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Amtrak honchos officially showed off renderings for President Trump and Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy’s renovation of Penn Station on Monday, but left unsaid amid the unveiling of pretty pictures was the only aspect of the Penn Station redevelopment that matters: How much will it cost, and who’s paying?

One possible answer: Tenant railroads Amtrak, the MTA and New Jersey Transit. According to the development company vice president Peter Cipriano (who was a senior adviser to the U.S. DOT during President Trump’s first term), those tenants might have to pony up “availability payments” to cover a share of the project costs.

“Presumably there will be some level of availability payment at the end of the road on this project, like Amtrak has on 30th Street Station in Philadelphia,” the Halmar executive told reporters.

This type of payment scheme — which the railroads will almost certainly pass on to their riders — was the linchpin of the Halmar/ASTM plan that Cipriano’s team pitched the MTA in 2023. That plan would have involved Halmar and its parent company ASTM funding the renovation upfront, then collecting $250 million per year over 50 years from each over the three tenant railroads.

But neither Cipriano nor Andy Byford, Amtrak’s special adviser for Penn Station, would put a pricetag or timeline on the “availability payments.”

Byford, who has openly bragged about using President Trump to strong-arm New York into accept the project, insisted he would not allow an “unaffordable” funding scheme.

“I made it very clear in the RFP to the bidders: do not come with a proposal that saddles the railroads, of which Amtrak is obviously one, with unaffordable availability payments, because you won’t get through, you will not win,” said Byford. “My strategy is to minimize the gap between the overall cost and what we can raise through capital, like loans and grants, and what remains to be paid for via availability payments.”

One type of “availability payment” that Byford insisted is not in play is a surcharge on train tickets for trips originating from Penn Station. But riders will wind up paying in one way or the other if Amtrak plans to charge the railroads they ride, and the MTA is already raising objections to the proposal.

“Gov. Hochul has been clear from the day President Trump took over this project: if he wants it, then he’ll have to pay for it,” said MTA spokesperson Mitch Schwartz. “Secretary Duffy didn’t have any problem with that arrangement when he told Congress that his administration was ready to ‘give’ Penn Station $8 billion — the full cost of the project. Now, they’re admitting their real plan is to charge New York taxpayers billions. Their position may have changed. Ours hasn’t: we’re not interested in that deal.”

Amtrak held Monday’s press briefing in order to reveal renderings of the project, some of which were previously published in Gothamist. Cipriano, Byford and architect Vishaan Chakrabarti did not seem eager to discuss the project’s funding despite a barrage of criticism and concerns from Manhattan pols including Rep. Jerry Nadler.

Recommended



Penn Station Belongs to New Yorkers
Jerry Nadler

June 8, 2026

Byford eventually copped to a vague total cost of between $7 billion and $8 billion — the reported price for the previous Halmar plan in 2023. Part of that cost included paying Madison Square Garden owner James Dolan $500 million to buy the Hulu Theater (formerly the Felt Forum) and knock it down to make way for a station entrance on the Eighth Avenue side of the station.

Other wild cards remain in the offing: A recently passed amendment to the proposed federal Build America 250 Act would give Amtrak the power to seize local property tax funding to pay for station rehab projects.

The redesign promises a grand interior.

The amendment is not yet law, but if it passes critics warn it will enable a federal land grab that could allow real estate titan Vornado to redevelop the area and send its billions in property taxes that otherwise would have gone to New York City to pay for what is essentially a facelift for Penn Station.

For his part, Cipriano suggested that proposed scheme was no different than what New York state had previously proposed for the project (somethong local critics also opposed).

“If Amtrak got that authority, Andy would probably go through a process that looks somewhat similar to the one that [New York State] undertakes now. He would go to the city and say, ‘This is what we want to do. Can we work together?’ Should this thing get built, I think it’s fair to speculate that the surrounding property values will go up,” he said. “People call that ‘value uplift.’ What we’re talking about is Amtrak, by virtue of having delivered this, especially if the state’s not participating in costs, Amtrak should get a piece of that value which it created. That’s all. It’s fair. It’s done throughout the world,:

Cipriano alluded to, but did not directly mention, the previous Penn Station redevelopment plan floated by former Gov. Andrew Cuomo and briefly pursued by Gov. Hochul to do a similar value capture scheme in which New York seized zoning power around Penn Station through the creation of a land-use action called a General Project Plan.

Through the GPP, the state planned to give Vornado the power to develop multiple office buildings around Penn, and pay payments in lieu of taxes to cover the costs of the Penn Station renovation.

But the Cuomo-Hochul plan had built-in guardrail — including a chance for the state’s Public Authorities Control Board to review plans for each parcel of land. Critics of the GPP and the House amendment passed last week threw cold water on Cipriano’s spin.

“The so-called ‘Transit Oriented Development’ amendment … is an unprecedented power grab from the Trump administration and Vornado to steal New York City tax revenues for what appears to be an unnecessarily expensive facelift for Penn Station,” said Reinvent Albany Senior Policy Advisor Rachael Fauss. “It overrides all local authority over taxation and zoning in the area around Penn Station. Even if Amtrak did agree to consult with local officials, there is no requirement they do so and they could stop at any time if they don’t like what they hear.”

