"Interior Department staffers were optimistic after Doug Burgum was confirmed to lead the agency in 2025... . But since he took over at Interior last year, that hope has been replaced by confusion and concern that the agency is poorly run, has devolved into secrecy and has lost thousands of the staff needed to manage the national park systems and millions of acres of public lands."
"Two Senate Democrats introduced a bill Monday to set cybersecurity standards for water utilities — something Republicans and industry have long fought."
"Donald Trump has signed an executive order with plans for sweeping changes to the childhood vaccination schedule that attempts to override the authority of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)."
"President Trump has nominated a former White House official and Project 2025 author to be the Interior Department’s internal watchdog, a move that critics say could hurt the integrity of the office’s investigations."
"The data center capital of the world is shifting more transmission costs onto the energy-hungry sector." "The decision is expected to shift hundreds of millions of dollars in transmission costs away from the public."
"Trump has lashed out at U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro after she dropped vandalism cases and blamed damage at the pool on rushed and flawed work by a contractor."
"The Senate on Wednesday voted mainly along party lines to confirm Erica Schwartz to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The vote ends months of leadership uncertainty at the nation’s premier public health agency but leaves unresolved the central question that dominated her confirmation process: Will she preserve the agency’s scientific independence under Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.?"
"In 2023, the Environmental Protection Agency under the Biden administration proposed creating stronger cybersecurity guidelines to better safeguard the nation’s water supply from hackers. ... The E.P.A. rescinded the order, however, after Republican-led states and industry groups sued to block its enforcement."
"Police from five Amazon countries have arrested hundreds of people and seized timber, minerals and thousands of livestock in one of the largest coordinated crackdowns on environmental crime ever carried out in the world’s largest rainforest."
