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In Defense of Democracy and Freedom
🌅 'Surviving Victory'🔥
March 2026
Another War
As the US and Israel launch war with Iran, the following words hover front of mind.
“People predicting disaster: The odds are in your favor, but you cannot be sure, and you should not hope to be right. People celebrating: Maybe wanna wait a bit. The odds, historically, are definitely not on your side. Anyone certain they know what happens next is making it up.” -- Tom Nichols
"The world needs to renew a focus on human rights with quality of life high on every nation's agenda." -- GreenPolicy360
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February 2026
February 18, 2026
Environmental Groups Sue Trump’s EPA Rollback of Climate Science Finding
Via The Guardian
More than a dozen health and environmental justice non-profits have sued the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) over its revocation of the legal determination that underpins US federal climate regulations.
Filed in Washington DC circuit court, the lawsuit challenges the EPA’s rollback of the “endangerment finding”, which states that the buildup of heat-trapping pollution in the atmosphere endangers public health and welfare and has allowed the EPA to limit those emissions from vehicles, power plants and other industrial sources since 2009. The rollback was widely seen as a major setback to US efforts to combat the climate crisis.
The suit was brought by the American Public Health Association, the American Lung Association, the Center for Biological Diversity, the Environmental Defense Fund, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Sierra Club and 11 other public health and environmental organizations. The lawsuit was filed by green legal organizations Clean Air Task Force and Earthjustice and it names the EPA and the agency’s administrator, Lee Zeldin, as defendants...
Photo from the LA Times
An Attack on a Foundational Law, EPA Findings and a Supporting Court Decision
(Updated, with this Trump order) "The United States will essentially have no laws on the books that enforce how efficient America’s passenger cars and trucks should be."
A Trump Legacy: Rejecting Science, Climate Change, and the Environmental Protection Agency
- A Moment in History That Will Be Remembered
Reading 'Top of the News' headlines this week, the world's people encounter a nation's president who rejects a half-century of a scientific, military, educational and security studies, data, knowledge -- and warnings.
President Trump orders environmental cuts and rollbacks, retrogressive policies that turn around the Environmental Protection Agency's progress for the nation.
Five plus decades of vision, foundational work, projects and programs, NASA/NOAA, EPA, USGS, across US colleges and universities, health and medical research, and on and on are now being diminished and degraded.
Time will tell the full story of the Trump presidency.
For now, let's take a quick look back at actions taken to advance environmental protection and the nation's well being, the beginnings of the EPA, atmospheric/climate/earth science, national security, health, and a better future for all.
GreenPolicy360:
Let's call this Trump rejection of science what it is -- an act of hubris, an decision that will not stand in the face of physics...
Donald Trump's administration, with an EPA taken over by anti-science purveyors who callously and destructively set aside fifty plus years of scientific data, now act to put their legacy into the history books. Their action to deny the overwhelmingly evident dangers of climate change, a gathering storm threatening US and world environmental security, is an ignominious day.
We, today's generation and future generations will live to mark this moment as a tragedy, one that accelerates real-world physics of earth systems, delivering climate impacts, disruptions, security lost...
The Trump administration have delivered 'retro' thinking, anti-science destructiveness.
The Clean Air Acts and accompanying model regulations, ideas beginning in California to deal with its "smog" in the 1960s/70s, were shared and spread throughout the US -- and the world's cities and communities. Profound progress, meant explicitly to deal with hazardous air pollutants and remedy the climate-related costs, the damages of atmospheric pollution to health, environment and future well being that adversely impacts life across nations and regions of Earth, was achieved and continues to be achieved. The Trump attempt to block this progress will fail.
Yet, the time lost to Trumpian folly will add additional costs to humanity's journey forward.
We mark these days in February 2026 as times to be remembered -- and judged -- for what they are.
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February 1, 2026
Another Warning Among Many
Excerpt from a Chapter in a new book by Thom Hartmann...
The Climate Collapse Presidency
- Climate change is the single greatest threat to a sustainable future
- but, at the same time, addressing the climate challenge presents a
- golden opportunity to promote prosperity, security and a brighter
- future for all.
- —- Ban Ki-moon, former UN Secretary-General,
- Remarks at Climate Leaders’ Summit, April 11, 2024
Thom Hartmann @https://hartmannreport.com:
The greatest existential threat humanity faces isn’t hiding in a military bunker or a terrorist cell. It’s in plain sight: the accelerating collapse of our only home’s life-support systems.
Trump’s first term was environmental arson. He gutted the EPA, installed fossil fuel executives in key positions, shredded over one hundred environmental protections, and abandoned the Paris Climate Agreement.
Scientists were silenced. Research was suppressed. The words “climate change” vanished from government websites as if deleting terms could delete reality.
When confronted about climate’s role in the devastating 2020 wildfires, Trump smirked: “I don’t think science knows, actually.”
--
An AI response:
Daniel Solomon
I asked AI what is the effect of Trump #47 on the climate? Ans. below:
In his second term as the 47th President, Donald Trump has moved aggressively to reverse U.S. climate progress by prioritizing fossil fuel production and dismantling federal environmental oversight.
Key effects on the climate and policy include:
Withdrawal from International Agreements: On January 27, 2026, the U.S. officially withdrew from the Paris Agreement for the second time. Additionally, the administration has announced departures from over 60 international bodies, including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Increased Carbon Emissions: Projections suggest that the administration's rollbacks could lead to an additional 4 billion metric tons of CO2-equivalent emissions by 2030 compared to previous trajectories.
Dismantling Regulatory Foundations: The EPA is currently working to repeal the 2009 Endangerment Finding, which is the legal basis for nearly all federal greenhouse gas regulations.
Expansion of Fossil Fuels: Under the mantra "drill, baby, drill," the administration has fast-tracked deep-sea mining, reopened Alaskan refuges for oil development, and granted roughly $40 billion in new subsidies to the fossil fuel industry.
Stalling Clean Energy: Federal support for wind and solar has been slashed, including the elimination of the $7,500 electric vehicle tax credit and nearly $13 billion in green energy funding.
Information and Data Gaps: The administration has removed past National Climate Assessments from federal sites, deleted climate science webpages, and cut funding for climate research programs, creating significant gaps in global climate tracking.
While federal action has stalled, market forces and state-led initiatives — particularly in California and Texas — continue to drive some growth in renewable capacity despite federal headwinds.
Deep Losses in Clean-Renewable Production & Competitiveness
- US Policy Goes Retro with Fossil Fuels
* https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/File:Tracking_science_policy_across_the_Trump_administration.png
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January 2026
January 7th, a Day to Remember ...
This day in America delivered a deadly shooting in Minneapolis, Minnesota, a death recorded live by a number of video recordings taken and distributed by citizens who observed the killing. Today is going to become etched in the memory of US history.
The death, as witnessed by those who viewed and reviewed the video recordings, was tragic -- and much more...
The lies told by government officials following the shooting of a woman in her car were painfully far from the facts and now remain another in a line of political lies that are spreading like a fire inflaming communities across the country.
Today, it is again time to remember the warnings of Hannah Arendt.
Take time to read her writing of lies, big lies, repeated lies -- and the threats and dangers they pose.
These lies are, again, as history teaches, deliverers of dangerous times.
Echoes from the propagandists that brought on World War II.
Echoes of lies to recall...
"Truth and Politics"
By Hannah Arendt
1967 in the New Yorker Magazine
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December 2025
Russell Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, called the center "one of the largest sources of climate alarmism in the country" and said that the federal government would be "breaking up" the institution...
National Center for Atmospheric Research
NYT
Russell T. Vought is "a right-wing absolute zealot"
-- Susie Wiles, Chief of Staff for President Donald J. Trump
December 16, 2025
The administration plans to identify and eliminate what it calls "green new scam research activities" ...
Russell Vought, the former vice president of the Heritage Foundation’s lobbying arm and current director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, gave USA Today the scoop on Tuesday (Dec. 16) and posted his plan and [ir]rationale on X as well, claiming that “this facility is one of the largest sources of climate alarmism in the country” -- Andy Revkin, https://revkin.substack.com/p/trumps-demolition-derby-continues
This is not a center for alarmism. The science that comes from @NCAR_Science has made the United States a leader in tracking severe weather, modeling extreme floods and even the effects of increased solar activity and how it impacts our atmosphere here on Earth. Research that comes from here benefits us all from a safety and infrastructure standpoint. And, economically, the science helps mitigate a growing number of #billiondollar #weatherdisasters -- Al Roker
Wider anti-science efforts
This action is similar to the admnistration’s assault on NASA’s climate research (including ending the lease for the legendary Goddard Institute for Space Studies in Manhattan). There is a wider assault on missions, budgets and resources at other agencies where work involves climate or renewable energy. Just a short drive from NCAR, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory on December 1 underwent a name and mission change. The Department of Energy dropped the word renewable from the name and mission of the lab. It’s now called the National Lab of the Rockies.
The climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe posted a comment on LinkedIn that is worth sharing:
The National Center for Atmospheric Research is quite literally our global mothership. Nearly everyone who conducts research in climate, atmospheric science, and weather -- not only in the US but around the world -- has passed through its doors and benefited from its incredible resources.
NCAR supports the scientists who fly into hurricanes, the meteorologists who develop new radar technology, the physicists who envision and code new weather models, and yes - the largest community climate model in the world. That too.
Dismantling NCAR is like taking a sledgehammer to the keystone holding up our scientific understanding of the planet.
And that understanding was already under strain: the funding freeze on the national network of Climate Adaptation Science Centers in September, the discontinuation of key NASA satellite data records, the removal of EPA climate indicators last week, and a thousand other actions—large and small—all aimed at suppressing our ability to study how humans are affecting our shared home, how we can protect ourselves, especially the poorest and most vulnerable, and most of all how build a better future together.
Colorado Governor Jared Polis posted a reaction to initial reports on Tuesday. Here’s an excerpt:
Climate change is real, but the work of NCAR goes far beyond climate science. NCAR delivers data around severe weather events like fires and floods that help our country save lives and property, and prevent devastation for families. If these cuts move forward we will lose our competitive advantage against foreign powers and adversaries in the pursuit of scientific discovery.
More:
Russell Vought is not an elected official. He is best known for his contributions to Project 2025, a plan for gutting the U.S. government and installing a theocratic dictatorship. Project 2025 was so unpopular when it came to light last summer—only 4% of voters who knew about it wanted to see it enacted—that Trump insisted he had nothing to do with it.
