G2. Local Greens

By Renee Umsted

As temperatures in the Triangle soar, Duke Energy customers are noticing higher bills.

On social media, customers claim they’re not using more energy, or that they’re trying to use less. But they still say that bills are getting higher each month, and are more expensive than this time last year.

Are high temperatures to blame for expensive energy bills?

It’s summertime. It’s hot and humid. Your air conditioning system is working harder to cool your home.

And if you ask Duke Energy, that’s the story.

“Cooling demand across North Carolina was 43% above normal by July 4 following multiple periods of extreme heat, according to federal weather data,” the Charlotte-based company wrote in an Aug. 7 news release. “For many customers, increased air-conditioning use is the primary reason energy use and bills may be higher than normal.”

Is it Duke Energy’s fault?

But there are other factors to blame for higher bills, said Sara Heilman, clean energy strategist at NC WARN, a nonprofit that advocates for a transition to clean energy and promotes energy and climate justice.

“I think the most central thing contributing to rising electric bills is that there is a direct correlation between profit for Duke Energy executives and investors, and rising costs for North Carolinians,” Heilman said in a video interview.

Duke Energy reported $5 billion in profits last year, The News & Observer previously reported. Last week, it reported its strongest-ever second quarter (April through June), with more than $1 billion in net income.

When the utility builds new infrastructure such as a power plant or high-voltage power line, customers pay for the cost of the project, plus an additional percentage as profit, Heilman said.

“There’s this incentive for Duke to be building as much as possible, even when it’s not necessarily needed,” Heilman said.

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The post Your electric bill is up. Is it because of the heat or Duke Energy? — The News & Observer appeared first on NC WARN.

The author, Betsy Pfeiffer, was a UC Berkeley Goldman School of Public Policy (GSPP) Fellow and Greenbelt Alliance research collaborator between February and May 2026.

How do we help Californians understand that building homes in existing communities is good for commutes, wallets, and the environment? Over the first half of 2026, I had the opportunity to work with Greenbelt Alliance to identify existing housing and climate narrative strategies and develop guidance to increase impact.

To understand how Greenbelt Alliance can communicate this link more effectively to Californians, I consolidated existing research, recent polling done by EMC Research, and stakeholder input into a best practices playbook for communicating about climate and housing in California.

According to polling from 2025, California voters’ top five issues are cost of living, housing, crime, traffic, and climate change. Local land-use policies that prioritize infill development can address four out of five of those issues, but that same poll also showed that most voters don’t understand that connection. When asked what local governments could do about climate change, only 3% of respondents said housing policy, and a third of all respondents had no answer at all.

California has historically prioritized housing development on undeveloped land outside of existing communities—known as sprawl. These policy choices have normalized long commutes while driving up the cost of living, increasing traffic, and undermining Californians’ health and quality of life. These land use patterns also lead to more Californians living in areas that are vulnerable to wildfire and floods, which fuels insurance pressures that drive up housing costs statewide. In turn, pollution and global warming gases from so many long commutes are contributing to climate change.

While the links between housing and climate change are clear to many of us working in the field, they can be difficult to talk about in a way that resonates with the general public. There is a growing body of research on the most effective ways to communicate about the environment and housing separately, but little guidance exists on how to connect them.

Day-to-Day Life Resonates

The single most consistent finding from the research, the polling, and the advocates I interviewed is that messages rooted in tangible, everyday benefits outperform everything else. Quality-of-life messages combine those top four concerns from the poll—cost of living, housing, affordability, and climate change—by emphasizing that more housing in existing neighborhoods means less time in traffic, less money spent on gas, and less impact on the environment.

Shorter commutes, walkable neighborhoods, and living closer to family are messaging winners.

The Environment Belongs in The Story

Environmental messages poll well in California, and research suggests that pairing them with quality-of-life framings strengthens the narrative, but the right environmental angle varies by audience.

Urban Californians, for example, seem to respond most to framings that treat care for the environment or fighting climate change as broad values, not aligned with specific actions.

When speaking to rural and suburban residents, conservation messages, in contrast, may be more effective. And framing matters—”Protecting open space” earned strong support, but “stopping sprawl” did not. This difference reflects a broader best practice principle to link messages to existing concerns and keep the framing proactive and solutions-oriented.

Developing a positive framing for stories about disaster avoidance is a bigger challenge. Fire and flood hazards are among the most effective ways to connect housing and climate change, but to work as a housing development narrative, these messages need to execute a pivot that can be difficult to pull off. Moving from why “not to build” in certain places to “why to build” in others can be difficult to communicate effectively and simply in a single message. For now, wildfire threats and insurance pressures seem to land most powerfully with rural and suburban Californians, but urban residents are beginning to share those concerns as climate impacts reach more of the state.

The research demonstrates that quality of life framing applies broadly, but a more nuanced approach is needed when talking to urban versus suburban/rural audiences. Additionally, staying safe from fire and flood is a promising narrative for all Californians, but the messaging needs to be refined and tested. Finally, simpler is better: trying to combine all of these into a single message risks diluting the impact of each.

The Big Picture

Greenbelt Alliance and allies have the opportunity to shift the current public perspective on both housing and the environment to emphasize that housing is a climate solution. The quality of life plus environment pairing has strong evidential support, but it has yet to be tested. And while stakeholder input suggests that separating audiences into urban versus suburban/rural is a reasonable starting point, it’s an inference rather than a tested finding. 

Encouragingly, Californians already care about what infill housing can deliver: shorter commutes, lower costs, walkable neighborhoods, land protection, and a healthier climate.

Header Photo: View from Berkeley Hills. By Chris LaBasco Photography

The post Build California Here appeared first on Greenbelt Alliance.

With more than two decades of advocacy efforts and many twists and turns, the site known as Tesla Park in eastern Alameda County needs protection once again. 

In 2021, Governor Gavin Newsom, the Legislature, and the California Department of Parks and Recreation reached a $31 million agreement to protect the Alameda-Tesla Expansion Area from off-highway vehicle (OHV) recreation on the land.

We are now asking our supporters to reach out to legislators to ask them to support establishing Tesla as a State Natural Reserve. We need your urgent help because State Parks plans to release the general plan and Environmental Impact Report by the end of the year. We cannot let Tesla’s irreplaceable resource values be damaged by short-term thinking. Send an email to Assemblymember Bauer-Kahan and Senator McNerney in a few easy steps using this action alert!

Tesla has natural and cultural resources of statewide significance that exceed the statute for Reserve classification, from extraordinary biodiversity to an essential critical linkage wildlife corridor to important historic and prehistoric cultural resources. Learn more here. 

Historic Fight

With the mobilization of a coalition of organizations, led by the Save Tesla Park campaign, Greenbelt Alliance helped fight this battle for Tesla Park—and won. The land has rare ecological value and contains an abundance of highly sensitive natural and cultural resources. Learn more here. 

This agreement was part of the 2021 Natural Resources Budget Trailer Bill AB 155/SB 155, which ended plans to expand the Carnegie State Vehicular Recreation Area (SVRA) into the 3,100-acre Tesla Park and provides resources to reallocate this high-environmental-impact activity to a different, more appropriate location. 

For at least two decades, Tesla Park was at risk of becoming a destructive off-highway vehicle/motorized recreation park as an expansion project for the Carnegie SVRA. In 2019, Governor Newsom vetoed legislation that would have preserved Tesla Park, and in June 2021, threatened to line-item veto a Tesla Park protection item in the budget unless it was removed. Ultimately, the Tesla budget language was passed.

