recent history, including the catastrophic Los Angeles fires of January 2025 that killed dozens and burned over 12,000 homes.
"As Staci Hartwell sees it, her community has much more to lose than to gain from the development of a massive data center."