-- Heather Cox Richardson from Letters from an American, October 3, 2025
A reminder of Russell Vought, April 2025
Trump dismisses scientists writing the National Climate Assessment
As orchestrated by Mr. Vought --
The Trump administration dismissed all of the scientists working on the newest version of the National Climate Assessment, a sweeping report that outlines the growing dangers of rising temperatures for lawmakers, policy experts and the public.
The sixth installment of the congressionally mandated report, which was due to come out by 2028, has typically been put together by about 400 researchers, many of whom are top scientists at universities who volunteer their time. The assessment is used to craft environmental rules, legislation and infrastructure project planning. It seen by experts as the definitive body of research about how global warming is transforming the country. ...
White House budget director Russ Vought... has urged the Trump administration to toss out all work on the assessment that began under former President Joe Biden. Vought wants to help pick a new group of researchers to issue a report that reflects the administration’s claims that climate change is not a serious threat. That report might focus on how climate change “benefits” the U.S., according to a plan he outlined in Project 2025, the conservative policy proposal produced by the Heritage Foundation.
Earlier this month, the administration defunded the U.S. Global Change Research Program, which supports the assessment. The program, which coordinated the work of 13 federal agencies, had existed for 35 years through Republican and Democratic presidencies, including Trump’s first term.
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Geopolitical Thought for the Day (and Decade)
- 'Go retro' ('Drill, drill, drill') or 'Go green' ('renewable energy, sustainable development')
The postwar geopolitical order rested on three pillars: American hegemony, the fossil-fuel energy system, and an open, multilateral trading order. America has now attacked each pillar at the foundation of its hydrocarbon global order.
There are now two competing global models of energy and influence: one based on fossil fuels, one on green technologies and a new model of sustainable development. China’s technology is finding new markets around the world because lots of people want it. But there is so far no real wraparound support of finance, trade, and tech transfer — as no new international order of sustainable governance has yet been built. The critical question of the future of BRICS lies with its member countries’ willingness and ability to effect broader collaboration in the fields of technology, trade, and finance. A quarter of the way to the twenty-second century, everything is up for grabs.
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The NY Times Does an End of Year Climate News Wrap Up
- The Trump Era is a Historic Setback for Climate Science & Environmental Protection
- National & Global Security are Being Setback with Historic Global & Accumulating Future Impact
Many Fighting Climate Change Worry They Are Losing the Information War
- Shifting politics, intensive lobbying and surging disinformation
- online have undermined international efforts to respond to the threat.
Read the Times article, available here without subscription or paywall
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November 2025
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On Veterans Day, November 11, 2025
GreenPolicy360 & Strategic Demands
- Advocating for a 'Physics of Peace' v. a 'Calculus of War'
- https://strategicdemands.com/costsofwar/
- https://strategicdemands.com/new-definitions-of-security/
- https://strategicdemands.com/surviving-victory-from-the-archive/
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The justices will hear arguments November 5th on the legality of most of the president’s tariffs — the first in a series of tests of sweeping claims of authority.
GreenPolicy360/Strategic Demands: We recall a quote of Benjamin Franklin responding to a question in 1787 about the newly announced birth of the US as he left Independence Hall after the Constitutional Convention:
We have "a Republic, if you can keep it."
_______________________________
October 2025
Before and After Views via Satellite
- October 23rd Surprise, the East Wing of the US White House Is Gone
A Golden Ballroom Is Planned by the US President
- Reported Underground 'Bunker' Included
In July, Trump said that construction of the ballroom “won’t interfere with the current building.” “It’ll be near it but not touching it, and pays total respect to the existing building, which I’m the biggest fan of,” Trump said of the White House at the time. -- CNBC, October 21, 2025
New images available Thursday appear to show the entire White House East Wing has been demolished to make way for President Donald Trump's $300 million ballroom. -- ABC, October 23, 2025
- Planet Labs delivers new East Wing site images to the public
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Read more about Planet Labs and how 'New Space' Earth Imaging is changing the ways we see the home planet
- Earth observations -- satellite mapping, trendline data, research
- Earth system science -- Time-lapse, multi-spectrum, micro-analysis
- Economic development -- natural resources, measurement/monitoring/management
- Geopolitics -- Revealing news, images of current events for public discussion
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Into the Inner Workings of a Government in Turmoil
- Dismantling DC as Policy
On the Impact of Russell Vought and His Ideology
- An Investigation by ProPublica
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Hero, a Voice Supporting a Living Earth
- An Activist Scientist, a Life Well Lived -- Jane Goodall
... WHEN I WAS OUT IN THE FOREST DAY AFTER DAY, MONTH AFTER MONTH BY MYSELF I JUST SENSE A GREAT SPIRITUAL POWER AROUND, YOU KNOW? ... LOOKING UP THROUGH THE LEAVES AT THE STARS, THE RAIN COMING, THE CYCLE, THE ENDLESS CYCLES, LIFE AND BIRTH, DEATH, ALL SEEMING TO MAKE IT VERY EASY TO FORGET THE RAT RACE OF THE MODERN WORLD. AND I GOT THIS FEELING THAT BECAUSE WE HAVE THIS QUESTIONING MIND WE'RE ASKING CAN OURSELVES, YOU KNOW, WHY, WHAT'S THE MEANING IN LIFE? AND I BELIEVE THERE'S A SPARK OF THIS DIVINE IN EACH ONE OF US, AND THAT SPARK WE'VE GIVEN A NAME TO, WE CALL IT A SOUL. AND I BELIEVE THAT THIS DIVINE HAS ALL THESE DIFFERENT NAMES AND DIFFERENT COUNTRIES WITH DIFFERENT RELIGIONS, BUT SURELY IT'S THE SAME GREAT SPIRIT ...
THE LONGER YOU CONSIDER THE ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS, THE MORE YOU REALIZE HOW EVERYTHING IS INTERCONNECTED ...
WHY IS IT THAT WE, THIS AMAZINGLY INTELLIGENT SPECIES, HAVE SO DESTROY OUR PLANET AND WE CAN INCLUDE THE WAR AND THE VIOLENCE, THE ETHNIC VIOLENCE AND THE GENOCIDE? WHAT HAS GONE WRONG? I BELIEVE WE HAVE LOST WISDOM. THE INDIGENOUS PEOPLE WOULD MAKE MAJOR DECISIONS BASED ON HOW THE DECISION WE MAKE TODAY AFFECTS OUR PEOPLE GENERATIONS AHEAD. WE ARE ARE INTENDING TO MAKE ON HOW TO DOES AFFECT ME NOW OR ME AND MY FAMILY NOW, WILL THE NEXT SHAREHOLDERS ME OR MY NEXT POLITICAL CAMPAIGN. THAT'S THE KIND OF CRITERIA WE ARE FACING MAJOR DECISIONS ON. AND SO, WE NEED TO RECONNECT, I BELIEVE, THIS INCREDIBLY CLEVER BRAIN WITH THE SEED OF LOVE AND COMPASSION, THE HUMAN HEART. AND THAT'S WHAT I HOPE AND I PRAY ROOTS AND SHOOTS IS DOING. IT IS CREATING FAMILY. IS CREATING YOUNG PEOPLE NOW IN 111 COUNTRIES, NOT 30. 111 COUNTRIES AROUND THE WORLD, ALL AGES, BRINGING THEM TOGETHER, SOMETIMES ELECTRONICALLY, WHENEVER POSSIBLE IN PERSON, SHARING SUCCESSES, DISCUSSING FAILURES. AND ONE YOUNG MAN SAID TO ME, I LOVE ABOUT ROOTS AND SHOOTS BEST IS THAT WHEREVER I GO IN THE WORLD, EVEN IF I KNOW NOBODY, IF I FIND ROOTS AND SHOOTS, I WILL HAVE FOUND MY FAMILY. SO LET'S HOPE THAT YOUNG PEOPLE WITH DIFFERENT VALUES TO UNDERSTAND THAT THIS LIFE IS ABOUT MORE THAN JUST MAKING MONEY, THAT WE NEED MONEY TO LIVE BUT WE SHOULDN'T LET FOR MONEY, LET'S HOPE THAT THIS GROUP OF YOUNG PEOPLE, THE NEXT DOCTORS AND LAWYERS AND LEGISLATORS AND PARENTS AND TEACHERS, CAN HELP US ONCE AGAIN ...
I HAVE A QUESTION. IF YOU HAD ONE WISH IN THE WHOLE WORLD, WHAT WOULD IT BE?
IF I HAD ONE WISH AND IF I WAS AS POWERFUL AS GOD OR SOMETHING, I WOULD WANT TO FIND A WAY TO CREEP INTO PEOPLE'S HEARTS TO OPEN UP THE HEARTS SO THAT WE GET BACK OUR WISDOM AND SO WE START THINKING. NOT JUST ABOUT OURSELVES, BUT ABOUT WHAT WE DO AND HOW THAT AFFECTS OTHER PEOPLE AND THE ENVIRONMENT AND THE ANIMALS. THAT'S WHAT I -- I WANT TO FIND A BETTER WAY OF REACHING INTO HEARTS. IT'S DIFFICULT WHEN PEOPLE THAT YOU'RE TALKING TO THINK COMPLETELY DIFFERENTLY TO YOURSELF. AND I'VE PRACTICED A LITTLE BIT, BUT IT'S NOT EASY, SO I WANT TO GET BETTER AT REACHING INTO PEOPLE'S HEARTS ALL OVER THE WORLD ...
And a final few words from Jane...
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September 2025
US Federal Government 'Shutdown' Looms
- Threats of Firings (beyond Furloughs) and Reductions in Force (RIFs)
September 30, 2025
“This is wholesale destruction, what’s proposed.”
Organizations that represent the interests of public workers have been more explicit: “The plan to exploit a shutdown to purge federal workers is illegal, unconstitutional, and deeply disturbing,” Tim Whitehouse, the executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, said in a statement. “A shutdown triggers furloughs, not firings. To weaponize it as a tool to destroy the civil service would mark a dangerous slide into lawlessness and further consolidate power in the Executive Branch.”
But illegality (or possible illegality) would not necessarily stop the Trump administration from choosing the layoff route if a budget deal is not reached. In any case, the memo obviously creates uncertainty and anxiety for the federal scientists whose work has been singled out for steep funding cuts or even elimination by the Trump administration.
“Either we all go home or it’s business as usual … nobody knows what’s going to happen,” one NASA scientist, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told the Bulletin.
Earlier this year, the president submitted a budget request to Congress that would slash NASA’s overall 2026 budget by 24 percent. It is the clearest indication of what his priorities are going into a possible government shutdown. The steepest cuts were within science programs, which the president proposed reducing by more than 46 percent. Funding for Earth science programs specifically would be cut by more than half.
