Grist

The fossil fuel industry isn’t just raking in record profits amid the war with Iran. In California, it’s also spending big to oppose climate and worker-safety legislation.

According to analyses by a coalition of environmental groups called the Last Chance Alliance, oil and gas companies spent more than $17 million on California lobbying during the first half of 2026. That includes $10.3 million during the first quarter — a new record for the sector — and another $6.8 million during Q2.

Much of the spending was directed against legislation proposing new costs and liabilities for the fossil fuel industry, like a state bill that would make companies pay for rebuilding following climate-intensified natural disasters. But other bills targeted were more milquetoast, seeking to clarify existing workplace-safety laws and ensure more thorough reporting of cleanup costs when oil companies want to decommission projects.

Faraz Rizvi, campaign and policy director for the nonprofit Asian Pacific Environmental Network — a member of the Last Chance Alliance — criticized companies for “aggressively lobbying” against straightforward measures to protect communities and boost transparency. “They’re not actors that have consumers’ or communities’ interests at heart,” he told Grist.

Last Chance Alliance pulled the data from mandatory reporting to the California secretary of state. The top spenders in the oil-and-gas lobbying category included the Western States Petroleum Association, which spent $4.3 million over the first half of the year; Chevron, whose spending amounted to $3.7 million; and Phillips 66, an oil refiner that spent just over half a million dollars. Much of the money went to consultants and alleged “front groups” that present themselves as grassroots operations but are funded by the fossil fuel industry, like Californians for Energy Independence.

One big target of the sector’s lobbying was California’s cap-and-invest program, which requires companies to pay for a finite — and declining — number of emissions permits each year. The program covers roughly 80 percent of California’s economy and is considered critical to achieving the state’s climate targets, including carbon neutrality by 2045. Earlier this year, oil and gas interests successfully lobbied regulators to green-light a mechanism that could make a vast pool of free pollution permits available to fossil fuel companies. If finalized, the plan could deprive the state of billions in funding that would have otherwise gone toward public transit and housing. The change is currently facing a legal challenge from environmental groups and objections from some Democratic lawmakers.

The sector also fought a bill, currently awaiting passage by the state Senate, to extend California’s Displaced Oil and Gas Workers Fund. Established under a 2022 law, the $30 million fund distributes grants to help oil and gas industry workers transition to new careers. According to one estimate, the fund has already helped 600 people find new lines of work, and supporters have been discussing the potential for new forms of support, including wage replacement during transition periods and financial support during apprenticeships. 

Other pending bills that oil companies lobbied against propose creating a task force on safe staffing guidelines for oil refineries; preventing fossil fuel companies from abandoning methane-leaking oil wells; and adding new safety and public comment requirements for offshore oil pipelines. One bill would force companies to submit formal retirement plans before they shutter their oil refineries. The bill follows the closure of a Phillips 66 refinery in L.A. County that environmental groups claim was poorly handled. 

A number of the targeted bills have been defeated, giving the oil and gas industry a series of wins. These include SB 1245, which sought to stabilize California’s gas supply, and SB 982, which addressed California’s home insurance crisis. The latter bill would have allowed the state attorney general to sue fossil fuel companies for damages following climate-related disasters like wildfires. It was meant to help pay for skyrocketing property insurance, disaster mitigation, and other expenses that are currently straining the state’s insurer of last resort. Oil and gas lobbying also helped to defeat a bill that would have made it harder for fossil fuel companies to abandon methane-leaking oil wells. There are more than 100,000 of these wells in California, and companies are often able to evade responsibility for plugging them.

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Hollin Kretzmann, deputy political director at the Center for Biological Diversity Action Fund, said it’s been a generally disappointing year for Golden State climate policy. “This legislative session was just a huge missed opportunity for California. We didn’t get to show what the world’s fourth-largest economy could accomplish when it comes to protecting our economy, protecting our health.”

The lobbying is a particularly bad look, he added, given the oil and gas industry’s recent earnings. Late last month, Chevron reported $12 billion in net profits during the second quarter, nearly five times as much as it earned during the same period in 2025. Exxon Mobil made $14.5 billion, more than double its second-quarter earnings from last year. These profits have been driven by oil supply disruptions linked to the U.S.-Israel war against Iran, particularly the monthslong closure of the Strait of Hormuz. Supply shortages and higher oil prices have benefited oil producers that don’t depend on the strait to export products, as well as companies with oil refineries in the West.

Still, Chevron CEO Mike Wirth has said threats to oil supplies are straining his company. “Every day that goes by, the situation gets more difficult,” he told CNBC in late July. His company has also blamed California energy policies for high gasoline prices, deflecting accusations of price gouging. Chevron, Phillips 66, and Californians for Energy Independence did not respond to Grist’s requests for comment. A spokesperson for the Western States Petroleum Association declined to comment.

Ryan Schleeter, communications director for the nonprofit The Climate Center, said curtailing Big Oil’s influence over the California Legislature should be a priority moving forward. He suggested starting with the reduction of public subsidies — including from the cap-and-invest program’s free allocations, but also from tax loopholes that allow companies to report only a fraction of their global earnings to the state. “We’re essentially subsidizing their profit margins,” he told Grist. 

Kretzmann said more measures are needed to limit both the number of lobbyists visiting Sacramento and the amount of money they’re allowed to spend; otherwise, legislators and environmental advocates will keep running into the same problem year after year. “It gets to the heart of why our policies in California don’t reflect the will of the people,” he said. “I don’t have an easy solution, but we need our legislators to listen to the public … rather than oil industry lobbyists.”

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This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The fossil fuel industry is spending record amounts to keep California from regulating it on Aug 27, 2026.

My husband, friends, and I sat huddled at a faux-marble-topped table in the lobby of our Utah hotel, looking down at a Google Maps route pulled up on my iPhone. We pinched and scrolled the screen as the breakfast buffet crowd hummed around us. 

We were less than a week into a Great American Road trip — one that would take us 9,000 miles from coast to coast and border to border. Today’s agenda was to relocate from Moab, the gateway city for Arches and Canyonlands national parks, to our hotel near Bryce Canyon. But there was a problem:

Utah was on fire. 

To the west of us, the Cottonwood Fire had burned through 94,000 acres of forest and mountain towns, making it the largest conflagration in the United States. To the east, the Jones Fire had just erupted near the ghost town Cisco, its smoke plume looming on the flat horizon, visible from our hotel room. In total, more than a dozen wildfires were burning across the state, closing roads and turning the skies an ominous orange. We had to find a safe way through.

“If we take Route 89, it takes us straight into the middle of the Cottonwood Fire,” said my childhood friend Jessie, who had joined us with her husband for the Utah leg of our trip.

“There’s Route 72 through Loa, but that isn’t much farther away,” my husband said.

We switched apps from Google Maps to Watch Duty, a real-time wildfire tracker, waiting for it to load our precise location. My kids shifted their attention from their stacks of chocolate chip pancakes to the screen, which was covered in fire symbols. My 12-year-old son looked at me, worried.

“The edge of the Cottonwood Fire is creeping toward Route 72, too,” I noted. We had to make a decision and get going. 

More than a dozen wildfires broke out in Utah in late June, including the Jones Fire (right), visible from the horizon near the town of Moab. Katherine Bagley

We landed on a route that stuck to smaller state highways, even though it would add significant time to our driving. Anything to avoid the rapidly shifting edges of fire.

“You guys go get your bags and check out,” Jessie said. “I’ll go to the pharmacy and grab us some N-95 masks.”

Crisscrossing the United States by car has attained an almost rite-of-passage status in American society over the decades, its allure solidified in everything from On the Road to Thelma & Louise to the #TakeTheScenicRoute Instagram reels of today. It was that craving for wild landscapes and new cultures that had drawn my family out onto the road. My husband had just finished a year of cancer treatments, the kids were on summer break, and I was eligible for a sabbatical from my job as a climate journalist. So despite never having done anything like this before, we packed our hybrid Honda with duffle bags and camping gear and set out with a plan to visit 14 national parks.

I had expected to walk away with a better understanding of our public lands, a renewed sense of awe and adventure, and the opportunity to travel as a family in a way I never got to growing up — and the trip did give us those things in spades. What I hadn’t expected, however, was to also get a stark glimpse into how climate change is rapidly altering our nation. 

Our kids spent the majority of the trip looking out the windows while listening to the full-cast Harry Potter audio books. Katherine Bagley

As a climate journalist, and scientist by training, I probably shouldn’t have been so surprised. For 20 years, I have documented the ever-growing impacts of a warming planet — and summer coincides with the annual period during which these impacts are on full display. A drumbeat of floods, fires, drought, and scorching heat put nearly every U.S. state in a vise from May to October. The season has become so synonymous with extreme weather that the nonprofit Union of Concerned Scientists launched a campaign in 2022 to dub it “danger season.”  

But even knowing that, the scale of devastation underway outside our car windows was alarming. As the miles ticked by, disaster after disaster strung together in an alarming pattern of chaos. Freshly charred landscapes and orange skies in Utah. Bathtub rings on drought-stricken reservoirs in Arizona. Stands of dead trees killed by bark beetles in the Sierra Nevada mountains. Toxic dust blowing off the Great Salt Lake. Emergency alerts for flooding and evacuations in Glacier National Park. Extreme heat warnings in Grand Teton.

It felt like a near-constant assault, one disaster stacked on top of another. Travel a few miles, a few hours, and we’d encounter another mark climate change had made — or was actively making — on the American landscape.

It’s too early to say whether climate change was a factor in every brush fire, heat wave, storm, or flood we encountered. But there is compelling evidence that it’s making many forms of extreme weather more severe or frequent. From 1980 to 1989, the number of billion-dollar weather disasters in the United States averaged just 3.3 per year. In the decade between 2015 and 2024, that number had more than quintupled, averaging 19 billion-dollar disasters per year. Twenty-three billion-dollar disasters hit American communities in 2025, according to the research group Climate Central. By the time we hit the road in June 2026, 12 events from this year had already met that threshold.

As we left Moab toward Bryce Canyon, heavy-duty particulate masks stashed in the glove box, we got an alert from the National Park Service. It was closing a portion of Canyonlands National Park, where less than 24 hours prior we had peered out over the park’s plummeting red sandstone cliffs into the hollowed landscape where the Colorado and Green rivers converge. Intense wind gusts had blown the hats from our heads and sand into our eyes. 

Overnight, those gusts gave the Babylon Fire power to grow from 300 acres to 16,000 acres. The landscape we had just admired was under siege.

Route 128 in southern Utah winds its way through towering red sandstone cliffs, following the Colorado River. A wildfire broke out near the byway just a day after we passed through. Katherine Bagley

Over the next week on the road, my husband and I became experts at spotting the characteristic plumes of distant wildfires, locating the blazes on the Watch Duty app, and adjusting our driving route. In my travel journal, I jotted down notes: An ominous plume of smoke from the Pocket Fire seen on our way to the Grand Canyon. Feelings of gratitude after days where we encountered clear skies. We kept moving, even as I learned of flood evacuations in campgrounds further down our itinerary. 

“Will our trip be derailed?” I wrote.

After stopping in Las Vegas for July Fourth, we headed farther west, through Bakersfield, California, en route to the Sierra Nevada mountains. We passed the scars of prescribed burns on ranchland, wind turbines, rows and rows of fruit trees, and a seemingly endless stream of oil pumpjacks, their arms turning rhythmically up and down, up and down.

Pumpjacks and drilling pads cover the landscape at the Kern River Oil Field in Bakersfield, California, on July 28, 2015.
Mark Ralston / AFP via Getty Images

“What are they doing to the ground?” my 9-year-old daughter asked from the backseat.

“Those help to pull oil from underneath our feet to power things like cars and lights,” I replied, staring out at the edges of the Kern River Oil Field.

My kids already had a basic sense of climate change and its causes before we left on this trip. On our way west, we had stopped at a wind turbine-themed rest stop in Iowa celebrating the state’s commitment to renewable energy. We awed at the presence of electric vehicle chargers at the “world’s largest truck stop,” Iowa 80. And we cheered with every solar farm we saw. They were signs of progress, regardless of politics or climate beliefs or geography.

Our driving breaks in Iowa were marked by signs of climate action, from a wind energy-themed rest area to electric vehicle charging at the “world’s largest truck stop.” Katherine Bagley 

That was the lens my kids had on climate change: It was bad, but there were ways to fix it. Then came the fires, and the smoke, and the flooding, and the heat warnings, and the drought. And now, here in Bakersfield, they were seeing for the first time what extracting fossil fuels looks like in practice, what it does to a landscape.

“I can’t believe they’re still working,” my son said quietly. “This place is littered with them.”

We rode the next few hours without speaking to each other, listening to Harry Potter audio books and staring out the windows, hoping to see another wind farm.

My family spent a year planning our five-week trip, from reserving campsites inside the national parks to mapping our route and planning hikes. Katherine Bagley

We stopped overnight in Three Rivers, California, before heading into Sequoia and Kings Canyon national parks. The road rose from the valley floor, switchbacking and climbing 5,000 feet in just 16 miles. The higher we went, the taller the trees got, towering above us. We opened our sunroof and windows, letting the cool mountain air rush over our outstretched arms. After weeks in the desert, the forest felt like a homecoming for us New Englanders.

We parked at the General Sherman tree, the world’s largest by volume, and set out on foot through what is known as the Giant Forest. Trunks stretched upward for what seemed an impossibly long time, disappearing into rings of thick branches. But despite the scale, the forest felt cozy. Dappled sunlight filtered through the scalelike needles, casting a shadowy, warm glow. As we walked along the Congress Trail, weaving between thousand-year-old sequoias, my kids hugged every tree they could. The red, spongy bark tickled their skin as they stretched their arms and legs around the trunks.

My husband and kids hugged every tree they could in Sequoia National Park, including this giant along the Congress Trail. Katherine Bagley

Along the trail, we came to a cross section of a felled sequoia. More than 2,200 years of growth rings radiated from its center, each a marker of the history the tree had lived through. The rings showed evidence of at least 80 fires strong enough to permanently mark the tree’s bark over its lifetime — averaging one fire every 28 years. 

Even when they leave marks, fires don’t always spell disaster for these giants: Low-intensity blazes can clear the forest of underbrush, scorching the bottom of a tree but leaving its branches untouched, ultimately rejuvenating the forest’s nutrients. But these stands of ancient sequoias have experienced an unprecedented number of wildfires recently, including six large fires in six years. Scattered throughout the parks were large patches of burned-out trees, their blackened trunks like used matchsticks, stripped of all greenery.

According to the National Park Service, “More than 85 percent of all giant sequoia grove acreage across the Sierra Nevada has burned in wildfires between 2015 and 2021, compared to only one quarter in the preceding century.” The fires were so intense that they killed thousands of “large sequoias,” those measuring 4 feet or more in diameter. The KNP Complex and Windy fires in 2021 killed upward of 2,380 large sequoias alone. 

Blazes in the Sierra Nevadas are often the result of lightning strikes, untamped camp fires, or power line sparks, among other causes, but their intensity and scale are fueled by the dry conditions and pest infestations brought on by climate change.

Sequoia and Kings Canyon national parks experienced six large wildfires in six years between 2015 and 2021, killing thousands of large sequoias. Katherine Bagley

As we drove down out of the sequoias, pointing out each new giant, we saw logging trucks and excavators parked on the side of the road. Dead branches sat in piles ready for controlled burns, part of a partnership between scientists, park managers, and environmental groups to reduce the severity of the next wildfire to rip through the region. 

When it does, not if.

After visiting the sequoias and Yosemite, my family and I turned back east. Our days whiplashed between grandeur and crisis. 

We passed the Great Salt Lake at sunset, reds and pinks mirrored in its vast, still waters. But as we drove, we could also see stretches of dry, cracked shoreline — the lake has lost an estimated 73 percent of its water and 60 percent of its surface area due to agricultural diversions and worsening drought. A decade ago, I visited Antelope Island with friends to see its iconic free-ranging bison, but the lake’s shrinking shores mean the landmass is no longer an island, but a peninsula.

In Salt Lake City, we visited the Natural History Museum of Utah. One of the first exhibits was an interactive Sim City-esque game where you have to make planning decisions — install solar panels, build an urban farm, tear down a coal plant — to try and stave off the worst impacts of climate change. My kids played it three times. Little did they know that across the museum’s parking lot stood a hillside charred by the Bonneville Fire just two weeks earlier.

We traveled north into Wyoming, greeted by road signs warning of extreme heat. Jackson Hole, outside of Grand Teton National Park, hit 94 degrees Fahrenheit on July 12, 13 degrees warmer than the average daily high for the month. The town of Worland, in central Wyoming, hit 110 degrees F. We drove to String Lake to cool off in its snow-fed waters and watched as a bald eagle dove to catch fish.  

We took a boat ride on Jackson Lake to see the park’s iconic jagged peaks from a different perspective, and learned that the tour operator was shutting down operations weeks earlier than usual. Low water levels caused by the region’s dismally low snowpack were making it hard to navigate wide swaths of the reservoir. Our guide pulled up a photo on his phone from six years ago. “The peaks were covered, just covered, in snow at this time,” he said. “What we’re seeing right now in July, that’s what we would typically see in late August.”

Up near Yellowstone, we took the kids whitewater rafting in the town of Gardiner. They shouted with delight as we crested the rapids and dunked in the spray. But in moments of quiet on the river, our guide pointed to pipes, wires, and decks sticking out from eroded riverbank, all that remained of the houses swept away by a historic flood in 2022.

Katherine Bagley

Katherine Bagley

Iconic scenes from Yellowstone National Park. Katherine Bagley

Katherine Bagley

Park after park, the kids’ junior ranger books wove climate change and its impacts into their pages. Staff told us about the plight of the pikas, adorable mouselike mammals that are moving farther up mountains in search of cooler climes. We watched videos and read placards about how warming temperatures are making more areas suitable for white pine bark rust and destructive beetles. 

I listened as my kids took their junior ranger pledge in every park we went to. Each oath differed slightly — some adding silly rhymes, others more serious — but they all included some variation of, “I promise to appreciate, respect, and protect all national park places.”

Our kids taking their junior ranger oath in Zion National Park. By the end of our trip, they had achieved ranger status in 14 national parks. Katherine Bagley

After taking their junior ranger oath in Glacier National Park, my kids walked through the exhibits at the St. Mary Visitor Center on the east side of the park, bordering the Blackfeet Indian Reservation. In the center was a 3D rendering of the park. They hit a button and watched as tiny bulbs lit up the mountaintops, signifying the location of the 150 glaciers that existed back in 1850.

As the timeline moved from 1900 to 1950 to 1980 to 2000, the lights disappeared faster and faster. Today, the park is home to only 26 ice bodies. My children pressed the buttons over and over, as if trying to restore the glaciers, remembered only by the carved-out hillsides they left behind.

A national Gallup poll recently found that nearly 4 in 10 Americans say their community was damaged by extreme weather within the past year, but that they “feel powerless to shape their own future.” The impacts of climate change can feel overwhelming, but my family’s road trip made clear this is an issue that affects us all. Climate change is no longer a collection of isolated disasters, separated by headlines or distances. It touches everything, its imprints lasting and deep and inescapable.

After more than a month on the road, it was time to go home.

The evening sky at our lodging outside of Zion National Park. Katherine Bagley

I wondered whether my kids will ever be able to take this same trip with their own families. If so, their experiences will likely be drastically different. Will they be able to explore the arches and sandstone cliffs of Utah? Will they be able to walk through the towering sequoias? Will they be able to see the ice? 

I hoped so. There is so much to cherish, so much beauty, and still so much to fight for. We just need to rally to face a new foe. 

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The great American road trip is in peril on Aug 26, 2026.

The United States has never been one of the most ambitious countries when it comes to tackling climate change, but it has long maintained a program that funds innovative clean energy technology. This program is known as the Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy, or ARPA-E, and over the past 15 years it has doled out more than $4 billion to universities and startups that are trying to change the way we produce energy.

It’s very hard to raise money for this kind of moon shot technology, which can take years or even decades to scale up large enough to generate a profit. A huge number of emergent technologies never attract the funding to cross this “valley of death” between experiment and big business. The purpose of the Department of Energy’s ARPA-E, which was modeled on a similar program run by the U.S. military, was to help energy inventors span this gap and develop the climate technologies of the future.