Now, this land will become a new unit of the state park system, under the control of State Parks and the Parks and Recreation Commission. A planning process is currently being conducted to determine the classification of Tesla Park as a unit of the park system and its management and use plan, with $1 million allocated to the planning process. 

Greenbelt Alliance and the coalition to Save Tesla Park are working to have Tesla classified as a State Natural Reserve, which can provide low-intensity public access, education, and enjoyment, including hiking, nature appreciation, cultural resource interpretation and tours,
and ensure that its irreplaceable natural and cultural resources are protected forever.

With information from Friends of Tesla Park.

The post Tell Legislators to Make Tesla Park a Natural Reserve appeared first on Greenbelt Alliance.

Restoration of the Broadford Bridge oil site in West Sussex is due to begin this summer, officials have confirmed.

The Broadford Bridge oil site during operation. Photo: Weald Action Group

The site, near Billingshurst, is subject to two council planning enforcement notices after the operator, a subsidiary of UK Oil & Gas plc (UKOG), failed to return the well pad to farmland.

Broadford Bridge has had no planning permission since March 2024 when West Sussex County Council refused an application for a fifth extension of consent. Before that, the site had been mothballed since 2018.

An operation to plug and abandon two Broadford Bridge wells ended in February 2026.

But the well pad, fencing, gates and soil bunds remain, despite a planning condition requiring the operator to return the site to farmland. West Sussex County Council took enforcement action in January 2025 and February 2026.

A council spokesperson said today:

“Two Breach of Condition Notices (BCNs) were served on 13 February 2026. These remain live and require the operator to remove all associated infrastructure (including buildings, plant, machinery, fencing, gates and other structures) and restore the site in accordance with the approved restoration scheme by 31 December 2026.

“The operator has advised that the intention is for restoration works to commence this summer with a view to achieving restoration by the required date.”

Restoration includes work to clean and remove surface stone layers, take-up impermeable membranes, in-fill drainage ditches and regrade the soil from surrounding earth bunds to return the site to its original appearance and use.

Access application Access track application plan. Source: WSCC/036/26

The restoration timeframe emerged in a new planning application for Broadford Bridge (WSCC/036/26).

The application, to keep the site access track, was submitted on behalf of Sheila Francis by the Zetland planning consultancy which has previously worked for UKOG companies.

It revealed: “the well site is to be restored (Summer-Autumn 2026)”.

The application seeks to retain the 450m track to the well site for “agricultural purposes” and the junction of the track with the B2133 Adversane Lane. The application does not seek to retain the former well pad area and fencing around it.

Comments on the access track application can be made online. The deadline for comments is 20 August 2026. A decision is expected by 21 September 2026.

The National Park Service is reportedly weighing a land swap that would allow a data center to be built inside Prince William Forest Park in northern Virginia, one of the D.C. area’s largest green spaces and a Civil War-era site.

Developer Highland Digital owns an “inholding,” land inside the park’s boundaries that was privately held before the park was established, and was considering building a data center there. But that site has wetlands and streams that complicate permitting, so Highland Digital came up with a workaround: swap its wetland-heavy inholding for other Park Service land nearby that would be easier to develop. It hired lobbyist Jeff Small, a former senior Interior department official in the first Trump administration, to work on the swap in May 2025.

According to the National Parks Conservation Association, the deal looks balanced on paper but actually leaves “the developer com[ing] out ahead” with land “primed for development.” Representative Eugene Vindman’s office asked the Park Service in mid-July whether it even has legal authority to trade park land without congressional approval and says it never got a response, while Highland Digital has since withdrawn a permitting application and scrapped a public meeting without explanation. Since becoming Interior secretary, Doug Burgum has been a vocal advocate of artificial intelligence and data centers.

Huffman, Dexter launch investigation into Energy Fuels execs

Members of the House Natural Resources Committee have opened an investigation into whether Energy Fuels executives traded on advance knowledge of President Donald Trump’s decision to shrink Bears Ears National Monument by more than 90 percent. The company’s CEO, Ross Bhappu, bought 74,000 shares on July 7, the largest insider purchase in company history, and Chairman Bruce Hansen bought 4,000 more the next day, just five days before Trump stripped monument protections from nearly 1.4 million acres, including uranium-rich areas the company has eyed for years.

Representatives Jared Huffman and Maxine Dexter say the company’s lobbying ties to the administration, including a former Trump Interior official on retainer, “may have enabled” Bhappu and Hansen to learn of the announcement early, and they’re demanding Energy Fuels’ communications with Interior, Agriculture, and Defense officials.

Quick hits Opinion: Doug Burgum is the real vandal behind Trump’s failed Reflecting Pool renovation

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Opinion: Proposed changes to federal oil and gas provisions are bad for public land, private property owners and democracy

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Organ Pipe monument closes roads to clear path for 2nd border wall construction

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‘A day of infamy’: Construction bulldozes through Big Bend National Park

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Opinion: Why is Burgum licking Trump’s boots?

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Six takeaways from the slashing of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante

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OnX tool connects Montanans to public land comment opportunities

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Quote of the day

In the desert, there is no more valuable habitat than where the trees grow… In this arid region, diversity and abundance of plant and animal species is nowhere greater… This is what they chose to destroy first.”

—Former Big Bend biologist Raymond Skiles on border wall construction inside the park, GearJunkie

Picture This

@Interior

A single lightning strike can reach temperatures nearly 5 times hotter than the surface of the sun. At White Sands National Park, that incredible heat can fuse gypsum sand into formations called fulgurites, better known as “fossilized lightning.”

Feature image: Trail along creek in Prince William Forest in Virginia; Source: Diana Robinson/Flickr

The post NPS is quietly considering a data center deal inside a Virginia forest appeared first on Center for Western Priorities.

Thirty-seven senators recently signed a letter to President Trump vehemently opposing his recent monument reductions and standing up for Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante. That letter sent a clear message: our national monuments must not be attacked, diminished, or treated as bargaining chips.

But Trump’s attacks don’t stop at monument boundaries. The wild public lands surrounding and connecting many national monuments in Utah are part of the same remarkable redrock landscape and deserve lasting protection.

Please thank your senator(s) for signing the letter while also urging them to cosponsor America’s Red Rock Wilderness Act, landmark legislation that would protect more than 8 million acres of wild public land in Utah as wilderness, including lands within the national monuments.

Thank your senator(s) for defending the monuments and ask them to cosponsor America’s Red Rock Wilderness Act

Trump’s attack on the monuments is part of a broader effort to weaken protections for public lands across Utah and the West. The Red Rock bill offers a powerful response: permanent congressional protection for the canyons, mesas, badlands, and other desert wild lands that make this region so extraordinary.

The lands proposed for wilderness designation under the Red Rock bill provide critical wildlife habitat and migration corridors, protect cultural resources, and preserve intact desert ecosystems. Cosponsoring this visionary legislation is one of the clearest ways lawmakers can show they are serious about defending America’s public lands from attacks now and in the future.

Please contact your senator(s) now and ask them to cosponsor the Red Rock Bill. If one or both of your senators have already cosponsored, they’ll just receive a thank-you message.

The Senate sign-on letter is an important public rebuke of Trump’s actions on Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears. Now let’s build on that and make sure Congress protects the surrounding redrock wilderness lands that are essential to the future of these landscapes.

Thank you for taking action!