Proposed cuts to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) research are also severe, outright eliminating the entire budget for climate research, weather and air chemistry research, and the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (OAR). (In addition to cuts to Earth and climate science, the proposed budget recommends cutting all funding for habitat conservation and research, as well as ocean, coastal, and Great Lakes research.)
Although the White House recommended cutting NOAA’s budget by up to 30 percent, members of the House Appropriations Committee have recommended a much smaller cut of 6 percent. But by telling agencies to conduct layoffs based on the president’s priorities, the Trump administration could try to preempt Congress and reshape the federal government in line with their own vision and budget proposal during a shutdown.
Even without a government shutdown, a third of the US Geological Survey’s Climate Adaptation Science Centers could wind down or cease operations this week because the Interior Department is refusing to submit paperwork to release funding.
“This is a dismantling of efforts in the United States on climate science, and in fact, in large swaths of environmental science. And I don’t think that people know that,” Elisabeth Moyer, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Chicago, told the Bulletin. “This is wholesale destruction, what’s proposed.”
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Environmental Protection Agency tells scientists to stop publishing studies
Scientific work and publications halted as 'new review process' is announced
More:
Staff from the EPA’s Office of Water were summoned to a town hall meeting this week and instructed to halt work on most ongoing research papers...
(E)mployees said that the imposition of this type of review is unprecedented and warned that it could stymie the release of scientific findings important to preserving public health.
The Office of Water works to ensure the safety of the nation’s drinking water and the health of coastal and other aquatic environments. Scientists in the office conduct and publish research assessing how to keep water safe for drinking and for recreational use, as well as analyzing environmental concerns related to water quality.
In recent months, EPA scientists have contributed to studies in scientific journals on subjects such as PFAS and microplastics in urban sewer overflows, comparisons of different methods for testing drinking water for lead, and groundwater pollution by naturally occurring arsenic.
Details about the review process remain unclear.
In July, the EPA announced plans to dismantle its scientific research branch, the Office of Research and Development, which had been tasked with conducting independent research to assess impacts on human health and the environment. The agency did not confirm how many staff members from the office were reassigned or terminated.
Hirsch said there are ongoing conversations with staff about their new responsibilities and how they align with the agency’s core mission.
The move to halt the agency’s scientific research has prompted concern from scientists and environmental groups that findings could be altered to conform to the Trump administration’s political agenda.
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Americans are ‘deer in the headlights’ in face of Trump assault on free speech, Maria Ressa tells Jon Stewart
Nobel prize winner says US institutions have collapsed much quicker than expected under the Trump administration
Via The Guardian
September 19, 2025
The Nobel prize winner Maria Ressa has said Americans are like “deer in the headlights” amid the collapse of US institutions and free speech under the Trump administration, particularly after Jimmy Kimmel’s suspension.
Speaking to Jon Stewart on the satirical news programme The Daily Show, the journalist and author of How to Stand Up to a Dictator said the speed at which Donald Trump had “collapsed” US institutions happened much faster than she anticipated.
She drew comparisons between the Trump administration and the government of the former president Rodrigo Duterte in her home country of the Philippines, saying: “If you don’t move and protect the rights you have, you lose them. And it’s so much harder to reclaim them.”
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The US Department of Energy Chooses Five Climate Change Debunkers to Write a Debunking Report in Secret and When It's Released Publicly
- Now the DOE Says 'Nevermind'
September 10, 2025
From Roger Pielke, Jr.
The Department of Energy’s Climate Working Group (CWG) was disbanded on September 3 and its work under DOE will not continue in any manner. Presumably its work product(s) and submitted public comments will all be withdrawn. This will be formally announced shortly.
Based on my connecting the dots, the disbanding is the direct result of a lawsuit filed by the Environmental Defense Fund and the Union of Concerned Scientists arguing that the empanelment of the CWG violated the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA).
Update: DOE has filed a response to the lawsuit arguing that they don’t believe that there is a FACA violation but even if there was, it is all moot as the CWG is disbanded. DOE also objected to the request that the report be taken down (it remains up). For their part, UCS/EDF have requested that the court rule that EPA not be allowed to rely on the report or the CWG members as individuals unless DOE goes through the FACA process.
From Andy Revkin
Tuesday night (September 9), Politico Pro’s Zack Coleman broke the news that the Trump administration on September 3 officially dissolved the Department of Energy’s “Climate Working Group.” This is the five-scientist team Secretary of Energy Chris Wright hand picked to undertake what his department called a “critical assessment of the conventional narrative on climate change” and to support Trump’s effort to overturn the Environmental Protection Agency’s finding that CO2 endangers public health and welfare and deserves regulation.
GreenPolicy360 Responds: DOE Chief Chris Wright is doing the bidding of President Trump whose claims that climate change is a "hoax" is not worth much in the scientific world of facts, evidence, reasoning, and protecting and acting to sustain a healthy, living environment.
The attacks by the president on clean renewable energy will go down as his, and Chris Wright's legacy.
The risks are real, the data is there to see.
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August 2025
Then Along Comes Donald Trump
- Historian Richardson Explains
August 30, 2025
HEATHER COX RICHARDSON
Just days before Labor Day, a holiday designed to celebrate the importance and power of American workers in the United States, the Transportation Department cancelled $679 million in funding for offshore wind projects, and the Department of Energy announced it is withdrawing a $716 million loan guarantee to complete infrastructure for an offshore wind project in New Jersey.
These cancellations reflect President Donald J. Trump’s apparent determination to kill off wind and solar power initiatives and to force the United States to depend on fossil fuels. He refers to climate change as a “hoax,” says that windmills cause cancer, and falsely claims that renewable energy is more expensive than other ways to generate power. Former president Joe Biden made investing in clean energy a central pillar of his administration; Trump often seems to construct policies mostly to erase the legacies of his predecessors.
Reversing the shift toward renewable energy not only attacks attempts to address the crisis of climate change and boosts the fossil fuel industry on which some of Trump’s apparent allies depend, but also undermines a society based on the independence of American workers. In 2023, about 3.5 million Americans worked in jobs related to the renewable energy sector, and jobs in that sector grew at more than twice the rate of those in other sectors in what was a strong U.S. labor market. The production of coal, which Trump often points to as an ideal for American jobs, peaked in 2008. Between then and 2021, employment in coal mining fell by almost 60% in the East and almost 40% in the West, leaving a total of about 40,000 employees.
Another cut last week sums up the repercussions of the administration’s attack on renewable energy.
On August 22 the Interior Department suddenly and without explanation stopped construction of a wind farm off the coast of Connecticut and Rhode Island that was 80% complete and was set to be finished early next year.
As Matthew Daly of the Associated Press noted yesterday, Revolution Wind was the region’s first commercial-scale offshore wind farm. It was designed to power more than 350,000 homes, provide jobs in Connecticut and Rhode Island, and enable Rhode Island to meet its goal of 100% renewable energy by 2033.
The Board of Directors of the Chamber of Commerce of Eastern Connecticut expressed their dismay at the decision, noting that Revolution Wind employed more than 1,000 local union workers and is part of a $20 billion investment in “American energy generation, port infrastructure, supply chain, and domestic shipbuilding and manufacturing across over 40 states” by Ørsted, a Danish multinational company.
“Stopping this fully permitted, important project without a clear stated reason not only seriously undermines the state’s efforts to work towards a carbon neutral energy supply but equally important it sends a message to investors from all over the world that they may want to rethink investing in America. The message resulting from the President’s action is a lack of trust, uncertainty, and lack of predictability,” they wrote.
Connecticut governor Ned Lamont and Rhode Island governor Dan McKee, both Democrats, are working together to save the project. In a statement, Lamont said: “We are working closely with Rhode Island to save this project because it represents exactly the kind of investment that reduces energy costs, strengthens regional production, and builds a more secure energy future—the very goals President Trump claims to support but undermines with this decision.”
“It’s an attack on our jobs,” McKee said. “It’s an attack on our energy. It’s an attack on our families and their ability to pay the bills.”'
The Trump administration launched this attack on renewable energy at a time when electricity prices are bouncing upward. According to Ari Natter and Naureen S. Malik of Bloomberg, electricity prices jumped about 10% between January and May and are projected to rise another 5.8% next year. Trump has tried to blame those rising costs on renewable energy, but in the country’s largest grid, which stretches from Virginia to Illinois, nearly all the electricity comes from natural gas, coal, and nuclear reactors.
More to the point is that the region also has the world’s highest concentration of AI data centers, driving power demand—and costs—upward. At the same time, according to Natter and Malik, the infrastructure for transmission is too outdated to handle the amounts of electricity the data centers will need.
Trump’s cuts are adding stress to this already overburdened system. Over the next decade, they are projected to reduce additions to the electric grid by half compared to projections from before his cuts. In July, Ella Nilsen of CNN reported that cuts to renewable power generation, as well as to the tax credits that encouraged the development of more renewable power projects, are exacerbating the electrical shortage and driving prices up.
The Trump administration claims that relying on fossil fuels will jump-start the economy, but higher costs for electricity are already fueling inflation, and in the longer term, more expensive power will slow economic growth. In contrast, China has leaped ahead to dominate the global clean energy industry.
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Speaking of Wind Energy
Via GreenPolicy360
Venturing On with Best Green Ideas
- 'Going Green'
- 'Going Green'
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First Offshore Wind Farm in the US
- Beginning of an Energy Revolution
December 2016:
America’s First Offshore Wind Farm Spins to Life
Local News: Wind Farm to power Block Island by April 2017
Photos courtesy of Dr. Tony Affigne
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Earth Science Under Assault by the US President
Sean Duffy says.... (and the US Congress determines and appropriates the NASA programs and budget)
August 20, 2025
Via Space.com
😵💫 A highest priority now is to put a nuclear reactor on the Moon, says Trump's man who is directing NASA
The remarks echo President Trump's NASA budget proposal, which seeks steep cuts to NASA's Earth science initiatives, potentially putting several key missions at risk and raising concerns among researchers about gaps in climate monitoring and weather forecasts.
Speaking on Fox Business on Aug. 14, Duffy said NASA's purpose is the exploration of space — not Earth's climate. "All of the climate science and all of the other priorities that the last administration had at NASA, we're going to move aside," Duffy told Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo. "All of the science that we do is going to be directed towards exploration, which is the mission of NASA. That's why we have NASA, is to explore, not to do all of these earth sciences" ....
NASA's Earth science program has long stood as the world's largest provider of climate and weather data, though both of Trump's presidential terms have sought to minimize its focus at the space agency.
In Trump's first term, Earth science faced repeated budget threats and potential cancellation of missions like Orbiting Carbon Observatory 3 (OCO-3) and CLARREO Pathfinder. Now, the FY 2026 proposal seeks to cut NASA's science funding by 47%, slashing Earth science by more than half.
