"The Department of Commerce is preventing the release of an investigation’s findings into whether it coerced the head of a federal agency into supporting President Trump’s erroneous claim that Hurricane Dorian would hit Alabama last year, the department’s inspector general said on Wednesday."

"State regulators are taking over maintenance of a decades-long environmental cleanup in two northwestern Montana towns where lung-damaging asbestos contamination has been blamed in hundreds of deaths."

"The public deserves to know which companies have taken advantage of the EPA’s relaxed pandemic-era enforcement policy, even as the agency starts to wind down the approach, environmental lawyers told a federal court."

"Billions of dollars in contracts have been awarded to politically connected Americans, even as Puerto Ricans suffer electricity outages."

"The House Wednesday passed a climate-friendly infrastructure bill with $1.5 trillion for everything from roads to broadband that has little chance of being signed into law as written, but is destined to play a starring role in rhetoric and talking points for both parties in the run-up to the presidential election."

"Coronavirus infections in the United States surged nearly 50 percent in June as states relaxed quarantine rules and tried to reopen their economies, data compiled Wednesday showed, and several states moved to reimpose restrictions on bars and recreation."

"After a concerted reintroduction effort two decades ago, the state is now home to the largest population of elk east of the Mississippi. The animals’ home: reclaimed coal mines."

"U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley said on Tuesday he supported a plan by one of his Senate colleagues to block the nomination of an Environmental Protection Agency official until the agency makes clear how it would handle requests from oil refiners for retroactive exemptions from their biofuel blending mandates."

"An internal watchdog said Tuesday that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) hasn’t provided a good explanation for its decision not to recover travel expenses from former Administrator Scott Pruitt that were found to be improper."

"A federal fisheries management agency has barred some of its employees from making formal references to the COVID-19 pandemic without preapproval from leadership, according to an internal agency document."