The post Thank Your Senator(s) for Defending National Monuments in Utah, Ask Them to Cosponsor ARRWA appeared first on Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance.

The post How to Report to City of Merced Code Enforcement / Cómo Reportar al Departamento de Cumplimiento de la Ciudad de Merced appeared first on Leadership Counsel for Justice & Accountability.

More than 6,500 people have signed a petition demanding that FERC reject the Mountain Valley Pipeline expansion as state concerns remain unresolved.

RICHMOND, VA — On Friday, August 7, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) issued its Environmental Assessment (EA) for Mountain Valley Pipeline’s (MVP) proposed “MVP Boost” expansion. While the assessment concludes that the project does not “significantly [affect] the quality of the human environment,” critics say the EA leaves a variety of critical questions unanswered. Additionally, the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality has suspended its review of MVP’s proposed compressor station permit due to inconsistent filings. The DEQ also raised concerns about environmental justice and community outreach to MVP, which the company has not resolved. Now, more than 6,500 people have signed a petition urging FERC to reject the MVP expansion. 

“As a resident in Elliston, we already have the trains, which are a situation in themselves that block us in where we can’t get out,” said Penny Nunes, an Elliston, Virginia resident. “Now we’ve got gas in the pipe. I find it interesting that our firehouse is in the blast zone. You can see from the blast zone: a trailer park, housing development, and ROWE Furniture, a business with about 500 employees. As soon as they put gas in the pipe, I thought about moving. But I am not gonna move. I’m gonna stay here, and I am gonna fight as hard as I can to stop this. And for FERC to do something that Virginia DEQ said is incomplete, that’s one agency stepping on the other. DEQ is right: you got a problem, you gotta fix it. But FERC may just ignore our problem and go on with it.” 

The MVP Boost proposal would drastically increase gas capacity on the 303-mile Mountain Valley Pipeline system and add a new 136,900-horsepower compressor station in Montgomery County, Virginia, near homes, farms, a busy railroad crossing, and an environmental justice community in Elliston. FERC is reviewing the industrial water use associated with this major fossil-fuel project, even as Virginia faces mounting concerns about industrial water use prompting state lawmakers to call a special session on stronger water protections. 

“The people of Elliston, Virginia deserve clean air and a safe, healthy community,” said Russel Chisholm, Managing Director at Protect Our Water, Heritage, Rights. “EQT and MVP’s massive Boost expansion and data center fever dreams directly threaten that safety while recklessly pushing the planet toward a future of more fire, flood, and displacement. People everywhere are fighting back – and prevailing – against these greedy projects by saying, ‘Enough is enough.’”

The Montgomery County Board of Supervisors previously found the proposed site unsuitable, citing safety concerns that the evacuation route from the site would be blocked by train traffic. For community members, that one concern does not resolve the bigger question: whether it is appropriate to place a massive fossil fuel compressor station in a community already burdened by pollution and safety risks.

“Time and time again, FERC commits itself to an unreality where massively polluting and unsafe fossil fuel projects somehow pose no significant threat to the environment or the neighboring communities who must shoulder the burden,” said Joshua Vana, Director of ARTivism Virginia. “A rational review of the dangers posed by MVP Boost and its Swann Compressor Station should alarm any conscious person. Whether it be harmful air pollution dumped on an environmental justice community in Eastern Montgomery County, the cumulative impacts of drastically increasing MVP’s methane emissions in a world that’s on fire, or gambling on the safety of an already compromised pipeline – this project is nothing more than another bad idea from MVP, meant to cash in during a time of gross environmental deregulation, nauseating corruption, and an intensifying stench of skyrocketing corporate profits. This project must never be built.”

MVP Boost also comes after years of concerns surrounding the existing Mountain Valley Pipeline, including state violations, safety orders, and construction impacts that residents say underscore why further expansion should not be approved. Community and environmental advocates say the federal government should not advance the project while Virginia’s permit process remains paused and local opposition remains overwhelming.

“FERC is trying to build on a foundation that DEQ has already found to be flawed,” said Zander Pellegrino, Senior Field Manager at Chesapeake Climate Action Network. “MVP wants to lock us into outdated fossil fuel infrastructure and decades of climate pollution when we urgently need to transition to clean energy. It is unacceptable that the company is trying to do so on the back of environmental justice communities that have clearly said they do not want this project in their neighborhoods. FERC should stop MVP Boost and reject this dangerous expansion before it puts more communities at risk.” 

The EA was issued by FERC Friday, August 7, 2026, followed by a comment period ending on September 6, 2026, and a Federal Authorization Decision deadline on November 5, 2026.

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Chesapeake Climate Action Network is the first grassroots organization dedicated exclusively to raising awareness about the impacts and solutions associated with global warming in the Chesapeake Bay region. Founded in 2002, CCAN has been at the center of the fight for clean energy and wise climate policy in Maryland, Virginia, and Washington, DC.

The post Thousands Urge Feds to Reject “MVP Boost” While Virginia DEQ Suspends Impact Review appeared first on Chesapeake Climate Action Network.

Three Interior department staffers told POLITICO they watched officials routinely shred official documents and use disappearing Signal messages, even for routine scheduling, to keep communications from being preserved as the Federal Records Act requires. “They’re terrified of written records,” one former official said. Two other former officials said Interior Secretary Doug Burgum used a private email account for department business. Interior staff described a “culture of secrecy” under Burgum, who wanted to add a secure conference room, or SCIF, near his 6th floor office even though Interior already has a SCIF three floors below.

The secrecy concerns extend to Interior’s own watchdog office. The department has allegedly installed Dennis Kirk, a co-author of Project 2025’s federal workforce chapter, inside its Office of Inspector General, but declined to confirm the hire. Kirk arrives at an office that has had no Senate-confirmed inspector general since January 2025, when President Trump fired 17 inspectors general across the government without giving Congress the 30 days’ notice federal law requires.

“Interior’s watchdog was fired, left vacant for eighteen months, and is now hosting one of the architects of Project 2025. At least five investigation requests from members of Congress are sitting in that office right now, and its integrity has been compromised,” said Center for Western Priorities Executive Director Aaron Weiss. “Congress cannot outsource its constitutional oversight duty to an inspector general’s office taken over by the White House.”

Border wall crews move into Big Bend and onto Tohono O’odham land

Federal contractors began border wall construction work inside Big Bend National Park on August 4, prompting Texas lawmakers to call for a pause. Days later, the Tohono O’odham Nation in Arizona posted no-trespassing notices against border wall contractors on Tribal land and said it may pursue arrests, escalating a long-running fight over construction on Tribal territory.

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Photos: This is what the new rush to mine America looks like

TIME

Haaland: I helped restore protections for Bears Ears. Now it’s at risk again

Outside

Quote of the day

Washington is looking at the Imperial Valley and saying that’s just a desert, that’s just wasteland… It has been mandated by the United States government and the state of California to annihilate the California Indians since the Gold Rush, and I’m still watching it today.”

—Carmen Lucas, a 90-year-old from the Kwaaymii Tribe in California who has been fighting mining developments for over two decades, TIME

Picture This

@factpostnewsBulldozers sent by Trump have begun tearing up Big Bend National Park to build a border wall through the protected public land. The Trump administration waived dozens of environmental laws to permit the construction.

Feature image: Doug Burgum, Kathryn Burgum, and Donald Trump at the opening of the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library, X.com

The post Burgum directs staff to shred documents, installs Project 2025 author as Interior watchdog appeared first on Center for Western Priorities.