Such cuts put long-term data records — like sea level measurements, carbon cycles and atmospheric dynamics — at risk. Proponents of the shift away from climate research argue this type of monitoring could be taken on by agencies like NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), freeing more resources at NASA to focus more on space exploration. ...
Ultimately, the survival of these missions will hinge on Congress, which has the final say in NASA's funding allocations. Appropriation decisions are expected by October — the start of the new fiscal year — though lawmakers in both chambers have already signaled resistanceto the steepest science cuts presented in the president's budget proposal.
Inside NASA, employees and contractors are also voicing concern. Some workers tied to missions flagged in the budget for cancellation have already received "at risk" notices warning their jobs may not be extended beyond Sep. 30, causing unease as political higher-ups duke it out over NASA's future.
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GreenPolicy360:
As we have documented on our website and in our work, for over fifty years a core NASA Earth Science mission has continued in coordination with NOAA, the USGS (Landsat), and a vast array of connections with public and private agencies, educational institutions, enterprises, businesses, nations, organizations, entities and individuals.
We of a green environmental movement at GreenPolicy360, who joined to cooperate on a wide-ranging quest in the 1960s (bringing together our founder Steven Schmidt and George E. Brown), set a vision into motion. The work continues on.
We now look back over fifty years at the original NASA's Mission Statement, with its words about Planet Earth Science -- the Mission
“To understand and protect our home planet..."
From its beginning the NASA's mission, as stated, continues on... let's repeat for acting NASA administrator Sean Duffy to understand the Mission...
“To understand and protect our home planet..."
Read here about the history:
- https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/HelloEarth
- https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/Earth_and_Space,_Politics
- https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/Earth_Science_Research_from_Space
- https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/New_Definitions_of_National_Security
- https://greenpolicy360.net/w/Earth_Right_Now
- https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/Thin_Blue_Layer
- https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/Earth_Science_Vital_Signs
Our 'living, breathing planet'... The Commons
Systems of Life, It's All Connected, It's All Related
Earth System Science
Earth Information Center
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Data is essential to policymaking
Lies, manipulated data, dis/misinformation, cyber targeted marketing tools, 'Bubble' repetition techniques and money-in-politics, quid pro quo are not essential to democratic, representative, republic-supporting policymaking
~
July 2025
The EPA proposes gutting its greenhouse gas rules. Here's what it means for cars and pollution
- Trump's EPA now says greenhouse gases don't endanger people
July 29, 2025
Via NPR
President Trump campaigned against "electric vehicle mandates," and once in office, pledged to roll back such rules. Three sets of regulations that push companies to build cars that burn less gasoline — or no gas at all — were in his sights. His administration and Congress have already eliminated or weakened two of them.
Now, the EPA has published its proposal to revoke the "endangerment finding" and rewrite its tailpipe standards — meaning the third set of rules is poised to fall.
Three clean car standards – all of them being reversed
Vehicles in the U.S. have long been covered by three overlapping sets of efficiency and pollution rules.
The EPA regulates vehicle emissions through tailpipe standards. They govern how much pollution a vehicle can release while it's operating.
The Department of Transportation regulates fuel economy, or how many miles per gallon a car gets. Those rules are known as the CAFE standards, short for Corporate Average Fuel Economy, and are administered by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, or NHTSA. They require that the average fuel efficiency of new cars brought to market — across all the vehicles offered by a manufacturer — must meet a certain bar. That bar gets higher every year.
And because it was the first state to regulate vehicle emissions, well ahead of federal regulations, California has long been able to set its own rules that are tougher than the national standards. These include pollution standards and a rule mandating how many zero-emission vehicles carmakers must sell in the state. Other states can choose to follow California's rules, which wind up having a major influence on the auto market.
Over the past few decades, the combination of these three kinds of rules has pushed automakers to build cars that are significantly more fuel efficient and pollute less.
The Trump administration has taken major steps to roll back all three.
First, the administration asked Congress to revoke the EPA waiver that allows California to set the state's zero-emission vehicle mandate. That was an unprecedented move, and in May, Congress did as requested.
The federal CAFE standards, meanwhile, are still in place — for now. But the Department of Transportation is currently reviewing those rules, after stating that it costs automakers too much to comply with them, and that they drive up prices for consumers. Rewriting the rules "will lower vehicle costs and ensure the American people can purchase the cars they want," Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy wrote in a statement in June. (The regulations do increase the cost of cars, but consumer groups have repeatedly found they save drivers far more in fuel over the life of the car than they create in upfront costs.)
In the meantime, Congress has defanged the CAFE standards by removing the fines for carmakers who fail to meet them. That change, passed in the mega tax and spending bill that President Trump recently signed into law, could save hundreds of millions of dollars for automakers like General Motors and Stellantis that have chosen to make less efficient vehicles and pay the resulting penalties. And it removes the incentive for other automakers to comply; they face no consequences if they don't.
That leaves the EPA's tailpipe standards.
(GreenPolicy360: NPR does not cite here the 'full costs' of oil/gas consumption. The documented costs have immediate and lasting effects including emissions leading to air pollution and respiratory disease, child development issues, serious illnesses tied to breathed combustion particulates, premature deaths, and the full-array and the immense costs of carbon-related energy waste and use ranging from wars to protect oil/gas sources and regions, rising impacts of climate change and extreme weather events, insurance cost shocks, and 'opportunity costs'. Opportunities are being lost as investment capital that could have, and should have, gone to better use takes profits and neglect competitive applications as the world moves to renewable power, cleaner power, healthier industries that are rising to power tomorrow's world. The US under Trump's mandate is cutting off science, literally eviscerating decades of scientific programs of NASSA/NOAA/EPA/USGS and on and on... terminating forward-looking public/private work, damaging the nation's security and setting back the well being of the nation. The costs of this backward, retro administration pushed by oil/gas lobbying money will come into view as the consequences of the president's failed vision continue... and the opposition to the administration's failures rises.)
While the rollback of the California waiver and the elimination of CAFE fees have both been signed into law, the EPA's change is just a proposal. There will be a comment period, when companies, organizations and members of the general public can tell the agency what they think, and the EPA is required to take those comments into consideration before it finalizes any changes.
The deregulatory push is also being challenged in court — and will almost certainly face more lawsuits.
California has sued over the revocation of its EPA waiver.
States and environmental groups have also asked the federal courts to review some of NHTSA's changes to the CAFE standards.
The Environmental Defense Fund has repeatedly sued the Trump administration over changes that weaken environmental protections. Asked whether this latest change is likely to prompt legislation, Vickie Patton, the group's chief counsel, paused for a moment...
"This would be one of the most damaging actions, really, ever taken in the history of the Environmental Protection Agency, if they move forward with an effort to just walk away from protecting the American people from some of the most dangerous pollution in our lives," she said, pointing to the ongoing effects of heat waves and fires made worse by climate change, in addition to smog and soot from vehicles. "It is EPA's responsibility to carry out the law and ensure that the American people are protected from harmful tailpipe pollution."
Read more at GreenPolicy360:
- https://greenpolicy360.net/w/Environmental_Protection_Agency
- https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/Environmental_full-cost_accounting
- https://greenpolicy360.net/w/Table_of_Contents_(ToC)_GreenPolicy360
- https://greenpolicy360.net/w/Category:Climate_Change
- https://greenpolicy360.net/w/Category:Climate_Policy
- https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/Category:Externalities
- https://greenpolicy360.net/w/File:SMOG_be_gone.jpg
- https://greenpolicy360.net/w/File:Air_Pollution_studies_of_premature_annual_deaths.png
- https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/Category:Air_Quality
- https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/Money_in_Politics
- https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/Merchants_of_Doubt
- https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/File:Drilled_-_Website.jpg
- http://www.wired.com/2016/07/exxon-fighting-right-deny-climate-change/
- https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/File:Tracking_science_policy_across_the_Trump_administration.png
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- At the EPA
- At NOAA
- At NASA
Time to let Congress know -- the proposed extreme science cuts to the EPA, NOAA, & NASA, NWS, DOD & budget cut proposals to eliminate public/private/educational climate-related partnerships are security disasters-in-the-making with profound short-, mid- and long-term impacts
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Defending the Best of the Scientific Community and Work to Improve the Quality of Life on Earth
Serious Science, decades of knowledge, data, work, and a torch of freedom and light passed along to Zoe and today's generation... From California, memories of a "Mr. Science", Representative George Brown, three decades of vision and leadership of a first generation and now foremost atmospheric, climate, earth science missions/programs/projects... a foundation of knowledge to understand our planet and guide policies and decision-making.
As GreenPolicy360 often has expressed and experienced over the years, now it is today's generation's responsibility to step up and act -- 'Earth is in our hands'.
The US Science, Space & Technology Committee has a special responsibility...
New Definitions of National Security
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Advancing Weather & Climate Forecasting Technology | C-SPAN.org
July 16, 2025
NOAA and National Weather Service Research and Operational Tools Are Essential to the Nation's Security
Ensure NOAA's 'Mission Critical' Satellite Observation Platforms & Systems
Enhance Foundational/Traditional Environmental Monitoring and Existing Core, Historical Data with New, Emerging Technologies
Data and Open Datasets Are Necessary, Even Critical, for Training AI-Assisted Models and Weather/Climate Forecasting
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Extreme weather events like Texas rain are more likely to occur due to climate change, scientists warn
Via ABC News
July 7, 2025
Torrential rains and "catastrophic" flash flooding that hit central Texas over the holiday weekend have left more than 100 people dead, including dozens of children. ...
Andrew Dessler, a professor of atmospheric science and director of the Texas Center for Extreme Weather at Texas A&M University, said one of the oldest predictions of climate science is that intense rain events are going to become more intense.
"The primary reason is that warmer air simply holds more water," he said. "And so, as this warm, moist air flows into the storm and starts to ascend in thunderstorms, all of the water gets wrung out."
The Gulf, which borders Texas, has become significantly warmer in recent years due to climate change...
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July 5, 2025
Trumps signs the Republican Party 'big' H.R. 1 legislative package
- Inside Climate News begins to describe the misnomer of a bill's deep and lasting destructive consequences:
Trump’s legislation will hurt clean energy, boost fossil fuels and end investment in environmental justice. Climate advocates vow to continue the fight
The $4 trillion One Big Beautiful Bill Act is now ready to reach across the U.S. economy, slicing into every aspect of the national effort to address climate change and environmental injustice...
The 887-page legislation largely erases the landmark investment in cleaner energy, jobs and communities that a Democratic-led Congress made only three years ago in the Inflation Reduction Act.
