"The Department of the Interior spent more than $150 million on administrative leave for employees working in the secretary’s office last year."

"Heat and drought have diminished harvests in some of the biggest wheat-producing countries, including the United States, which is expected to have its worst wheat harvest in a half-century, spiking prices. Poor countries that agreed to buy American wheat under the threat of Trump tariffs could be stuck paying abnormally high prices."

"On a spring morning so blustery that the National Weather Service issued a small craft advisory, a Samish Indian Nation research boat, called the Chinook (Yómech), set out from Anacortes, Washington, just east of the San Juan Islands."

"August though it is, there’s still at least one good book left of summer. So this month’s post offers 12 possible choices for your final summer read: six non-fiction and six fiction."

"Long after sunset, Motoaki Iijima’s illuminated greenhouse north of Tokyo glows like a lantern as the flower farmer harvests pink and orange gerberas, avoiding a daytime sun fierce enough to be deadly."

"The Trump administration is ending summertime smog restrictions on gasoline early this year in a bid to offer relief for high prices at the pump."

"The Trump administration has taken a series of extraordinary steps to attack California’s position as a national leader in environmental protection, enlisting at least a half-dozen federal agencies to undermine the state’s efforts to pivot away from fossil fuels."

"More than 40 million people in the United States and Canada depend on the Great Lakes for drinking water. Each glass of treated lake water is laden with tiny bits of plastic — microplastics — made of toxic chemicals linked to cancer and other diseases. Also contaminated are fish, staples of Midwestern fish fries and fish boils, and an important part of the diet of Indigenous tribes, certain immigrant populations and communities of color."

"More governors are shifting their stances or taking more steps to squeeze data centers as the midterm elections near and public opinion sours on the energy-hungry behemoths that tech giants and developers are building to fuel artificial intelligence products and cloud computing. The backlash to the massive server warehouses is enveloping races for governor in some of the nation’s biggest states and presidential battlegrounds."

"The Trump administration has hit the brakes on its plan to roll back a Fish and Wildlife Service wetland conservation policy following pushback from prominent Republicans and tens of thousands of duck hunters."