"Karen Budd-Falen, a top official at the Department of the Interior, has financial ties to the controversial Thacker Pass lithium mine in northern Nevada — a project that the Trump administration worked to fast-track during its first term. In recent months, the administration took an equity stake in the mine and the mine’s parent company."
"A proposed critical minerals mine in southern Arizona that was the first added to a federal permitting process designed to be quicker and more transparent has reported water with levels exceeding the state’s regulatory limits of a mineral that can damage the heart, lungs, stomach and eyes."
"The Trump administration has removed Martin Luther King Jr. Day and Juneteenth from next year's calendar of entrance fee-free days for national parks and added President Trump's birthday to the list, according to the National Park Service, as the administration continues to push back against a reckoning of the country's racist history on federal lands."
"The National Park Service has ordered park rangers to remove books and retail items at park gifts shops that run afoul of President Donald Trump’s edicts targeting diversity and equity across the federal government, according to a recent memo viewed by POLITICO’s E&E News."
Explore our 10th annual Journalists’ Guide to Environment + Energy, as we scour the beat to identify 15 top stories to put on your radar for 2026. Our updated format for the special report provides a quick read and a broad scope — with insights on climate change and environmental justice, bird and insect declines, data centers and deep sea mining, deregulation and PFAS and much more. Get started here.
When writer Gulnaz Khan saw how global warming drove both natural loss and spiritual breaks for surrounding human communities, it started her on a PBS documentary series exploring sacred sites around the world threatened by climate change. But she also undertook another odyssey, one from writer to visual storyteller. What she learned on her journey from text to screen, in the new EJ InSight column.
"A geothermal startup said Thursday that it has hit gold in Nevada — metaphorically speaking. Zanskar, which uses AI to find hidden geothermal resources deep underground, says that it has identified a new commercially viable site for a potential power plant. The discovery, the company claims, is the first of its kind made by the industry in decades."
"After a long delay, the Interior Department’s Office of Government Ethics last week provided Public Domain the financial disclosure of Karen Budd-Falen, a high-ranking Trump appointee at DOI." "Karen Budd-Falen, a self-described “cowboy lawyer," owns ranch operations and real estate rentals. Her family has also had sizable investments in oil companies."
"Congressional lawmakers on Thursday voted to repeal a Biden-era policy that limited the amount of land in an Alaska wildlife refuge that could be leased for oil and gas development. The U.S. Senate voted 49-45 to approve a resolution that revokes the Interior Department's 2024 rule governing energy development on the 1.56-million-acre Coastal Plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge."
"The Trump administration says it will reconsider aspects of a rule that aims to protect miners from exposure to cancer-causing silica dust on the job."
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