It stomps out incentives for purchasing electric vehicles and efficient appliances. It phases out tax credits for wind and solar energy. It opens up federal land and water for oil and gas drilling and increases its profitability, while creating new federal support for coal. It ends the historic investment in poor and minority communities that bear a disproportionate pollution burden—money that the Trump administration was already refusing to spend. It wipes out any spending on greening the federal government.
In its proposed 2026 budget just released
NOAA closes all federally funded weather and climate research labs,
including the one responsible for maintaining the nation’s top hurricane models
NOAA Under Attack, Trump Administration Cuts in the Announced 2026 Budget Are Deep and Extensive
More
New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman wrote Friday (July 4) about how H.R. 1 will effectively "kneecap America’s renewable energy industry" and give China a monopoly on the renewable energy industry for decades. One of the major components of the law is the stripping of billions of dollars in subsidies and tax credits for solar, battery and wind energy. This comes at the same time China is rapidly restructuring its energy grid to include larger portions of electricity from renewable sources. Friedman wrote that Chinese President Xi Jinping likely views July 4 as "American Electricity Dependence Day."
Friedman goes on to explain:
"The Chinese simply can’t believe their luck: that at the dawn of the electricity-guzzling era of artificial intelligence, the U.S. president and his party have decided to engage in one of the greatest acts of strategic self-harm imaginable."
"(The) giant bill, among other craziness, deliberately undermines America’s ability to generate electricity through renewables," he continued. "And why? Because they view those as 'liberal' energy sources, even though today they are the quickest and cheapest ways to boost our electricity grid to meet the explosion of demand from AI data centers."
Friedman also cited a study from the research firm Energy Innovation, which found that Trump's law would "cause wholesale electric power prices to increase roughly 50% by 2035," while "cumulative annual consumer energy costs will increase more than $16 billion by 2030." The law would also reportedly eliminate 830,000 estimated renewable energy jobs by the end of the decade.
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Pathos for US Climate-Related Research & Programs
- Budget Decreases, Position Eliminations and Programs Terminations are sent to Congress
- Cuts in NOAA give a glimpse of the far-reaching and deeply damaging evisceration goals of the Trump administration
- Programs in Earth science, atmospheric science, ocean science, environmental protection, renewable energy, health, and more are terminated
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June 2025
June 30 - 2025
McKibben & Musk
As the Republican Party majority in the US Congress, using its narrow member control of the House and Senate, rushes to meet the demands of the President and send a 'Big Beautiful Bill' (as the deeply controversial package of legislation has been titled), Bill McKibben writes to sum up his thoughts:
McKibben: I don’t pretend to understand the rules now prevailing in our political jungle. Far more than ever before in my life it seems an exercise in pure and corrupt power, but even that power is operating only half-logically. This new bill does everything it can to kill off solar and wind power, including by imposing a sweeping new tax on them that appeared out of nowhere over the weekend. In their place it adds yet more subsidies for that 18th century technology, coal. Sun and wind accounted for more than 90 percent of new electric generation last year in this country, and around the world. It’s the cheapest power on planet earth; it’s clearly where the planet is heading; it’s our only serious hope for fighting the spiking temperature of our planet.
I don’t really think those, or any, arguments matter at the moment.
Musk:
'Elon Musk Promises a New Political Party if Republicans Pass Trump’s Policy Bill
“If this insane spending bill passes, the America Party will be formed the next day,” he wrote in one of several Monday(June 30) posts to his 220 million followers on X. “Our country needs an alternative to the Democrat-Republican uniparty so that the people actually have a VOICE.”
___________________________________________
🌅 Earth, Science & Politics | Climate News | Climate Change
____________
June 14 - 2025
In the US of A today... history will tell a story of tanks rolling thru Washington DC, a nationwide protest called "No Kings", a new Catholic Pope streaming live to Chicago and America with a message, and headlines of Another War in the Mideast flaring, a political Assassination in Minnesota, and raids against immigrants, ongoing social media extremes and extremists, threats, anger and recriminations. In and of America...
This is the way today is.
.png)
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Fifty + Years On, the Questions Remain
June 8, 2025
With last night's CNN broadcast of the Broadway theater production about Edward R. Murrow titled "Good Night, and Good Luck", today is a good day to revisit a Murrow 1958 speech of warning, a critical look at the networks and news industry. The speech came to be known as "Wires and Lights in a Box" and now, as we look around, we have to ask -- even as the era of Joseph McCarthy has faded in history -- has the McCarthy era that Murrow stood to bravely warn against, truly gone away?
Visit the Murrow Speech on YouTube
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIhy0T7Q48Y
Here is a Salon article that touches on George Clooney and the timeliness, and success, of the theatrical production.
- Image via the LA Times
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Musk v Trump & Trump v Musk
… Musk announced today, June 6, 2025, that the results of his online poll are in over whether he should form a 3rd party and 80% of respondents said yes.
Musk: “The people have spoken. A new political party is needed in America to represent the 80% in the middle!”
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Good Night, and Good Luck
In Defense of Democracy and Freedom
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Shared by Timothy Snyder - * https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/203956715-on-freedom
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May 2025
Memorial Day in the USA
May 26, 2025
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Trump and Republicans continue targeting climate and renewable energy policies
Thursday’s Senate vote to block California’s future ban on sales of gas cars is the latest GOP effort to stop state climate policies
May 22, 2025
Via Washington Post
The Senate voted 51-44 to pass a resolution blocking the California rule, which ranks as one of the nation’s most ambitious policies aimed at promoting electric vehicles. The House already passed the resolution, which now heads to Trump, who has indicated he will sign the measure into law. ...
Under the Clean Air Act, California can receive a waiver from the Environmental Protection Agency to set tougher vehicle emissions standards than those of the federal government. California regulators approved a rule in 2022 that would phase out sales of new gas cars by 2035, and in December under President Joe Biden, the EPA granted the state a waiver to enforce the regulation.
Eleven other states have pledged to adopt California’s rule and end sales of gas cars within their own borders by 2035. Together, the states account for about 40 percent of the U.S. auto market. ...
Congress passed the Clean Air Act in 1970 “with almost unanimous bipartisan support on the basis that states would play a central role — federal standards would be the floor, not the ceiling,” said Michael Gerrard, who founded Columbia Law School’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law. “Lots of states were eager to have cleaner cars, and now that option is being taken away from them.”
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Point of Information: Amid the ⬇️ Daily News, Don't Ignore Eco-Progress Continuing Onward & ⬆️
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Auspicious Timing as a Foundational Rights Document is Discovered in yhe Harvard University Law Library
May 15 / Via Harvard University
The Magna Carta was first issued in 1215 as a check on the power of the English monarch. A group of rebellious barons forced King John to sign it, establishing fundamental rights such as due process and habeas corpus, a legal concept that guarantees freedom from illegal imprisonment. It later inspired foundational legal documents, including the United States Constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
May 16 / ABC News and Multiple National & International News Services
An original Magna Carta discovered in plain sight at Harvard UniversityThe document influenced the writing of the U.S. Constitution and constitutions around the world. An original copy of the Magna Carta has been discovered hiding in the archives of Harvard University, and the British medieval history professor who first stumbled across it online said the document is "one of the world's most valuable."
The 19-inch-by-19-inch parchment document is part of the Harvard Law School Library's collection of fragile documents and artifacts and was purchased by the university for $27.50 from a British auctioneer nearly 80 years ago.
The document has been on display in a case at the library and digital images of the document have been available online to researchers and medieval memorabilia buffs for years.
Until now, the law library staff just figured it was a cheap knockoff, said David Carpenter, the professor of medieval history at King's College in London, who made the astonishing discovery.
Carpenter said the document had been miscatalogued by the auction house where the university purchased it as dating to 1327, and describing the manuscript as "somewhat rubbed and damp-stained." ...
Carpenter told The Associated Press that he was researching Harvard Law School's digitized historical documents collection online for a book in 2023 from his home in southeast London when he clicked on a document marked "HLS MS 172."
"I immediately thought, 'Oh my God,'" said Carpenter.
He said he recognized the document as one of just seven original copies still in existence of the Magna Carta issued in 1300 by Britain's King Edward I.
The first Magna Carta was issued in 1215 by England's King John, declaring that the king and his government were not above the law and outlined the legal rights of commoners for the first time. Five subsequent updated editions of the document were issued, including the one issued by Edward I. The document has since influenced the writing of the U.S. Constitution and constitutions around the world.
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May 12, 2025
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May 8, 2025
Headlines around the World
The new Catholic pontiff, leader of over 1.4 billion, takes the name "Leo XIV" ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Leo_XIV
The successor to Pope Francis is seen as carrying on positions supporting the poor, the environment ("Laudato Si"), the Commons, peace...
In his first appearance on the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica, the new pope extended the blessing of Pope Francis, saying: “God loves us, all of us, evil will not prevail. We are all in the hands of God. Without fear, united, hand in hand with God and among ourselves, we will go forward. We are disciples of Christ, Christ goes before us, and the world needs His light. Humanity needs Him like a bridge to reach God and His love. You help us to build bridges with dialogue and encounter so we can all be one people always in peace.”
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Press Release from the Pope's alma mater, Villanova University
Augustinian Friar and Villanova University Alumnus Elected Pope
Pope Leo XIV is the first Pope from the United States and the first Augustinian friar to be elected pontiff
VILLANOVA, Pa. (May 8, 2025) — On May 8, Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost, OSA, ’77 CLAS was elected the 267th head of the Catholic Church and the Sovereign of the Vatican City State during the second day of the papal conclave held in the Sistine Chapel. He assumes the papacy under the name Pope Leo XIV. A Villanova University alumnus, Pope Leo XIV is the first Pope from the United States and the first Augustinian friar to be elected pontiff.
“As an Augustinian Catholic institution, we celebrate this significant day for our University community and the global Church. Villanova, built on the teachings of St. Augustine, has always been grounded in advancing a deeper understanding of the fundamental relationship between faith and reason—between spirituality and wisdom,” said University President the Rev. Peter M. Donohue, OSA, PhD, ‘75 CLAS. “With today’s election of His Holiness, Pope Leo XIV, I cannot help but reflect on what his Augustinian papacy will mean to our University community and our world. Known for his humility, gentle spirit, prudence and warmth, Pope Leo XIV’s leadership offers an opportunity to reaffirm our commitment to our educational mission.”
The selection of Pope Leo XIV by the College of Cardinals comes less than two years after the late Pope Francis I announced him as cardinal designate, a position to which he was formally installed in September 2023 during a consistory at the Vatican on the eve of the Synod of Synodality.