• World Cup host cities like Seattle, Atlanta, Boston and Kansas City are using the event to beef up their transit systems in ways that will hopefully outlast the global soccer tournament. (Next City)
• Both the location of housing near transit and the frequency of transit service are important for getting people to ride transit. Surprisingly, Los Angeles is at the top of the Urban Institute’s metric, followed by San Francisco and New York City. Less surprisingly, Sun Belt cities Dallas, Houston and Atlanta are at the bottom.
• A private company hires and trains bus drivers for Boston public schools. TransDev drivers were responsible for at least 60 deaths nationwide in the past decade, but most were not reported by the federal database that tracks such crashes, which means communities contracting with TransDev don’t know about its record. (ProPublica)
• The new Penn Station renderings are in, but the cost accounting isn’t. (Streetsblog NYC)
• Delays in Sound Transit projects have led to calls to reform the Seattle transit agency. (The Urbanist)
• California is cracking down on polluted runoff from parking lots. (Los Angeles Times)
• What’s the point of even having city governments if the Texas legislature can override anything they do? (Tribune)
• Passenger trains were delayed Saturday when a barge hit a rail bridge in Maryland. (New York Times)
• The Utah Transit Authority is addressing gaps in service. (Utah Public Radio)
• The D.C. Metro is closing three Red Line stations for construction this summer. (WTOP)
• Las Vegas is lowering the speed limit on Centennial Parkway as part of a Vision Zero effort to reduce deadly crashes. (Fox 5)
• Are Honolulu residents treating bikeshare like a mere novelty? (Civil Beat)
• Arkansas cities should do a better job of maintaining sidewalks. (Democrat-Gazette)
• Ann Arbor is experimenting with asphalt made from recycled tires. (Equipment World)
• Carmel, the small Indiana town of 100,000, has more than 150 roundabouts that have cut car crashes by 80 percent. (CNU Public Square)
• Feel like taking a scenic train trip this summer? Travel + Leisure suggests a few Amtrak routes.

Australia leads the world in the uptake of rooftop PV, but risks losing its seat at the table of global collaboration because of a cut in government funding.

The post Australia is leading the world on PV generation, but risks losing its seat at the global solar table appeared first on Renew Economy.

Queensland LNP extends mine lease into 2040s, saying coal is essential "when the sun doesn’t shine, the wind doesn’t blow and the batteries run dead."

The post “Coal is essential …. when the batteries run dead:” Queensland extends mine lease for second oldest generator appeared first on Renew Economy.

Despite using more electricity than households, and most of it during the day, the commercial sector lags well behind homes on rooftop systems and batteries.

The post Network tariffs blamed for failure of warehouses and businesses to follow household lead on rooftop solar appeared first on Renew Economy.

Batteries, both grid scale and in the home, are clearly moderating evening peak prices, but so is wind. But the industry needs to learn to manage wind costs.

The post Batteries and wind are crushing evening peak prices, and there is more pain to come for gas and coal appeared first on Renew Economy.

University of Michigan researchers have used a U.S. Navy ocean forecasting model to predict where internal tides occur in the ocean in order to bring ocean patterns important to weather forecasting and shipping into clearer focus.

Astronauts on long space missions may one day use plants to produce fresh stocks of medicines on demand, thanks to new research by engineers at the University of California San Diego. 

In May and June of most years, NASA satellites typically begin to detect large numbers of wildland fires throughout the Top End and Arnhem Land regions of Australia’s Northern Territory. 

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Field Notes: Paraguay’s Ayoreo People and the Disappearing Chaco (Season 2 Episode 2) https://youtu.be/bbLXmhOzlXg?si=EAy-Nt-DvUk7phWf In Paraguay’s Gran Chaco forest, one of the fastest-disappearing forests on Earth, the Ayoreo people—some still uncontacted—face existential threats from expanding cattle ranching, land grabs, road building, illegal logging, and human-set fires. Narrated by photojournalist Orin langelle. Field Notes — Dispatches […]

The Cascade Institute has partnered with Seequent, 400C Energy, INRS, and Simon Fraser University to develop the Canadian Thermal Model — a comprehensive mapping of the vast geothermal resources beneath our feet.

This national initiative will reveal Canada’s deep geothermal resources and accelerate the development of renewable energy. The announcement happened on the opening day of the world’s biggest geothermal event, being held in Calgary from June 8 to 11.

As investment in geothermal energy surges globally as a reliable, always-on clean power source, the Canadian Thermal Model will create a comprehensive national view of deep heat resources using novel machine learning methods to address a long-standing challenge for the sector: limited subsurface data coverage. Seequent is providing access to its world-leading geophysics software to accelerate research into the Earth’s subsurface.

This initiative advances knowledge of Canada’s geothermal energy reserves by integrating geologic and geophysical datasets into InterPIGNN machine learning algorithm for deep heat modelling. By improving confidence in where geothermal resources are located, the model provides a critical foundation to inform investment, policy planning, and project development nationwide.

