"The Trump administration wrongly tweaked a grant process when forwarding $2 million in funds to the state of Alaska as officials pushed to open the state’s Tongass National Forest up to more logging, a government watchdog found."
"Congressional negotiators inserted a bipartisan measure to curtail planet-warming chemicals used in air-conditioners and refrigerators in the huge government spending and coronavirus relief package that is expected to head to President Trump’s desk on Monday."
"Rep. Deb Haaland's selection to lead the Interior Department has energized the progressive base, mobilized tribal communities and thrilled politicos who want to see President-elect Joe Biden make history with his first round of Cabinet picks. In Congress, however, the New Mexico Democrat is about to run the gantlet of a confirmation process in a Republican-led Senate."
"
"Environmental justice advocates now have an empowered voice with the incoming administration and a potential new ally in Michael Regan, President-elect Joe Biden's pick for EPA administrator."
"President-elect Joe Biden announced a racially diverse slate of environmental advisers on Saturday, to help his administration confront what he called “the existential threat of our time, climate change”.
""We're now talking about two pandemics. We have a pollution pandemic, and we have the COVID pandemic.""
"Officials in multiple states said they were alerted late Wednesday that their second shipments of Pfizer-BioNTech’s vaccine had been drastically cut for next week, sparking widespread confusion and conflicting statements from Pfizer and federal officials about who was at fault."
"Climate change raises the risk from failing sewage systems. So Catherine Coleman Flowers is working for a new way to deal with waste."
"Republicans and Democrats together approved the Great American Outdoors Act, but the administration has ignored planned projects and imposed rules restricting spending."
"The partisanship poisoning Washington made it hard to imagine the sharply divided Congress coming together over anything in this year, let alone environmental legislation. And fallout from the pandemic made it seem even more unlikely that Democrats and Republicans could agree on something like spending hundreds of millions of dollars on parks and conservation.
