Government

"The Senate voted 55-43 Wednesday to confirm Radhika Fox as head of the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) Office of Water."

"The Electric Reliability Council of Texas says a large number of power plants are offline, but it could not provide details as to what may be causing the “very concerning” number of outages. At the same time, the state is experiencing near-record demand for electricity in June."

"The Brazilian government on Monday authorized the employment of the National Security Force (FNS) to protect the Yanomami indigenous people and their reservation lands for 90 days in the northern state of Roraima bordering Venezuela."

"The Oregon House on Tuesday passed a bill to redirect funding from a tax-funded institute created 30 years ago to inform residents about forestry, after an investigation found that the organization sought to discredit scientists and acted as a lobbying and public relations arm for the timber industry."

"When the U.S. Park Police led law enforcement officers into a crowd of mostly peaceful protesters outside Lafayette Square on June 1, 2020, including officers equipped with chemical irritants and officers on horseback, they did so as part of a plan made days earlier to build a fence around the park to protect officers, not to facilitate the visit minutes later by President Donald Trump to a nearby church, an inspector general’s report released Wednesday concluded."

"Republicans on the Senate Energy Committee on Tuesday grilled Tracy Stone-Manning, President Biden's pick to lead the Bureau of Land Management, questioning her on partisanship and her personal finances."

"The world’s leading economies have made lots of commitments lately about reducing carbon emissions, but their actions tell a different story. A report released Tuesday finds that between January 2020 and March 2021, G7 governments pumped $190 billion into supporting coal, oil, and gas, with the U.S. taking the prize for the most money spent on dirty industries."

"The true number of people killed by the disastrous winter storm and power outages that devastated Texas in February is likely four or five times what the state has acknowledged so far. A BuzzFeed News data analysis reveals the hidden scale of a catastrophe that trapped millions of people in freezing darkness, cut off access to running water, and overwhelmed emergency services for days."