By KAY MATTHEWS

There’s good news for the many Questa area citizens opposed to the proposed Kit Carson Electric Cooperative hydrogen facility and solar array. Attorneys for the Cabresto Lake Irrigation Community Ditch Association and Acequia Madre del Cerro de Guadalupe filed suit against the United States Department of Agriculture Rural Utilities Service over the agency’s Finding of No Significant Impact (FONSI) authorizing the Questa Hydrogen Project. Claiming that the ruling violated the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), the notice seeks judicial review under the Administrative Procedure Act (“APA”) and requests that a full-blown Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) be conducted rather than the inadequate Environmental Assessment (EA). The plaintiffs also allege that the EA improperly limited the scope of the environmental review by excluding the proposed solar array from analysis.

Kit Carson Electric Cooperative, Inc. (“KCEC”) proposes to construct and operate a hydrogen-production facility, an associated electrical substation, and a solar-generation facility in the Village of Questa, New Mexico. The proposed hydrogen facility and related infrastructure are located on property associated with the former Questa Mine Tailings Site and within or adjacent to areas subject to ongoing environmental remediation and oversight under the federal Superfund program. The Project would use electricity generated by the proposed solar facility to support the production of hydrogen. The hydrogen facility, electrical substation, solar facility, and related infrastructure are intended to function together as components of the same overall development. The Project plans the use of groundwater from an existing well owned by Chevron mining identified as RG-14117 POD 18 (“POD 18”). At present, POD 18 is authorized for water use associated with reclamation and dust-control activities at the mine and tailings facility.

The two acequia plaintiffs, Cerro Acequia, which diverts water from Cabresto Lake, and Acequia Madre, which diverts water from Latir Creek and contributing streams, supply irrigation water for hundreds of parciantes and allege that USDA approved the Project without complying with NEPA’s procedural requirements by preparing an inadequate EA and failing to take the required hard look at significant environmental consequences.

Operation of the Project requires the continued withdrawal and destruction of substantial quantities of groundwater, including approximately 10,579 gallons per hour, from a well located within the Chevron Questa Mine Superfund Site. Once the water is introduced into the electrolyzer, it undergoes destruction as water and dissociates into hydrogen gas and oxygen gas. The liquid water pumped from the ground no longer exists. The EA concluded that groundwater resources would not be affected but did not support that conclusion with a quantified analysis of the Project’s anticipated withdrawals. The EA did not include an aquifer-drawdown analysis, long-term water analysis, or other adequate assessment of how sustained Project pumping could affect groundwater levels, nearby wells, connected surface-water resources, or water historically available to Plaintiffs and their members.

The suit also raises the issue of KCEC’s lease of the Chevron mine. At the time USDA issued the EA and the FONSI, KCEC was “currently in the process of purchasing the land described from Chevron for the construction of the proposed project.” On May 8, 2026, five months after issuance of the EA and the FONSI, KCEC and Chevron entered into a 3-year lease for the property. The lease, with a term of 3 years without renewal provisions, addresses ownership and use of the property, the presence of contaminated materials, responsibility for damage to the existing environmental remedy, and the allocation of environmental risks. Because the lease postdated the FONSI, USDA did not evaluate the final lease terms before making its NEPA determination, including the terms governing the duration of KCEC’s site control, ownership of permanent Project infrastructure, groundwater limitations, and responsibility for environmental conditions caused or aggravated by project activities.

After KCEC and Chevron executed the lease, USDA did not reopen its environmental review, prepare a supplemental environmental assessment, or issue a new finding addressing the final lease terms. USDA therefore did not evaluate whether the executed lease altered or undermined assumptions concerning KCEC’s long-term control of the Project site, ownership of permanent infrastructure, authority to use groundwater, responsibility for environmental damage, or interaction with the existing environmental remedy.

Furthermore, hydrogen gas production poses the risk of explosion. Upon completion and operation, the Project will store up to 29 tons of produced hydrogen gas under pressure in 54 tanks, with 28 tanks situated south of the 42 electrolyzer units and 26 tanks situated north of the 42 electrolyzer units. While KCEC contracted with Entrust Solutions to conduct a “What If” assessment, using 79 scenarios to evaluate risk and likely consequences of a variety of hypothetical failures of key components across the hydrogen storage, electrolyzer, and fuel cell units, an explosion can occur without the ignition of hydrogen.

Because construction is currently ongoing the Plaintiffs request immediate conjunctive relief. For more information you can go to the Questa Watershed Protectors Facebook page where the attorney who filed the complaint in US District Court in Albuquerque, Guy Dicharry, thanks Honorio Justin Rael who has done most of the legal work on this case.

file:///Users/geographer/Downloads/FILED%20COMPLAINT%20(1).pdf

By Henry Taylor

On Wednesday, August 5, the Chatham County Board of Commissioners held a special meeting to hear the thoughts and concerns of residents regarding a proposed natural gas pipeline from the utility company Enbridge. More than 300 people who are against the development attended, and 50 of them spoke directly to the board.

The pipeline would stretch 28 miles from Siler City to Moncure and pass through the private property of residents. While Enbridge says it would be used to support the county’s growing population and industry, many residents fear the environmental impacts, the negative effect on property values and that the pipeline would be used to support a proposed data center. Some have already received notice from the company that their property could soon host an easement. Enbridge plans to use eminent domain laws to survey and ultimately create 50-foot-wide easements on private property in order to complete the 12-inch wide pipeline.

“Fossil fuels are not the future, they are truly fossils, dinosaurs of the past,” said Susie Crate, a Professor of Anthropology in the Department of Environmental Science and Policy at George Mason University who lives in Bynum. “We need to preserve and protect the precious farmland and heritage that is remaining in our county. And we need to listen to the residents, both long-term and newly arrived, who are speaking out and saying no.”

…

Another speaker at the meeting was Sara Heilman, the clean energy strategist at NC WARN, a nonprofit which advocates for environmental causes across North Carolina. She said while the state is rapidly developing, a natural gas pipeline would cause more harm than good.

“Any investment that North Carolina makes into fossil fuel infrastructure is one that further entrenches us in a fossil fuel future,” said Heilman. “If we do in fact need more power to fuel growing businesses in the state, I think it’s important that we fuel those  businesses with clean energy. Local solar installations, battery installations…these are faster to install, cheaper, much more equitable and less polluting than these proposed fossil fuel projects.”

She said both her organization and the Haw River Assembly are urging the county to ask the state to require an environmental impact statement. They also want the county to ask the state to require individual permitting for any area where the pipeline would cross water sources, rather than allowing Enbridge to use one permit for the whole project. These are ultimately state-level decisions – as Chatham County Commissioner Amanda Robertson shared in a written statement from the board.

Continue reading

The post Chatham County Residents Speak Out Against Proposed Enbridge Gas Pipeline — Chapelboro appeared first on NC WARN.

With the inspector general’s independence compromised, Congress is the only oversight left. It should start issuing subpoenas

DENVER — Three Interior department staffers told POLITICO they watched officials routinely shred official documents and use disappearing Signal messages, even for routine scheduling, to keep communications from being preserved as the Federal Records Act requires. “They’re terrified of written records,” one former official said. Two other former officials said Interior Secretary Doug Burgum used a private email account for department business early in his tenure. Interior staff described a “culture of secrecy” under Burgum, who wanted to add a secure conference room, or SCIF, near his 6th floor office even though Interior already has a SCIF three floors below.