A landmark report from the National Academies of Science, requested by Congress and released last week, has found that this high-risk, high-reward program is working: ARPA-E’s $4 billion investment has led to more than $20 billion in additional funding and more than 1,400 patents. Projects that received ARPA-E money were much more likely to get patents and additional investment than projects that were denied. The report also found that around 40 percent of ARPA-E grants led to a “crowding in” effect: After a startup proves that a new technology is feasible, other companies jump in and try to replicate it. 

“We’re trying to enable very talented people who could be doing other things to spend their lives trying to do incredibly risky things that, probabilistically speaking, will not deliver a profit in time to benefit them,” said Chris Bataille, a fellow at the Columbia University Center on Global Energy Policy and an expert on the development of clean energy technology who was not involved in the report.

The report committee, which consisted of more than a dozen scientists and energy experts, recommended that Congress significantly expand ARPA-E’s funding. It also found that the program should shift its focus from renewables and electric vehicles toward a harder set of energy problems — a shift for which the Trump administration has signaled its partial support.

ARPA-E began in 2009, and many of its early grants focused on improving solar panels and lithium-ion batteries, which weren’t yet ready to compete with traditional energy sources on a large scale. (A different Department of Energy program offered early support to Tesla.) The technologies have since gotten hundreds of times cheaper thanks to China’s massive investment in manufacturing overcapacity. Among the report’s most notable findings is that ARPA-E doesn’t need to focus on this renewable tech anymore. This finding echoes some climate experts’ claim that solar no longer needs tax subsidies like those in the Inflation Reduction Act passed during Joe Biden’s presidency. 

But solar and wind only work when the sun is shining and the wind is blowing, and most of the country’s grid still relies on coal and gas plants that can run at all hours of the day. This is especially true for factories and data centers, which need large and constant infusions of electricity in order to stay online. It’s here that ARPA-E’s investments are really starting to bear fruit.

Many of the program’s more recent grantees have been companies trying to solve the problem of “clean firm” power available around the clock. The most notable is Fervo, a company that uses super-deep wells to convert the ambient geothermal heat of the Earth into electricity. The company received ARPA-E support as early as 2019 and went public this year on the heels of a few successful demonstration projects. It’s now inking deals with Google to power data centers in Nevada. Other success stories include Form Energy, which develops iron-air batteries that can store large amounts of clean energy for multiple days at a time, and X-energy, which builds small-scale nuclear reactors.

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Given this success, the report authors argue that ARPA-E should now shift its investment to the hardest climate problems, the ones where solutions could still be decades away. Potential opportunity areas include nuclear fusion, which in theory would provide almost limitless clean energy if it ever panned out. There’s also “seasonal energy storage,” or batteries that could store solar and wind energy for long winter months when those resources aren’t as available in a given location. Perhaps most significant for the climate would be carbon-free methods for producing steel and cement, which each account for around 8 percent of global emissions.

“You need this sort of constant innovation to move us off the fossil fuel pathway, right? Because we’re very firmly entrenched on it,” said Bataille. “We’re talking about projects that will likely be profitable, but they’re just not valued unless the government values them. There’s probably one-one-hundredth of the necessary money going into those.”  

President Donald Trump tried to defund ARPA-E in his first term by withholding funds appropriated by Congress. So far, during his second term, the administration has attempted to wipe billions of dollars in Biden-era climate grants. Trump’s budget request to Congress this year called for shrinking ARPA-E by almost 50 percent, but the Department of Energy is still handing out new grants for experimental tech like long-duration energy storage, fusion reactors, and mining for critical minerals like lithium.

In a statement to Grist, the department said that ARPA-E is “advancing President Trump’s agenda to restore American energy dominance” by “backing breakthrough, high-risk technologies.” The proposed funding cut, on the other hand, “demonstrates fiscal discipline and a commitment to an efficient and effective federal government.”

Even though Trump hasn’t destroyed the program itself, his policies have hindered the growth of the clean tech field that ARPA-E helped to advance. A case in point is Natron Energy, a company that received ARPA-E grant funding to develop experimental sodium-ion batteries. The company announced in 2024 that it would build a $1.4 billion plant in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, but Trump’s reelection dampened private sector interest in electric vehicles, and the company failed to secure investors for its factory. The company shut down last year.

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This story was originally published by Grist with the headline US companies are on the cusp of big climate solutions. Thank the government. on Aug 25, 2026.

With congested, aging power lines and a densely developed landscape, the East Coast has few options for building large-scale renewable power. Meanwhile, the region’s electricity prices are rising, and states are falling behind their emissions goals. 

Offshore wind offered a unique opportunity to meet those challenges, experts say, but the industry is barely surviving under economic headwinds and an openly hostile federal government. Offshore wind isn’t dead, but advocates agree that the technology is fading just when the region needs it most.

Offshore wind developers, who had already struggled with high construction costs, hit a minefield when the Trump administration took office in 2025. The administration has subjected offshore wind projects to questionable Pentagon reviews, permit revocations, and stop-work orders, some of which survived only briefly before being blocked by courts. The administration’s most consequential move may have been its decision to pay developers to surrender their rights to develop in federally managed waters. By mid-August, it had committed to roughly $4 billion in payouts, wiping an estimated 21 gigawatts of potential wind power capacity off U.S. coasts, or enough energy to power over 15 million average-sized U.S. homes. Experts say more deals could follow.

As they wait for conditions to improve, the industry must push through what offshore wind experts describe as an irked malaise. 

“Companies are trying to be upbeat, but I think if you kind of peel back the layers a bit, there’s a number of emotions out there; anger, sadness,” said Mark Repsher, an energy and sustainability expert at PA Consulting. “These people like what they do … sometimes it’s been their whole career, and it’s been put on pause now.”

At least nine companies are still holding onto their offshore wind development rights, most of them European energy giants like Shell, and at least some appear unlikely to strike a deal. Denmark-based Orsted, the world’s largest developer of offshore wind energy, and the Spanish company Avangrid are the largest remaining leaseholders, with five and six undeveloped leases, respectively.

The projects are dropping at a time when the three major interstate grids in the Northeast and mid-Atlantic are all facing growing demand from data centers, electrification, and new manufacturing, while some of the region’s cleanest power is generated far from its biggest cities. New York is a case in point. Half of the state’s electricity demand is concentrated around New York City and Long Island, but much of its renewable power is generated upstate, where aging transmission lines are already a bottleneck. Meanwhile, for PJM, the grid operator covering most of the mid-Atlantic, power demand is projected to grow 7.8 gigawatts higher than available supply by 2033.

“If you had additional wind, it could be filling those gaps, reducing any of those challenges at a time the grid really, really needs that,” said Hillary Bright, executive director of Turn Forward, a nonprofit supporting offshore wind.

Offshore wind can send clean power straight to demand centers and ease grid pressure. The Empire Wind project, expected to enter operation in 2027, will send power directly to New York City through undersea cables, while the Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project already delivers power to the data center cluster in northern Virginia that has become one of PJM’s fastest-growing energy consumers. 

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Former President Joe Biden saw offshore wind as a central pillar of his federal climate strategy, largely because of its geographic strengths. His administration permitted the first commercial-scale U.S. offshore wind project, Vineyard Wind, in 2021, then leased 1.9 million acres of coastal waters to developers — more than had been awarded during the previous three presidential terms combined.

States built the technology into their climate plans accordingly. Massachusetts has called offshore wind a “cornerstone” of its clean energy strategy; New York called it “critical”; and Maryland described it as its “greatest opportunity” to reach its emissions goals. 

Without offshore wind, Eastern states don’t have a clear alternative for abundant, clean energy, experts say. Some solar power might help, but the East’s tightly packed geography just isn’t well-suited for the kind of land-based renewables deployments that have revolutionized grids in California and Texas.

“The wind resource, and even the solar resource, in the Eastern U.S. is not nearly as good as it is in the West,” Repsher said. Miles from his office in Denver, he said, eastern Colorado’s wide open, sparsely populated prairie lands have bloomed with a profusion of rotating white blades and glossy black panels. 

Most Eastern states have yet to adjust their climate plans for less offshore wind. New York extended its emissions goal deadlines and loosened greenhouse gas accounting regulations in March, but offshore wind remains a large part of its plan. Meanwhile, in New Jersey, local officials have given up trying to build substations that would receive power from planned offshore wind projects after those projects were canceled or delayed beyond expected connection timelines, even as the technology remains integral to its emissions plans. In both states, planned projects have been frozen or canceled from a mix of pre-Trump economic pressures and current Trump policy pressures, including lease buyouts.

It’s questionable, Repsher said, whether there are any realistic changes states could make if they wanted to: “If you have these fairly aggressive carbon reduction targets within these states, it’s borderline impossible to meet them without having offshore wind.”

Still, some wind advocates say there are reasons for optimism: Electricity prices have risen, improving the economics of new wind projects, and the Trump administration has only two and a half years left in its term. 

Kris Ohleth, executive director of Special Initiative on Offshore Wind, a pro-offshore wind nonprofit research group, said some advocates have already started planning for a post-Trump world by compiling what they’ve dubbed “Project 2029” — a policy roadmap that a future administration could adopt to support offshore wind. 

“Offshore wind is still such an exciting opportunity. It’s such a cool technology,” Ohleth said. “There’s something on the horizon, and that gives me hope.”

Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated Empire Wind’s operational status.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Offshore wind power projects are flailing, just when the East Coast needs them most on Aug 25, 2026.

Luther “Sunny” Miller is nearly 80, but in his younger days, he worked at Aerojet, a rocket and missile manufacturer located quite literally in his backyard. He can’t prove it, but he worries that his thyroid and bladder problems, and his wife’s kidney disease, can be traced to the plant.

Last year, national nuclear supplier BWX Technologies purchased the factory in Jonesborough, Tennessee, and announced plans for a significant expansion. The new facility will convert depleted uranium oxide supplied by the Department of Energy into high-purity depleted uranium. The 10-year, $1.6-billion contract will supply the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, with the material needed to maintain the nation’s nuclear weapons arsenal. Despite the company’s promise to bring 175 permanent jobs to the area, Miller and many neighbors were left irate. 

“They’re going to turn over the most beautiful parts of Tennessee into a nuclear waste area,” Miller said. 

But for others, the promise of jobs is what makes a nuclear “renaissance” centered around the nearby city of Oak Ridge in East Tennessee so promising. BWXT’s planned buildout is part of what state officials hope will be an economic revival driven by a renewal of the Manhattan Project’s legacy. Billions of dollars are already flowing into a region whose experience and expertise in nuclear energy and weapons development make it especially attractive to the industry. 

Now Tennessee is among five finalists for a Department of Energy “nuclear lifecycle innovation campus” that could make it the centerpiece of a federal plan to finally deal with what’s left behind after splitting atoms to generate electricity. But the history that makes the Volunteer State so attractive a contender is marked by contamination, illnesses, and accidents, leaving some wary of what a renaissance might bring.

Nuclear waste is a logistical and public relations nightmare. Spent fuel, which remains radioactive for millennia, eventually finds its way into secure concrete containers. It remains there indefinitely because there is nowhere else to put it. The federal government has long wanted to build a permanent repository deep underground, but the only serious candidate, Yucca Mountain in Nevada, stalled amid political and public opposition. With the Trump administration hoping to quadruple nuclear energy output, solving this problem is increasingly urgent given that the nation’s 85 interim storage sites already hold more than 86,000 tons of radioactive waste, or just about enough to fill a football field nearly 10 yards deep.

The nuclear lifecycle innovation campuses are the latest attempt to address that problem. Rather than foist a site on an unwilling community, the Department of Energy invited states to volunteer as potential hosts. These industrial centers would support far more than waste storage. They would include uranium enrichment and fuel fabrication, reprocessing and recycling of spent fuel, and even energy generation. But federal officials said waste management would anchor the project. In July, Tennessee joined Utah, Oklahoma, Louisiana, and Idaho as the five states selected to continue discussions with DOE.

Tennessee’s advantage in that competition dates back more than 80 years to the end of World War II and the dawn of the nuclear age. The federal government chose Oak Ridge, at the time a remote southern Appalachian farming community, as a key site for the Manhattan Project. The town grew to encompass an array of separate sites related to the nuclear weapons development program, including a nuclear reactor.

BWXT president of operations Ronald Daily said that the company, and others like it, is building on the region’s history of contributing to national energy security and defense. “Appalachia was key to the U.S. developing a defense power in a time frame like no other because of the industrious nature of the people of Appalachia,” he said. 

The Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, produces materials for nuclear weapons. Jim West/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

Oak Ridge’s rural feel has given way to a concrete sprawl hosting a mismatched array of museums, highway-exit chains, and top-secret facilities. Today, the federally managed Y-12 Security Complex and the laboratory, now a federally funded research institution, remain, sitting alongside private companies of all kinds hoping to get a little shine from the area’s legion of talented engineers. All of it is dotted by verdant public lands.

For those at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, this moment is a chance to leverage its expertise for the continued local and national public good.

“Part of Oak Ridge’s role is that we have expertise in all parts of that fuel cycle,” said Joe Hoagland, a physical chemist and associate laboratory director of the laboratory’s Fusion and Fission Energy and Science Directorate. “We know how to enrich it. We know how to use it. We know how to store it. We know how to transport it, and we understand the chemistries around how to recycle it.”

For many years, Hoagland said, East Tennessee was home to a handful of legacy companies like GE and Westinghouse, which created technologies for traditional utilities. But these days, it looks a lot more like startup culture, he said, because growing demand for electricity “creates an opportunity for others to get in the energy game.” 

Hopes for local benefit are lofty. In the past 10 years, the Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development has secured $10 billion in investment to recruit new companies and bring the region 3,000 new jobs, said the agency’s nuclear advisor, Braden Stover. They include companies like BWXT, Orano, and Centrus, which are involved in various aspects of the processes that enrich uranium.  

Officials said this growing sector could bring tens of thousands of jobs in everything from construction and manufacturing to engineering and research. They also envision an educational pipeline that prepares local residents for many of those positions. “The second graders of today are going to be the ones that actually are coming in to work at these facilities,” Stover said. “We need to get to them and just let them know, Hey, here is what is coming.”

BWX Technologies has announced plans to open a high-purity depleted uranium processing plant in Jonesborough, Tennessee. Jesse Barber / Grist

But the region’s long industrial and nuclear history has left another legacy, and opposition to the coming nuclear revival is rooted in memories of the harm already done to the people and the landscape of East Tennessee. 

For some, that harm started with the eviction of 3,000 farmers to make way for the Manhattan Project. Wariness has only grown in the years since as the risks of living alongside the facility and those that support it emerged.

Past studies have linked patterns of neurological conditions, cancers, and fatal respiratory ailments to workplace exposures at the now-shuttered K-25 plant that enriched uranium from 1943 until 1985. The federal government continues cleaning up contamination left by decades of nuclear weapons production in Oak Ridge. Nuclear Fuel Services, a uranium processing plant in Erwin and subsidiary of BWXT, has a record of leaks, potentially toxic dust, and groundwater contamination.  

The mistrust also arises from incidents beyond the nuclear industry. In 2008, 1.1 billion gallons of coal ash spilled at the Kingston Fossil Plant, originally built to power the Oak Ridge war complex. Coal ash cleanup workers were not informed of the hazards they faced or provided with protective equipment. Over the past decade, many workers exposed to the toxic waste have fallen ill, and some have died of rare cancers.

Those histories have contributed to skepticism and fear as the Trump administration has streamlined and overhauled radioactive waste storage and siting requirements. Valerie Thomas, who studies nuclear engineering and environmental impacts at the Georgia Institute of Technology, called those changes concerning.

“There are two reasons we want nuclear regulations to be very strong. One is, no, you don’t want to have errors,” Thomas said. “The second is if people think the regulations aren’t very strong, they’re not going to want nuclear power and nuclear facilities.”

That distrust has already shaped fights over the nuclear industry’s expansion in East Tennessee. In early March, hundreds of residents in Claiborne County packed a town hall to oppose a proposed nuclear graphite facility. Their efforts stopped the proposal in its tracks.

This history wasn’t far from the minds of many in Jonesborough, where residents expressed concerns about waste storage and uranium dust. Many filled local county commission meetings to oppose BWXT’s proposal and fought zoning rules that would clear its path. BWXT responded to community questions about the plant’s waste storage plans, but the answers weren’t satisfactory for many local residents. A late March meeting at the Washington County courthouse left many residents angry and hurt. Will Manning, a 42-year-old knifemaker and father, had spent the winter knocking on doors in Jonesborough, urging neighbors to turn out to oppose final zoning approval for the facility. Ultimately, however, the measure passed, clearing a path for the plant. 

Some residents of Jonesborough, Tennessee, are wary of nuclear and defense industries and oppose efforts to lure them to East Tennessee. Jesse Barber / Grist

“I honestly don’t know what was more disgusting, disappointing, depressing: the outcome of the vote or the dog-and pony show they put on and blatant disregard for the strong voice of this community,”  Manning later told Grist. 

Jonesborough residents remain active in a Facebook group created to organize opposition to BWXT, monitoring any news about the nuclear industry’s moves in Tennessee. Some participants have followed local elections closely, vowing to vote out officials who supported the zoning change.

As for the DOE’s nuclear lifecycle innovation campus, most of it would likely be located in Oak Ridge, but waste disposal might happen elsewhere, and that location remains undecided. Federal officials familiar with the process told Grist the selection process will include extensive discussions with the communities that might be considered, although they did not say what those conversations might look like. They also said any waste storage decisions would be preceded by years of environmental analysis to rule out locations with fatal flaws like streams, aquifers, or geologic instability. The initial Tennessee project application sought letters of support from officials in adjoining counties, and suggests that campus funding could support infrastructural improvements locally.

Sunny Miller concedes East Tennessee needs the jobs a nuclear revival would bring. Many residents are poor, he said, and employers would offer good pay. What troubles him is being asked to weigh those benefits against risks he doesn’t feel he fully understands.

“You can’t live on car washes and chicken places alone, that’s a real feeling,” Miller said. “But let me make this decision based on facts.” 

This piece has been updated to clarify the role and origin of Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Y-12 Security Complex.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Tennessee helped usher in the nuclear age. It wants to lead the way again. on Aug 24, 2026.

Cattle are a central part of the identity of Andrew Msami’s Maasai community in northeast Tanzania. Herd size determines social position, and many people keep all their wealth in livestock, not banks. But in recent years, Msami and others have been forced to sell the animals and buy goats, which can handle drought better but are less financially and culturally valuable. Msami says adapting to a shifting climate has been a part of Maasai life for generations, but recent conditions represent an existential threat.

“We have to adapt because it’s like desertification is attacking our identity,” Msami told Grist. “If you lose your identity, it means you have lost everything.”

The Maasai are pastoralists, a term that describes the roughly 500 million people around the world who tend herds of livestock like cattle, goats, and sheep. They often move with the animals as they seek grass and water. Because they live and work in places with arid conditions and extreme temperatures, they are particularly vulnerable to climate change. 

Around the world, drought and land degradation threaten rangelands, which make up roughly half of the planet’s landmass, and the pastoralists from Tanzania and Sudan to Nepal and Mongolia that rely on them. Desertification is occurring at 30 to 35 times the historical average, threatening even the most resilient communities. That’s on top of an influx of invasive species, extractive industries, tourists, and other threats. 

To address these overlapping crises, Msami and hundreds of other pastoralists are in Mongolia this week for the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification, or UNCCD. They are calling for stronger protections for Indigenous pastoral traditions, greater access to funding and resources to combat the crisis, and official recognition that the experience of generations living on increasingly marginal lands offers lessons for adapting to a hotter, drier world.

“We want to give the world a message that it’s not only the land that you will have to really look at,” said Msami, who is the program lead for the Pastoralists Indigenous Non-Governmental Organizations Forum, or PINGOs Forum, which is a network representing over 50 pastoralist organizations in Tanzania. “But you look at the people in that land, and maybe their lives should not be disturbed or sacrificed for the development of the world.” 

That message must first overcome a global environmental movement that has not always prioritized rangelands and the peoples who steward them. 

In 1992, world leaders gathered at the historic United Nations Earth Summit in Brazil, where they identified three great environmental challenges: climate change, biodiversity loss, and desertification. Global conferences were established for each, creating a forum where the world would develop plans to tackle them. In the decades since, trillions of dollars have flowed toward the first two, while desertification has largely been relegated to a problem for the developing world to address.

