"U.S. lawmakers have reached an agreement on the Farm Bill that drops a proposal to tighten food stamps restrictions backed by President Donald Trump, and are looking to vote on it this week, according to congressional staffers."
As Democrats take charge of the House of Representatives next month, they’ll be wielding powerful congressional oversight powers over environment and energy matters. Watch for oversight drama in 2019 as committees take a closer look at natural resource policy at the Interior Department, the rollback of climate policy, attacks on climate science and more. All in our latest Issue Backgrounder.
"Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke has resurrected a federally chartered board that advises the National Park Service with his own appointees, nearly a year after most of its former members resigned in frustration." ... "The new members are either all registered Republicans or have voted in GOP primaries."
"An industrious but finicky pest could be the key to restoring Washington State’s wetlands and salmon populations."
"Environmental groups have gone to court to challenge the state's decision last month to grant two key permits for the proposed PolyMet copper-nickel mine near the Iron Range in northeastern Minnesota."
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday rebuffed a challenge by three conservation groups to the authority of President Donald Trump’s administration to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, a victory for Trump who has made the wall a centerpiece of his hardline immigration policies."
"Living peatlands sequester carbon-dioxide, drawing it down from the atmosphere through plants and trapping it underground as carbon".
"For decades, opposition to drilling has left the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge off limits. Now the Trump administration is hurriedly clearing the way for oil exploration."
"FAIRBANKS, Alaska — It is the last great stretch of nothingness in the United States, a vast landscape of mosses, sedges and shrubs that is home to migrating caribou and the winter dens of polar bears.
"The tentative deal on the 2018 farm bill is likely to boost the Conservation Reserve Program at the price of other conservation initiatives, reflecting fiscal limitations and policy fights that shaped talks over that part of the five-year legislation."
"Key lawmakers said Wednesday they have reached a tentative deal on a massive farm bill, breaking a months-long impasse over legislation that doles out more than $400 billion in federal funds for farm subsidies, food stamps and conservation efforts."
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