Born in Chicago, Ill., Pope Leo XIV, then Robert Prevost, joined the Order of St. Augustine in 1977. Following his undergraduate studies at Villanova, where he received a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics in 1977, he earned a Master of Divinity from Catholic Theological Union in Chicago in 1982 and was ordained a priest the same year. Pope Leo XIV went on to earn both licentiate (1984) and doctorate (1987) degrees in canon law from the Pontifical College of St. Thomas Aquinas in Rome. Villanova also awarded him an honorary Doctor of Humanities, honoris causa, in 2014.
After joining the Augustinian mission in Peru in 1985, Pope Leo XIV worked predominantly in that country until the late 1990s. Nearly a decade of that time was spent leading the Augustinian seminary in Trujillo and teaching canon law at the diocesan seminary. Pope Leo XIV returned to his hometown in 1999 after being named provincial of the Augustinian Province of Chicago. He was then elected in 2001 as prior general of the Augustinians and reelected to a second six-year term in 2007.
In 2014, Pope Francis I appointed then-Bishop Prevost as apostolic administrator of the Diocese of Chiclayo in northern Peru and titular bishop of Sufar. He was elevated to bishop of Chiclayo in 2015, serving for eight years until his January 2023 appointment as prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops (formerly the Congregation of Bishops), receiving the title Archbishop-Bishop Emeritus of Chiclayo. The Dicastery for Bishops oversees both the selection of new bishops and formation of dioceses, among other matters, and is led by its Pope-appointed prefect.
Pope Leo XIV began his leadership role with the Dicastery—of which he had been a member since November 2020—along with his appointment as President of the Pontifical Commission of Latin America, on April 12, 2023.
Founded in 1842, Villanova University is one of only two Augustinian Catholic institutions of higher learning in the United States, sharing this common heritage with Merrimack College. As an Augustinian Catholic university, Villanova is rooted in the values of truth, unity, and love (Veritas, Unitas, Caritas), inspired by the teachings of St. Augustine. For more on Villanova’s Augustinian mission and tradition, click here
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Cut, Cut, Cut
- Trump Attacks National Park Service
- Science, Sustainability, Parks & Public Lands Are Targets
Dozens of programs, many linked to climate change and diversity, have been designated for elimination by DOGE, according to people with knowledge of the plan
The Trump administration has earmarked dozens of National Park Service grants for elimination, including several that aim to protect public lands from the effects of climate change, according to an internal agency document detailing the plans.
A spreadsheet of grants likely to be canceled claims the cuts could save $26 million by canceling grants to universities, state historic preservation offices, tribes and youth corps.
It was developed by Conor Fennessy, a staff member in Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, according to two people with direct knowledge of the plan. Similar lists of grant eliminations are being developed in other parts of the Department of the Interior, according to the two people, who requested anonymity for fear of retribution.
At the National Park Service, the DOGE plan proposes eliminating Scientists in Parks, a popular program that places students and early-career scientists at natural and historic landmarks to help protect ecosystems.
Also on the chopping block: a $67,000 climate resiliency study on lands surrounding the Golden Gate National Recreation Area; a $223,000 study of the impact of climate change on Alaska’s glaciers; watershed protection efforts across the country; and a $220,000 project to protect the Louisiana State University “campus mounds,” two dome-shaped structures created by Native Americans thousands of years ago.
The reason given for shuttering those programs, according to the document, is “Climate change/Sustainability,” indicating they were singled out because they touch on an issue the Trump administration has opposed addressing...
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April 2025
Beyond a Religion
- Pope Francis is Interred
- April 22, 2025
To the living memory of a religious leader who spoke of protecting a living Earth.
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Pope Francis dies on Easter Monday, April 21, 2025
- He brought change to the Catholic Church - and the world
🙏🏼
The First Catholic Pontiff Named after the Patron Saint of the Environment
- The First Eco-Encyclical Sets Forth an Environmental Message of Care for 'Our Home'
Pope Francis: Destroying the Environment is a Sin
Pope Francis has called for urgent action to stop climate change and proposed that caring for the environment be added to traditional Christian works of mercy such as feeding the hungry and visiting the sick.
In a message to mark the Catholic church’s World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation that he launched last year, Francis said the worst impact of global warming was being felt by those who were least responsible for it – refugees and the poor.
The pontiff used the occasion to revive many of the powerful issues he highlighted a year ago in his provocative encyclical on the environment, Laudato si’, and his latest message seems certain to rankle conservatives.
Francis described man’s destruction of the environment as a sin and accused mankind of turning the planet into a “polluted wasteland full of debris, desolation and filth”.
“Global warming continues,” the pope said. “2015 was the warmest year on record, and 2016 will likely be warmer still. This is leading to ever more severe droughts, floods, fires and extreme weather events.
“Climate change is also contributing to the heart-rending refugee crisis. The world’s poor, though least responsible for climate change, are most vulnerable and already suffering its impact. ”
The pope said the faithful should use the Holy Year of Mercy throughout 2016 to ask forgiveness for sins committed against the environment and our “selfish” system motivated by “profit at any price”.
“We must not be indifferent or resigned to the loss of biodiversity and the destruction of ecosystems, often caused by our irresponsible and selfish behaviour,” he said. “Because of us, thousands of species will no longer give glory to God by their very existence … We have no such right.”
Washington Post:
Francis’s remarkable 2015 encyclical, “Laudato Si,” insisted that action against climate change was a moral imperative for Christians and for humanity. This engagement, like so much else, was prefigured by the papal name he chose, honoring Saint Francis of Assisi. He wanted to identify, the pope explained, with “the man of poverty, the man of peace, the man who loves and protects creation.”
Read more @ GreenPolicy360 on the Life, Values, Ideals & Work of Pope Francis:
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GreenPolicy360: The latest news coming from the Trump administration with its extreme policy goals is no surprise to us. E&E News is revealing the breaking story and it is, though shocking, not a shocker coming from an anti-facts and anti-science president.
Before we go on to deliver our judgment of the decision to attempt to drastically cut the budget of the preeminent climate and weather Earth Science organization in the world, let's introduce the news organization that has the story.
E&E News goes back to a start that involved friends of ours who carved a successful path in investigating and reporting a wide range of environmental and energy news. Although the current administration's memo re: the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration refers to its work as "woke", we say, yes, science is woke.
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Fact Checking a US-initiated Trade War
AP
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Some 1,900 scientists accuse Trump of ‘wholesale assault’ on science
In a letter, several members of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine warn Trump’s overhaul of U.S. science has created a “climate of fear.”
More than 1,900 scientists have signed a letter warning that the Trump administration is threatening scientific independence and urging it to “cease its wholesale assault on U.S. science.” Since taking office, President Donald Trump and his team have upended the country’s scientific research apparatus — slashing funding, terminating grants and attempting to weed out ideas deemed unacceptable, according to the letter.
TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE
We all rely on science. Science gave us the smartphones in our pockets, the navigation systems in our cars, and life-saving medical care. We count on engineers when we drive across bridges and fly in airplanes. Businesses and farmers rely on science and engineering for product innovation, technological advances, and weather forecasting. Science helps humanity protect the planet and keeps pollutants and toxins out of our air, water, and food.
For over 80 years, wise investments by the US government have built up the nation’s research enterprise, making it the envy of the world. Astoundingly, the Trump administration is destabilizing this enterprise by gutting funding for research, firing thousands of scientists, removing public access to scientific data, and pressuring researchers to alter or abandon their work on ideological grounds.
The undersigned are elected members of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, representing some of the nation’s top scientists, engineers, and medical researchers. We are speaking out as individuals. We see real danger in this moment. We hold diverse political beliefs, but we are united as researchers in wanting to protect independent scientific inquiry. We are sending this SOS to sound a clear warning: the nation’s scientific enterprise is being decimated.
The administration is slashing funding for scientific agencies, terminating grants to scientists, defunding their laboratories, and hampering international scientific collaboration. The funding cuts are forcing institutions to pause research (including studies of new disease treatments), dismiss faculty, and stop enrolling graduate students—the pipeline for the next generation’s scientists.
The administration’s current investigations of more than 50 universities send a chilling message. Columbia University was recently notified that its federal funding would be withheld unless it adopted disciplinary policies and disabled an academic department targeted by the administration. Destabilizing dozens of universities will endanger higher education—and the research those institutions conduct.
The quest for truth—the mission of science—requires that scientists freely explore new questions and report their findings honestly, independent of special interests. The administration is engaging in censorship, destroying this independence. It is using executive orders and financial threats to manipulate which studies are funded or published, how results are reported, and which data and research findings the public can access. The administration is blocking research on topics it finds objectionable, such as climate change, or that yields results it does not like, on topics ranging from vaccine safety to economic trends.
A climate of fear has descended on the research community. Researchers, afraid of losing their funding or job security, are removing their names from publications, abandoning studies, and rewriting grant proposals and papers to remove scientifically accurate terms (such as “climate change”) that agencies are flagging as objectionable. Although some in the scientific community have protested vocally, most researchers, universities, research institutions, and professional organizations have kept silent to avoid antagonizing the administration and jeopardizing their funding.
If our country’s research enterprise is dismantled, we will lose our scientific edge. Other countries will lead the development of novel disease treatments, clean energy sources, and the new technologies of the future. Their populations will be healthier, and their economies will surpass us in business, defense, intelligence gathering, and monitoring our planet’s health. The damage to our nation’s scientific enterprise could take decades to reverse.
We call on the administration to cease its wholesale assault on U.S. science, and we urge the public to join this call. Share this statement with others, contact your representatives in Congress, and help your community understand what is at risk. The voice of science must not be silenced. We all benefit from science, and we all stand to lose if the nation’s research enterprise is destroyed.
The views expressed here are our own and not those of the National Academies or our home institutions.
<signed>
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March 2025
The end of the American-led world order
Via Op/Ed in the Washington Post
March 27, 2025
GreenPolicy360: After making a case that post World War 2 economic dominance and US hegemony militarily is in decline, and that neoliberal globalization policies have resulted in a loss of manufacturing and a political shift across the country, the conclusion of this WaPo editorial columnist is stark:
...Democracy has been eroding for decades. In its latest report on the state of democracy, issued six weeks into the Trump administration but based on data through 2024, the V-Dem Institute in Sweden noted that there are fewer democracies than autocracies for the first time in more than 20 years. Almost three out of four people in the world live under autocratic governments, the highest share since 1978, well before the end of the Cold War. Liberal democracies host 12 percent of the world population.
