"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."
"The New York Times accused the Pentagon in a lawsuit on Thursday of infringing on the constitutional rights of journalists by imposing a set of new restrictions on reporting about the military."
"An investor lawsuit accusing Florida Power & Light’s parent company, NextEra, and several current and former executives of securities fraud can move forward, a panel of federal appeals judges ruled last week in a remarkable resurrection of the case."
"The Trump administration on Monday stripped the words “renewable” and “energy” from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory name, furthering White House directives to abandon clean energy sources."
"NASA has sent two new satellites into space over the past six months to monitor many of the ways global warming is affecting the planet. Just don’t call them climate satellites."
"Media companies owned by Rupert Murdoch have found a “scapegoat” in clean energy for the rising electricity prices in New Jersey, according to two reports from watchdog Media Matters."
A steep decline in the enforcement of environmental laws means the monitoring of pollution by citizens is more important than ever. But as the latest TipSheet notes, some states have passed laws that severely constrain the use of citizen monitoring or the sharing of findings. Get the backstory, along with top reporting angles and resources for finding monitoring in your area.
For more than a century, oil and gas companies have been drilling — and abandoning — wells across the country, leaving hundreds of thousands to potentially leak pollutants into the air, water and soil. Climate and environment reporter Martha Pskowski looks at how funding and regulatory issues are impacting efforts to identify and plug these wells, and offers resources for drilling into their story.
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