“Canada has a significant opportunity to advance geothermal when the need for reliable, always-on clean energy has never been greater,” said Jeremy O’Brien, Energy Segment Director, Seequent. “Realizing that potential starts with greater subsurface certainty and making data accessible to key stakeholders. Combining this access with best-in-class geophysics enables more accurate mapping of heat at depth. The Canadian Thermal Model brings these elements together to create a national view of deep geothermal resources, helping to reduce risk, guide investment, and accelerate development.”

Cascade Institute specialists, working with a team of geoscientists and research partners, including Simon Fraser University, 400 C, and the Geological Survey of Canada Pacific Division, the Institute will develop the model using data integration workflows supported by Seequent’s Oasis montaj geophysics software. Seequent’s technology will process and visualize the data required to inform energy markets on resource availability and development costs.

“Canada has world-class subsurface expertise and a growing opportunity to lead in geothermal,” said Thomas Homer-Dixon, Executive Director of the Cascade Institute. “This project will provide a foundational resource to demonstrate the technical and economic viability of geothermal energy at scale.”

The Canadian Thermal Model reflects a broader industry shift toward data-driven geothermal development, including next-generation technologies and national-scale resource assessment. It also underscores the growing importance of partnerships between research institutions, technology providers, and the wider energy sector to scale geothermal from opportunity to infrastructure.

Seequent supports more than 60% of the world’s geothermal power generation, with experience spanning next-generation projects such as Fervo Energy’s Cape Station in Utah, and long-established operations including Ormat’s global footprint, reflecting deep expertise that drives the sector forward.

To kick off the collaboration, Cascade and Seequent hosted a discussion at WGC on June 8, titled “The Next Frontier: Exploring the Potential of Canada’s Deep Geothermal Resources.

The post Cascade Institute partners with Seequent to map Canada’s geothermal resources appeared first on Cascade Institute.

Bad Men Behaving Badly Chap. 746: 'Cause it's not awful enough we have to endure the racist crap spewing from our home-grown jackasses, the rest of the world bore grim witness to it as dunk-tank Christofascist Pete Hegseth chose a D-Day remembrance to flip the script on World War 2, trash European allies for not being fascist enough, and liken (good-guy) Allies landing at Normandy to an "invasion" of brown people "with "dangerous ideologies." Fact: "This is repulsive and confused, unless you're a Nazi."

Speaking of: Last week, under cover of darkness, "shameful" Senate Republicans pushed through a "Secure America Act" (sic) gifting yet more billions to keep out more of the swarthy hordes Pete's so scared of. Without making any of the reforms Dems had demanded, they added to last year's obscene $191 billion gift to DHS another $75 billion for ICE and $65 billion for CBP, 4 to 7 times their previous budgets, with most allocated to expand detentions, deportations, facilities, goons - not, as it could, to fund free childcare for over a million kids, groceries for over 10 million households, a year of SNAP benefits to 31 million people, health care tax credits for a year etc etc ad nauseum. Their wise leader, meanwhile, was throwing tantrums on TV - "Dude is losing his shit" - because a reporter dared ask for evidence of his flood of unhinged claims.

And greasy, self-proclaimed Secretary of War (Crimes) Pete lurches along on his unholy quest to turn America into a white nationalist theocracy. A blood-lusting warmonger though (because?) he never saw combat, he acts the macho, racist buffoon at every turn. He posts klutzy videos of himself working out; in one, he prances in a t-shirt that reads, "This Is War." (No, this is reality TV). Sporting Crusader tattoos - Deus Vult, but whose God wills it? - he stripped 180 faiths from those the military recognizes - all the Christian ones remain - "a religious purge dressed up as paperwork (telling) thousands of service members their beliefs don't matter to the government they're risking their lives to protect." He cut dozens of female and Black Navy officers from leadership-approved promotions, dissing "historic so-called firsts” that make the military "less lethal."

And to mark this weekend's 82nd anniversary of the June 6, 1944 D-Day landing of Allied forces on the beaches of Normandy - perhaps the most pivotal moment in a long bloody fight to defend democracy against fascism - he gave a pro-fascism speech, embracing a Great Replacement theory that calls for a return to the racial ideology on which fascism is based. Speaking at the American Cemetery in north-west France where about 9,400 are buried, he'd barely recalled the courage of Allied Forces from multiple countries wading ashore in history's largest amphibious operation to liberate Europe before pivoting to warn "their legacy requires our active vigilance." European leaders may have grown too "comfortable," he said with the chutzpah of the deeply ignorant, and they may have somehow "forgotten that freedom is not free."

"Sadly, today, different European beaches are stormed by different, dangerous ideologies," he intoned. "On beaches in Spain, Italy, Greece and Bulgaria, boats and men arrive....When will European capitals do something about that invasion? Is it too late? I pray not, and I believe not." What a pompous asshole. So: On D-Day, Ugly Americans hawking xenophobia. Equating brown-skinned migrants who want to feed and keep safe their families with "dangerous ideologies." Also: Equating anti-fascism with "dangerous ideologies"? Wait, weren't the Allies the good guys? And wait, so the Nazis were...? Americans were horrified by so much repulsive and confused: "Sewage," "straight-up white nationalism," "a cheap suit full of hate and racism - what an evil shit," "Crystal Meth Rumsfeld strikes again," "We get it, dude. Just come out and say you hate black and brown people."