“But now the history is catching them because when you look at Spain, France, even Sweden, all those countries, they have a bigger drought ever since the last two years,” said Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim, who is Mbororo from Chad and the first chair of the Indigenous peoples caucus at UNCCD. “So it is becoming a developed countries issue, and now they start paying more attention, but still it does not get the same attention on the level of political will or finance.”

Although this is the 17th meeting of the convention, Ibrahim described this year’s event as “unique, historic, and particular.” That is because it is the first with a formal caucus specifically for Indigenous peoples, something not found at the climate and biodiversity conferences. Because of that, Ibrahim and others consider this gathering a unique opportunity for Indigenous pastoralists to advocate for their rights and advance their goals on the international stage. 

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The gathering also comes during the United Nations’ International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists, which Ibrahim said has had a positive impact on raising awareness of the challenges communities like his face and the contributions they are making to climate resilience.

Despite those signs of progress, attendees in Mongolia said that the Indigenous caucus has faced resistance. In the first week of the conference, Ibrahim led a protest to demand full participation for the caucus and for its official functions to be established.

As the world increasingly works to address drought, Ibrahim and others are concerned that, after decades of being overlooked, a global focus could sideline them even further. About a third of Mongolia’s population practice pastoral lifestyles, for example, but often have no role in global climate discussions.

Some countries have responded to drought and land degradation by restricting pastoralist herd sizes and restricting movement. That comes despite scientific evidence that pastoralism boosts biodiversity and supports climate resilient landscapes, among other benefits. 

But Ibrahim said that the rate of desertification has accelerated beyond the point where traditional knowledge alone is enough. She said that in Chad the desert is advancing 2 kilometers, or 1.2 miles, each year. “We have the land degradation very, very fast, and of course we use our knowledge to try to restore the land,” she said. “We try to fix it, but it is still there.” 

That’s why a call for greater legal protections and resources for their livelihoods is central to this year’s conference. “Securing land and mobility rights is not separate from climate adaptation,” said Solange Bandiaky-Badji, who is coordinator and president of the Rights and Resources Initiative, a global coalition of over 200 organizations focused on land rights. “It is a fundamental part of building resilience.”

Bandiaky-Badji said the rest of the world should learn about climate adaptation and resilience from pastoralists. But, she said, none of their expertise and experiences matter unless countries protect rights to land and mobility. The right to free, prior, and informed consent, which requires that Indigenous peoples have a say in what occurs on their lands and in their waters, is one that Bandiaky-Badji said needs greater enforcement. Because pastoralists are mobile, their land rights are not always recognized, and pastoralist leaders often do not receive an invitation to negotiate agreements and solutions.

Both Ibrahim and Bandiaky-Badji said global climate change and biodiversity conferences should follow the UNCCD’s focus on active inclusion of Indigenous voices. 

But beyond that, Bandiaky-Badji said desertification and rangelands can no longer be treated as secondary issues. “There is a link between climate resilience, protecting biodiversity, and restoring landscapes,” she said. “They’re all interrelated. And until we start seeing them as interrelated, we might have these different COPs, but it will not really solve the systemic problem that we have been dealing with. And the climate crisis is a systemic problem that we need to deal with.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Living with drought has taught pastoralists lessons the world needs on Aug 24, 2026.

Unprecedented. Record-breaking. Baffling. Experts are running out of ways to describe this year’s tornado season in the Midwest, which has unleashed more twisters on Illinois than any other place on Earth. 

So far, 207 cyclones and counting have touched down in the Prairie State, some of which have flipped homes, toppled power lines, and even torn through solar arrays. That figure may rise as officials continue working through the remaining post-storm assessments, according to the National Weather Service. The season has yet to wrap, but it has already handily topped the previous record of 142 funnel clouds set just two years ago, according to Trent Ford, the Illinois state climatologist. This is the third year in a row that Illinois has experienced a triple-digit tornado season; the state’s historical average is closer to 50. 

“It’s just anything beyond what we would expect,” Ford said. 

The dramatic surge in Illinois and throughout the Corn Belt contrasts with a decreasing trend of twisters in the Great Plains, the region traditionally billed as Tornado Alley. Experts are still working through the data, trying to understand whether it has been inching eastward, and if so whether climate change has anything to do with it. 

Regardless of the answer to that question, Illinois is today the epicenter of tornadoes in the U.S. A recent analysis by Steve Nesbitt, a meteorologist and professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, found that the region is getting a historic hammering. Illinois and Indiana have already recorded the highest level of tornado activity since the National Weather Service started keeping track in 1950. He added that nearby states including Iowa, Missouri, Michigan, and Ohio are in the top 10. A pair of tornadoes even touched down in New York City and Long Island. 

That said, overall it has been a slow year. “It has been below average nationally, with the southern Plains and Southeast less active than normal,” Nesbit said.

Even with the unusual flurry of tornadoes, the Land of Lincoln remains well short of the all-time record. That belongs to Texas, which experienced 255 in 2015. Some experts argue it’s not a fair comparison because Texas is about 4.7 times larger than Illinois. However, Nesbit said that in terms of tornado density, or concentration of tornadoes touching down in 80-kilometer (50 mile) squares, Illinois is on top. He added that as of mid-August no region of the country has had a higher reported density of tornadoes than parts of central Illinois. 

Tornadoes are the result of atmospheric contrasts and chaos. They develop when moist air near the ground lies beneath drier, hotter air aloft, creating a sandwich of sorts. In this unstable atmosphere, differences in wind speed and direction at different heights create rotation and thunderclouds. “So just a difference between air masses,” said Shel Winkley, chief meteorologist at the research group Climate Central. “That’s also going to provide some spin in the atmosphere.” 

Scientists measure this as “convective available potential energy,” or CAPE, which describes the available fuel for thunderstorm development. Look inside these towering thunderclouds and you’ll find warm air rising but cool air falling, which creates spinning currents that can spawn a tornado. One trend scientists can parse, Winkley said, is the increase in the number of potential thunderstorm days. “That doesn’t necessarily mean a tornado will form,” Winkley added, “but we have these higher values of CAPE over the East and the Southeast during the spring than we used to have.”

The other component is that moisture. An abundantly clear climate signal is playing out in the Gulf of Mexico, which has been exceptionally warm of late. Since humans began pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, the oceans have absorbed more than 90 percent of the additional heat. The hotter the Gulf gets, the more moisture it can pump into the atmosphere, and the more fuel it can provide for thunderstorms and tornadoes. (This is also how climate change is supercharging hurricanes, as those storms also love moisture.)

Even given all that, it doesn’t seem that climate change is in and of itself resulting in more tornadoes. However, on the days when we get the biggest tornado outbreaks, more twisters are touching down, Winkley said. Tornado Alley also seems to be shifting east, putting new communities in danger.  “At least the science that we have right now, we don’t see a connection between more tornadoes occurring because of climate change,” Winkley said. “It’s more about where they’re occurring, when they’re occurring, and then again the number that they’re happening on specific days versus others.”

Another wrinkle: It has never been easier to spot a tornado. 

“Our radar data has increased in resolution multiple times over compared to even when I started at this office 20 years ago,” said Ginno Izzi, a senior meteorologist at the National Weather Service office covering Chicago. He adds that advancement in radar resolution, satellite data, and remote sensing has made it possible to count smaller tornadoes that might not have been previously detected. 

If that seems unsatisfyingly inconclusive, it’s not for lack of trying. Tornadoes are hyperlocal weather events, so they’re difficult to simulate in climate models. Massive hurricanes, on the other hand, are easier to model. So scientists are still working to figure out how much the change in tornado activity is due to natural variability — what you’d expect if humans hadn’t warmed the planet — versus what’s the consequence of runaway greenhouse gas emissions. “That’s still one of those things that we just need faster computers and stronger computers in order to be able to do that sort of modeling with it,” Winkley said, “and we’re just not quite there yet.”

toolTips('.classtoolTips3','Carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and other gases that prevent heat from escaping Earth’s atmosphere. Together, they act as a blanket to keep the planet at a liveable temperature in what is known as the “greenhouse effect.” Too many of these gases, however, can cause excessive warming, disrupting fragile climates and ecosystems.');

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Even meteorologists are baffled by the Midwestern tornado season on Aug 24, 2026.

Dominika Parry never stopped fighting for Jackson, Mississippi, residents even after the Trump administration terminated a multibillion-dollar program last year meant to help the Black city still reeling from a water crisis. 

For years, if water did flow out of Black households’ faucets in Jackson at all, it was often brown. It left elders and babies with rashes and caused a slew of health problems across the city.

Parry and other community leaders and organizations got some semblance of hope in 2023 with a federal grant. Yet, two years later — before any funds could be distributed — President Donald Trump entered office and terminated a $2.8 billion program meant to help mitigate the harm from climate change and environmental issues in Black, low-income, and disadvantaged communities. 

More than a year later, federal courts stepped in and rebuked the administration’s effort to dismantle climate funding. The case centers on the administration’s effort to roll back climate investments authorized by Congress under the Inflation Reduction Act, President Joe Biden’s cornerstone economic policy.

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Last month, a South Carolina federal judge ordered the Environmental Protection Agency to resume distributing funds designed to address environmental and health challenges in underserved communities.

The July ruling came just before the Washington, D.C. Circuit Court blocked the EPA from rescinding nearly $20 billion in Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund awards. That program is different from the environmental justice grants promised to Jackson and other overburdened communities. 

That means that over $22 billion meant for climate and environmental projects in disadvantaged communities may soon be distributed. 

Parry did not respond to requests for comment after the ruling, but Matt Sedlar, climate analyst at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, said the outcomes of these lawsuits are “sending a message to the administration that the separation of powers exists and that it must follow the law.”

What the billions could be spent on in Black communities

In 2023, a $20 million federal grant offered a life-saving chance for Jackson’s poorest. The money was for a resilience hub that would offer year-round access to housing where the lights would stay on with clean drinking water in the time of disaster by funding a micro electric grid. It would also include backup generators, an independent water well, showers, and overnight shelter for up to 150 people at a time facing water issues in their home.

The goal was building “a place where people can come, stay overnight, have access to energy, be in healthy conditions,” Parry said last year. Parry founded the recipient group 2C Mississippi, a Ridgeland-based nonprofit focused on climate resilience in Mississippi.

Since February 2025, the billions made available through the Environmental and Climate Justice Block Grant Program have languished as the Trump administration has moved to gut a historic number of environmental rules and protections. The Associated Press estimates that the EPA programs and rules cut were projected to prevent roughly 30,000 deaths per year, particularly in Black and disadvantaged communities. 

After prison, Leon Dillard participated in a solar installation program for formerly incarcerated people in Houston. The program no longer exists. Adam Mahoney / Capital B

The Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund was designed as a $27 billion national clean-energy financing program. Its goal was also to make clean-energy investments like home-energy upgrades, solar installations, and electric vehicles more accessible in low-income and disadvantaged communities that have historically been shut out of affordable green financing.

The Trump administration has already moved to legally appeal the judge’s ruling regarding the environmental and climate justice grant program, claiming that the EPA now lacks the money and staff to implement the program. (The Trump administration has fired 25 percent of EPA workers since 2024, bringing the agency to its lowest staff total ever.) 

Already, some of the programs that received the initial approval for funding in 2024 have ceased to exist, including a solar installation program for formerly incarcerated people in Houston. 

Last year, Leon Dillard, a formerly incarcerated man who was a part of the program before it was cut, said the climate-friendly work gave him a “sense of purpose.” 

“I really just needed to be a part of [the program], be a part of something,” he said. “You have to make a choice to take a chance, or your life will never change. But you need other people with you on that journey.”

It is likely that the administration will attempt to appeal the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund ruling as well. 

Environmental and Climate Justice Block Grant Program projects include: 

• More than $14 million to install wastewater systems in Alabama’s Blackbelt communities where failing septic systems and untreated sewage have long sickened Black residents.
• A $500,000 micro electric grid project in Gentilly, a historically Black New Orleans neighborhood that has faced chronic flooding, heat, and power-outage risk, particularly during hurricane season.
• A $20 million grant for four connected disaster hubs in Florida’s historically Black areas of Lee County. The hubs would include cooling centers and, during disasters, sites for electricity, communications, water and food distribution, and emergency health support. The project also included money for stormwater treatment, new shade trees, and workforce training.
• $500,000 for solar-workforce training for formerly incarcerated Texans, illegal-dumping cleanup, and environmental education in a Black community in Houston overburdened by pollution. 
• $20 million to weatherize, electrify, repair, and improve air quality in 500 homes in East Alabama and West Georgia. The plan also included 10 solar-and-battery resilience hubs for residents during outages and extreme weather. 

Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund projects include:

• Mississippi Solar for All: Hope Enterprise Corporation received $62 million to expand residential solar access for low-income and disadvantaged Mississippians.
• Arkansas Solar for All: Hope Enterprise Corporation received $94 million for a companion program bringing solar benefits to low-income households across Arkansas.
• Georgia BRIGHT Communities Coalition: Capital Good Fund received $156 million to expand access to clean energy and related jobs in Georgia.
• EnergizeNC: The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality received $156 million for its statewide low-income solar initiative.
• Industrial Heartland Solar Coalition: Growth Opportunity Partners received $156 million for a multistate solar effort serving Midwestern industrial communities.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Trump ordered to release billions in climate grants meant for Black communities on Aug 23, 2026.

The U.S. has faced a critical shortage of firefighters at the Forest Service, or USFS, this summer as thousands of fires erupted across the country.

Despite officials’ claims that the firefighting workforce was stronger than ever, the agency has failed to keep pace with escalating conditions and the catastrophic fires fueled by them, according to nine firefighters who spoke to the Guardian anonymously, because they are barred from disclosing the information to the public.

Several people familiar with internal hiring data at the agency said there were also large gaps in important leadership roles, which had caused bottlenecks and operational challenges during a busy and dangerous year.

They described a response system that’s been pushed to the brink, as unsustainable pressure is put on skeleton crews with months to go before the highest fire risks subside. Last year, many firefighters had to work more than 1,000 hours of overtime — the equivalent of cramming an extra five months of work into an already busy season. This year is expected to be even worse.

“We just do not have enough people,” said a federal fire captain who works in the Pacific Northwest, where wildfires recently devastated neighborhoods in Washington state’s second largest city, Spokane. “Every firefighter is engaged at the highest priority we can possibly engage them, but houses are burning. When it’s not Spokane, it’s going to be the next town, and the next town.”

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The USFS, housed under the Department of Agriculture, employs the bulk of the federal government’s fire workforce and manages more than 193 million acres across the country. The agency has struggled with recruitment and retention for years, an issue that’s come to a head as the climate crisis fuels a rise in dangerous fire conditions.

A fire captain put the shortages in context by comparing crews to players in a soccer match, where each team has 11 players allowed on the field but an active roster of 30 in case substitutions have to be made. In the forest service, he said, there were no backup players.

“Showing up to a game with 13 people is insane. Playing a whole season with 13 people is abuse,” he said. “That’s how we fight fire — and nobody gets to take a day off.”

The picture stands in stark contrast to the one painted by Tom Schultz, the USFS chief, who has repeatedly assured lawmakers and the public that the agency’s firefighting workforce is at full capacity.

“Our firefighting workforce is stronger than at any point in recent years,” Schultz said in testimony to a congressional subcommittee in July. “We are fully staffed and equipped to respond aggressively to every unplanned ignition.”

The agency has avoided disclosing breakdowns in its staffing totals, even after repeated requests from journalists and members of Congress. Instead, the USFS points to a hiring goal of 11,300 positions as the benchmark for operational staffing levels — a number that has remained flat for years.

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John Winn, a spokesperson for the USFS, declined to answer questions about the staffing challenges or provide clarity on the numbers. He doubled down on Schultz’s claims, saying in an email that the agency was “fully staffed at the level we are funded for, and our posture allows us to respond effectively — just as we have for decades.”

But the minimum “operational” staffing levels are far different from what’s required to have a functioning firefighting force in the current climate, according to several firefighters.

Firefighters who have seen internal staff totals said the actual number of people who were able and available to be deployed when large blazes erupt was probably far smaller than what the USFS had reported to the public.

The disparity between the rhetoric repeated in public and the situation on the ground has added to the burdens borne by exhausted crews.

“Having more firefighters means I have a higher probability of coming home,” a fire captain said. “How are we supposed to feel when our leaders — the same people who get up and speak to the mourning families when firefighters die — are lying about our capacity?”

Gaps in leadership

Firefighters who spoke to the Guardian were most concerned about the widening gap at the management level. Specialized positions needed for running large-scale fire suppression operations, including taskforce leaders, division supervisors, and heavy equipment bosses, require decades of experience. Losses in these on-the-ground leadership roles have become extremely difficult to replace.

Seth McKinney, a fire management officer with the Boulder County Sheriff’s Office, spent 12 years working for the USFS before leaving the agency, but he returned this summer to help because the forest he previously worked for was short on chief officers.

“It shouldn’t really surprise anybody that we’re in the situation that we are in, because we haven’t invested in our federal firefighters,” he said, adding that the workforce had become a shadow of what it once was.

For years, escalating job hazards paired with low pay pushed scores of people with experience to leave the USFS. Even after an overdue bump in pay was finalized in 2025, the damage was already done. The USFS lost nearly half of its permanent employees between 2021 and 2024 alone, leaving the agency scrambling to fill leadership positions during the most active parts of the year.

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The agency lost roughly 20 percent of its workforce during the Trump administration’s mass-firing spree in 2025, according to a recent government report. While the cull wasn’t directed at firefighters, it affected vital support roles that crews are now searching desperately to fill.

“Without experienced middle management you don’t have anything resembling effective coordination,” a firefighter familiar with the shortages said. “It’s no small thing to be short in those areas and it is a significant safety issue.”

These positions oversee thousands of people deployed when big blazes erupt. When there are gaps, it can mean that other parts of the fire-suppression workforce can’t be utilized.

When fires tore across Oregon this summer, private contract resources sat idle, because there weren’t enough qualified managers available to supervise them, state Senator Mike McLane said. He found out about the issue from constituents and then confirmed with the incident management team staff and the Oregon department of forestry.

The problem has been compounded by decades of mismanagement at the agency, according to a firefighter who explained that the losses in positions critical to coordination and supervision left holes that exponentially affected response efforts. “We are now completely unequipped to deal with the sort of fire seasons we will see more and more of.”

A destructive summer adds more pressure

It’s already been a destructive wildfire season. The country has been classified at “preparedness Level 5” — the highest level of resource deployment and an indication that new requests for support may go unanswered — since July 18.

As of Tuesday, more than 49,200 wildfires have erupted and burned more than 7.2 million acres (2.9 million hectares) nationwide since the year began, eclipsing 10-year averages, and the dangers are far from over. In many regions, fire risks will remain high through autumn and could linger into winter.

Inter-agency complex-incident management teams, specialized groups that are crucial for organizing responses to large-scale disasters, have also taken a hit, with fewer experienced leaders to run them. There were 46 teams in 2023. Now there are just 38.

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Dave Upthegrove, the commissioner of public lands for Washington, a publicly elected official who manages the state’s roughly 6 million acres (2.4 million hectares) of public lands and directs statewide wildland firefighting efforts, said the USFS has been an important partner. But he raised the alarm early this year about the agency’s diminished capacity.

“There are fewer teams, which was true in 2025 as well,” Upthegrove said. “The difference this year is the extreme weather conditions, dangerously high winds at times, very dry fuels, and a fourth year of drought. All of that has combined to make us highly vulnerable to large and catastrophic fires like we have seen throughout the state, especially in Spokane.”

With resources spread thin, it’s also been increasingly challenging to meet the needs for equipment and manpower when new fires ignite.

More than 600 requests went unfilled during a 72-hour period last week, according to an internal dataset shared with the Guardian, the bulk of them coming from the Pacific Northwest region currently being hammered by fires. Requests for aircraft, crews, and equipment were unable to be filled 265 times over the three-day period. Dozens of requests for experienced managers and supervisors also went unfilled.

Staffing shortages have also affected urgently needed landscape treatment work that helps stop blazes before they spread.

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More than half of federal firefighters who responded to a survey, conducted in March by the firefighter advocacy group Grassroots Wildland Firefighters and the National Federation of Federal Employees union, said their unit had to cancel prescribed burning projects due to staffing shortages.