Today’s reporting comes one day after news broke that the Interior department’s Office of Inspector General acquired a new employee: Dennis Kirk, a co-author of the federal workforce chapter of Project 2025 and a former senior personnel official in Trump’s first term. The OIG declined to confirm the hire. Kirk arrives at an office that has had no Senate-confirmed inspector general since January 2025, when President Trump fired 17 inspectors general across the government without giving Congress the 30 days’ notice federal law requires.

The Center for Western Priorities released the following statement from Executive Director Aaron Weiss:

“Interior’s watchdog was fired, left vacant for eighteen months, and is now hosting one of the architects of Project 2025. At least five investigation requests from members of Congress are sitting in that office right now, and its integrity has been compromised. Congress cannot outsource its constitutional oversight duty to an inspector general’s office taken over by the White House.

“The next step must be subpoenas, not letters. Chairman Westerman and Chairman Lee hold the gavels and the authority to compel documents and sworn testimony, and every week they decline to use it is another week the shredders can keep running. The House and Senate must fully investigate Interior’s Signal use and records-retention violations, Burgum’s personal email, and the ethics office file on his North Dakota meetings, then put the secretary under oath about all of it.

“Burgum’s reflecting pool debacle plays into all of this as well. A department caught withholding exculpatory evidence from federal prosecutors carries that credibility problem into every courtroom. Interior employs thousands of federal law enforcement officers whose testimony can send people to prison, and it defends itself against dozens of public lands lawsuits at any given moment. To address this credibility crisis, Congress needs to build a factual record now, under oath, because nobody else is positioned to do it.”

The referrals already sitting at the OIG

House Natural Resources Committee members have asked the acting inspector general to open investigations into three senior Interior officials:

• Karen Budd-Falen, associate deputy secretary, over the $3.5 million water rights deal her husband’s ranch secured with a lithium mining company that had approvals pending before Interior during her first Trump term tenure. She never disclosed the profit. Budd-Falen also worked on grazing and land management policy for more than a year before receiving a partial ethics waiver in March 2026 while still holding BLM permits for her ranching operations in Wyoming and Nevada.
• Jenifer Chatfield, deputy assistant secretary for fish and wildlife and parks, for advancing permit matters benefiting her family’s captive wildlife business. The New York Times reported that Chatfield moved a permit application listing her as one of the applicant facility’s veterinarians through the agency’s permitting process within a day.
• Matthew Giacona, acting BOEM director, for working on the same issues he lobbied on for an oil and gas trade association.

House Natural Resources Committee members have separately asked the OIG to examine how Interior handled the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool vandalism allegations, and Senators Sheldon Whitehouse and Martin Heinrich, the ranking members of the Environment and Public Works and Energy and Natural Resources committees, sent their own request on August 4.

A credibility problem beyond the Reflecting Pool

On July 31, U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro moved to dismiss felony vandalism charges against former Olympic canoeist David Hearn, telling the court that Interior had provided less than fulsome information at the outset and that prosecutors would not have sought a grand jury indictment had the department turned over evidence already in its possession. The motion disclosed that a National Park Service employee had flagged the peeling liner on June 11, eight days before Hearn’s arrest. Interior’s eventual production indicated a rushed and botched installation by the contractor, working under no-bid contracts on a project whose costs grew from an initial estimate of $1.5 million to $2 million into more than $16 million. The day after the dismissal filing, Burgum claimed again that vandals had damaged the pool.

Whitehouse and Heinrich told the Inspector General that Interior’s withholding of exculpatory evidence walked Justice Department lawyers into a violation of their obligations under Brady v. Maryland and Giglio v. United States, the latter of which requires prosecutors to disclose information bearing on the credibility of a government witness.

Interior employs thousands of federal law enforcement officers across the National Park Service, U.S. Park Police, Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and Bureau of Indian Affairs. A documented federal finding that Interior personnel withheld exculpatory material from prosecutors is potential impeachment evidence about those individuals in future criminal cases where they testify, which could put poaching prosecutions, Archaeological Resources Protection Act cases, and other public lands enforcement at risk.

The same finding brings risk on the civil side as well. Courts reviewing Interior’s decisions under the Administrative Procedure Act presume the agency acted in good faith and generally confine review to the administrative record the agency itself assembles. A federal prosecutor’s on-the-record conclusion that the department withheld material evidence could give litigants a basis to challenge that presumption and seek discovery beyond the record. Interior is a defendant in dozens of public lands cases, and Burgum is named in most of them.

Burgum’s ethics problems

Burgum’s January 2025 ethics agreement barred him for one year from participating in matters involving North Dakota without written authorization from agency ethics officials. Public Domain reported that his official calendars show two 2025 meetings in his Washington office with former North Dakota colleagues he had appointed or served alongside: Attorney General Drew Wrigley and Agriculture Commissioner Doug Goehring. The calendars contain no record of ethics officials weighing in beforehand, though they show he consulted ethics staff before dozens of other meetings. Interior called them “personal meetings” with “old friends.” During Burgum’s tenure as governor, North Dakota sued the Interior department at least five times, and Wrigley signed a brief supporting Utah’s attempt to seize more than 18 million acres of federal public land.

Interior briefly pulled the calendars off its records library, then reposted them after Public Domain asked about their disappearance.

Why the watchdog can no longer do this work

Mark Lee Greenblatt, the Interior inspector general Trump fired in January 2025, warned this week that installing a political operative inside an independent oversight office creates a conflict that erodes public confidence in the office’s independence. He noted that Dennis Kirk’s placement inside an IG’s office has drawn objections before, when he was assigned to the Office of the Intelligence Community Inspector General earlier this year.

Interior manages roughly 500 million acres of public land, the national park system, Tribal programs, and hundreds of billions of dollars in public assets. Its inspector general is the office responsible for reviewing senior-level misconduct, contracts, grants, ethics, and whistleblower retaliation inside that department.

What Congress should compel

The Center for Western Priorities is calling on the House Natural Resources Committee and the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee to use their subpoena authority to obtain:

1. Interior’s records-retention policies and guidance covering Signal and other ephemeral messaging platforms, along with any communications directing or approving the destruction of records.
2. All Interior-related communications from Burgum’s personal email accounts, and any documentation of whether those messages were forwarded to official accounts within the 20 days the Federal Records Act allows.
3. The Departmental Ethics Office file on Burgum’s meetings with North Dakota officials, including any authorization sought or granted, and an explanation of why the secretarial calendars were temporarily removed from Interior’s website.
4. All documents concerning Dennis Kirk’s hiring, his job description, his reporting lines, and any communications between the OIG, the secretary’s office, and the White House regarding his placement.
5. The status of every pending OIG referral involving a senior Interior official, and a written commitment that Kirk is walled off from each.
6. The complete June 11 National Park Service email thread on the peeling liner, its full distribution list, and every Interior communication about what the department told and withheld from the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
7. Sworn testimony from Burgum, Chief of Staff JoDee Hanson, Karen Budd-Falen, Jenifer Chatfield, Matt Giacona, and Acting Inspector General Caryl Brzymialkiewicz.

Congress should also refer the alleged records destruction to the National Archives and Records Administration, which is required to be notified of any unlawful removal or destruction of federal records.