Especially in Europe, critics did not hold back, and we are here for it. English historian Simon Schama decried Hegseth's "special kind of loathsomeness, a blend of historical deafness, grotesque stupidity and comically ludicrous self-importance...As if the little people’s rage against immigration somehow is superior to the war against the 3rd Reich, and entitles this comic-book nobody to lecture the actual heroes." Others blasted "something profoundly ugly happening" in our right wing..."and on D-Day, D-Day!" and "an obscene desecration" of the memories of those who fell. Like many, French P.M. Sébastien Lecornu rightly paid tribute instead to the "3,000 men, barely 20 years old," who died, offering "the breath of their youth and the sacrifice of their lives."

Europeans also called bullshit on the faux drama and utter hypocrisy of Hegseth's angry claim that, after a united D-Day era when "each nation bled," Europe is not "standing with" a U.S. now run by a lying, racist, narcissistic, war-mongering toddler who does nothing but abuse them. "America will lead and we must, but capable allies must be Right. There. With Us...In the Breach. When It Matters," he bloviated. "The men who fought and died here restored freedom to Europe,. Now freedom must be maintained by this generation of leaders and war-fighters...We stand by our allies, and we expect our allies to stand beside us." "So much nonsense," retorted Swedish economist Anders Åslund. "'We stand by our allies!’ No you don’t. You just attacked them. Immigration policies are internal matters...Doesn’t Hegseth know the most unreliable ‘ally’ by far is the US?”

And now, in the name of their mythical, bigoted, white, male, Christian Republic, the US - Hegseth, Trump, Vance et al - have the audacity to be hectoring their European “allies” to “up their white supremacy game” to stop an “invasion” of what Trump has called the brown and black “vermin” who once flocked to our “shining city on a hill,” now a beacon of hate. Hamlet's ghost: “O, what a falling-off was there.” Last weekend, in France, Hegseth didn’t even stay for the international ceremony at the cemetery where so many are buried - per Trump, all those suckers and losers. Pete likely didn’t know the denizens of a nearby village had weeks earlier asked that his visit be cancelled. "It seems to us," they said in their request, "that this man does not share our democratic values." We feel your pain.

Kate and Aaron are joined by Dr. Steve Feldgus, an independent consultant who served as Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Land and Minerals Management at the Interior Department under President Biden. Dr. Feldgus talks about how to improve mine permitting in the US, a topic he worked on while at Interior.

News

• Falling behind: Forest Service fuel treatment gap puts communities at risk – Center for Western Priorities
• Americans’ national parks passes will pay for Trump’s July 4 plans, documents show – Washington Post
• Wyoming’s ‘Path of the Pronghorn’ is a signature away from protections fought over for a quarter century – WyoFile

Resources

• Red Tape is a Red Herring: Deregulation Will Not Speed Critical Mineral Development
• Watch this episode on YouTube

Produced by Aaron Weiss, Lauren Bogard, Kate Groetzinger, and Lilly Bock-Brownstein
Feedback: podcast@westernpriorities.org
Music: Purple Planet
Featured image: Construction equipment at a bentonite mine on BLM land near Greybull, Wyoming; Source: Photo by Gretchen Hurley, Geologist, BLM Cody Field Office

The post A former Interior department official explains what’s wrong with mining on public land appeared first on Center for Western Priorities.

Update: Santa Clara voters made their support for open spaces clear by saying YES to Measure D! With over 54% of the vote, the measure to enhance the Santa Clara Valley Open Space Authority’s capacity to care for open spaces in its jurisdiction passed!

Also known as the Santa Clara Valley Wildfire Protection, Clean Water, and Open Space Act, Measure D will implement an equitable parcel tax to generate approximately $17 million annually to steward these lands.

Greenbelt Alliance proudly endorsed and advocated for this measure and is thrilled to see that voters embraced this cause!

Why It Matters

The Santa Clara Valley Open Space Authority is an essential steward and protector of vital landscapes in Santa Clara County, and it currently needs more resources to manage these lands sustainably.

Just in the past decade, the lands under the agency’s management more than doubled, from 12,000 to 30,000 acres, while revenue has remained flat, limiting its ability to carry out its stewardship and resilience mission.

Since 1993, the Santa Clara Valley Open Space Authority has been a steward of the irreplaceable natural landscapes of central and southern Santa Clara County. The Authority conserves the natural environment, supports agriculture, and connects people to nature by protecting open spaces, natural areas, and working farms and ranches for today and for future generations. Visitors enjoy free, year-round access to hike, walk, bike, horseback ride, or simply relax in a beautiful landscape. With preserves such as Sierra Vista, Rancho Cañada del Oro, and the iconic Coyote Valley—a campaign that Greenbelt Alliance fought for for many years—, thousands of residents have access to nature near their homes. 