Last year, the USFS treated 35 percent fewer acres than in 2024, according to an analysis from the nonprofit Center for Western Priorities. In Oregon, a state now in the midst of a historic season when more acres have burned than in any other recorded year, treatments fell by 47 percent.

Only a quarter of federal firefighters who responded to the survey said their unit was fully staffed. A fifth reported that unqualified personnel are filling the vacant positions.

This comes amid a major consolidation of the federal firefighting workforce under a new agency, known as the Wildland Fire Service, housed under the Department of the Interior. Officials say the strategy will ensure better coordination and streamline costs.

While many federal firefighters are supportive of a centralized approach, there are also widespread concerns about how this consolidation will be achieved and whether officials will make good on promises to improve working conditions for the crews who bear a severe mental and physical toll trying to protect communities year after year.

After years of raising the alarm about the widening gap between limited capacity and growing catastrophes, federal firefighters are becoming disillusioned with the sacrifices they’re being asked to make.

“What’s the purpose of the fire service? That’s the hard question we’re starting to ask ourselves,” one fire captain said. “Is it actually to manage fire and to do what we’re telling the public we’re intended to do? Or is it simply to sell the public a belief so that they can sleep at night?”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Firefighters sound alarm as US faces critical staffing shortage: ‘We don’t have enough people’ on Aug 22, 2026.

Repeated record-breaking heat waves cooked the European continent this summer, delivering the region’s hottest June on record. A simultaneous, though possibly related, drought shriveled rivers to record lows. In addition to their impact on public health, the dual crises put pressure on Europe’s energy system: Wind power struggled under stagnant conditions created by heat waves, and “thermal” power plants — nuclear, gas, and coal plants — had to reduce their output as European waterways warmed and dried, taking away water used for their cooling systems.

Solar power proved the only major energy source that performed better than normal during Europe’s summer of extremes, experts found. When paired with batteries, it helped supply thousands of AC units during historic hot conditions.

Scientists are still trying to understand why so many recurring heat waves materialized this summer, but studies have found that individual heat events are more likely and more intense because of climate change. The intensity of the June heat wave that scorched Western Europe was roughly 200 times more likely in today’s fossil fuel-warmed climate than it would have been two decades ago, one study found. As the continent continues to warm and Europeans install more cooling systems to cope — just 23 percent of households currently have access to or use air conditioning — experts say this summer provides lessons for the future.  

Extreme temperatures in late June bumped up Italy’s power demand by 28 percent compared to the previous week, according to the energy think tank Ember. In France, that number was 14 percent. Electricity and natural gas prices spiked in evening hours as demand grew highest and solar generation ended, with some prices hitting their highest levels since the 2022/2023 winter gas crisis following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. 

As demand and prices were climbing, power generation in some areas was falling. In the United Kingdom, five gas plants reduced their output by a combined 2.5 gigawatts in generation because heat reduced their cooling systems’ effectiveness. At the same time, heat-induced low wind speeds halved the country’s typical wind farm generation in June. 

Historic dryness dropped river levels across Europe: England and Wales reported their driest July on record, while water levels in the Danube River in central and Eastern Europe reached record lows, exposing WWII shipwrecks and prehistoric relics. Europe’s hydropower production hit its lowest July level in a decade, and multiple countries curtailed nuclear power generation as warm, low rivers threatened water supplies for cooling. France lost 18 percent of its nuclear capacity to “environmental factors” in mid-July, Ember found, extending a trend of summertime nuclear outages that has plagued the country in recent years. French nuclear plants often use river water as a vital component of their cooling systems, drawing the water in at natural temperatures and then discharging it back into the rivers slightly warmer. Because French law caps the temperature of this discharged water to protect aquatic life, plants must reduce cooling operations and related power generation when the intake water from rivers is already warm because of heat waves or drought. 

But where these sources faltered, solar shone through. European heat waves tend to deliver optimal conditions for solar power: clear, sunny days. Europe’s solar panels produced 17 percent more power during the summer’s heat waves than they normally do, stabilizing the grid as afternoon cooling demand climbed, according to Ember. Battery systems helped deliver this solar power into the evening hours, when heat still lingered and air conditioners cranked to allow households to sleep.

“The next challenge is the evening period. Temperatures often remain high after sunset and AC demand can stay elevated, even as solar production declines,” said Walburga Hemetsberger, CEO of SolarPower Europe, an industry group. “This is why battery storage is becoming such an important part of the energy transition.”

For as much as this summer’s extreme heat strained Europe’s grid, the continent’s cooling demand has a lot of room to grow: About half of households in Italy and Spain have air conditioning, and a quarter in France — compared to 90 percent in the United States. 

“There are places where we just can’t do without it now,” Marine Tondelier, national secretary of the Ecologist Party, said this June, a reversal in the party’s longstanding argument against air conditioning because of its greenhouse gas emissions.

France’s state-owned utility plans to spend over $10 billion to adapt its nuclear and hydropower plants to warmer temperatures and lower water availability over the next 15 years, including investments in equipment that cools the water nuclear plants discharge into rivers so that it complies with environmental standards. But adapting to that new demand could also take new generation and storage, especially as grids simultaneously increase demand from data centers. 

Solar and batteries have already been growing at a breakneck pace across Europe, with 36 gigawatt-hours installed in 2025, a 48 percent increase over new additions the previous year. Battery installations saw their 12th straight year of growth in 2025, according to industry group SolarPower Europe.

“Extreme price spikes during heatwaves are a blaring signal for regulatory changes that increase power system flexibility,” said Beatrice Petrovich, a senior energy analyst covering Europe at Ember. “Treating this summer as a turning point for energy storage would be an opportunity to remove existing barriers.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Solar buoyed Europe’s grid amid record-breaking heat and drought this summer on Aug 21, 2026.

The world has become hotter and, in many places, drier than ever before in recorded history. Just this summer, as some U.S. states battle over rights to the Colorado River, major reservoirs are at historically-low levels. In Puerto Rico, extended drought has exacerbated an infrastructure crisis, leaving residents to suffer weeks-long stretches without water. In Europe, the Danube and Rhine rivers reached record lows, causing nuclear plants to shut down, devastating crops, and revealing long-lost relics from WWII. More than 60 percent of farmland in Italy is affected by critical drought. 

Emerging research shows that a drier world is often a sicker one, too. A new paper, published last week in the journal Trends in Ecology and Evolution, takes stock of nearly 100 scientific studies of diseases found throughout the animal kingdom — from humans to large mammals, fish, amphibians, and insects — to reveal how drought can help deadly infections and parasites spread. 

The majority of human parasites and many pathogens need water to thrive. And while cases of some infectious diseases — like schistosomiasis, a dangerous flatworm infection also known as snail fever, and malaria — sometimes fall dramatically when ponds and lakes dry up, others — like cholera, West Nile virus, and dengue — end up booming. 

This is called the “drought-disease paradox,” said Tara Stewart Merrill, an aquatic disease ecologist at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies and coauthor of the paper. “It’s so counterintuitive,” she said. “We think a water-borne disease should thrive only when there’s plenty of water, but in some cases they thrive when there’s less water.”

She and her collaborator and coauthor, Pieter Johnson, a professor at the University of Colorado Boulder, became interested in how drought would affect these pathogens several years ago while studying parasites in pond ecosystems in California. Suddenly, Stewart Merrill said, more than half of their study sites dried up. 

“Beyond drought screwing up our study, we then started having conversations about how drought might be shaping disease transmission in ecosystems around the planet,” Stewart Merrill said. 

Research on climate change and infectious disease is a relatively young but fast growing field. Until recently, many studies focused on how rising temperatures, but not drought, affect the spread of diseases, Stewart Merrill said. 

Now, their paper shows how scientists are beginning to untangle the complexities of diseases and the water cycle. Understanding how drought affects the spread of certain diseases could also help scientists better predict which diseases will spread and be the most problematic for humans in the future. 

As fossil fuels warm the planet and change the climate, the hotter atmosphere sucks more water from the landscape and holds onto it longer, leading to more intense and prolonged droughts. The world is 77 percent drier than it was three decades ago, according to a United Nations report. 

The consequences for human health have already been felt. Droughts in California throughout the 2000s led to thousands of excess cases of valley fever, and in 2014, a superdrought contributed to the state’s second-highest cases of West Nile virus. In 2017, a drought in Somalia led to nearly 80,000 cases of cholera, which killed more than a thousand people. And in Brazil, where millions are afflicted with dengue each year, researchers have found that the risk of infection can rise a few months after drought.

City workers in Sao Paulo, Brazil fumigate a neighborhood to fight against an outbreak of mosquito-borne dengue in March 2024.
Andre Lucas / Getty Images

Tracking disease is fundamentally about the movement of animals that carry it, said Georgia Titcomb, a wildlife disease ecologist and assistant professor at Colorado State University. 

“Throughout history, living things have been moving to get water, and so when there are massive changes to the way water is distributed on the landscape, we’re going to also expect big changes in the ways animals move to access that water,” she said. “That’s going to remove some opportunities for transmission, and introduce new ones too.” 

For example, Titcomb said, picture watering holes in the African savannah, surrounded by animals like zebras, elephants, rhinos, and giraffes. During droughts, some of them dry up. More animals crowd around the remaining pools. These crowded areas are also full of dung from those animals, making it easier for parasites that lay their eggs in feces to spread and thrive, and more likely that the animals will encounter parasites.

Titcomb’s paper, included in the new review, found that after periods with less rainfall, parasites thrived — with more than 100,000 eggs found per each kilogram of dung.

Research in other areas has found similar dynamics: When drought results in fewer bodies of water, birds carrying West Nile virus can come into closer contact with mosquitos, resulting in more mosquitos that carry the disease and can infect humans. Drought can also make bodies of water warmer, creating conditions in which some dangerous mold, algae, and bacteria can thrive.

In other cases, drought can diminish disease. Hotter, saltier, and less oxygenated water can become unsurvivable for certain pathogens, bacteria, fungus, and parasites, the paper found. 

The severity of the drought also matters. Vibrio vulnificus, a bacteria that infects oysters and causes 80,000 cases of food poisoning in the United States each year, initially spreads during a drought but can be eliminated entirely if it goes on long enough. 

And heavy periods of precipitation can also make an outbreak worse when a drought eventually comes, said Samantha Sambado, a biologist and postdoctoral researcher at Stanford University who was not affiliated with the study.  This phenomenon, known as ‘weather whiplash,’ is becoming increasingly common as the planet warms. 

The fungus that causes valley fever, for example, grows during wet winters, and then dries and spreads as wind-borne dust in the summer, she said. “It’s a classic case of, climate change will make this worse,” she said.

The new paper sheds important light on these dynamics, Sambado said. “It’s going to be really foundational for how we teach disease ecology,” she said. 

In the coming years, improvements in satellite monitoring technology could make it easier for scientists to track water as it shifts around the planet, she said. Paying attention to how humans respond to drought and manipulate the movement of Earth’s water will become increasingly important, too: Building dams or using more irrigation on crops can create conditions that spread or foster disease. Increasingly unpredictable weather can make it harder for communities to manage their water with disease prevention in mind.

“Water touches almost every aspect of life,” Sambado said. “How do we manage this resource, knowing the future will be warmer?”

Correction: An earlier version of this article misspelled Samantha Sambado’s name.

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This story was originally published by Grist with the headline In a drier world, some infectious diseases are unexpectedly thriving on Aug 21, 2026.

Darya Minovi was mapping pollution from medical sterilization plants across the country when many of the communities she was speaking to began asking the same question. The facilities emit ethylene oxide, a potent carcinogen, and those who lived nearby wanted to know how much the emissions were increasing their cancer risk. She turned to data compiled by the Environmental Protection Agency to find out.

The resulting maps, published in 2023 by the Union of Concerned Scientists, a nonprofit where Minovi is a researcher, revealed that more than 14 million people lived in a 5-mile radius of ethylene oxide-emitting facilities. Crucially, the map highlighted 23 sterilization facilities that the EPA had found emit ethylene oxide at levels that definitively contribute to elevated cancer risk. The project helped raise awareness and was used to push the government to tighten limits on ethylene oxide emissions.

But now, the cancer risk data that made Minovi’s analysis possible has quietly gone offline. After more than two decades of sharing this information with the public, the Environmental Protection Agency has omitted cancer risk estimates from its latest update to national air pollution data. The agency is continuing to release raw pollution figures, but it is no longer providing information on the additional cancer risk that the emissions cause. It has also not updated its searchable U.S. map of cancer risk from air pollution with the most recent data.

The risk assessments are routinely used by communities to understand the effects of the pollution in their neighborhoods, as well as by journalists and nonprofits to inform the public and hold polluters accountable. Withholding this information would shift the burden of interpreting pollution data — a technically demanding task requiring specialized experience and an understanding of EPA protocols — onto the public, Minovi said, making it harder for communities to access this vital public health information. 

“At the end of the day, the people who are living in communities with concentrated sources of pollution are frankly the ones to lose,” she said. “They end up caught in a bureaucratic and political tug of war, and they’re not being protected as they should be.”

An aerial view of Louisiana’s “Cancer Alley,” an 85-mile stretch of land along the Mississippi River with hundreds of industrial facilities that pose a higher risk of cancer for local residents. Giles Clarke / Getty Images

The Trump administration has made it significantly more difficult to access environmental data. So far, the administration has modified or removed nearly 2,000 webpages and datasets on science, climate, and environmental topics. Last year, the EPA discontinued a tool that allowed the public to search its inventory of facilities that handle large volumes of hazardous substances by ZIP code. It also shut down an environmental justice screening tool known as EJScreen, which was the EPA’s flagship tool for tracking environmental hazards across the United States and mapped industrial pollution hot spots alongside demographic data, revealing which communities face the greatest health risks. And some of the agency’s webpages about pollutants, like ethylene oxide, have been modified to remove information about cancer risks and emphasize their industrial usefulness.

Inyang Uwak, a research and policy director for Air Alliance Houston, a nonprofit advocacy group in Texas, said that the administration’s cuts tend to prioritize industries at the expense of public health. 

“It’s unfortunate because this data is highly useful to organizations such as ours that use it,” she said, adding that scientists and policymakers also need the data to make informed decisions. “It’s a disservice to public health in general.”

Left: The Environmental Protection Agency’s webpage on ethylene oxide in 2024. Right: The updated page in 2026, which removes mentions of health risks and emphasizes the carcinogen’s industrial usefulness. Grist / EPA.gov

The EPA has been publishing the cancer risk data periodically since 2002 as part of a program called the Air Toxics Screening Assessment, which details the concentrations of dozens of toxic pollutants across the country down to the census block level. The agency began releasing the data on an annual basis in 2022, but the information is typically several years out of date because of the time required to compile the information. As factories and other polluting facilities are built, shut down, or expand, local pollution levels can change dramatically. The yearly updates to the cancer risk data provided communities with the most current information available about those changes. 

Had the updates arrived on schedule this year, the agency would have released data on the cancer risk from emissions in 2022. Instead, the most recent update was published a year late and represents emissions data from 2021. 

It was only made available on a public-facing webpage this summer after Tai Lung, a senior advisor for federal data policy at the Federation for American Scientists, reached out to the agency. Lung had previously worked at the agency for more than a decade as the lead of EJScreen, which also used the data, before the Trump administration suspended him alongside 170 colleagues.

Carolyn Holran, an EPA spokesperson, told Grist that the agency “will continue posting the annual nationwide air toxics emissions and concentrations data when it becomes available,” but did not address the missing cancer risk data. Holran also did not answer Grist’s questions about why it did not release the cancer data this year and whether the agency is still making this calculation internally.  

“EPA is committed to fulfilling our core mission of protecting human health and the environment and ensuring clean air for all Americans, while following gold standard science,” she said.

Lung said the agency’s decision will make it harder for the public to understand how pollution affects their health. “So now we’re just sharing this raw data, which really means nothing to anybody,” he said. 

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The United States has one of the highest cancer incidence rates in the world. Nearly 40 percent of all Americans will receive a cancer diagnosis at some point in their life, and more than 2 million new cases are diagnosed each year. Living near industrial sources of certain pollutants, like benzene, formaldehyde, and ethylene oxide, can increase a person’s chances of developing cancer. Louisiana’s so-called “Cancer Alley,” neighborhoods near the Houston Ship Channel, and the southeast side of Chicago are all home to a concentration of industrial operations and have become cancer hotspots.

Cancer risk assessments are at the core of the regulatory work that the EPA does. The EPA has long set “acceptable thresholds” for how much exposure to industrial pollution is allowed in an area. The agency’s generally follows limits of one additional cancer case per 10,000 people exposed over their lifetime. (The agency has also said that cancer exposure would ideally be far lower, at one in a million.) When a new polluting facility applies for a permit or when the agency considers new rulemaking, it assesses whether the change will raise the cancer risk in the area above this threshold. 

Many of the administration’s regulatory changes fall into one of two patterns, said Denice Ross, director of the Data Policy Institute at the Federation of American Scientists and a former U.S. chief data scientist during the Biden administration.

An Earth Day rally outside the EPA offices in Ann Arbor, Michigan, in 2025.
Jeff Kowalsky / AFP via Getty Images Protesters rally against a global energy conference in Houston earlier this year. Ronaldo Schemidt / AFP via Getty Images

The first is the deliberate removal of data that conflicts with the administration’s priorities, or casts its policies in an unfavorable light. Information and projects that focused on diversity, social justice, gender, and climate issues were among the first to disappear, she said. 

The second trend is data being lost as a consequence of the sweeping funding and staffing cuts to scientific research at agencies and institutions. There is now more red tape and political approval needed to accomplish tasks that were once routine, she said. 

The services that agencies provide “have historically been invisible infrastructure,” Ross said. “There’re so many things that we take for granted about federal data in our lives, and the people aren’t taking that for granted anymore.”

Some of these cuts contradict President Donald Trump’s own policies. In 2019, during his first term in office, Trump signed the OPEN Government Data Act, a law that established government-wide requirements to make federal data more useful and accessible to the public. Federal law also requires agencies to provide adequate notice when substantially changing or ending significant sources of information, such as the Air Toxics Assessment. But many of the recent changes are “just sort of quietly happening behind the scenes,” Ross said. “And if you don’t know where to look, you won’t find it.”

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Recently, some organizations have begun preserving lost EPA tools, like EJScreen, by recreating them or releasing unofficial copies. But these versions still rely on updates to federal data and do not carry the same authority as government assessments. Many communities also don’t have access to the expertise or training necessary to interpret raw EPA data, said Elizabeth Bechard, a public health manager at Moms Clean Air Force, a nonprofit advocacy organization. The group often uses EPA data to equip families fighting against polluting industries in their communities with the data they need. Ending the cancer risk assessment, Bechard said, will make it harder for people to get involved.

“The public deserves to have that information about that risk so that they can be equipped to push back,” she said. “We’re trying to protect people. It’s not just a math equation.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The EPA’s data on cancer risk from air pollution has gone dark on Aug 14, 2026.

July was the hottest month on record in the United States, with three heat domes — slow-moving, high-pressure systems that trap heat and humidity in place — afflicting large swaths of the country. The most recent of these contributed to an 18-day extreme heat warning in Phoenix, Arizona, the state’s second-longest stretch on record. Yet, in the face of these extreme heat events, representatives in Congress last month advanced a bill that would block the nation’s workplace regulator from finalizing a rule to protect workers from heat stress. What gives?

H.R. 6213 was introduced last year by Representative Mark Messmer from Indiana, who celebrated the House Committee on Education and the Workforce’s recent vote in support of the legislation. The bill seeks to undermine a proposed federal rule that has been languishing under the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, or OSHA. The rule — which would ensure workers have access to rest, shade, and water on the job — was drafted under the Biden administration. Messmer has described the proposed rule as “unnecessary,” saying it would present a burden to employers. 

In response to a request for comment, the communications director for the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, Audra McGeorge, did not share a timeline for a full vote on the bill. “The Committee doesn’t control the Floor schedule,” she said. But labor advocates are nevertheless alarmed by the progress H.R. 6213 has made, especially at a time of record-breaking summer temperatures.

“The passage of this bill would set a terrible precedent,” said Juanita Constible, a senior advocate on environmental health at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “It signals a shift away from our current deliberate, data-driven process to kind of a Wild West, where Congress decides whether workers are at risk or not. And I don’t think that’s its role.”