LEARN MORE

• POLITICO: Inside Doug Burgum’s rocky tenure at Interior (Aug. 7, 2026)
• E&E News: Interior adds Project 2025 author to inspector general’s office (Aug. 6, 2026)
• Mark Lee Greenblatt: Statement on the Reported Placement of Political Operative Inside DOI OIG (Aug. 4, 2026)
• House Natural Resources Committee: Huffman Blasts Trump Scheme to Plant Project 2025 Architect Inside Interior’s Watchdog Office (Aug. 5, 2026)
• Public Domain: Records Show Trump Interior Secretary Met With Former North Dakota Colleagues (July 29, 2026)
• Senate Environment and Public Works Committee: Whitehouse, Heinrich Urge Inspector General to Probe Trump DOI Deception Amid Reflecting Pool Saga (Aug. 5, 2026)
• House Natural Resources Committee: Letter to Acting Inspector General Caryl Brzymialkiewicz on Jenifer Chatfield (April 10, 2026)
• Burgum ethics agreement (January 2025)

Featured image: Doug Burgum, Kathryn Burgum, and Donald Trump at the opening of the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library, X.com

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On a hot late July evening at Nuckolls Brewing in Santa Fe, a train rumbled past the outdoor event not once, but twice—a fitting soundtrack for a conversation about the forces barreling through New Mexico’s public lands. The Center for Western Priorities brought a live taping of The Landscape podcast to town as part of the Keep Parks Public campaign. CWP launched the campaign and road tour last summer to highlight attacks on America’s public lands by Congress and the Trump administration, and to encourage folks to fight back by connecting to local advocacy groups making a difference on the ground.

The panelists represented four different corners of the conservation world: Charlotte Overby, vice president of conservation field programs at the Conservation Lands Foundation; Keegan King, founder and executive director of the Native Land Institute and a Pueblo of Acoma tribal member; Andrew Black, director of Tribal Lands and Waters at the National Wildlife Federation and founder of the interfaith Earthkeepers 360; and Elaine Leslie, who spent more than 25 years with the National Park Service, including as Chief of Biological Resource Management, and now sits on the executive council of the Coalition to Protect America’s National Parks. Elizabeth Hightower Allen provided welcome remarks on behalf of RE:PUBLIC, an independent journalism outlet covering public lands that is headquartered in Santa Fe. RE:PUBLIC and the Conservation Lands Foundation co-hosted the event.

Asked to name the single biggest threat facing New Mexico’s public lands, King didn’t hesitate: “Right now, I think we’re all pretty alarmed by this administration’s attempts to sell off public lands,” he said, adding that holding the line for the next two years has become his organization’s top priority. Overby agreed, and flagged a quieter danger: advocate burnout. “We’re sort of one attack after another,” she said, urging fellow advocates to pace themselves and still “get out and see these places.”

The conversation kept circling back to two flashpoints close to home for the Santa Fe audience. The first was the Caja del Rio, a 106,000 acre landscape located on federally managed U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management (BLM) land just outside Santa Fe. Black described the area as home to one of the most dense concentrations of petroglyphs in the country, and a critical wildlife corridor between four mountain ranges. “It’s desert spirituality at its finest,” he said. “It’s subtle and it’s hidden and it’s complex.” King added that Tribal nations have pushed hard for legislation, introduced by New Mexico Senator Martin Heinrich, that would permanently protect the area. The bill recently cleared its first committee hearing in Washington, D.C.

The second was oil and gas drilling near Chaco Culture National Historical Park, where an expedited public comment period on BLM’s proposal to shrink or eliminate the 10-mile protective buffer around the UNESCO World Heritage site had closed the day before the taping. King, fresh off a trip to Washington, D.C. with roughly 50 Pueblo leaders, reported that more than 250,000 comments poured in during the rushed comment period, the vast majority in favor of keeping the buffer intact. He described BLM Director Steve Pearce, a former New Mexico congressman, as respectful in meetings but noncommittal on what comes next. Black was less charitable about the process itself, noting the scoping period landed during Holy Week and Passover with almost no notice: “It’s a huge slap in the face,” he said, calling it part of a broader pattern of squeezing out public input and disregarding Tribal sovereignty and protection for cultural sites nationwide.

Leslie, drawing on her decades inside the National Park Service, connected the dots between drilling proposals, mining interests, and the administration’s push to shrink monuments and defund agency science. Asked why the public keeps getting cut out of these decisions, she didn’t mince words: “I think it’s greed—Follow the money.”

Still, the panel closed on a hopeful note. King pointed to a conservation movement increasingly centered on Land Back and Tribal co-stewardship agreements as “a real end goal,” not just new national monument designations. Overby described a rally of young Pueblo advocates she’d witnessed the day before, timed to the close of the Chaco comment period as an encouraging sign of how much the public cares about their public lands. Black framed the moment as a choice: “Where will you stand?” he asked, on whether the land is a community to belong to or a commodity to extract from. Leslie shared her concern for the future of the National Park Service and America’s public lands, while expressing her hope for seeing more young people at the table going forward.

The Santa Fe stop is one of many along the Keep Parks Public tour, which kicked off in July 2025 in Denver. The advocacy campaign and road tour has already visited Las Cruces, Tucson, Flagstaff, Moab, Salt Lake City, Grand Junction, and Jackson. The tour heads back to Tucson on August 28, with potentially more stops to be announced soon. You can share your own story and join the campaign at keepparkspublic.org.

The post New Mexico leaders condemn Trump administration’s attacks on public lands appeared first on Center for Western Priorities.

“The Hub” is a weekly round-up of transportation related news in the Philadelphia area and beyond. Check back weekly to keep up-to-date on the issues Clean Air Council’s transportation staff finds important.

As exciting events continue in Philadelphia, learn how you can get around to major summer 2026 events without a car, or being stuck in traffic with GoPhillyGo: Car-Free Routes Map!

Image Source: WHYY

WHYY: After SEPTA’s summer success, riders fear momentum could stall – This year’s state budget once again failed to provide dedicated transit funding, and advocates worry support and momentum could decline. Over 155,000 riders were moved by SEPTA to and from FIFA World Cup matches, and the agency rose to the occasion. Previous emergency funding diverted by SEPTA will expire in July 2027, which will result in a fiscal cliff without state intervention.

Image Source: WHYY

Billy Penn: Philly’s smart loading zones are a boon or a plague, depending on who you ask – Automatic camera systems on 23 blocks of Chestnut, Walnut, and Sansom streets in Center City have issues an average of 8,000 tickets per month, for unregistered drivers parking in smart loading zones. The zones are meant for commercials vehicles, and by registering and enforcing these vehicles, surrounding areas have seen a decrease in illegal parking and idling. Bike and fire lanes are more open, and pedestrians have clearer walkways. This represents an ongoing shift for the Philadelphia Parking Authority (PPA) towards automated enforcement, with officers going through the images, verifying license plate scans, and if necessary, issuing tickets.

Image Source: PhillyVoice

PhillyVoice: SEPTA to close 2 trolley lines this weekend to replace rails – Two trolley lines in Delaware County will temporarily close this weekend, and service will be replaced with shuttle buses through Sunday. Starting on Friday, sections of Landsdowne Avenue will be closed through Monday evening to vehicles. The D1 and D2 trolleys will be paused through Sunday, and bus Route 115 will also be detoured around the construction. 