Protected open space is not a luxury. Healthy watersheds, managed grasslands, and restored wildlife corridors reduce wildfire risk, protect drinking water, filter runoff, and give communities a better chance to withstand extreme weather events, which are becoming more frequent and intense.

Supporting this measure is the smart thing to do because it advances key priorities, including:

• Reducing catastrophic wildfire risk by removing hazardous brush
• Protecting our drinking water sources, including rivers, creeks, and streams, from pollution
• Helping clean up pollution and litter in natural areas
• Protecting our area’s farms and healthy, local food sources
• Maintaining and restoring wildlife habitats and corridors

Investing in Resilient Landscapes

At a time when the cost of living and economic challenges are top of mind for American voters, asking voters to support a new tax is never a small request. However, unlike a traditional flat-rate parcel tax, this new measure applies a rate of two cents per square foot of building area. For the average homeowner in the Authority’s jurisdiction, that represents approximately $32 per year, while large commercial and industrial property owners, including the corporations and campuses that benefit enormously from the Bay Area’s livability and natural amenities, will pay proportionally more, but still have a cap of $7,500 per parcel annually. 

The Santa Clara Valley Open Space Authority has already proven it knows how to deploy this kind of investment effectively. For every dollar of local funding collected, the Authority has leveraged significant matching funds from state, federal, and private sources, bringing in more than $180 million in outside resources to date. This measure will expand that leverage, unlocking additional state and federal dollars that require local matching commitments. 

Endorsement originally published on March 19, 2026.

The post WIN: Measure D Reaffirms Santa Clara’s Protection of Open Spaces appeared first on Greenbelt Alliance.

California’s leaders have spent years telling the public that fighting climate change requires giving people alternatives to driving.

They were right.

The transportation sector remains California’s largest source of greenhouse gas emissions. If California hopes to meet its climate goals, it must give people realistic alternatives to getting behind the wheel. That means better transit, more homes near jobs and transit stations, safer streets for walking and bicycling, and communities designed around choices instead of traffic.

Unfortunately, Sacramento just made that job much harder.

Last month, the California Air Resources Board approved sweeping changes to the state’s cap-and-trade program, which the state insists on calling cap-and-invest. State officials argued the changes would reduce costs for consumers and provide relief to industries facing increasingly stringent climate regulations.

The changes will significantly reduce the amount of money generated through emissions allowance auctions that will go into the state’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, the same fund the state uses to support public transit, affordable housing near transit, active transportation projects, and other programs designed to reduce driving and greenhouse gas emissions. Some estimates say they will reduce available transit funding by hundreds of millions of dollars. Others put the estimates even higher.

As we noted last week, for transit agencies, the decision could not have come at a worse time.

And for California’s climate goals, it raises an uncomfortable question: How does the state expect to meet its emissions targets while cutting funding for the programs that are supposed to help achieve them?

After slashing funding for the state’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, regulators with the Air Resources Board who oversee the cap-and-trade program gave us the answer: lobby your legislator.

“Nothing that we’re doing here is setting the priority for how the legislature may decide to appropriate funds,” Rajinder Sahota, deputy executive officer for climate change and research at the Air Resources Board, told KQED.

Climate Goals and Policy Changes

California’s self-created climate mandate is to reduce statewide greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to 40% below 1990 levels by 2030, in accordance with Senate Bill 32. Furthermore, the 2022 Scoping Plan maps an aggressive trajectory aiming for an even deeper 48% reduction by 2030 to eventually reach carbon neutrality by 2045.

These are great goals, and California is making some progress. Emissions are dropping, but at an average annual pace of roughly 2.8%, whereas a 4.4% year-over-year reduction is required to meet the 2030 deadline. The state would need to double the decrease in emissions every year between now and 2030 to make its own goals. 

The Legislature and Governor Gavin Newsom reauthorized the cap-and-trade program last year but changed how revenues are distributed. High-speed rail now receives guaranteed funding. A substantial portion is also directed toward broader state budget priorities. Transit and many other climate programs were left to compete for whatever money remains.

That may have seemed manageable when policymakers assumed auction revenues would remain robust. As we’re seeing, that is no longer a safe assumption.

But as noted above, it’s the legislature and governor that ultimately decides how funds are spent. If there’s less money to spend, then the elected leaders have choices to make.

California’s budget year goes from July 1 until the following June 30. The state has a habit of passing budgets at the last possible moment, and this year is no exception. Last month, Newsom unveiled his final proposed budget and it did not include increased funding for transit to offset the changes to the cap-and-trade system. However, in recent years the legislature has acted to fix the governor’s shortcomings on transit funding.

In 2024, lawmakers rejected Newsom’s proposal to slash funding for the Active Transportation Program and intercity rail projects, arguing that California could not afford to abandon climate and mobility investments simply because they were politically easier targets than highway spending. While the final budget did not fully restore every dollar, legislators significantly softened the proposed cuts and preserved funding for programs that had been slated for the chopping block.

The same thing happened last year. Newsom’s May Revision proposed deep reductions to transit funding and declined requests for additional emergency operating support. After weeks of negotiations, legislative leaders restored much of the threatened funding and approved a package designed to prevent devastating service cuts at transit agencies across the state. The lesson from the past two budget cycles is clear: the governor’s May budget proposal is often the opening bid, not the final word.