Since OSHA first went public with its proposed rule on preventing heat illness and injury in 2024, the agency has been through multiple comment periods, including public hearings. Experts say the proposed rule’s requirements are relatively straightforward and commonsense. Objections tend to come from pro-business groups, which argue that such regulation would be onerous, stifle growth, and cost too much money. But advocates like Charlotte Brody, vice president of health initiatives at the BlueGreen Alliance, insist that “the OSHA rule, like most OSHA rules, is based on good science.”

For example, the proposed rule would require employers to develop safety plans for workers that would kick in when the heat index reaches 80 degrees Fahrenheit, the point beyond which the vast majority of heat deaths in the workplace occur. (The heat index, which takes into account humidity as well as air temperature, is sometimes referred to as the “feels like” temperature.) When the heat index surpasses 90 degrees, additional measures would then be required. The rule would also instruct employers to create plans to acclimatize workers to laboring under extreme heat. As Brody noted, 3 out of 4 occupational heat deaths happen within the first week of work. 

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The vote in the Republican-controlled committee fell along party lines. In a statement to Grist, Representative Adelita Grijalva, a Democrat from Arizona, argued that H.R 6213 erases “the progress we’ve made to establish one, uniform national heat standard,” she added. Before being elected to Congress last year, Grijalva spearheaded a heat safety ordinance for Pima County, Arizona — a first of its kind in the state — while serving on the Pima County Board of Supervisors. Representative Mark DeSaulnier, a Democrat from California, referred to the outcome of the vote as “just another example of how the balance of power between capital and labor has become dangerously skewed in this country, increasingly favoring the interests of big corporations over the safety of workers.”

In a press release, Messmer stated a federal rule as “rigid” and “one-size-fits-all” as the Biden-era standard is redundant when states can pass and enforce their own workplace safety regulations. But that isn’t necessarily true. Texas and Florida, for example, have preempted municipalities within their states to create standards that would keep workers safe from heat illness and injury. Representatives for Representative Messmer did not respond to a request for comment. 

Texas and Florida notwithstanding, Constible says, the fight to ensure worker safety during extreme heat has shifted to the state level. Virginia, for example, recently kicked off its own rule-making process on this issue. Unions and labor groups also have an important role to play, she added. 

“At the state level, they’re hearing loud and clear from workers that it’s dangerous and scary out there and that they should be doing something about it,” Constible said. “Certainly the hot weather we’ve had the last two years has helped, I think, change hearts and minds on this issue.”

Legal experts say it is surprising that Congress would move to prohibit OSHA from enacting a rule that hasn’t even been finalized yet. In fact, OSHA had already indicated the agency was pivoting away from the Biden-era heat rule and would publish a supplemental proposal toward the end of this year. As Jordan Barab, a former OSHA deputy assistant secretary, noted on his blog, a supplemental proposed rule is used when OSHA seeks to make “significant substantive changes” to an original proposal. Representatives for OSHA did not respond to a request for comment. 

“It’s unusual, I would say,” said Romany M. Webb, deputy director at the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University. “It would not be beyond the Congress’ authority to do something like this. It just doesn’t normally do this.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Congress may kill the federal heat rule before OSHA can on Aug 14, 2026.

In May of 2017, Juan Mancias became an overnight sensation in France. Standing over 6 feet tall with a mane of salt-and-pepper hair, a medicine wheel-emblazoned ribbon shirt, beaded belt, and feathered medallion bearing the seal of the Carrizo/Comecrudo Tribe of Texas, he was conspicuous on the streets of Paris, and he had a message: French banks were financing the desecration of sacred Native lands and burial sites. They were, he said, aiding in the ongoing ethnic cleansing of Indigenous people in Texas through their support of natural gas pipelines and export terminals.

“It’s the same thing for 500 years,” Mancias told Observatoire des Multinationales. “We were occupied by the Spanish, by the Mexicans, then by the Texans, then by the Americans. And now it’s the oil industry.”

Three months before Mancias arrived in France, the last camps at Standing Rock emptied. For nearly a year, thousands of Indigenous water protectors and environmental allies had gathered near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North Dakota to protest the Dakota Access Pipeline, or DAPL. Oil was now flowing through DAPL, but activists and environmental organizations kept the momentum of the protests going. 

In South Texas, Mancias had been fighting the same battle on a different front. He and Bekah Hinojosa, a grassroots activist in the Rio Grande Valley, spent weeks organizing against the proposed Rio Grande terminal and Rio Bravo Pipeline. The $18-billion projects would carry tens of millions of tons of natural gas each year to the export terminal in Brownsville, where it would be liquefied and shipped overseas as LNG. The battle led them to collaborate with Rainforest Action Network on a study documenting what it identified as the projects’ threat to the area, which included Carrizo/Comecrudo lands. The proposed industrial corridor, Mancias said, threatened the tribe and Garcia Pasture, a village site near Brownsville with human burials, ruins, and a rare coastal ecosystem the World Monuments Fund, an organization dedicated to raising global awareness of endangered cultural heritage sites, declared “threatened by natural resource extraction.”

“It used to be one of the places that we would gather as different clans and set up our lean-tos and be there for awhile while we were fishing,” Mancias said. “That’s why we were real concerned.”

The report circulated. People were paying attention.

Read Next 5 takeaways from our investigation into the ‘ghost’ tribe that got millions in climate funding Tristan Ahtone

Les Amis de la Terre, or Friends of the Earth France, saw an opportunity: French banks — including BNP Paribas and Société Générale — were, at the time, still financing DAPL and petrochemical industries in South Texas, including the Rio projects. Organizers believed they could pressure them to stop. 

“We had a broad objective of trying to prevent more financial flows and loans going from France to this project,” said Lorette Philippot, with Les Amis de la Terre, who worked on the campaign. “We had the difficulty to try to mobilize people on a project that was happening far away with impact on people that were far away.” 

By early spring of 2017, Rainforest Action Network, Sierra Club, and Les Amis de la Terre had a plan: Mancias and Hinojosa, who was a Sierra Club campaigner at the time, would travel to France to help launch an international divestment campaign. They would work alongside Indigenous activists and allies involved with Stand Up With Standing Rock, a European solidarity tour aimed at demanding banks divest from oil and gas projects in North America. 

Over the next week, they appeared in nearly a dozen print and radio outlets, including Le Monde and Radio France. They spoke at rallies. They built a symbolic oil pipeline inside a Paris branch of the bank Société Générale. A video of Mancias discussing Indigenous rights went viral. The pair were applauded by shareholders at BNP Paribas and booed by those at Société Générale. Mancias even secured a meeting with newly elected President Emmanuel Macron’s diplomatic advisors, where he explained how the United States government ignores Indigenous rights in Texas. 

“It was a very strong narrative and it helped us mobilize a lot of media at the time because there were these chiefs coming to France to address French companies,” said Philippot. “It was very strong, it was very new, so it helped really create attention.”

Juan Mancias, center, appears at a demonstration in front of the George R. Brown Convention Center ahead of Super Bowl Live events in Houston in 2017. Marie D. De Jesus / Houston Chronicle via Getty Images

In the wake of Standing Rock, the global climate movement was eager to elevate Indigenous voices in the fight against fossil fuels, and Mancias stepped up. By leveraging the story of the Carrizo/Comecrudo Tribe as a victim of ethnic cleansing at the hands of fossil fuel interests, the European campaign eventually helped push the two banks to withdraw from U.S. oil and gas projects. This high-profile victory launched Mancias and the tribe into the international media ecosystem, transforming them into environmental media darlings. 

Mancias’ visit to France was a massive public relations victory for the climate movement.

But an extensive review of historical and genealogical records reveals that key documents underpinning Mancias’ claims to being of Carrizo/Comecrudo descent contain significant historical inconsistencies and cannot be verified or authenticated. His platform instead rests on family lore that has generated immense financial and social capital for Mancias, who is the group’s chairman, while fueling a broader trend that has detrimental global repercussions for Indigenous Peoples and the fight to address climate change.

“At the time we met him in the United States, Juan Mancias was clearly recognized as a representative of Indigenous communities,” said a spokesperson for Amis de la Terre France. “Regardless of his origins or ancestry, we believe that everyone has the right to oppose LNG projects and their financiers.”

Everyone had a reason to believe the story Mancias told. And somewhere in the years of campaigns and headlines, the question of whether it was true fell away. The story worked, and that was enough.

If you’re a Native reader, you know the word pretendian — its history, the personalities attached to it, and the debates over identity and “pretendian hunting.” The next two paragraphs are not for you. Feel free to skip ahead. 

Pretendian — a portmanteau of “pretend” and “Indian” — describes someone who poses as Indigenous but is not. The term has broken out of Indian Country in recent years, with coverage, unmaskings, and think pieces by Indigenous and non-Indigenous writers alike in outlets ranging from The Atlantic and National Public Radio to the New York Post and others as far away as Aotearoa, New Zealand. You know these people; some of your friends and family may even be pretendians, and the problem is bigger than your weird aunt with high cheekbones waving the results of a recent DNA test. Instead, tribal nations and international bodies agree that Indigeneity is a political identity requiring verifiable citizenship within a historically continuous community.

The consequences of false claims to Indigenous identity are not abstract and have brought pretendians significant financial, professional, and cultural benefits. In 2017, three fake Cherokee tribes received $300 million in federal contracts by claiming minority-owned business status. Twin sisters Amira and Nadya Gill received more than 158,000 Canadian dollars earmarked for Inuit kids after pretending to be tribal members. Scholars Elizabeth Hoover and Andrea Smith built careers on bogus claims of Indigenous identity. Perhaps most famously, an investigation by the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. in 2023 found that Buffy Sainte-Marie, the internationally known singer whose career spanned nearly six decades, had falsified her claims of tribal identity and was born in Massachusetts to Italian and English parents. 

Tribal Recognition 101

Recognition indicates whether a group has a formal political and legal relationship with a government — not simply whether individuals have Indigenous ancestry. Recognition can come from the federal government or a state government.

Federal recognition establishes a government-to-government relationship with the U.S. The Bureau of Indian Affairs recognizes 575 tribal nations. Each is inherently sovereign, with partial exemption from state and local jurisdiction, the ability to place land into federal trust, some civil and criminal jurisdiction over its lands, and other rights.

State recognition: Some states recognize tribes within their borders, but these tribes lack the inherent sovereignty that comes with federal recognition. They cannot exercise jurisdiction over land or access most federal programs, though some economic and business opportunities are available, such as the Small Business Administration’s section 8(a) program.

Non-recognized groups are, legally speaking, voluntary associations or nonprofits. They have no governmental authority, cannot exercise sovereignty, and lack legal standing as tribal nations under federal or state law.

Who qualifies as American Indian? Generally speaking, members of a federally recognized tribe. Tribal nations set their own criteria, such as lineal descendancy or blood quantum requirements, through formal, legally binding processes based on genealogical documentation. This is in contrast to informal systems in which leaders grant membership at their discretion.

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Stories are powerful, and in the world of climate action, an idealized Indigenous narrative can be more malleable, and more valuable, than facts. In France, the story of the Carrizo/Comecrudo Tribe provided exactly what activists needed to pressure international banks into divesting from oil and gas: a moral front line. It was a victory built on a collective willingness to believe a story that no one bothered to question, let alone investigate.

In the years since he returned from Paris, Mancias has transformed the Carrizo/Comecrudo Tribe of Texas, which lacks federal and state recognition, into a formidable environmental force. He has raised more than $5 million from major philanthropic foundations and joined heavyweights like Earthjustice and World Monuments Fund, and he has engaged with several United Nations agencies to battle oil and gas terminals, President Donald Trump’s border wall, and Elon Musk’s SpaceX. 

Those partnerships have allowed the Carrizo/Comecrudo to behave as a tribal nation in the public eye while evading the responsibilities — and burdens of proof — genuine sovereign nations must bear. That has brought financial windfalls and international influence, revealing a troubling shadow recognition system, one in which well-heeled environmental organizations, well-meaning but unwitting journalists, and trusting international human rights bodies unknowingly prop up unverified Indigenous groups and pretendians to wage the climate war at the expense of legitimate Indigenous Peoples, tribes, and organizations.

For Indigenous policy experts, the elevation of unverified groups by environmental organizations represents a systemic issue that extends far beyond any single region. Speaking broadly about the nationwide trend of illegitimate actors and unverified groups entering the environmental movement, Kyle Whyte, a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation and a climate justice scholar at the University of Michigan, noted the widespread damage caused by this dynamic.

“It’s actually hurting, I would say at an exponential rate, the possibility for Indigenous people to be major players in climate change,” said Whyte. “It’s completely undermining the potential that tribal nations and Indigenous people have.”

Juan Mancias, as seen in the Carrizo/Comecrudo YouTube video “Teaching of the Hands.” Courtesy of Juan Mancias

The Carrizo/Comecrudo Tribe of Texas, which also goes by Esto’k Gna, claims historical connection to the Texas Gulf Coast and Rio Grande Delta, a region with a thin record of its Indigenous history. While many primary documents about tribes in the region exist in the official archives of Spain, Mexico, and Texas, as well as parish records and municipal files, these threads have rarely been woven into a cohesive narrative. 

Spanish archives from the 16th through 18th centuries contain information on more than six dozen distinct groups in the region, but do not describe a unified “Comecrudo” or “Carrizo” tribe. Instead, Comecrudo, which is Spanish for “eats food raw,” and Carrizo, which translates as “river cane,” were simply derogatory, catchall descriptors colonizers applied to bands, tribes, communities, and groups that likely knew little of each other. These fragmentary colonial records capture little of the lived history of South Texas Indigenous communities, reducing complex human beings and societies to scattered chalk outlines of births, baptisms, and geographic displacements. 

Indigenous homelands in South Texas have played a reluctant host to the shifting, militarized edge of the Spanish, Mexican, and, later, Texan and American frontiers. Nearly 50 years of perpetual war against Native peoples into the late 19th century ended in forced removal and genocide. By the 1870s, many surviving tribal nations had been pushed out of the state altogether, including the Waco, Kiowa, and Tonkawa, all of which are now based in Oklahoma — a brutal reminder of Texas moxie. Historians have called the state “a cauldron of racist violence.”

These landscapes appear in the Carrizo/Comecrudo video ‘Teaching of the Hands.’ ​Courtesy of Juan Mancias

Few authoritative books compile the Indigenous history of South Texas. The most prominent, Martín Salinas’ Indians of the Rio Grande Delta, was praised for painstakingly compiling what one reviewer called the “recorded sherds of Indian existence” in the lower Rio Grande Valley. Those sherds, created by Spanish colonizers and military leaders, document Carrizos and Comecrudos at Spanish missions into the 19th century, and is punctuated by an 1886 visit from noted Swiss ethnologist Albert Gatschet, who found elderly Comecrudos living on the riverbanks of the border town of Reynosa Diaz. Some could still speak their language, which he wrote down, but after Gatschet the tribe disappears from the historical record.

For more than a century, the prevailing academic and historical consensus has held that Gulf Coast groups like the Carrizo, Comecrudo, and Karankawa ceased to exist as distinct societies by the late 1800s. According to the Texas State Historical Association, leading anthropologists, and historians, the surviving populations of South Texas died from colonial violence and disease, or they were assimilated into Mexican and Tejano society, leading to their de facto extinction as distinct cultural groups. To modern scholars, these tribes simply do not exist today.

According to Mancias, those scholars are wrong. He insists the Carrizo/Comecrudo Tribe and its history, culture, and language survived.

Mancias claims that in the 1940s, his grandfather, Juan Ramirez Mancias, a Carrizo/Comecrudo chief, led 29 tribal families from their traditional homelands along the Rio Grande 600 miles north to the Texas Panhandle. There, the families adopted identities as Mexican farmworkers and deliberately assimilated into the Hispanic population. The Mancias family, however, secretly maintained its Indigenous identity, language, and oral histories — the only people to keep the tribe alive. Mancias has said he knew as a child that he was Indigenous, and that he was dismissed and marginalized for it. He claims to have endured anti-Indian racism and expulsion from school for fighting his tormentors, but he never abandoned his convictions or his grandfather’s orders to “go get our land back.” Mancias says he is the hereditary leader of the tribe due to his family’s singular role in preserving its identity and history, and that those convictions have fueled his mission of protecting his ancestors’ homelands from billionaires, pipeline companies, banks, and the federal government, while rebuilding those homelands one parcel at a time.

“They almost annihilated us,” Mancias told a reporter in 2024. “That genocide continues.” 

The story Mancias tells echoes the Book of Exodus in the Bible: a multigenerational quest to return home that requires concealed identities, years in hiding, and a history physically carried forward — ending, at last, in a hard-fought, triumphant return. 

“This is pretty standard for people to make a life out of a story like this,” said Kim TallBear, who is Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate, author of Native American DNA: Tribal Belonging and the False Promise of Genetic Science, professor at the University of Minnesota, and an expert in Indigenous self-definitions. “This is a pretty standard hiding-out-in-the-wilderness kind of thing, and it is very common in the South.”

When ‘Hiding’ Doesn’t Hold Up

When unverified groups cannot prove continuous existence, some rely on a common defense: They were hiding. Like the Carrizo/Comecrudo, who claim their ancestors survived by blending into the Mexican-American population, some have argued that oppression forced them underground.

In Vermont, four state-recognized Abenaki groups — the Elnu, Koasek, Missisquoi, and Nulhegan — say their ancestors lived in hiding for nearly 200 years, citing the state’s 20th-century eugenics and sterilization policies as the primary reason for their secrecy.

Yet the Bureau of Indian Affairs and Vermont’s attorney general found no evidence of a hidden, continuous Abenaki community in the state, and historians found nothing to prove the eugenics policies specifically targeted Abenaki people.

The federally recognized Odanak First Nation in Quebec has explicitly rejected the Vermont narrative and have said their ancestors never went underground. Experts call “hiding” a convenient loophole that weaponizes historical trauma to excuse a lack of genealogical proof.

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Mancias said around a dozen of the 29 families who moved north remain active in the Carrizo/Comecrudo Tribe, but would not provide a full list or contact information for them. But he said his ancestral claims go back even further. He has told journalists his lineage starts with Chief Naz’tazea, a Carrizo/Comecrudo warrior, and his son, Manuel Cavazos — the lone survivor of an alleged massacre of more than 300 Carrizo/Comecrudo people in 1801 at the hands of Spanish soldiers, acting with Catholic priests, along the Devils River in South Texas. 

The sole basis for this claim is an unverified 19th century document that Mancias insists he discovered in the archives of the Texas Railroad Commission — a find he has repeatedly said corroborates his family’s oral history and confirms his relation to Naz’Tazea and Cavazos. According to Mancias, the report details an 1871 incident in which surveyors for the Gulf, Western Texas, and Pacific Railway stopped work after excavating an earthen mound containing the skeletal remains of more than 300 people. The document chronicles a subsequent military investigation during which an elderly Cavazos testified through a Spanish and Apache interpreter about the slaughter and his miraculous survival.

Mancias has recounted the story many times. In 2002, he read the alleged report aloud while testifying before the Texas Senate on the need for a state agency for Native American affairs, including a quote he attributed to Cavazos: “As I have said many times before, even though I am old, it will never pass in my eyes on what happened to my family when I was a little boy of 11.” In 2019, Mancias provided additional passages to a reporter, including a particularly graphic recollection from Cavazos that Spanish soldiers “put our little ones on spear tips and held them up for all to see. My sister was with child and Long Spears cut her with their knives where her unborn baby slept.”

‘I didn’t make it up.’

Juan Mancias

Mancias has been inconsistent about when he discovered the document. He told Grist that he had to threaten the state Railroad Commission to release it in the late 1980s, but also told Texas state senators that he’d discovered it only the week before his 2002 testimony. He has also placed the discovery in 2005, and in a recent interview claimed the report was not translated until 2023 because it was written in what he called “Castilian/Galego” Spanish. That translation, Mancias said, was done with the help of reporter Frank Hopper at Indian Country Today, now ICT, but the article in question was published in 2019. 

“I didn’t translate the story,” Hopper wrote in an email. “I don’t have the original document. I tried researching the massacre online but could find very little.”

Mancias would not share the document despite repeated requests, blaming technological issues and suggesting that state officials may have altered or removed it from public viewing. “I know that it exists somewhere, and maybe they changed it, so I can’t do anything about them changing it,” he said when confronted with our findings.

Extensive searches of digital and physical repositories within the Texas State Library and Archives Commission found no evidence that the report exists. Instead, it revealed multiple discrepancies and historical anachronisms in Mancias’ story. 

