"Construction on — or at least preparations for — a border wall through Texas’s Big Bend National Park and the larger Big Bend region have been halted through Sept. 15, and possibly longer, a federal judge said from the bench Friday."
"California sued the Trump administration and Golden State Wind over the federal government’s deal with the company to cancel an offshore wind project lease, alleging the transaction violated multiple federal laws."
"The Trump administration is working to cut global health funding to developing nations by tens of billions of dollars by 2030, according to a new analysis of the secretive agreements U.S. officials have pursued with more than a dozen governments to date."
"The Trump administration’s latest deal to cancel offshore wind projects and boost fossil fuel energy development instead is generating a huge payday for one of the president’s million-dollar donors."
"Many Venezuelans suspected that there was going to be a price to pay for President Trump’s brazen capture of their autocratic leader, Nicolás Maduro, who was arrested by U.S. forces in January. On Friday, that cost became clear when Mr. Trump announced that the U.S. would be taking majority control of a vast part of Venezuela’s oil reserves — national resources long considered by many in the country to be a birthright."
"For more than a year, the National Park Service has been quietly working to fulfill an unprecedented directive from Trump officials: Parcel off a corner of Yosemite National Park to give to a private developer."
"The country’s biggest energy market has a problem: It can’t build enough power plants to keep up with electricity demand." "More than 50 GW of solar, wind, and batteries can now connect to PJM’s grid. It could help drive down costs — if states, utilities, and hyperscalers make it happen."
"A major Canadian oil and gas company reported dozens of incidents at its pipelines after the provincial regulator exempted thousands of its pipelines from normal clean-up timelines."
"The artificial intelligence race is creating demand for more than data centers and electricity. It is also creating a new market for the chemicals needed to keep increasingly powerful computer chips from overheating. Some of those cooling technologies rely on PFAS, a broad class of fluorinated compounds already responsible for widespread drinking water contamination in North Carolina."
"A handful of mega data center projects would emit over 100 million tons per year of greenhouse gases, an enormous amount roughly equal to the annual emissions of a mid-sized industrialized country."
