Government

"The Department of the Interior spent more than $150 million on administrative leave for employees working in the secretary’s office last year."

"The Trump administration is ending summertime smog restrictions on gasoline early this year in a bid to offer relief for high prices at the pump."

"The Trump administration has taken a series of extraordinary steps to attack California’s position as a national leader in environmental protection, enlisting at least a half-dozen federal agencies to undermine the state’s efforts to pivot away from fossil fuels."

"More governors are shifting their stances or taking more steps to squeeze data centers as the midterm elections near and public opinion sours on the energy-hungry behemoths that tech giants and developers are building to fuel artificial intelligence products and cloud computing. The backlash to the massive server warehouses is enveloping races for governor in some of the nation’s biggest states and presidential battlegrounds."

"President Donald Trump announced Wednesday he will nominate Heidi Overton, a top aide at the White House’s Domestic Policy Council, to serve as the next commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration."

"A senior Federal Emergency Management Agency official fired early last year is seeking to clear her name after Elon Musk blamed her for allowing payments to New York City to house immigrants, which she said was approved by a U.S. DOGE Service aide."

"North Carolina’s poultry industry continues to add more birds to already highly concentrated barns, generating millions of tons of manure that is largely unregulated by the state, according to a new report."

"Nearly 4 in 10 Americans say their communities were damaged by extreme weather events over the past year, according to a new survey released Tuesday."

"A legal environmental group sued the U.S. government on Tuesday to halt the Trump administration’s plans announced last month to auction off sections of water surrounding American Samoa for potential deep-sea mining."