Mancias has been inconsistent on where the massacre occurred, with the railroad report naming two counties that did not exist at the time it was allegedly created and hundreds of miles from the traditional territory of the Carrizo/Comecrudo. He claims the document was written in a dialect of Spanish that would not have been used by an American railroad company operating in Texas almost 30 years after statehood. His chronology has also been historically illiterate: There weren’t any railroads operating in the area until nearly a decade after the discovery of the human remains purportedly occurred. None of the individuals named in the deposition, including the interpreter and a former Civil War captain, were found in the military and genealogical databases examined.

“I doubt any railroad survey crews would have been in such a remote area 10 years before the tracks were being laid,” said Rick McCaslin, the Texas state historian. “I strongly doubt that an Anglo company would have a deposition in Spanish without a translated version to accompany it.”

Don Hofsommer, a railroad historian and author of several books on the topic, also noted that the Texas Railroad Commission — the agency Mancias claims held the report — was not established until 1891, two decades after the alleged survey. “Typically, railroads did not move that sort of information to the public domain,” said Hofsommer. “It’s extremely unlikely that such a document would have migrated, and I can’t see any reason why it would have migrated to the Texas Railroad Commission. Improbable.” 

“I didn’t make it up,” said Mancias.

The Texas Railroad Commission did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

Mancias has cited the purported document as evidence to his claims in federal court. In 2019, he sued the federal government, alleging genocide against the Carrizo/Comecrudo people, the desecration of sacred sites, and the use of discriminatory waivers to expedite border wall construction. He asserted “absolute land sovereignty” over six South Texas counties and sought sweeping remedies: an immediate halt to border wall and energy development, the transfer of land from corporations to the tribe, and $1 trillion in reparations — including $400 billion up front and $200 billion annually for 500 years.

When a judge required Mancias to specify the basis for alleging that the Carrizo/Comecrudo held a legal interest in the territory, Mancias submitted the text of the alleged Devil’s River report but did not produce a physical copy. Mancias later dismissed the lawsuit after the government challenged his legal standing to sue as an unrecognized tribe. In 2020, Mancias cited the railroad report in a Sierra Club lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s border wall, but neither he nor the environmental group provided the original document in the court filings, instead referencing the article Hopper wrote for ICT in 2019.

The alleged report is the only documentary evidence Mancias has publicly referred to in order to establish his connection to the Carrizo/Comecrudo Tribe. 

A lack of proof extends to his other ancestral claims, including the foundational lore of his activism: a childhood command from his grandfather to “go get our land back.” When pressed by the judge in his 2019, $1-trillion lawsuit against the federal government about whether he held traditional title to the lands he was suing over, Mancias admitted that while his grandfather claimed to own land in Peñitas, Texas, the family had “never been able to find a recorded deed or a document verifying this.”

A typed transcription of the purported 1871 interview with Manuel Cavazos, submitted by Juan Mancias as an attachment in the federal lawsuit Mancias v. United States of America. PACER

Grist also reviewed census, birth, baptism, marriage, and death records spanning the mid-18th century to the end of the 20th century from across Texas and in Tamaulipas and Nuevo León, Mexico. They show Mancias descends from a well-documented colonial family with deep roots in northern Mexico, including at least three documented Indigenous ancestors born in Mexico between approximately 1770 and 1800. They lived six to seven generations ago and are among the roughly 64 to 128 direct ancestors a person has at that generational depth. However, parish records show this Indigenous ancestry likely originates from the Sierra Madre Oriental mountains, not the Rio Grande Delta, the historic territory of the Carrizo/Comecrudo. More crucially, those ancestors are found on Mancias’ maternal line, not paternal — the foundation of his Indigenous claim. Those genealogical records also do not support Mancias’ assertion that he is related to Manuel Cavazos — the historical paper trail breaks at the precise generational link required to connect Mancias to the Devil’s River survivor. Nobody by that name, or the name Naz’tazea, appears in any records, including those by Gatschet, the Swiss ethnologist. Mancias did not respond to a detailed request for comment outlining our findings.

“If you go back six generations, that’s a lot of ancestors,” TallBear said. “Why are you focusing on the one who might or might not have been Indigenous? Even if there’s an actual Indigenous person, who cares? That’s not a claim. Ancestry alone is not a claim.”

That point is essential to understanding Indigenous identity. Tribal nations, the federal government, and international human rights bodies agree that Indigeneity is fundamentally a political and collective identity, not a private matter of individual racial descent or even blood quantum. As recognized by both the Bureau of Indian Affairs and international bodies like the United Nations, a group cannot simply self-identify into existence or reexistence; legitimate Indigenous Peoples must demonstrate historical continuity by tracing an unbroken line of political authority, typically through formal treaties, acts of Congress, or historical archives that document unbroken, collective lines to preinvasion and precolonial societies. When recognition politics shift from collective, land- and place-based rights toward individual rights that rest on ancestral claims, Indigenous Peoples, rights, and movements face compounding harms — a point scholars emphasize. To avoid that, and distinguish inherently sovereign tribal nations from groups composed merely of individuals claiming descent, the United States relies on a formal, if imperfect, legal system to vet claims of nationhood. 

It’s important to note that recognition status indicates whether a group has governmental authority and collective political rights as a sovereign nation. It does not, in and of itself, validate individual Indigenous heritage, just as the lack of federal recognition does not invalidate it. But it does determine whether a group is a sovereign governmental authority or merely an association or nonprofit organization. Indigenous leaders and scholars say that failing to respect those political boundaries enables individuals and groups fraudulently claiming Indigenous heritage for professional, political, and financial gain, ultimately harming legitimate Native communities.

Mancias rejects these bedrocks of Indigenous identity.

“We don’t abide by the colonial mentality of a procedural recognition process,” he said, referring to the tribe’s lack of political status.

Still, Mancias submitted a letter to the Bureau of Indian Affairs, or BIA, in 1998 with the intent of petitioning for federal recognition of the Carrizo/Comecrudo Tribe. Although Mancias frequently cites the multimillion-dollar cost of the process as the primary barrier to proceeding, documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act show the group continues to interact with the agency. In March 2016, Mancias and his daughter Christa Mancias submitted a signed letter to the BIA to officially update their tribal council roster and maintain the petition.

This is a scanned copy of an envelope, postmarked March 28, 2016, containing an update to the Carrizo/Comecrudo Tribe’s 1998 letter to petition the Department of the Interior for federal acknowledgment. Grist obtained it through a Freedom of Information Act request. United States Department of the Interior via FOIA

The financial barriers and public condemnation of the recognition process haven’t stopped Mancias from emulating those federal systems. Since the 1990s, when Mancias established a nonprofit under the tribe’s name and began fundraising, he has created a tribal government with himself as the hereditary leader, recruited members, and issued identification cards. During the Texas Senate hearing in 2002, Mancias claimed the tribe had 352 members. By 2009, that figure had risen to 9,000 and by 2017 to 17,000 before tumbling to 2,500 four years later. It jumped again to 6,500 in 2024. This year, Mancias claims 30,000 members, a surge that would require adding roughly 65 members every day for an entire year. Mancias said membership is granted through lineal descendancy. 

“It’s family connections,” said Mancias. “Because of the blood that runs through us.”

That recruitment strategy helped bring in Christopher Basaldú, one of the tribe’s most prominent and outspoken members. Basaldú grew up in South Texas hearing family stories of his Indigenous heritage, but that changed when he met Mancias. According to an article featuring Basaldú, who did not return requests for comment, Mancias asked for his family names and where his relatives were born, then declared: “Those are my families, too. We’re related. You’re Carrizo.” Basaldú has since co-founded the tribe’s closest ally fighting oil and gas terminals, the South Texas Environmental Justice Network, along with frontline activist Bekah Hinojosa, whom Mancias also claims is a “distant cousin.”

Presented with our findings, Hinojosa said, “I’m not aware of any familial ties with Juan Mancias.”

Over the last two decades, global leaders have increasingly looked to Indigenous Peoples for solutions to climate change. That shift started in 2004 with the release of the landmark Arctic Climate Impact Assessment, which pushed Indigenous ecological expertise into the mainstream. Three years later, the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues — among the largest global gatherings of Indigenous leaders and advocates — dedicated its annual session to climate change, helping establish Indigenous stewardship as a pillar of global environmental policy. 

Institutional acceptance deepened in 2014, when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change formally recognized Indigenous expertise as an important resource for climate adaptation, a stark departure from earlier reports that marginalized or ignored those perspectives. The following year, the Paris Agreement wove Indigenous ecological knowledge into its framework. 

Then came Standing Rock. Nearly a year of intense protest put Native people in the international spotlight and pushed the Indigenous climate movement to the fore.

Juan Mancias addresses a crowd in Zuccotti Park during an environmental justice rally in New York City in June 2024. Gina M. Randazzo / ZUMA Press Wire / Shutterstock

Eventually, the federal government caught up. In 2021, the Biden administration elevated Indigenous traditional ecological knowledge to federal policy and established an interagency working group to ensure Native stewardship informs decision-making. “Tribal and Native communities have stewarded these lands since time immemorial,” said Brenda Mallory, who chaired the White House Council on Environmental Quality, at the time. “Their voices and their expertise are critical to finding solutions to address the climate crisis, an issue that disproportionately affects tribal and Native communities.”

Mounting recognition brought an unprecedented flood of money. In 2021, a coalition of governments and private funders unveiled a $1.7 billion pledge to support Native-led land defense, the largest investment ever in Indigenous climate action. By the time world leaders gathered in Brazil last year for the COP30 international climate summit, that commitment had expanded to an additional $1.8 billion for Indigenous and locally led conservation efforts. If the climate crisis is a defining marker of this century, Indigenous Peoples are becoming keystone parties in the fight to address it. 

How an Indigenous Claim Can Attract Millions

The Carrizo/Comecrudo aren’t the first to turn an unverified Indigenous claim into major environmental funding. In 2019, The Los Angeles Times found a similar pattern in California, centered on one man’s multimillion-dollar nonprofit empire.

Mati Waiya, born Frank Rocha, identifies as a member of the Coastal Band of the Chumash Nation, an unrecognized group separate from the federally recognized Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians. In 1997, Waiya founded the Wishtoyo Chumash Foundation.

The foundation was created to provide environmental preservation, education, and advocacy. 
Between 2005 and 2018, it generated more than 130 news stories in outlets like The New York Times and NPR. That profile helped the nonprofit acquire a 67-acre former golf course for $5.5 million — nearly two-thirds the size of Santa Ynez’s own 99-acre reservation.

The Times later found that Waiya’s family originated in Mexico, with no documentation to support his claims of Chumash ancestry. The investigation also revealed that the Wishtoyo Chumash Foundation had raised more than $12 million in just four years.

Today, Waiya sits on the board of the Center for Biological Diversity and other nonprofits. In 2023, Wishtoyo listed total assets at $30.7 million from grants and contributions. Waiya, his wife, and one other employee earned $366,000 combined last year.

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When that unprecedented funding reaches legitimate tribal nations, the impact is undeniable. “One million dollars that goes into an entity with accountability and due process and cultural integrity could allow [it] to actually do things that lower carbon footprints or protect themselves from the fossil fuel sector,” said Whyte, the University of Michigan professor.

But the sudden influx of money also created a lucrative new pathway for bad actors. That shift led some funders and advocacy groups to unwittingly elevate people and organizations with no legitimate claim to indigeneity, said Whyte. “After Standing Rock and during the Biden administration, you have philanthropy and federal resources focused on Indigenous people,” he said. “They didn’t have a lot of long-term relationships with tribes or with Indigenous people with legitimate organizations.”

Historically, financial support for Indigenous people and organizations has been dismal. A 2019 Native Americans in Philanthropy report found that between 2002 and 2016, large U.S. foundations gave, on average, 0.4 percent of their total funding to such communities and causes. Similarly, tribal leaders quoted in a 2021 study from the Center for Effective Philanthropy reported that nonprofits had denied requests because program participants were already deemed successful. 

“We interpreted that as, They just want to fund drunk, starving Indians on the reservation or on skid row in the city. They’re not interested in what Native American leaders can contribute to society,” said one survey participant. These misconceptions, fueled by racist stereotypes, have been documented in other studies. Research has also found that philanthropy fundamentally misunderstands Indigenous experiences, tribal sovereignty and governance, and organizations operating in Indian Country — to say nothing of the growing problem of people fraudulently claiming Native identities.

“They didn’t understand, for example, that maybe in a certain region there was a legitimate tribal nation or Indigenous organization that was representing actual communities,” Whyte said of philanthropy in general. “They didn’t understand that there’s a difference between a group that is a nonprofit and a state-recognized tribe and a federally recognized tribe. Or in another country, a group that has a certain status. They didn’t know anything about it, and often, they were sucked in by these very powerful stories.”

Those same blind spots plague news coverage, where journalists with little or no understanding of Indigenous affairs are ill-equipped to engage in critical reporting or recognize when sources mislead them.

Vetting Indigenous Identity

Confirming Indigenous identity matters as much for philanthropists and activists as journalists. It can be uncomfortable, but here are essential questions to ask individuals and organizations before taking a claim at face value.

For individuals: What’s your connection to the community, and do you have family within its boundaries? Are you claimed by a recognized nation, verifiable by elders or leaders? How does the community view you and your work?

For organizations: Who leads the group, and with what verifiable ties to recognized communities? Is there transparent governance, membership criteria, elections, and active engagement? Is it recognized as legitimate by established tribal nations or national authorities?

Proceed with caution if someone relies on DNA tests, family lore, or “cultural adoption” instead of documentation; claims no living relatives; cycles through different tribal identities; uses romanticized spiritual language; or only claims identity when it’s professionally convenient.

These conversations are not comfortable, but generally, legitimate, enrolled, and connected Indigenous people understand why you are asking these questions. Anger, defensiveness, or frustration with being questioned can be a potential red flag.

Not knowing Indigenous affairs doesn’t excuse skipping verification, and assuming someone else already vetted a claim doesn’t, either. Verification is a systemic issue and a necessary professional obligation is essential to maintaining integrity.

For more information:
• Indigenous Identity Reporting Guide, Indigenous Journalists Association
• Indigenous Substantiation Recommendations Report, University of Toronto
• SPJ Code of Ethics, Society of Professional Journalists

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Media access is essential for the well-being and civic participation of legitimate Indigenous nations. But it can also grant visibility and credibility to illegitimate individuals and groups whose claims go unscrutinized, and non-Native reporters often feel overwhelmed by the complexities of Indigenous identity, a vulnerability that is easily exploited. Many fail to do basic research or ask tough questions about a source’s tribal ties for fear of causing offense or because they are rushing to meet a deadline, said Sunnie Clahchischiligi, who is Diné and president of the Indigenous Journalists Association. “I think it’s just carelessness and laziness,” she said.

That can create an echo chamber because, as the Indigenous Journalists Association warns, “once a fraudulent claim is published in one news article, especially in Indigenous-led media, other media tend to follow without verification.” 

That echo chamber has benefited Mancias and the Carrizo/Commecrudo Tribe, which have appeared in more than 70 stories, blogs, and press releases since 2016. They have received frequent coverage from outlets ranging from ICT and Inside Climate News to PBS, The Guardian, and The Texas Tribune. 

Inside Climate news and ICT were among the most prolific outlets covering Mancias and the tribe. Grist presented the findings of this investigation to them and asked about their editorial policies for covering unrecognized groups and whether reporters examined primary documents to corroborate Mancias’ claims. Both outlets provided statements but did not answer the questions or explain their fact-checking protocols or policies covering unrecognized Indigenous groups.

“The issues you raise about identity are ones [the reporter] included with nuance in his reporting on displaced and marginalized people seeking justice,” the executive editor at Inside Climate News told Grist in an email.

ICT also declined to discuss its vetting process or its publication of the unverified 1871 Spanish railroad document. Citing an organizational restructuring that occurred in 2021, the president of IndiJ Public Media, which runs ICT, said she “can’t speak to decisions made in the past” but added that the outlet “is committed to integrity and the highest journalistic standards.”

The Carrizo/Comecrudo Tribe operated on a tight budget for years after incorporating as a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit in 1999. The IRS repeatedly revoked and restored that status, and tax filings show the tribe reported less than $50,000 in annual revenue between 2012 and 2018. In 2016, a GoFundMe campaign raised just $3,000 to support a monthslong pipeline protest encampment.

Everything changed in 2019. 

As Mancias’ celebrity grew on the heels of his 2017 Paris trip, the tribe began attracting philanthropic support. The Carrizo/Comecrudo Tribe has raised more than $5 million since 2019, largely from environmental and social justice funders like the Schmidt Family Foundation, First Nations Development Institute, Rockefeller Family Fund, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

First Nations Development Institute, the Rockefeller Family Fund, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation did not respond to detailed requests for comment. The Schmidt Family Foundation defended its funding and said identity verification is beyond its philanthropic mandate. 

“While we resource many movements run by, and in service of, historically excluded demographics, we do not fund based on identity,” said Joseph Sciortino, executive director of the Schmidt Family Foundation. “Furthermore, it is not our place to interrogate the identity of those we support. Federal tribal recognition and matters of cultural legitimacy are incredibly complex and important subjects with significant social, cultural, and political implications. Our job as a philanthropy is to support important work, not to serve as the arbiters of who does and doesn’t get to be Indigenous.”

Philanthropic support helped the tribe in many successful campaigns. The tribe pushed French and Japanese banks to divest from LNG, disrupting financing for projects worth billions. It joined German activists to blockade European imports of fracked gas. It engaged in direct action to stop construction of the border wall and challenged Elon Musk’s plans to expand SpaceX operations in South Texas. As an accredited nongovernmental organization at the United Nations, the Carrizo/Comecrudo have weighed in on international negotiations, including a global plastics treaty.

Tori Cress, who is Beausoleil and a member of the Society of Native Nations, and Juan Mancias attend the International Indigenous Peoples Forum on Plastics in Busan, South Korea, in 2024. Kiara Worth / IISD / ENB

Mancias said the tribe is now working to protect threatened peyote habitats in South Texas, one of the few places in the U.S. where the psychoactive cactus, used as a sacrament in the Native American Church, grows wild. A spokesperson for the Native American Church declined to comment on this story.

It has accomplished all of this, Mancias said, with just five full-time employees, including his daughter. He also said much of the tribe’s money has gone toward buying land and paying taxes on it, a financial burden stemming from the tribe’s unrecognized status.

The Sierra Club has been one of the tribe’s most important allies. It has provided nearly $200,000 in grants and ongoing legal support, most recently in a lawsuit targeting SpaceX. The suit, filed by the environmental group SaveRGV in 2021 and later joined by the Sierra Club and the Carrizo/Comecrudo Tribe, challenged the closures of Boca Chica Beach on the Gulf Coast. The shutdowns can last as long as 12 hours and are meant to safeguard the public from any falling debris from the rocket company’s launches. The plaintiffs argued the closures violated the Texas Constitution’s guarantee of access to public beaches.

In June, the Texas Supreme Court unanimously ruled against them, holding that private parties do not have the right to sue to enforce public beach access.

Mancias has argued publicly that the closures infringe on rights protected under the federal American Indian Religious Freedom Act — but that law applies to citizens of federally recognized tribes.

“The Carrizo/Comecrudo Tribe are the original people of the Boca Chica Beach region,” Mancias has claimed. “The river is sacred to us. When we call for the rains, we go to the river because that’s where the rains come from. And we’ve been stopped, prevented from giving our prayers at Boca Chica beach by a billionaire’s pet project and the police.” 

But the litigation wasn’t fought on that ground. The suit rested on Texas beach-access law, not federal Indian law, and the tribe appeared in the case not as a sovereign nation but as an incorporated nonprofit organization. 

The Sierra Club did not respond to a detailed request for comment.

As an unrecognized group, the Carrizo/Comecrudo lack the legal standing to compel developers or governments to consult with them on projects impacting their claimed ancestral lands. Instead, Mancias has turned to international frameworks, specifically invoking the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, or UNDRIP, and the legal principle of free, prior, and informed consent, or FPIC. By leveraging these standards, the tribe has forged an effective strategy to legitimize its identity claims on the world stage, pressure international financial institutions, and attract philanthropic support.