So in 2026, as lawmakers negotiate the final state budget, they should be asking a simple question: if cap-and-trade revenues decline as expected, where will the replacement funding come from?

The answer cannot be nowhere.

Otherwise, the state is effectively admitting that its climate goals are aspirational rather than operational.

DENVER—A new report from the Center for Western Priorities found that less than one percent of 35,700 comments submitted to the National Park Service in response to signage asking the public to report negative depictions of American history in parks actually used the comment form as intended.

The analysis looked at 35,700 comments submitted across 475 national park units between June 2025 and January 2026, organizing the comments into seven distinct categories based on content and sentiment. The largest category was “General opposition to the order,” which accounted for nearly 10,000 responses. This was followed by “Defend historical accuracy” (over 5,000 responses) and “General pro-parks support” (over 4,000 responses).

Other notable categories of public feedback included comments on the “Park visit experience,” “Trump / Burgum criticism,” and a number of “Off-topic / jokes / spam” submissions. In contrast, only 47 comments, or 0.1 percent of the total comments submitted, “Flagged signage or supported removal.” 

Background: In March of 2025, President Trump issued Executive Order 14253, “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.” In response, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum ordered national park staff to put up signs asking park visitors to report “any signs or other information that are negative about either past or living Americans or that fail to emphasize the beauty, grandeur, and abundance of landscapes and other natural features.”

Methodology: In May 2026, the Department of the Interior released 35,700 comments submitted through a QR code system in response to a FOIA request by KOAA News 5 and others. The Center for Western Priorities sorted the full dataset into categories based on content and sentiment through a combination of pattern-based classification and a manual verification/refinement process. More information on methodology is available in the full report.

The Center for Western Priorities released the following quote from Creative Content and Policy Manager Lilly Bock-Brownstein, who conducted the analysis and authored the report:

“These comments pass the vibe check with flying colors. Americans support our parks and the stories they tell, and they aren’t happy about the Trump administration’s efforts to rewrite history. Instead of helping Trump censor our national parks, visitors used the comment form to tell the Trump administration to respect our parks or get lost.”

Learn more:

• ‘Censorship:’ See the National Park visitor responses after Trump requested help deleting ‘negative’ signage – Government Executive

• The National Park Service race to rewrite history becomes a slog – Politico

• America’s 250th anniversary and why history matters in our parks – The Landscape (Center for Western Priorities’ podcast)

• Confidential database reveals which items NPS thinks may ‘disparage’ America – Washington Post

The post New analysis finds Trump effort to solicit negative feedback on national park signage completely fails  appeared first on Center for Western Priorities.

June 8, 2026 – FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

SUWA Statement on new Cooperative Management Agreement for the San Rafael Swell – 6.8.26  Latest effort by State of Utah to exert control over federal public lands 

Contacts:
Grant Stevens, Communications Director, Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (SUWA); (319) 427-0260; grant@suwa.org

Salt Lake City, UT– Today, the State of Utah announced it signed a Cooperative Management Agreement with the federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM) regarding the San Rafael Swell Recreation Area in southern Utah; the Area was established as part of the 2019 Dingell Act. Below is a statement from SUWA Legal Director Steve Bloch and additional information.  

“Today’s announcement has all the hallmarks of the fox being put in charge of the henhouse,” said Steve Bloch, Legal Director for the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (SUWA). “Under Governor Cox’s leadership, the state has conspired to place control of American public lands into the hands of politicians who have their own agenda: prioritizing off-road vehicle use over everything else. Gov. Cox has found a willing parter in the Trump administration, who sees public lands as little more than figures on a “balance sheet” to be dismantled and monetized for short-term gain. We will be watching closely for any shenanigans that stem from this agreement.” 

Additional information: 

The John D. Dingell Jr. Conservation, Management, and Recreation Act, which was signed into law on March 12, 2019, designated 663,000 acres of BLM-managed wilderness within 17 new wilderness areas. In addition, the legislation established the 117,000-acre San Rafael Swell Recreation Area, added 63 miles of the Green River to the National Wild and Scenic River System, designated the John Wesley Powell National Conservation Area and the Jurassic National Monument, and directed a land exchange between the BLM and Utah’s Trust Lands Administration. Additional information can found here. 

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM), a federal agency, is part of the Department of the Interior, a Cabinet-level department headed by Secretary Doug Burgum. In Utah, the BLM manages 22.8 million acres of public land, ranging from “spectacular red-rock canyons and roaring rivers to high mountain peaks and expansive salt flats,” including Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument (designated in 1996 and the first monument managed by the BLM) and Bears Ears National Monument (designated in 2017 and jointly managed with the US Forest Service).  

