"President Donald Trump’s effort to put coal miners back to work stumbled in most coal producing states last year, even as overall employment in the downtrodden sector grew modestly, according to preliminary government data obtained by Reuters."

"In a surprise statement undercutting Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke’s announcement last week that he would exempt Florida from President Trump’s offshore drilling plan, a senior Interior Department official said Friday that Florida’s coastal waters had not been excluded after all."

"Governors of states along the Atlantic and Pacific coasts desperately want the Trump administration to whisper the same magic words to them that it whispered to Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R), who learned from Interior Department Secretary Ryan Zinke that the Sunshine State was being dropped from the president’s proposal to open 90 percent of the outer continental shelf to oil drilling."

"A House subcommittee hearing [Thursday] revealed bipartisan confusion about the leadership, priorities and funding of U.S. EPA's program for cleaning up the nation's most polluted tracts."

"Council on Environmental Quality nominee Kathleen Hartnett White, one of the White House's most controversial staffing choices, may be stuck in the Senate."

"The Environmental Protection Agency’s operations will continue through next week even if government funding expires at midnight, Administrator Scott Pruitt informed agency employees in a message Friday."

"As a Friday deadline for a government shutdown approached, the Trump administration began setting plans in motion to halt scores of federal functions — even as it scrambled to keep hundreds of national parks and monuments open to the public to minimize anger over the disruption of services."

"While top-level science positions remain vacant, scientific advisory panels have been quietly diminished, disbanded or stacked with industry scientists."

"A former Heartland Institute director faced charges for violating a female subordinate’s restraining order. An official at the think tank came to his defense."

"As a photographer for the Department of Energy, Simon Edelman regularly attended meetings with Secretary Rick Perry and snapped pictures for official purposes."