Representatives of the Carrizo/Comecrudo Tribe have argued that because companies like SpaceX haven’t consulted tribal leaders, they are violating UNDRIP. As part of its legal tactics, the tribe has demanded federal agencies obtain its free and informed consent before launching oil and gas projects. It has used similar arguments to pressure investors in France and Japan, contending banks are violating that standard by failing to consult with the tribe.

Although UNDRIP is universal in scope, its practical significance is greatest where Indigenous Peoples lack meaningful domestic protections, legal recognition, or recourse against state violence. In much of Latin America, Africa, and Asia, weak protection of Indigenous land rights — compounded by extractive pressure, organized crime, and impunity — has made defending Indigenous territory deadly. Indigenous people make up roughly 6 percent of the world’s population but account for nearly a third of the environmental defenders attacked in 2024. 

The U.N. special rapporteur on the rights of Indigenous Peoples, Albert K. Barume, has tied that violence directly to the absence of secure land rights. “There is a crisis Indigenous people are currently experiencing, and it’s because many Indigenous Peoples are killed, many are under arrest, many live in hiding,” he told the U.N. Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues in 2026. “This is because Indigenous Peoples’ land and territory are often not protected enough.” 

Critics argue the framework was never intended to legitimize identity in the United States, where a system for establishing and recognizing tribal sovereignty already exists.

“They are literally using an argument that people in the world, that are being killed right now, actually need,” said Whyte.

The tribe’s closest ally in its international work has been the Society of Native Nations, or SNN, a Texas nonprofit founded in 2016 to combat historical erasure and promote the idea that “Indigenous peoples are still here in Texas.” It represents unrecognized tribes that receive no federal funding or support, including the Tap Pilam Coahulitecan Nation, Lipan Apache, Chichimeca, Tobotolobal, Mexica, and Purepecha. 

The society started with help from Mancias. 

For more than a decade, Mancias led the Central Texas chapter of the American Indian Movement, or AIM, a historic and controversial Native American grassroots civil rights organization. During that time he recruited Frankie Orona, an information technology entrepreneur from California who identifies as Tongva, Chumash, and Borrado, and is an enrolled member and environmental liaison for the San Gabriel Band of Mission Indians, which does not hold federal recognition status. 

“Frankie became a member because he met me,” said Mancias.

Frankie Orona, who leads the Society of Native Nations and is co-chair of the Major Groups Facilitating Committee, is shown here at a committee forum in Nairobi, Kenya, on December 7, 2025. Anastasia Rodopoulou / IISD / ENB

In early 2016, Orona filed the paperwork required to incorporate their chapter, the American Indian Movement Of Central Texas, as a nonprofit. Riding the momentum of Standing Rock, the chapter mobilized against the Trans-Pecos Pipeline in West Texas. Later that year, AIM Central Texas members, including Mancias, protested at a resort owned by the CEO of Energy Transfer Partners, the company behind the Dakota Access and Trans-Pecos pipelines. Two weeks later, on October 20, Orona renamed the organization the Society of Native Nations because, he said, AIM’s radical history made it “very, very difficult” to work with other organizations.

In a written response to an email outlining our findings, Orona said the “AIM Central Texas chapter was not renamed or replaced by SNN,” the organization still exists, and it “remains entirely separate from SNN.” 

That claim does not align with legal filings available through the IRS and the Texas Secretary of State. Those documents show that AIM Central Texas and the Society of Native Nations share the same incorporation date, state file number, and federal tax identification number. SNN’s own governing documents reveal a shared origin: SNN’s by-laws — including its entire preamble, structural goals, and mission statements — are drawn almost verbatim from bylaws the Des Moines, Iowa chapter of AIM used in the 1970s, many of which are found in contemporary AIM materials. 

The bylaws of the American Indian Movement of Des Moines, left, as printed in the record of a 1976 U.S. Senate subcommittee hearing, are shown alongside the bylaws adopted by the Society of Native Nations in November 2016. Highlights indicate passages the two documents share, including the organizations’ purposes and both lists of objectives. U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary; Society of Native Nations

Orona also insisted that “Juan Mancias was not part of creating SNN.”

The society’s financial growth has mirrored the rise of the Carrizo/Comecrudo Tribe. After filing rudimentary tax returns for several years, the organization’s fortunes changed dramatically in 2019 when it began securing climate-action grants, including funding to “address threats of fossil fuel infrastructure and border wall construction on ancestral lands of the Carrizo Comecrudo Tribe.” By 2024, its reported annual revenue had reached nearly $777,000 with money coming from many of the same philanthropic funders supporting the Carrizo/Commecrudo Tribe.

A review of the organization’s tax filings reveals a history of reporting inconsistencies and revisions. The society has on three occasions between 2018 and 2024 reported different revenue for the same tax periods, and later filings reported substantially higher revenue for earlier tax years. In 2024, the society’s tax forms misattributed historical revenues to the wrong years and left the current year’s income column blank.

In his written response to Grist, Orona said SNN is aware of the discrepancies and is working with a new accountant to review its filings for the past three years. “This corrective process began before we learned of your investigation,” he said. “We acknowledge that the public filings contain reporting inconsistencies that need to be corrected. However, the placement of figures in incorrect year columns or inconsistent presentation across returns should not, without further evidence, be characterized as intentional misconduct or as proof that funds were missing, improperly received, or misused.” 

Asked to speak in general about the structural risks of funding unverified organizations rather than sovereign nations, Whyte noted that such groups frequently lack the infrastructure to handle large grants. “When a group comes in that has no potential for self-governance, they often lie about who their members are,” he said. “It might be a few figureheads, usually one person that’s the point person for everything, and a few other followers, and if they do get money, they often don’t have the capacity to manage those funds, and the entire thing gets wasted.”

Ongoing financial support helped propel the Society of Native Nations onto the global stage alongside the Carrizo/Comecrudo Tribe. Both organizations gained accredited nongovernmental status within the United Nations, allowing them to participate in global conversations, forums, and negotiations.

Within the United Nations system, legitimate tribal governments can, and do, participate as sovereign nations in specific Indigenous-focused spaces, such as the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. However, at the highest levels of global diplomacy — including the U.N. General Assembly, Human Rights Council, and Economic and Social Council — the U.N. remains exclusively for recognized Member States. 

Frankie Orona is shown here attending a meeting of an International Institute for Sustainable Development working group in Geneva on June 20, 2024. Mike Muzurakis / IISD / ENB

Because the U.N. excludes Indigenous governments from participating as sovereign nations in these broader arenas, Indigenous Peoples have fought for years for “enhanced participation” — the ability for tribal governments to hold a dignified, permanent status to negotiate on global policies that directly affect them. Until that happens, the system forces a workaround: To gain access to high-level bodies and specialized agencies, Indigenous Peoples must participate through nongovernmental organizations, or NGOs. 

Both the society and the Carrizo/Comecrudo have used this loophole to gain a level of international power and influence they could not exert in the United States. The society secured accreditation with UNESCO — the U.N. body protecting cultural heritage — in 2024 by highlighting its partnership with the Carrizo/Comecrudo. It also won recognition from the U.N. Environment Programme, or UNEP, where Orona now co-chairs the Indigenous Peoples Major Group, a position that helps shape high-level negotiations like the global plastics treaty that represent the interests of Indigenous Peoples worldwide.

Just 24 Indigenous-focused organizations are accredited observers to the United Nations Environment Assembly, the world’s highest decision-making body for environmental matters. Only four are from the U.S. One is the International Indian Treaty Council, which is among the oldest and most established Indigenous NGOs at the U.N. The others are the Society of Native Nations, Humanculture, and the Carrizo/Comecrudo Tribe of Texas.

The society holds similar standing at UNESCO. Of the 10 NGOs from the United States with accreditation, only three focus on Indigenous issues: the Pacific Traditions Society, Cultural Survival, and the Society of Native Nations. 

As accredited observers, NGOs cannot negotiate as sovereign governments. But groups like the Society of Native Nations and the Carrizo/Comecrudo Tribe receive a wide range of institutional privileges. Among other things, they can provide oral and written contributions to draft resolutions, access internal documents unavailable to the public, and interact directly with government delegations. 

“The U.S., when they come with a delegation, you have members from the [Department of Justice] there sometimes, or [Health and Human Services],” said Orona. “You speak to states and you are able to influence policy that can impact generations and generations and generations yet to come.”

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Yet despite granting this high-level diplomatic access, the U.N. does not verify whether these organizations actually represent historical Indigenous communities. In an emailed statement to Grist, a UNEP spokesperson confirmed that the agency “respects the principle of self-identification” and relies purely on standard nonprofit eligibility requirements for accreditation.

“UNEP, like other U.N. mechanisms, does not conduct determinations regarding the sovereign status, federal recognition, historical continuity, ancestry, or genealogical claims of organizations or individuals,” the spokesperson wrote, adding that accreditation “does not constitute endorsement or validation of such claims.”

That policy creates a structural conflict of interest for anyone looking to challenge a group’s credentials. Indigenous participation at UNEP is managed through the Indigenous Peoples Major Group. Because Orona currently serves as its co-chair, internal guidelines recommend that any official complaints or clarifications be brought to “one or both” co-chairs privately before being elevated to the broader group. A UNEP representative confirmed there is no specific conflict-of-interest procedure for this scenario, but did say that such a case wouldn’t be required to pass through a co-chair’s hands. Instead, concerns could be raised with the other co-chair or bypass the internal governance entirely by consulting UNEP’s Civil Society Unit.

Orona has become a fixture at U.N. summits, attending more than a dozen international events since 2024 in places like Geneva; Nairobi, Kenya; and Busan, South Korea. Mancias has also traveled internationally on behalf of the tribe and has, among other events, attended global conferences on fossil fuels and plastics in Kenya and Uruguay. He also participated in the 2024 plastics treaty negotiations in South Korea. 

For Indigenous delegates, the presence of individuals and groups with unverified claims exercising this level of influence has been a longstanding source of frustration. Because the U.N. system relies heavily on NGO credentials and self-identification, it inadvertently creates a pathway to undeserved international legitimacy.

“This has been an issue of concern throughout the U.N. system regarding the representation of Indigenous Peoples, and it is really hard to know how to deal with it,” said Andrea Carmen, executive director of the International Indian Treaty Council. “None of us know everybody, and definitely we don’t know Indigenous Peoples’ from every region. We don’t want to exclude anyone unfairly, but we do hear these concerns expressed.”

The Right of ‘Peoples,’ Not Groups

International law and identity: Under Article 33 of the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, or UNDRIP, Indigenous Peoples can determine their own identity or membership. This is a direct application of the broader right of self-determination that asserts Indigenous Peoples can “freely determine their political status.”

These rights are recognized for Indigenous Peoples specifically, not as a right for any individual to self-identify as Indigenous.

Defining “Indigenous Peoples”: The U.N. has relied on a definition drawn from Special Rapporteur José Martínez Cobo’s landmark study. As the U.N. Working Group on Indigenous Populations drafted UNDRIP, it adopted his central criteria: “historical continuity with pre-invasion and pre-colonial societies that developed on their territories.”

This is generally understood to include ongoing occupation of ancestral lands, clearly recognized descent from precolonial occupants, cultural continuity through spiritual customs and traditional livelihoods, and use of a common Indigenous language.

Illegitimate claims: These criteria have been used to reject spurious claims. One of the clearest examples came after the end of apartheid, when a self-defined delegation of South African Boers sought recognition as an Indigenous people whose culture was under threat. But as the descendants of Dutch settlers, experts quickly decided it could not satisfy the framework’s central requirement of historical continuity with precolonial societies.

Indigenous identity is a matter of representation, not racial descent or blood quantum. It also does not require state recognition. When someone claims to speak on behalf of, or represent, an Indigenous people, an institution, or organization, it’s important for them to clarify the specific Indigenous people that authorized that representation. The same goes for state delegates.

These questions can be difficult to raise, but they’re necessary to prevent abuses and misrepresentation that could undermine the movement’s collective work at the U.N.

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The U.N. has no formal mechanism to verify if participants, tribes, or organizations are who they say they are. But having illegitimate actors in the system takes diplomatic oxygen and means from legitimate Indigenous Peoples.

“It is concerning when you hear about entities whose claims to being Indigenous aren’t substantiated, that may be taking funding, time, representation, and resources away from Indigenous Peoples’ and their organizations that are really struggling to participate,” said Carmen. “If some are truly not bona fide, they should not be speaking as Indigenous Peoples.”

Orona and Mancias have known each other for more than a decade. “We do a lot of ceremony together, we spend a lot of time up in South Dakota together, we Sun Dance together,” Orona said in an interview with Grist earlier this year. Later, Orona said in an email that their collaboration has been largely a professional relationship before later saying it was largely a ceremonial one.

“My association with a person through environmental and Indigenous rights advocacy should not be presented as proof that I authenticated every historical or genealogical claim made by that person,” he wrote. “Participation in SNN does not confer Tribal citizenship, federal recognition, sovereign status, or validation of a person’s genealogy. Likewise, SNN membership should not be portrayed as evidence that the organization has formally authenticated every identity claim made by every member or affiliated individual.” 

Mancias’ ability to garner headlines and funding has required sharing the spotlight. Just up the Gulf Coast near Galveston, the unrecognized Karankawa Tribe of Texas has also been focused on environmental justice and protecting ancestral lands and artifacts from the petrochemical industry. This work has been led primarily by Sandra Love Sanchez, who claims Karankawa and Lipan Apache descent and is the tribe’s environmental liaison. She has cited Standing Rock as the catalyst for the tribe’s work. 

The Karankawa are well documented in Texas history and once controlled nearly 300 miles of coast from Corpus Christi Bay to Galveston Bay. Yet for more than a century, history books and roadside historical markers deemed them “extinct,” like the Carrizo/Comecrudo. That narrative held until 2009, when retired U.S. Army veteran Enrique Gonzalez came forward and claimed to be Karankawa. 

According to Gonzalez, rather than being wiped out in the mid-1800s, a band of Karankawa retreated to the Rio Grande Valley and secretly preserved the tribe’s culture. Gonzalez’s account marked a turning point. Since then, a growing network of people identifying as Karankawa Kadla — Kadla meaning “culturally mixed” to encompass other bloodlines, including non-Indigenous ones — has begun connecting online and with local historians.

“For many centuries we have been in hiding,” the tribe’s website declares. “We are hiding no longer.”

‘I think if you’re going to be doing these kinds of things, you have to be honest about who or what you are.’

Juan Mancias

The Karankawa have found common cause with the Carrizo/Comecrudo in a fight to save Donnel Point, a 2,300-year-old shell midden rediscovered along the La Quinta Ship Channel after having been assumed destroyed by dredging in the 1950s. When a local geologist stumbled across the intact site in 2025, organizers realized it was in immediate danger of development. The Karankawa and Carrizo/Comecrudo enlisted attorneys at Earthjustice to challenge the federal permitting process.

“By stopping this project, that would be protecting the land,” said Love Sanchez in an interview.

Earthjustice responded to a detailed list of questions about its vetting protocol with a statement reading, “At Earthjustice, we represent impacted communities across Texas to defend their health and significant places. We will continue to fight in the courts for our clients’ legal rights to protect their longstanding, generational legacy of stewardship.”

But Mancias has dismissed the Karankawa as fakes and latecomers riding the wave that followed Standing Rock. “If you follow the paperwork, they just got together, like, what, three or four years ago,” he said. “It became a fad after NODAPL. A lot of people got into the environmental stuff.” 

Mancias claims that he too is Karankawa, and that the word comes from the Carrizo/Comecrudo language. “I know that we’re Karankawa for a fact,” he said. “The documentation is there. I think it’s just poor research, and people are just trying to fight and justify their Indigeneity.” 

The Karankawa are not alone in facing Mancias’ skepticism. He has questioned the historical presence and true identity of the Lipan Apache in South Texas, an unrecognized tribe also heavily engaged in climate and environmental work at the domestic and international level. He claims that historical records provide no evidence the Lipan Apache ever lived in South Texas, and he attributes the name “Apache” to the Spanish word mapache: “A racoon,” said Mancias. “Everybody sees the racoon as a mischievous little thief and that’s what they would call a lot of the Native groups that had already started losing their identity.” 

Mancias has also dismissed the legitimacy of the Miakan-Garza Tribe, arguing that the unrecognized group based in San Antonio is not a distinct nation but a Carrizo/Comecrudo clan. He claims it was formed by “old men” who emerged from the Chicano movement, discovered they were Indigenous, and sought to identify with a tribe. “If you know anything about the Garzas, it’s not really a tribe,” he said.

“I’m not going to fight anybody that claims to be Native because we got bigger fights to fight,” Mancias added. “But I think if you’re going to be doing these kinds of things, you have to be honest about who or what you are.”

A landmark study in the journal Science found that Indigenous nations in the United States have lost 98.9 percent of their land, the result of centuries of violence, unratified or broken treaties, and racist federal policy. The Dawes Act of 1887 alone stripped tribes of roughly 90 million acres, of which only 8 percent has been reacquired. Today, 42 percent of tribal nations have no land base at all, and those that do hold, on average, less than 3 percent of their historic territory.

Regaining stolen land is a long process. Tribes can often wait decades to see even the smallest parcel placed into trust — the legal step that turns public or private property into sovereign territory. Records obtained from the Bureau of Indian Affairs show the Ely Shoshone Tribe’s 1995 application to put land into trust was approved in 2024. The Pala Reservation’s 2003 filing was completed in 2023; the same year saw a 2006 submission from the Wind River Reservation approved. 

The Carrizo/Comecrudo haven’t had to wait that long. Between 2022 and 2024, the tribe bought four properties in Cameron County, Texas, totaling 22.61 acres along the route of a proposed Enbridge pipeline. The deals were funded by grants from the Hive Fund for Climate & Gender Justice, Equation Campaign, the Schmidt Family Foundation, and NDN Collective. 

“We selected these grantees for the demonstrated effectiveness of their organizing against fossil fuel expansion and related harms in South Texas and elsewhere,” Katie Redford, executive director of the Equation Campaign, said in an emailed statement. “That record, not a claim to Indigenous identity, is why we funded them.

“We do not adjudicate who is or is not Indigenous, and we would not consider it legitimate to try,” Redford said. “We find the premise of these questions — that a funder should be auditing a person’s bloodline — offensive. A tribe’s determination of its own membership is a core attribute of its sovereignty, and federal acknowledgment under 25 C.F.R. Part 83 is a political and administrative process, not a genealogical one. There is no single accepted standard a funder could apply, and any standard we invented would be our own imposition — which is the reason philanthropy has no business in this.”

Melanie Allen, CEO of Hive Fund, said in an emailed response that the organization’s grantmaking is focused on the transition to clean energy in the South. “We fund the Carrizo/Comecrudo Tribe of Texas as part of a broader ecosystem of grantee partners in South Texas working to protect the health and safety of communities by opposing fossil fuel buildout,” Allen said. “Specifically, we have funded the Tribe to contest the construction of several liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminals in the Rio Grande Valley. We evaluate prospective grantee partners for charitable status, legal compliance, financial management, organizational capacity, and alignment with our mission, not Indigenous status.”

NDN Collective did not respond to requests for comment.

A $1.2 million check from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation was supposed to underwrite the Carrizo/Comecrudo Tribe’s plan to acquire 170 acres in Laredo for a community center and land trust. That deal fell through, according to Mancias, and most of that grant was rescinded, but a purported 3,400-acre donation in Sierra Blanca to restore the tribe’s traditional land base remains a work in progress. That land, he said, has been willed to the tribe, but the required paperwork is still being completed; around 700 acres of the donation is currently being leased, though Mancias would not say by whom. 

Mancias hopes these acquisitions will make the tribe more “self-determining.” To that end, he said he is founding “the first Native American university in Texas,” which conceivably would teach future generations of Carrizo/Comecrudo to be financially and academically independent. “We want to say, ‘You can’t tell us what to teach anymore, we don’t accept your ideas of invasion and colonization because we’re not a conquered people,’” he said.

Mancias said he’ll work with Rice University or the University of Houston to obtain accreditation, and claims to have been in contact with the American Indian Higher Education Consortium, a nonprofit composed of the presidents of the nation’s 37 tribal colleges. The University of Houston said it was unaware of the project and is not an accrediting agency. The consortium declined to comment, and Rice University did not respond.