What if the National Rally wins the next presidential election in France? What if the government of Friedrich Merz fails in Germany and the neo-Nazi Alternative for Germany triumphs? The V-Dem assessment of the United States does not include the past couple of months of democratic backsliding, with Trump challenging the judiciary, snubbing due process and fishing for justifications to ignore the rule of law. But American democracy, it suggests, is due for a downgrade.
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Author and Activist Bill McKibben on Climate Progress in the Age of Trump 2.0
- The administration is “rejecting flat-out the science,” he says, “about the single most dangerous thing that’s ever happened.”
Activist Bill McKibben says Americans upset by the Trump administration’s gutting of U.S. climate efforts need to move beyond despair. In an interview with e360, he talks about rethinking the role of protest, the global push on clean energy, and why he sees reason for hope.
In the first six weeks of the new Trump administration, it’s become clear that the president intends to undo not just Joe Biden’s environmental legacy, but an entire generation’s worth of action on climate change. The administration has announced it is withdrawing from the Paris Agreement. It has frozen Inflation Reduction Act grants, stopped issuing permits for offshore wind development, and declared an “energy emergency” to boost fossil fuel production. The White House appears to be preparing to go after the Environmental Protection Agency’s 2009 “endangerment finding,” which undergirds EPA regulations on greenhouse gas emissions, while cutting EPA spending by 65 percent.
How should environmentalists respond? Activist and author Bill McKibben has been a leading voice on climate change since 1989, when he published The End of Nature, the first book on the subject aimed at a general audience. McKibben spoke to e360 contributing writer Elizabeth Kolbert about the urgency of the moment, the role of protest, the future of clean energy, and where he sees glimmers of hope.
(Read the Interview between Elizabeth Kolbert and Bill McKibben)
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Another in a Flurry of Presidential Executive Orders
March 20, 2025
🤦🏽♀️
The source behind your local weather report is facing cuts. Meteorologists are sounding the alarm
NOAA, which provides data for morning forecasts and hurricane models, has laid off more than 800 employees and plans to cut 1,000 more
Via Poynter
When viewers tune into their local television station for the weather report, chances are that the forecast they see was made possible by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
“NOAA and the National Weather Service — they are the backbone of meteorology for the entire country,” said Ryan Phillips, a meteorologist for NBC 6 and an instructor at the University of Miami.
Through agencies like the National Hurricane Center and the Weather Prediction Center, NOAA collects observational data, runs models, develops forecasts and issues warnings — information that broadcast meteorologists use to create weather forecasts.
Those agencies are currently being targeted for cuts by billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Governmental Efficiency.
More than 800 NOAA employees were laid off in late February, including National Weather Service meteorologists. A day later, 500 more took a deferred resignation offer. Last week, NOAA reportedly began preparing to lay off another 1,000 employees, or 10% of the agency’s staff.
... During severe weather, broadcast meteorologists are especially dependent on NOAA.
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A Vengeful Moment in an Historic Time
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E.P.A. Plans to Close All Environmental Justice Offices
- As the Department of Education Announces President Trump's ordering the Education Department to Close Up and Shut Down
- A President acts to eliminate environmental protection and student education programs across the country
A step in eliminating the EPA: An internal memo directs the closure of offices designed to ease the heavy pollution faced by poor and minority communities.
The Trump administration intends to eliminate Environmental Protection Agency offices responsible for addressing the disproportionately high levels of pollution facing poor communities, according to a memo from Lee Zeldin, the agency administrator.
In the internal memo, viewed by The New York Times, Mr. Zeldin informed agency leaders that he was directing “the reorganization and elimination” of the offices of environmental justice at all 10 E.P.A. regional offices as well as the one in Washington.
Mr. Zeldin’s move effectively ends three decades of work at the E.P.A. to try to ease the pollution that burdens poor and minority communities, which are frequently located near highways, power plants, industrial plants and other polluting facilities. Studies have shown that people who live in those communities have higher rates of asthma, heart disease and other health problems, compared with the national average.
“If anybody needed a clearer sign that this administration gives not a single damn for the people of the United States, this is it,” said Matthew Tejada, a former E.P.A. official who is now a senior vice president for environmental health at the Natural Resources Defense Council, a nonprofit organization.
Molly Vaseliou, an E.P.A. spokeswoman, described the moves as “organizational improvements” that align with President Trump’s orders to end wasteful spending and diversity, equity and inclusion programs.
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'Trump's EPA, as its programs and employees are deeply reduced, announces refusal to continue Congressional funding
- EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin claims he has authority to block Congressional grants
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Environmental Protection Agency has terminated grant agreements worth $20 billion issued by the Biden administration under a so-called green bank to finance clean energy and climate-friendly projects.
The action comes weeks after the EPA froze the grants...
Democrats defended the bank program and accused Zeldin of acting without legal authority or evidence of wrongdoing.
“Without a shred of evidence, Administrator Zeldin is escalating his unfounded attempts to unilaterally terminate congressionally authorized and contractually obligated funding that would lower household energy costs, spur economic growth and cut pollution,” said Rhode Island Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, the top Democrat on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.
Whitehouse called Zeldin’s efforts to block the green bank “a blatant giveaway to the fossil fuel megadonors who bankrolled” President Donald Trump’s campaign.
Zeldin’s actions “will drive up energy costs, deepen our reliance on foreign oil and worsen climate change,” Whitehouse said, accusing Zeldin of continuing what he called the Trump administration’s “lawlessness and disdain for the Constitution.”
Separately, Whitehouse challenged a criminal investigation into the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund by the Justice Department and FBI.
“Without a true basis to interfere with these properly appropriated and obligated funds, it appears you reverted to a pretextual criminal investigation to provide an alternative excuse to interfere,” Whitehouse wrote in a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel.
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95% of countries miss UN deadline to submit 2035 climate plan pledges
- There is a "massive gap between rhetoric and reality"
- Countries climate-related work falls far short
In the 15th edition of its annual “emissions gap” report, the UNEP calls for “no more hot air” as countries approach the February 2025 deadline to submit their next nationally determined contributions (NDCs) setting mitigation targets for 2035.
Via Carbon Brief
The deadline to file new pledges was in February, but only 13 countries presented their contributions.
Via GreenPolicy360
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Trump Boasts About Dismantling Environmental and Science Policy
Via AGU / EOS
Promises and policies to --
Dismantle the environmental policies of former President Joe Biden
Immediately pause disbursement of funds appropriated via the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act that included support for a wide range of climate resiliency and mitigation projects
"Drill, drill, drill" and “Unleash American Energy”
Fact Checking Trump's March 4th Address to the US Congress
- As the Nation looks to determine its direction, facts come increasingly into the spotlight
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- (Screenshot/Google)
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February 2025
Germany and Europe shift political direction
German election delivers change for Europe
"It is not just another change of government” under Mr. Trump, Friedrich Merz, the leading candidate for chancellor, warned on Friday after taking the stage for an arena rally in the western town of Oberhausen, “but a complete redrawing of the world map.” ...
Mr. Merz and other candidates, including the current center-left chancellor, Olaf Scholz, have warned of strained or even severed ties with the United States, while vowing to fill a continental and global leadership vacuum.
Mr. Merz openly questioned this past week whether the United States would remain a democracy much longer — or slip into full autocratic rule — and whether NATO would continue to exist. Mr. Scholz has said that Germany and Europe must be prepared to go it alone without Mr. Trump. ...
Among the other challenges for Germany is that Trump administration officials, including Vice President JD Vance and Elon Musk, have also embraced a hard-right political party, the Alternative for Germany, or AfD, that revels in Nazi slogans and is ostracized by all of the country’s mainstream parties.
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Modeling Life: AI Leaps Into the Unknown Known
- Be Wary of Pathogens and Other 'Creations'
We at GreenPolicy are asking ourselves 'What would Dr. Michael Crichton think?' Is this an opening scene in a movie script? If Jurassic Park's author was alive and still ruminating about science gone bad, would he worried, or what, reading this news today?
February 19, 2025
AI can now model and design the genetic code for all domains of life with Evo 2
Arc Institute develops the largest AI model for biology to date in collaboration with NVIDIA, bringing together Stanford University, UC Berkeley, and UC San Francisco researchers
Arc Institute researchers have developed a machine learning model called Evo 2 that is trained on the DNA of over 100,000 species across the entire tree of life. Its deep understanding of biological code means that Evo 2 can identify patterns in gene sequences across disparate organisms that experimental researchers would need years to uncover. The model can accurately identify disease-causing mutations in human genes and is capable of designing new genomes that are as long as the genomes of simple bacteria.
Evo 2’s developers—made up of scientists from Arc Institute and NVIDIA, convening collaborators across Stanford University, UC Berkeley, and UC San Francisco—will post details about the model as a preprint on February 19, 2025, accompanied by a user-friendly interface called Evo Designer. The Evo 2 code is publicly accessible from Arc’s GitHub, and is also integrated into the NVIDIA BioNeMo framework, as part of a collaboration between Arc Institute and NVIDIA to accelerate scientific research. Arc Institute also worked with AI research lab Goodfire to develop a mechanistic interpretability visualizer that uncovers the key biological features and patterns the model learns to recognize in genomic sequences. The Evo team is sharing its training data, training and inference code, and model weights to release the largest-scale, fully open source AI model to date.
Building on its predecessor Evo 1, which was trained entirely on single-cell genomes, Evo 2 is the largest artificial intelligence model in biology to date, trained on over 9.3 trillion nucleotides—the building blocks that make up DNA or RNA—from over 128,000 whole genomes as well as metagenomic data. In addition to an expanded collection of bacterial, archaeal, and phage genomes, Evo 2 includes information from humans, plants, and other single-celled and multi-cellular species in the eukaryotic domain of life.
“Our development of Evo 1 and Evo 2 represents a key moment in the emerging field of generative biology, as the models have enabled machines to read, write, and think in the language of nucleotides,” says Patrick Hsu (@pdhsu), Arc Institute Co-Founder, Arc Core Investigator, an Assistant Professor of Bioengineering and Deb Faculty Fellow at University of California, Berkeley, and a co-senior author on the Evo 2 preprint. "Evo 2 has a generalist understanding of the tree of life that's useful for a multitude of tasks, from predicting disease-causing mutations to designing potential code for artificial life. We’re excited to see what the research community builds on top of these foundation models.”
Read about the 'Tree of Life' at GreenPolicy360
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Outrage after JD Vance claims judges are not allowed to check executive power
Vice-president accused of threatening constitution after saying judges have no right to restrain president’s agenda
Via The Guardian / February 10, 2025
Article III of the US constitution confers a power known as judicial review, which gives federal judges the authority to rule on cases involving the president, as well as other branches of government.
Vance’s comments drew widespread criticism.