The BLM manages several congressionally-designated wilderness areas in Utah, including remarkable places such as Muddy Creek (Emery County), Canaan Mountain (Washington County), and the Cedar Mountains (Tooele County). BLM-Utah also manages more than 80 Wilderness Study Areas and other significant public landscapes including Nine Mile Canyon, Red Cliffs National Conservation Area, and the Desolation Canyon and Labyrinth Canyon stretches of the Green River (designated Wild and Scenic Rivers). SUWA’s signature bill, America’s Red Rock Wilderness Act, would designate more than 8 million acres of BLM land in Utah as wilderness.  

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The Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (SUWA) is a nonprofit organization with members and supporters from around the country dedicated to protecting America’s redrock wilderness. From offices in Moab, Salt Lake City, and Washington, DC, our team of professionals defends the redrock, organizes support for America’s Red Rock Wilderness Act, and stewards a world-renowned landscape. Learn more at www.suwa.org. 

 

 

The post SUWA Statement on new San Rafael Swell Management Agreement – 6.8.26  appeared first on Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance.

This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Bob Henson

It might have seemed exotic when it first appeared, but the forecast “cone of uncertainty” used by the NOAA/NWS National Hurricane Center (NHC) is now a familiar part of tropical cyclone readiness in U.S. states and territories. For 2026, NHC has made a couple of key tweaks to its standard cone product. It’s also testing an expanded version of the cone – one made feasible by a new way of understanding how and where forecast errors arise.

Since its debut in 2002, the cone has become what a University of Miami writer called “arguably [the center’s] most iconic graphic,” a mainstay of TV coverage and weather apps. Prior to the cone, hurricane maps simply showed a line depicting the official multi-day forecast for the storm center, as issued every six hours by NHC. Experts urged the public not to “focus on the skinny line,” keeping in mind that a hurricane’s path can easily deviate from the forecast track and that impacts will typically extend far beyond that center.

When you see a cone graphic, that ‘skinny line’ may or may not appear (NHC provides both versions), but the cone itself has gone a long way to fix the skinny-line problem.

However, just as a hurricane’s impacts do not just lie along a narrow line, a hurricane’s damage doesn’t stop when it comes ashore. Some of the worst U.S. hurricane disasters in recent years have occurred well inland, including billions of dollars in wind-driven destruction across Georgia in 2018’s Michael, and the catastrophic, deadly flooding from 2024’s Helene, which killed more than 100 people in and around western North Carolina.

Up through last year, NHC’s cone graphics only showed watches and warnings along the coastline. Starting this year, the full extent of inland watches and warnings will be portrayed. In the example shown in Fig. 1 below, the revised graphics make it crystal clear that the hurricane warning for 2024’s Milton extended almost completely across the entire Florida Peninsula, including the Orlando area.

Another improvement shown in Fig. 1 is the addition of a crosshatched area to denote locations that are under both a hurricane watch and a tropical storm warning. It’s an important way to show that being in a tropical storm warning doesn’t mean you are necessarily off the hook for potential hurricane-level impacts.

Figure 1. A comparison of the original forecast cone for Hurricane Milton issued at 4 a.m. CDT October 8, 2024 (left) and how the same forecast would look in the revised cone graphic being used this year (right). The area crosshatched in blue and pink lines is under both a hurricane watch (pink) and a tropical storm warning (blue). The revised cone graphic will also use gray shading for the entire length of the cone, rather than for only the first three days of the five-day forecast period. (Image credit: NOAA/NWS/NHC)

When bad stuff happens outside the cone

Maybe because it’s so visually intuitive, the cone can deceive. The most common way to misinterpret the cone is to assume that it includes all possible hurricane tracks and that all serious hurricane impacts will fall inside the cone. It’s a problem that experts across disciplines have dubbed the “containment effect.”

The misunderstanding has led to some painful lessons. One of the most dramatic was in 2022, when Hurricane Ian veered toward the right-hand edge of the cone. Ian made a high-end Category 4 landfall near Fort Myers less than 36 hours after the official skinny-line track forecast had projected a strike near Tampa Bay. Because Ian was such a large and potent hurricane, its storm surge extended well to the right of the cone, delivering major flooding as far south as Naples. Ian took at least 161 lives and inflicted $112 billion in damage (USD 2022).

Multiple lines of social science research confirm that many laypeople make the mistake of assuming hurricanes simply don’t stray outside the cone. One survey of more than 2,800 Floridians led by Scotney Evans (University of Miami) and published in 2022 by the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society found that nearly half of respondents assumed that the cone showed all of the potential tracks for a hurricane. 

“Our analysis suggests that many residents have difficulty interpreting several aspects, suggesting a rethink on how to graphically communicate aspects such as uncertainty; the size of the storm; areas of likely damage; watches and warnings; and wind intensity categories,” Evans and colleagues wrote. In some cases, better-educated respondents were actually more likely to misinterpret certain aspects of the cone. 

READ: Building a better hurricane cone of uncertainty

The issue is especially acute because of the cone’s sheer popularity. “The cone is one of the most, if not the most, commonly shared hurricane visuals,” said Robert Prestley (NSF National Center for Atmospheric Research).