Other Stories

Mainline Times: Ardmore Rock N’ Ride celebrates 10 years, will also host state criterium finals 

Metro Philadelphia: Pine Road bridge in Fox Chase to close through summer 2027 

CBS Pittsburgh: New legislation in Pittsburgh removes loophole to prevent vehicles from parking on sidewalks 

Mass Transit Mag: NJ Transit offers discounts, but not to these riders. That needs to change, groups say 

Philadelphia Today: Century-Old Philadelphia Bridge Left to Decay as Preservationists Demand Action 

PhillyVoice: Camden County bridge closes for 3 months to undergo repairs 

Inside Climate News: In Philadelphia’s Chinatown, a Fight to Restore Funding for a Critical Highway Cap

CEO Harry Sideris said the company is deploying more than $1 billion per month to meet “record demand.” Advocates say the utility has exaggerated projections to justify spending.

By Emma Penrod

Duke Energy is committed to finding affordability solutions for customers amid rising demand — and opposition to the company’s $103 billion spending plan, company leaders said during a Tuesday earnings call.

…

The utility faces criticism in North Carolina, where it originally requested some $1.7 billion in additional revenue via base rate increases in 2027 and 2028. Sideris said Duke Energy had negotiated settlements in North Carolina that would authorize $1.1 billion of the company’s request. But the proposed rate increases have also led to calls for a moratorium on data center development in North Carolina.

In a letter to the state’s governor, NC Warn, an advocacy group focused on climate and energy justice, argued that Duke Energy testimony in the two rate cases revealed that electricity use in the state has declined despite population growth, that the utility has exaggerated its own growth projections and that the company is recruiting large load customers in order to justify its spending plan.

“This is a scandal and crime being perpetrated against the people of North Carolina who are already struggling with soaring power bills, repeated devastation by storms and assaults on their communities by massive data center developers whop provide almost no jobs after initial construction,” NC Warn wrote.

The utility company is also facing a dispute in Indiana over a rate hike approved last year. The state’s ratepayer advocate has accused Duke of over collecting more than $89 million. At the same time, the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission has been roiled by change, with Gov. Mike Braun expressing displeasure over recent rate hikes before firing Andy Zay from the commission this week after demoting him from its chairmanship.

Continue reading

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By KAY MATTHEWS

I was at the library to pick up a book on hold when I checked out the new books. There on the shelf was Hated By All The Right People: Tucker Carson and the Unraveling of the Conservative Mind. As we’ve all seen on social media, Carlson’s recent admission that there was a genocide in Gaza and his outspoken opposition to the war in Iran, are omnipresent. I picked up the book, figuring I’d browse through and get a sense of how author Jason Zengerle, a journalist with the New York Times, was going to treat this controversial public figure’s influence on the zeitgeist.

The book ends, in 2025, just as Carlson is beginning to question, and sometimes apologize for, his defense of Israel in Gaza and of the country in general. While the timing isn’t right for the author to speculate about just how much these flip-flops are politically motivated or “of the heart,” it isn’t hard for the reader to speculate on that motivation, as the book is, as Zengerle says in the Introduction, “the larger story of conservative politics and conservative media over the last thirty years” that resulted in the rise of MAGA. I ended up reading the whole damn book.

We begin in 1995 at the Weekly Standard with Bill Kristol, the newly minted editor from academia and son of Irving Kristol, the “godfather of neoconservatism.” His partner at the magazine is John Pomerantz, former editor of the Washington Times and son of Norman, longtime editor of Commentary. Media mogul Rupert Murdoch gives them seed money of $3 million to be the magazine of choice in Washington D.C. Fox News won’t come alive until 1996.

It was an auspicious entry for a 26-year-old neophyte journalist, but Carlson’s politics pretty much aligned with the Weekly Standard’s; a prep school boy whose father was also a conservative heavy weight. Names we still see today in journalism got their start along with Carlson: David Brooks (NYT); David Frum (Atlantic); and Matt Labash (Substack). Despite his lack of experience, according to Zengerle, Carlson wrote “some excellent and entertaining journalism.” He profiled many of the 90s leading political figures—Ross Perot, Jack Kemp, James Carville, and Al Gore—usually in rather withering prose. He took on Newt Gingrich, who the paper initially supported but then saw as “feckless” and timid. Carlson also took on Grover Norquist (the Standard let him publish it in The New Republic) as a “cash-addled, morally malleable lobbyist.” He became known in Washington as a “different kind of conservative journalist,” although his stand against abortion was lock tight.

Maybe if Carlson had remained a magazine or newspaper reporter he’d have avoided the ultra-right pull of the MAGA movement (Frum and Brooks just became hackneyed conservatives but Labash is a MAGA). He had a short stint at Tina Brown’s Talk, profiling George W. Bush, who he deemed unfit for office, and always aspired to be like his idols—Hunter Thompson, George Plimpton, and A.J Liebling—but they were from a different era and this era was soon to become the internet and cable news, where Carlson landed as a talking head. Through sheer luck (he was the only one in the Standard office when CBS came calling) he appeared on CBS’s prime-time news show 48 Hours to talk about the O.J. Simpson trial.  CNN then came calling during the Monica Lewinsky scandal. While Carlson continued his job at the Standard, whose other reporters often mocked him for his television work, it was clear he was rising in the talking heads world. The Standard saw they were losing him and offered to reduce his workload by half if he’d stay, but CNN offered him his own show, The Spin Room, with cohost Bill Press, the former left-leaning chair on Crossfire. Rupert Murdoch put the kibosh on Carson working for both the Standard and his competitor, CNN. While The Spin Room didn’t last long, Carlson got promoted anyway to Crossfire, the longtime political debate show between the right and left.

He was in his element at Crossfire, or as Zengerle put it, “Carlson wasn’t merely a pundit; he was the host of Washington’s most exclusive cocktail party.” But, as in all things political, after a skewering by the Daily Show’s Jon Stewart CNN fired Carlson and cancelled Crossfire. He rebounded to MSNBC where he hosted The Situation with Tucker Carlson and spared with Rachel Maddow until that show, too, was canceled.

But it was his venture into website news, The Daily Caller, that was a real turning point for Carlson. At the beginning, Carlson felt the website could embody what he said at the CPAC meeting in 2009 where Rush Limbaugh was the keynote speaker: The conservative media was struggling because it “refused to put accuracy first” and instead prioritized bombast and opinion. Despite Tucker’s truth-telling as a bonafide journalist, The Daily Caller was, unfortunately, anything but. Once The Drudge Report, a hard-right website, and Steve Bannon’s Breitbart News became its main competitors, the Caller’s relentless quest for  “hits” turned it into another media full of “bombast and opinion.” While he had hired respectable journalists at the Calling, he ended up hiring others who promoted white nationalism and racism.

Fox News was then in its ascendancy, and while Carlson initially took a condescending view—he dismissed its biggest star, Bill O’Reilly, as a “thin-skilled blowhard”—he recognized its hard right ideological success. Because of his reputation as a fairly open-minded TV host with a good sense of humor, author Zengerle has this to say about his role at Fox News: “He became a partisan shill.”

 Carlson was hired at Fox News while still at the Daily Caller, and his ascendency was slow. Zengerle provides a brief history of the development of Fox News under Roger Ailes and its relentless right turn during the Obama administration, with Glen Beck, Sean Hannity, and Bill O’Reilly leading the way. Once Trump announced in 2014 that he would run for president, Ailes saw immediately that he was “good for Fox News ratings” (Rupert Murdoch was not so convinced).

Until Trump’s presidential run Carlson was by no means a fan. But during his years at Daily Caller he’d “seen the web-traffic metrics” about where the conservative base was heading and “how a populist candidate who explicitly ran on nativism, white grievance, and sexism might have a lane in a Republican primary.” Five days before the election Fox News announced its new 7:00 pm show: Tucker Carlson Tonight.”