Daniel Goldman, a Democratic representative from New York, responded on X: “It’s called the ‘rule of law’. Our constitution created three co-equal branches of government to provide checks and balances on each other (‘separation of powers’).
“The judiciary makes sure that the executive follows the law. If you do, then you won’t have problems.”
Quinta Jurecic, a fellow at the Brookings Institution thinktank, told the New York Times: “What Vance’s wording suggests is that the executive could potentially respond to a court order by saying to the court, ‘You’re unconstitutionally intruding on my authority and I’m not going to do what you say.’
“At that point, the constitution falls apart.”
~
Programming Alert: America Under Siege
By Jim Acosta / February 10
In one revealing social media post, Vice President J.D. Vance somehow managed to upstage his boss, who spent this past weekend attending the Super Bowl, seizing control of the Kennedy Center and abolishing the penny, by issuing a performative decree on the propaganda platform of his other superior, Elon Musk, insisting that the White House need not adhere to rulings from federal judges.
“If a judge tried to tell a general how to conduct a military operation, that would be illegal. If a judge tried to command the attorney general in how to use her discretion as a prosecutor, that's also illegal. Judges aren't allowed to control the executive's legitimate power,” Vance posted.
Vance, who is a graduate of Yale Law School, is saying the riot part out loud. Presidents cannot violate rulings from the courts, unless of course, the Constitution is rendered null and void. Such an action would, for all intents and purposes, amount to something of a non-violent insurrection, executed from inside the government. To that end, Trump’s critics would note this is not his first rodeo. The idea that “judges aren't allowed to control the executive's legitimate power” may be the view of the most ardent conservatives on the Supreme Court. But it’s hard to imagine Chief Justice John Roberts holding such a view. Though one can imagine a lot these days.
Over the weekend, MAGA-world was howling after a federal judge temporarily blocked Musk’s government efficiency team, DOGE, from having access to the Treasury department’s highly sensitive federal payments system. Trump responded to the ruling, calling it a “disgrace.”
Trump’s actions since the start of his second administration raise serious questions about what his intentions would be, moving forward, if the guardrails of a judicial branch are tossed aside. His pardons and commutations for January 6th rioters, his stripping of the security details for outspoken ex-government officials like former national security adviser John Bolton, his move to tear down USAID and the Department of Education, not to mention his erratic fixation on acquiring Canada, Greenland, and the Panama Canal all call for bright red lines curtailing Trump’s executive powers. After the last couple of weeks, this is no time to remove any constitutional restraining bolts.
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How to find climate data and science removed from government websites
Purging "Climate Change" as Verboten Words in the Trump Administration
- Hard Turn in Climate-Related Policies Led by Cuts, Deletions, Erasures, and Firings
- Online Websites Are Being Scrubbed of Climate and Renewable Energy Content, Earth Science Research, Statistics, Data, and Educational Tools
The Washington Post and multiple news sources have begun reporting that Trump Executive Orders to government agencies are rapidly resulting in widespread purging of online references to "climate change".
>The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) website overhaul reprises a similar move by Trump’s first administration, which touched off a “Don’t Say Climate” movement among Republican-led state governments. Climate change is no longer listed on the EPA’s main environmental topics drop-down menu, which is instead populated with topics like bedbugs and radon.
>David Doniger, senior attorney with the environmental nonprofit the Natural Resources Defense Council, called the EPA’s “Orwellian” website changes “of a piece with [Trump] denying climate as a problem” and “trying to bury inconvenient facts and pretend these problems don’t exist.”
>At the Department of Energy, the webpage for the Office of Energy Justice and Equity is gone — as are all of its employees, who were placed on administrative leave earlier this week as part of the Trump administration’s purge.
>The web address for the department’s Low Income Energy Affordability Data Tool now redirects visitors to a page headlined “Restoring Energy Dominance” and links out to a description of the president’s promise to end a pause on liquefied natural gas exports.
>Another program no longer specified that it would help develop programs for an energy future that was equitable or clean.
>“Climate change” was also removed from a page describing an Environmental Protection Agency tool used to analyze greenhouse gas emissions and air quality.
>Several Department of Transportation references to “climate change” have been replaced with “climate resilience,” a more generic term that describes protections from disasters, without investigating their root causes, according to Alys Campaigne, Climate Initiative Leader at the Southern Environmental Law Center, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization.
>An agency within the Department of Transportation even went as far as to remove goals around “achieving net-zero emissions and increasing equity.” Instead, the new goals for the Advanced Research Projects Agency — Infrastructure now read to “enhance resilience, and make America more globally competitive.”
>Meanwhile, at the Agriculture Department, a page on the USDA’s Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities has been taken down. The Forest Service’s website has been similarly scrubbed. And at least two pages are gone that informed visitors about how climate change is affecting the nation’s 193 million acres of federally managed forests and grasslands.
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Global CO2 Emissions: Record High
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January 2025
January 21, 2025
Beneath a veneer of calm, Trump’s inauguration holds warning signs for US democracy
- The warning signs were clear
Via the Associated Press
- https://apnews.com/article/trump-inauguration-biden-democracy-power-00d5651a0ac611c2c6e3b555c4a8ad11
The celebration of the peaceful transfer of power kicked off just before noon Monday with both Trump and Biden present. That was a stark difference from last time, when Trump didn’t attend the event to hand over power to Biden. ...
"I did have a couple of things to say that were extremely controversial,” Trump told the crowd in the Capitol’s Emancipation Hall. It was the same space that had filled with rows of National Guard troops sleeping on the hard floors for weeks in the aftermath of the Jan. 6 attack.
Hours later, Trump followed through on a campaign promise to pardon those involved in the attack...
Even after regaining the highest office in the land, Trump continued to lie about his 2020 election loss. He didn’t mention it in his formal address, but in his impromptu, second speech, Trump falsely contended it was only due to voter fraud and that if votes were counted accurately he would win California, a state he lost by more than 3.2 million votes.
And perspective from Europe...
Trump the wrecking ball brings chaos to order, executing a parade of grievances
- Planet-sparing Paris agreement goes out the window, along with punishment for January 6 insurrectionists, as Donald Trump glories in his return to power
Via The Guardian
When the obituary of planet Earth is written, there may be a prominent slot for what took place in a basketball and ice hockey arena in downtown Washington on 20 January, 2025.
It was here that, with a wry head shake and gleeful twirl of the pen, Donald Trump again withdrew the US from the Paris climate agreement, to the joy and jubilation of 20,000 spectators apparently indifferent to fate of the pale blue dot they live on.
“We’re going to save over a trillion dollars by withdrawing from that treaty,” gushed an aide at Trump’s prompting, implying that watching the world burn is a small price to pay.
This was the moment it really hit home. Trump is back. The human wrecking ball who left a trail of chaos and division in his first four years has returned with a vengeance. America voted for this. People will get hurt.
Monday’s first batch of executive orders, contained in black folders, was also a reminder of Trump’s insatiable appetite for spectacle. His swearing in and inauguration parade had been brought indoors because of extreme cold weather. Naturally he saw an opportunity to turn it into a reality TV show.
“60th presidential inauguration” was written in red and gold on electronic screens. A red carpet covered the floor. A giant cartoon-like reviewing stand had been set up with an oversized presidential seal, a lectern and a tiny desk.
~
Monday, January 20, 2025
Donald J. Trump Inaugurated
🇺🇸
US Environmental Protection Agency Pick Speaks Up at Confirmation Hearing
🌎
January 12
California Governor Gavin Newsom (D) told NBC’s “Meet the Press” today that he believes the fires in Los Angeles will be the worst natural disaster in U.S. history in terms of “scale and scope” as well as “the costs associated with” the destruction and rebuilding.
And via one of the top writers on environmental news, Seth B of the AP
Via AGU... Amplified California Wildfire Risks
🌎
Los Angeles Fires Send a Message (and Who's Getting It?)
The effects of climate change bring massive costs and suffering
- Photo by Apu Gomes
Op/Ed by Peter Kalmas
GreenPolicy360 recalls early warnings about climate change
Our friend George E. Brown who became a colleague was a first voice to rise in the US Congress to take on the questions -- and dangers -- of climate change.
Look back to the origins of US climate science/earth science/atmospheric science, and there's an East Los Angeles Congressman, George Brown, out in front. In many ways this science work would go on to put in place a foundation and beginning of a modern environmental movement.
Let's take time to read again about a man who made a positive difference and changed the world for the better, even as the struggles continue.
When we speak of climate policy, George first acted to protect clean air above Los Angeles in the 1960s, then worked to create the EPA, environmental laws, and then pivoted in the 70s to become a leader of protecting what we call the "Thin Blue Layer" above home planet Earth.
We envisioned what the disruptions of a warming climate could bring. Now in Los Angeles the changing environment is delivering a disaster described as the region's worst in history, one that augurs more danger to come in the future.
This moment calls for increased awareness and action.
Congressman Brown was instrumental in proposing and establishing the Presidential Office of Science and Technology Policy in 1976. He was working alongside the National Academy of Sciences as they released a first-ever climate report in 1977. In 1977 he and the new Office of Science and Technology sent a first government warning of "climatic fluctuation" and "catastrophic" change to President Carter:
The First US Climate Act
- https://greenpolicy360.net/images/1969_beginnings_of_the_modern_environmental_movement.pdf
- https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/Earth_Day_Memories_on_the_50th_Anniversary
- https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/File:EarthScience_Missions_via_the_EOS_-_2022.png
- https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/File:Earth_Observing_System_-_fleet_of_satellites.png
- https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/LANDSAT_and_Virginia_Tower_Norwood
- https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/File:Landsat,_a_50_year_legacy.png
- https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/File:You_can_manage_only_what_you_can_measure_Dr_David_Crisp,_OCO-2,_June_2014_m.jpg
- https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/File:Earth-NASA.jpg
- https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/Category:Climate_Change
- https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/Category:Climate_Policy
Listen to a Climate Scientist, Michael Mann, Explain Factors Involved in the LA Wildfires
🌎
January 4, 2025
First, a Nobel Peace Prize, and now a U.S. Medal of Freedom
Congratulations to Jane Goodall. Her work is an inspiration to all, and how each of us can make a positive difference.
- Photo: Gabriela Herman for The New York Times
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2025! A 4 Billion+ Year Old Planet Begins Another Year Orbiting Its Sun Star
- Fly On #PlanetCitizens #SpaceshipEarth
🌎
Recent GreenPolicy360 Story Highlights
Green Stories of the Day - GreenPolicy360 Archive
GreenPolicy360 Archive Highlights 2024
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GreenPolicy360 Archive Highlights 2019
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~
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