A 2020 overview of hurricane risk communication in the journal Weather, Climate, and Society, led by Barbara Millett (University of Miami), noted that during the five days as Hurricane Irma approached Miami in 2017, the cone map accounted for more than 70% of independent pageviews at the NHC website. In a 2023 study published in the same journal, Prestley and NCAR’s Rebecca Morss found that cone graphics were retweeted more often than watch/warning graphics on Twitter.

With all this in the mix, “it was taking people by surprise when the hurricane would move outside the cone,” said Robbie Berg, warning coordination meteorologist at NHC.

In fact, the cone’s width is calculated for each storm based on the previous five years of track locations in the official NHC forecasts, rather than on how well or poorly behaved a particular storm might be. Based on average track errors from those preceding five years, the cone width is calibrated to include about two-thirds (67 percent) of all potential storm positions. This means that by design, one would expect the center of a hurricane to stray outside the cone margins about one-third of the time.

Making the cone substantially wider might seem like an obvious fix, but this approach carries its own hazards. Evacuations are based largely on storm surge risk rather than the cone itself, and storm surge warnings can extend well beyond the cone. However, a greatly expanded cone could mean a larger number of people finding themselves in a cone year after year, perhaps without significant impacts each time.

“Research shows the public perceives the cone as an area of concern – an indication to continue monitoring the forecast,” said Gina Eosco, director of NOAA’s Weather Program Office and a pioneering researcher on how people interpret the cone and other forecast products.

Since 2007, forecasters at NHC have used the two-thirds index for the cone width as a working compromise between overly narrow and overly broad. But a new way of analyzing errors from past years has paved the way to an experimental cone that would alert more people without including all that much more territory.

The key, according to Berg, was to decompose the total track error. A track forecast can make mistakes that are either “cross-track” (erring in the direction of motion) or “along-track”  (moving the system too quickly or too slowly). Standard practice is to draw the cone’s edges along each side of a series of circles straddling the forecast track, with the radius of each circle set to include 67 percent of potential positions and the circles growing larger with each forecast day.

As it turns out, timing mistakes (along-track) tend to produce bigger errors than do directional mistakes (cross-track), as shown in Fig. 2 below. Using circles to pool all of these errors obscures the difference between the two types, thus making the cone wider and less elongated than it ought to be.

Figure 2. Schematic showing a circle that denotes absolute error, pooling the along- and cross-track errors into a single value, and the ellipse that results when the two types of errors are assessed separately rather than pooled. (Image credit: NOAA/NWS/NHC)

When NHC examined the two types of error, they discovered that only a minor widening and lengthening of the cone could enclose 90 percent of possible positions, as opposed to the current 67 percent. This 90-percent cone is being used in experimental mode for the first time this season (see Fig. 3 below), alongside the traditional 67-percent version. The center will solicit comments and feedback before any move to finalize and adopt the experimental version. It’s been well received at conferences, according to Berg.

“Especially as we get out toward day 4 or 5, most of the error is in the along-track part of the storm,” said Berg. “Going to 90% doesn’t increase the width of the cone much. It’s more that you’re increasing the length.”

Figure 3. Comparison of the current operational cone (dashed red line) with the slightly larger experimental version (white shading). The dashed red line is only for illustrative purposes, so that the two versions can be compared here in one graphic. (Image credit: NOAA/NWS/NHC)

Another benefit of the 90% cone: some other NHC products already use the same threshold. For example, peak storm surge forecasts depict the maximum inundation one would expect from a given tropical cyclone approaching a given stretch of coast. These forecasts are calibrated so that a value higher than the maximum shown would be expected only 10% of the time. “So we’re trending in this direction: reasonable worst case, trying to capture as much of the risk as possible,” Berg said.

“The changes to the cone show remarkable scientific advancement,” said Eosco.

Meanwhile, the traditional version of the forecast cone will slim down a bit this year. Because of reduced error in the forecasts for 2021–2025 compared to 2020–2024, the two-thirds probability circles for 2026 will be 4 to 8 percent smaller on average in the Atlantic and 3 to 8 percent smaller in the Northeast Pacific. Such incremental improvements over the past couple of decades have led to striking reductions in cone size (see embedded post from 2025 below).

A timely year for new storm surge products in Hawaii

With El Niño boosting the odds that tropical cyclones will affect Hawaii this season, it’s fortuitous that NHC is now launching the same type of storm surge products for the main Hawaiian Islands that are regularly issued for the U.S. East and Gulf Coasts, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. These will include the peak storm surge forecasts noted above.

Behind the storm surge forecasts are exhaustive calculations carried out across more than 20 years of work using the P-Surge (probabilistic storm surge) model. The resulting datasets show the potential inundations at coastal points separated by 2.5 kilometers (about 1.6 miles) based on winds and atmospheric pressures from as many as 1,000 simulated tropical cyclones. As this work continues, NHC is looking to expand storm surge forecasts more broadly through the Caribbean in the coming years.

As stressed by Eosco: “Regardless of the cone’s shape or size, monitoring the forecast is a critical first step in assessing personal risk and empowering personal decision-making.”

If you ever find yourself at a river’s bank, a lake’s edge, or an ocean’s coast, keep an eye out for one of nature’s most skilled fishers—the Osprey. Distinguished by its bright yellow eyes...