Environmental Politics

"Hundreds of U.S. EPA employees are heading for the exits after the agency offered a round of buyout and early retirement packages."

"Less than two weeks after Hurricane Harvey started pummeling the Texas Gulf Coast, the House overwhelmingly approved a nearly $7.9 billion recovery aid package on Wednesday for Texas and neighboring Louisiana."

"Vaccine giant Sanofi Pasteur has quietly pulled the plug on its Zika vaccine project, a move that underscores how difficult it may be at this stage to develop a vaccine against the virus."

"When his investigators dug into corruption allegations at a Superfund site, Oklahoma State Auditor Gary Jones believed they'd found criminal wrongdoing. But Scott Pruitt, then Oklahoma's attorney general, didn't agree with Jones about activities at the Tar Creek site. In 2015, a little more than a year after getting Jones' report, he said he wouldn't bring criminal charges."

"The tug of war over how much more fuel efficient new cars and trucks should be in coming years — a fight that once seemed all but settled — will play out again on Wednesday in a downtown Washington hotel."

"The Environmental Protection Agency has taken the unusual step of putting a political operative in charge of vetting the hundreds of millions of dollars in grants the EPA distributes annually, assigning final funding decisions to a former Trump campaign aide with little environmental policy experience."

The renaming of facilities at Yosemite National Park, because of a contract-related trademark dispute, "is an opportunity for the National Park Service to dump dozens of place names that are the linguistic equivalents of Confederate statues."

"President Trump’s pick to be the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) chief scientist is on track to face one of the rougher confirmation battles of the administration."

"The U.S. House will consider a disaster relief package on Wednesday in wake of Hurricane Harvey that led to massive flooding in Texas and has been blamed for at least 50 deaths, the House majority leader’s office said Monday."

"In a move that's drawing fierce criticism, the acting head of the National Park Service has rescinded a 2016 order by the Obama administration that called for a focus on climate change in managing natural resources in U.S. parks."