The last section of Zengerle’s book analyzes Carlson’s relationship with Trump over his two administrations. The first, in which Carlson “kept a wary personal and professional distance from the president” while the president watched his show every night and often called him afterwards to discuss it, led to Carlson’s planning his show with an eye towards influencing the president. While he actually became a moderating influence on aggressive foreign policy, he was steered right, both politically and culturally by a group called the NatCons, or national conservatives, born of think tanks like the Claremont Institute that “were either attempting to add intellectual heft to Trumpism or trying to reverse engineer an intellectual doctrine to match Trump’s lizard brain populism.” In July 2020, Tucker Carson Tonight became the highest-rated program in US cable news history.

During the presidential interregnum Carlson kept his options open, flip-flopping on the January 6, 2020 storming of the Capitol from condemnation to “a mob of older people from unfashionable zip codes” and anchoring Fox News investigative long-form documentaries. He also befriended J.D. Vance in his rise to power and advocated for his senate run. Then, abruptly, in 2023, Fox News fired Carlson with no explanation. He had plenty of offers—one from Elon Musk—but by this time “the world was his oyster” and with billionaires stepping up he quickly formed his new digital-media company, the Tucker Carlson Network. This is where he whole-heartedly endorsed Trump’s second run and this time, he was the one to call Trump on the phone. He supported Vance for vice-president, helped persuade Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to not split the ticket, and was now an inside man.

Tucker Carlson Network is where we also hear him pontificating on anti-immigration and abortion while decrying the genocide in Gaza and Trump’s Iran war. I think most left-leaning pundits remain skeptical of his motivations but certainly welcome the anti-Zionist position he now promotes (although it’s more like pro-Christianity anti-Zionism). It may move us closer to the end of MAGA, but the tragedy is the damage already done. And for that, maybe Carlson will be remembered as being hated by everyone.

A day-long conference bringing together residents, advocates, community leaders, and public officials for discussion, training, and organizing to protect communities from dirty and dangerous data centers.

BALTIMORE, MD – With a bipartisan wave of data center opposition sweeping Maryland, two top nonprofits today unveiled plans to host the first statewide conference aimed at confronting the crisis in all its many forms. The daylong gathering on November 7 at the Baltimore Convention Center will feature everyday Marylanders and state and national leaders working to safeguard our water, air, health, climate, and insulate power bills from Big Tech’s alarming infrastructure agenda.

Nearly 80 percent of Marylanders already live in a county or city that has imposed a temporary moratorium on new data center permits, in what is perhaps the biggest and fastest grassroots rebellion in state history. Now leaders of those local fights – combined with top state officials, experts, and activists of every stripe – will bring their expertise to Baltimore to debate new ideas and offer practical next steps.

“With riveting local and national speakers, plus panels covering everything from water pollution to AI to local moratorium victories, journalists and policymakers will be able to hear and interact with everyday Marylanders working to defend their communities at the municipal, county, and state level in Maryland,” said Mike Tidwell, Executive Director of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network.

“For the first time, community leaders, organizers, and advocates from across the state will gather to share what’s working in the fight against dirty and dangerous data centers,” said Lydia Lawrence, Director of Conservation, Nature Forward. “People from urban and rural communities and across the political spectrum are uniting to protect our communities from the harmful impacts of unchecked data center expansion. This conference will send a clear message to elected officials at every level: data center reform can’t wait.” 

WHAT: Maryland’s first statewide conference on the dangers of unfettered data center growth and the practical actions communities can take to fight back

WHEN: Saturday, November 7, 2026, 10 AM – 5 PM. 

WHERE: Baltimore Convention Center, downtown Baltimore, Maryland

WHO: Prominent Maryland political leaders, activists, and everyday Marylanders

ENTRANCE: To obtain a press pass, please contact: kc@chesapeakeclimate.org

HOSTED BY: Chesapeake Climate Action Network (CCAN) and Nature Forward. 

FOR MORE INFORMATION: Visit peopleoverdatacenters.org 

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Chesapeake Climate Action Network is the first grassroots organization dedicated exclusively to raising awareness about the impacts and solutions associated with global warming in the Chesapeake Bay region. Founded in 2002, CCAN has been at the center of the fight for clean energy and wise climate policy in Maryland, Virginia, and Washington, DC.

Throughout its history, Nature Forward, first established in 1897 as the Audubon Society of the District of Columbia, has championed nature for all by playing a pivotal role in conserving our region’s iconic natural places from development, including the C&O Canal, Dyke Marsh, and, most recently, Ten Mile Creek. Past member and board president Rachel Carson, author of Silent Spring, is credited with launching the now global environmental movement. Nature Forward’s nature experts provide hundreds of opportunities each year for people of all ages and abilities to enjoy, learn about, and protect the environment.   

The post “People Over Data Centers” Maryland’s First Statewide Conference on Confronting the Data Center Crisis appeared first on Chesapeake Climate Action Network.

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Welcome to the August 2026 Clean Air Council’s monthly newsletter.

This month’s newsletter brings you updates from our work all across Pennsylvania, with inside info about environmental laws and ways to get involved. 
 – Thanks, from all of us at Clean Air Council

  NEWS
What PA’s New Methane Standards Mean for Clean Air

On July 24, Gov. Josh Shapiro and the Pennsylvania DEP announced that new methane standards are on the way for Pennsylvania’s oil and gas industry, which will help protect public health, reduce climate pollution, and improve air quality for the more than 1.5 million Pennsylvanians who live near oil and gas infrastructure.

Learn more   GET INVOLVED
Apply for a Public Space Enhancement Mini-Grant!

Feet First Philly, a pedestrian advocacy project of the Clean Air Council, has opened applications for the seventh round of its Public Space Enhancement Mini-Grants, offering $500-$2,500 for projects that improve public spaces and pedestrian safety across Philadelphia. 

Apply   NEWS New Gas Pipeline Proposed in PA to Power Data Centers in MD and VA

Eastern Gas Transmission and Storage’s Project Oak Leaf would add 50+ miles of new pipeline, expand compressor stations across three states, and increase fracked gas transport capacity, all while being presented as an upgrade to existing infrastructure. If that sounds like more than a simple upgrade to you, you’re not alone. Attend an upcoming open house, get informed, and make your voice heard.

Learn more   SUPPORT CLEAN AIR COUNCIL’S SUMMER FUNDRAISING DRIVE

Our Summer Drive is one of our major fundraisers of the year, and we count on the money we raise to make sure we can keep fighting the climate crisis. 

Help us reach our goal of $10,000!     TAKE ACTION Give PGW Feedback on its Plans to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions

Philadelphia Gas Works is developing plans to reduce climate pollution and meet the city’s goal of carbon neutrality by 2050. The choices it makes could impact our air quality, public health, energy infrastructure, and utility bills for generations. Attend the next virtual community meeting on Aug. 12 at 6:30 p.m. to make your voice heard.

Register   COMMUNITY PARTNER SPOTLIGHT Cobbs Creek Park Ambassadors

From weekly cleanups to community celebrations, the Cobbs Creek Park Ambassadors has grown into a dedicated network of community members caring for Cobbs Creek Park. This year alone, volunteers have completed more than 50 cleanups and removed over 6,000 pounds of trash from local green spaces!

Join us Support Clean Air

About Us

The Council is Philadelphia’s oldest environmental non-profit. We have been fighting for everyone’s right to a healthy environment since 1967.

Contact Us

215-567-4004

members@cleanair.org