Still, Mancias’ efforts have attracted support from global institutions. For decades, Garcia Pasture — a sprawling, pre-Columbian village site and burial ground near Brownsville — has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places. But as plans for a massive oil and gas export terminal advanced on the site, international advocates took notice. In 2022, the World Monuments Fund designated Garcia Pasture an irreplaceable cultural site and “traditional territory of the Carrizo/Comecrudo Tribe of Texas threatened by natural resource extraction” that “requires formal legal recognition to ensure its future.” The organization accompanied its announcement with a sprawling online exhibit supporting the tribe’s history and pledged to support its quest for federal recognition, citing “overwhelming historical evidence” that proves its connection to South Texas.

According to Frankie Orona, the Society of Native Nations plans to leverage its UNESCO accreditation to one day see Garcia Pasture formally recognized. 

“We have had conversations about how we can help to support the tribe in doing that,” said Orona. “To acknowledge Garcia Pasture as a sacred site and try to help to recommend it to be seen and recognized as a UNESCO heritage site.”

In his written response, Orona said that statement was not a commitment to pursue a UNESCO nomination, only a reflection of “SNN’s general practice of looking for appropriate ways to support issues affecting Indigenous Peoples and culturally significant places.” He also said the society had not authenticated the historical or genealogical documents the Carrizo/Comecrudo Tribe cited.

The World Monuments Fund declined to comment on the findings of this investigation, and UNESCO did not respond. 

Taken together, the tribe’s acquisitions are, relatively speaking, significant. A few tribes have managed to see vast tracts placed in trust — nearly 60,000 acres for the Santa Ana Pueblo in New Mexico, for example, and almost 39,000 for the Osage Nation in Oklahoma. But BIA data show nearly 70 percent of applications filed between 1995 and 2014 were for less than 50 acres. Many sought tiny slivers of land. The Puyallup Tribe, in what’s currently Washington state, filed paperwork for just 0.57 acres, and applications filed by the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community in Minnesota included parcels as small as 0.684 acres.

“Rampant land dispossession has not been addressed with actual tribes,” said Whyte. “That’s well documented. It’s clear. I think the remedies are clear. Yet somebody that spins this narrative is then receiving resources and having a public profile, but there’s nothing behind it.”

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Mancias’ side-stepping of the process that recognized tribes must endure limits how that land is protected. A community land trust, like the one the Mellon Foundation initially supported, can offer limited protection from fossil fuel and other development. Land placed into trust, however, is placed under the jurisdiction of a federally recognized tribe. It is no longer subject to state and local taxes, zoning laws, or eminent domain, and officially becomes “Indian Country,” allowing a tribe to exercise its inherent sovereign powers, manage land and resources as it sees fit, and deploy traditional ecological practices.

That has profound implications for biodiversity and the climate. A review of more than 600 studies shows conservation is vastly more successful when Indigenous Peoples and local communities have primary control or equal partnership over their lands. Positive outcomes have been achieved in 85 percent of the cases where that happens, compared to just 18 percent when Native peoples are treated merely as stakeholders or a community to be consulted. 

“The Indigenous climate justice movement is all about the fact that you have, across the world, thousands of groups that for generations have been self-governing,” said Whyte. “These self-governing entities, in the territories where they are self-governing or where legally they should be able to self-govern, have a tremendous impact on climate change.”

Juan Mancias addresses attendees at a climate protest in New York City on September 19, 2023. Gina M. Randazzo / ZUMA Press Wire / Shutterstock

In a warming world, Indigenous identities — warped by centuries of abuse and misuse — have become potent vehicles for capturing public attention and sympathy. This too often includes recycling of old tropes, including the ecologically minded Indian made popular by Espera Oscar de Corti. Among the most well-known pretendians, de Corti is famous for his appearance as “The Crying Indian” in a Keep America Beautiful ad that aired on Earth Day 1971. De Corti, dressed as a Plains-style Indian in buckskin and braids, paddles a canoe past ship channels filled with trash before pulling up to a debris-strewn beach. “Some people have a deep, abiding respect for the natural beauty that was once this country, and some people don’t,” the narrator intones as trash thrown from a passing car lands at de Corti’s feet. The camera pans up to his face, where a single tear rolls down his cheek. 

But that trope endures beyond nostalgia. Today, it appropriates and repackages genuine Indigenous scholarship, worldviews, and political struggles into simplified archetypes that can be easily consumed, circulated, and capitalized upon, from the crying Indian to the righteous water protector.

“The appropriation and use of that imagery can be attractive to NGOs entering into this space,” said Monte Mills, director of the Native American Law Center at the University of Washington. “Some of that is so deeply ingrained in the national consciousness. It’s hard to uproot.”

Members of the Carrizo/Comecrudo Tribe of Texas gather outside the White House following President Joe Biden’s October 2021 proclamation of Indigenous Peoples Day. Andrew Harnik / AP Photo

Indigenous Peoples have long been imagined or appropriated to serve settler needs and anxieties. Phil Deloria, a Yankton-descended Harvard historian and author of Playing Indian, argues that Americans have always needed constructed images of “Indians” to define their own history and identity. From sports mascots to the Boy Scouts’ appropriation of Indigenous culture, Native iconography has been woven into narratives of national belonging. 

“In the ’70s, you’ve got this ecological Indian thing happening,” Deloria said. In the 1980s, the self-healing, New Age Indian was in vogue. And then, “In the ’90s and aughts, you’ve got the postmodern Indian, who’s sort of ironic and hip and kind of cool,” Deloria added. “So one way to think about this is that climate change is just another one of these modernist crises where people imagine certain kinds of Indian-ness.”

For Mancias, that kind of Indian-ness has meant replacing buckskin with ribbon shirts and ball caps, trash by pipelines, tears by righteous anger.

“I’m no f*cking activist,” said Mancias. “I’m protecting our land and protecting our principles and our teachings and who we are. Cuz I was told, ‘Go get our lands back.’”

In February of this year, the Carrizo/Comecrudo Tribe graduated from press releases, niche blogs, and climate reporting to Hollywood with the release of Gaslit. The documentary, hosted by Jane Fonda and produced by Greenpeace, chronicles her travels through Texas’ oil fields, documenting “fossil fuel profiteering, environmental racism, and the lives of everyday people.” During her journey, Fonda visits the Carrizo/Comecrudo Tribe, and between sweeping images of the Gulf Coast and fossil fuel infrastructure, footage of Juan Mancias and Frankie Orona carrying an American Indian Movement flag flashes across the screen. 

For viewers, there are no missing records, genealogical gaps, questionable family histories, or factual anachronisms. Instead, they see exactly what Mancias has manifested: a moral, Indigenous front line in the battle to stop climate change, with a story the world is eager to believe. 

In the film, that story is delivered by Christopher Basaldú, the co-founder of South Texas Environmental Justice Network and alleged relative of Mancias. “We have the port selling us out, not listening to the tribe when we tell them these are sacred lands and we actually do have villages and archeological sites in the area that are being destroyed,” he says. “On top of that, in comes the billionaire conman of the world, Elon Musk. He’s polluting and destroying the area where we remember our creation.”

“When Gaslit was produced and published, our editorial review surfaced no dispute over the region’s Indigenous communities and gave us no reason to doubt Mr. Mancias’ statements,” said a spokesperson for the film. “Greenpeace USA respects Indigenous sovereignty and the right to self-determination as outlined in our Indigenous Peoples Policy, and also recognizes that Indigenous identity is a complex issue due to the far-reaching effects of colonialism. Therefore, we believe decisions on claims of Indigenous identity belong to tribal nations and communities, and follow that leadership.”

The fight against Musk and his company SpaceX has become Mancias’ primary focus these days. With the Texas Supreme Court dismissing the tribe’s claims earlier this year, the tribe has opened a new front: Working with the Center for Biological Diversity, South Texas Environmental Justice Network, and SaveRGV to sue the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The groups hope to block a land swap that would give SpaceX more than 700 acres of a national wildlife refuge.

“Our Mothman prophecies come straight out of Texas and they talk about the coming of fracking,” Mancias said of prehistoric and historic petroglyphs found in the state. “It shows horizontal fracking and it shows the actual land movers, and then there’s the other ones that show SpaceX and Blue Origin and they show the rockets there.”

Of this, as with everything, belief is the only evidence he can offer.

Correction: This story originally misstated Joseph Sciortino’s title.

CREDITS

This story was reported and written by Tristan Ahtone and edited by Chuck Squatriglia and Katherine Bagley. Story art by Marty Two Bulls Jr., with art direction by Teresa Chin. Fact-checking was conducted by Elisângela Mendonça of Mongabay through the Indigenous News Alliance, as well as Angely Mercado. The story was copyedited by Jaime Buerger and Laura Mallonnee assisted in searching Texas state archives. ​

 

DISCLOSURES

• Tristan Ahtone contributed to the IJA Indigenous Identity Reporting Guide, the UNESCO Indigenous Peoples and the Media report, and the Vermont Public Radio Series “Recognized” cited in this story. He has delivered lectures through the Mellon Foundation’s Sawyer Seminar.

• Grist included Nick Tilsen, CEO of NDN Collective in its 2019 Grist 50 list of climate innovators. Bekah Hinojosa appeared on the 2022 Grist 50 and in our Looking Forward newsletter.
• Grist receives funding from Hive Fund, the Rockefeller Family Fund, 11th Hour Project, and the Schmidt Family Foundation. Funders play no role in Grist’s editorial decisions.

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This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The climate movement gave this Texas tribe millions and a global platform. No one checked its story. on Aug 13, 2026.

In 2017, Juan Mancias, the chairman of the Carrizo/Comecrudo Tribe of Texas, traveled to France to help pressure two of the country’s largest banks into divesting from oil and gas projects in South Texas. He cast the fight as a new chapter in a centuries-long struggle to protect the tribe’s sacred lands. The campaign succeeded, and helped make Mancias an international climate figure. Over the next several years, he would use that status to bring more than $5 million in philanthropic funding to the unrecognized tribe.  

An investigation by Grist found that the historical and genealogical evidence underpinning Mancias’ claim that he is the hereditary chief of the Carrizo/Comecrudo Tribe cannot be verified. The foundational document he cites cannot be located or authenticated, and Mancias failed to provide it after multiple requests. Genealogical records trace his documented Indigenous ancestry to Mexico in the late 1700s on his maternal line, not the paternal line his claim rests on. 

Read Next The climate movement gave this Texas tribe millions and a global platform. No one checked its story. Tristan Ahtone

Mancias’ case reveals an unofficial “shadow” recognition system, one in which environmental nonprofits, journalists, and international human rights bodies support unrecognized, and unverified, individuals and groups in the fight against climate change. Although the short-term gains are real — Mancias and his allies have stymied LNG expansion in South Texas — experts said they often come at the expense of legitimate Indigenous Peoples, tribes, and organizations.

Here are five takeaways from our investigation: 

Marty Two Bulls Jr. / Grist The Carrizo/Comecrudo Tribe of Texas has raised more than $5 million for climate- and environmental-related efforts since 2019 despite holding neither federal nor state recognition.

After incorporating as a nonprofit in 1999, the tribe operated on a shoestring for two decades and reported less than $50,000 in annual revenue for several years beginning in 2012. That changed soon after the protests at the Standing Rock Indian Reservation, when Mancias’ campaign in France made him an international climate figure. Philanthropists gave him money, environmental nonprofits provided legal assistance, and journalists chronicled his work.

Mancias’ primary evidence supporting his claims of Indigeneity — an 1871 railroad report describing an 1801 massacre — cannot be located or authenticated, and historians doubt its plausibility.

Mancias has cited the document for two decades, including in federal court, as proof of his lineage and the tribe’s connection to South Texas, but he would not produce a physical copy. Extensive searches of repositories within the Texas State Library and Archives Commission found no evidence it exists, and Grist identified multiple anachronisms in its timeline and provenance with historians describing its existence as “improbable.”

Between 2022 and 2024, the tribe used philanthropic grants to buy four properties totaling nearly 23 acres along a proposed pipeline route in Cameron County, Texas.

The purchases allowed the tribe to purchase land it describes as ancestral territory — a claim that cannot be verified — and sidestep the arduous federal process recognized tribal nations must navigate to reacquire land. That contrast is stark. Federal policies like the Dawes Act and the Morrill Act seized and redistributed millions of acres of expropriated tribal land to settlers and state institutions — dispossessions that have been exhaustively documented and largely unremedied. But records obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request show that recognized nations seeking to recover even a fraction of an acre can wait decades to acquire land, while the Carrizo/Comecrudo, with philanthropic backing, bought land in a matter of months. Unlike land reacquired by recognized tribes, parcels in Cameron County remain subject to property taxes and carry only limited protection from development.

The Carrizo/Comecrudo Tribe of Texas and its closest ally, the Society of Native Nations, a Texas-focused intertribal organization, hold accredited observer status at the United Nations.

Twenty-four Indigenous-focused organizations are accredited observers to the U.N. Environment Assembly, or UNEA, the world’s highest decision-making body on environmental matters. Four are based in the United States, including the Carrizo/Comecrudo and the Society of Native Nations. 

SNN also holds accreditation at UNESCO, where it is one of three U.S. nongovernmental organizations focused on Indigenous issues. It secured that status by highlighting its partnership with the Carrizo/Comecrudo. Because the U.N. bars Indigenous Peoples and governments from participating as sovereign entities in its highest bodies, NGO accreditation is a convenient workaround that carries real privileges. These organizations can submit language to draft resolutions, access documents unavailable to the public, and engage directly with government delegations, including U.S. authorities that Orona told Grist have at times included officials from the Justice Department and Health and Human Services. Such access typically is reserved for the elected officials of federally recognized tribal nations.

At the U.N., the person who would consider challenges to the legitimacy of the Carrizo/Comecrudo Tribe or the Society of Native Nations leads the society itself.

Frankie Orona co-chairs the Indigenous Peoples Major Group at the U.N. Environment Programme, or UNEP, whose internal guidance calls for referring complaints about participants to its co-chairs. Orona is executive director of the Society of Native Nations, which he built out of an American Indian Movement chapter that Mancias recruited him into. UNEP told Grist it does not have a procedure for addressing such a conflict of interest, though it said concerns could go to the other co-chair or directly to its Civil Society Unit.

This post has been updated to clarify SNN’s Texas-focused mission.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline 5 takeaways from our investigation into the ‘ghost’ tribe that got millions in climate funding on Aug 13, 2026.

Researchers have found that the amount of green space and shade in a neighborhood can significantly shape temperatures. On average, neighborhoods with more trees and green space — instead of impermeable surfaces like pavement — can run anywhere from 1 to 7 degrees Fahrenheit cooler. The phenomenon, which has been well studied in major urban cities, is called the “heat island effect.” But researchers have done far less work examining how those trends play out in more rural parts of the country.

Missoula, Montana, is helping fill that gap. In 2024, Climate Smart Missoula, a local nonprofit, teamed up with the city and county of Missoula and secured federal funding for a heat mapping initiative. Last summer, teams of volunteers drove countywide transects with sensors recording second-by-second measurements of temperature and humidity. Then analysts with the climate adaptation consulting firm CAPA Strategies turned the data into a now-publicly available heat map for the county. It’s the first of its kind for the state and this region of the Rockies. (Cities in Wyoming, North Dakota, and South Dakota also do not have heat maps.)

A humidity and heat sensor attached to a car window collect data to create Missoula County’s heat map.
Ellis Juhlin

The research is especially important because Missoula has historically had warm, dry summers. Temperatures in the western Montana county climb into the 80s, with occasional stretches in the 90s, before cooling off sharply after sunset. But that pattern has shifted in recent years, with hotter summers and warmer nights. The area is already experiencing more days with temperatures above 90 degrees F each year. The county’s average annual temperature is projected to increase by 4 to 5 degrees F by 2050. 

The change poses particular challenges for places like Missoula, where homes, buildings, and other public infrastructure were built for cooler climates. Montana has one of the lowest rates of residential air conditioning in the country. When the heat builds, Montanans don’t have the same infrastructure as Arizonans or Texans to keep cool. 

The researchers found that temperatures can vary by nearly 20 degrees across Missoula County depending on the prevalence of shade from trees and other green spaces. Susan Teitelman, with Climate Smart Missoula, said their findings mirror heat maps in other larger cities across the country. 

“What we’re seeing in Missoula mimics larger cities like New York and Boston,” she said. “You see the same thing happening everywhere: Poorer, hotter neighborhoods have fewer trees; wealthier, greener neighborhoods have lower temperatures.”

Alli Kane, the county’s climate action program coordinator, said some of the results weren’t surprising. Neighborhoods like the University District or the Rattlesnake, where large, mature trees provide shade, were significantly cooler than the Northside or Westside.

“Places where we anticipated we would have heat islands were downtown Missoula, around Southgate Mall, those areas that are more urban and more built up,” Kane said.

But there were surprises, too, including how dry, brown open lands, like an empty lot in town, acted as heat islands, according to Kane. These unmanaged and undeveloped spaces tend to be a magnet for invasive species that quickly adapt to hot and dry conditions. When they’re left unwatered and not replaced with native species, they can act as heat islands, Kane said. The research showed heavily forested places like Seeley Lake and Evaro, a rural area north of the city center with dense trees, also held on to heat overnight.

“You’ll see, especially in the morning map, they are retaining heat from the day before because of that really dense canopy, and so that effect is resulting in some of our highest-recorded morning temperatures,” Kane said.

Agencies like the National Weather Service have consistently identified heat as the most deadly weather Americans experience. Research from the University of Montana published in 2024 found that for every 1 degree Celsius temperature increase, 911 calls increased correspondingly by 1 percent. Many of those calls came from rural areas with older, retired populations that are more susceptible to extreme heat. 

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The city and county of Missoula and Climate Smart launched a campaign called Stay Cool Missoula to build community resilience for extreme heat and attempt to prevent those deaths. Teitelman with Climate Smart Missoula pointed out that it’s critical to prepare communities for what is coming. 

“Extreme heat is dangerous,” she says. “It is impacting Missoula and Montana. It’s impacting northern climates, and it’s an issue of equity.” 

Teitelman leads Climate Smart’s efforts to plant trees in lower-income neighborhoods where tree cover is sparse or nonexistent. Having access to the heat map has helped her target those planting efforts. The map has been put to use in other ways too, like conversations around the proposed data center in Bonner on the banks of the Blackfoot River. That project was ultimately canceled by the property manager. But Kane said being able to showcase just how much warmer that area is, due to the amount of land cleared for industrial use, will help inform the county on future regulations and decision-making. 

Missoula was one of 11 communities — including New Orleans, Memphis, Buffalo, and Moab, among others — that NOAA funded as part of a nationwide effort to map heat islands in 2025. But the work almost didn’t happen. 

Like many federally funded projects related to climate change, it was targeted by the Trump administration. Kane, Teitelman, and their other partners had been awarded the grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Center for Collaborative Heat Monitoring Program in 2024. The money was allocated in the Inflation Reduction Act, the 2022 climate law passed by Congress. The Trump administration then terminated the funding in May 2025. 

Read Next What federal cuts to science funding could mean for the Great Lakes Vivian La

About half of the money was spent or allocated to partners before the grant’s cancellation, but Teitelman said it was a team effort to carry out the work after funds were rescinded. Climate Smart, along with the city and county of Missoula, had the staff to continue the work, but they also relied on free assistance from CAPA Strategies and other national collaborators. 

“They’ve done all this pro bono work for our community and other communities. That’s just been a boon for us and communities across the U.S. who got to do this heat mapping in light of federal funding being revoked,” Teitelman said.

Kane said the lack of funding doesn’t change the reality of a warming world. 

“There has been so much disruption overturned because of what’s happening at the federal level,” she said. “But I do think that our local governments and our local organizations are pretty uniquely positioned to continue to work on this, and so we’re putting everything we can behind it.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline As Montana warms, Missoula’s first heat map reveals hidden hotspots on Aug 13, 2026.

Matthew LaPlante doesn’t have to go to a lab to see his research in action. On some mornings, he can just look out his own window in the mountains high above Salt Lake City. After a warm night when the temperature stays above freezing, he’ll wake up and see that the snow level has dropped by inches, revealing more of the aspens he taps for syrup.

“It feels like a monster came and just in the middle of the night, took a bite out of a snowpack,” said LaPlante, a journalist and climate scientist at Utah State University.

So it’s fitting that scientists have started calling these kinds of heat waves, marked by unusually high temperatures in the spring and early summer, “snow eaters.” 

LaPlante was part of a recent study, published in the journal Science Advances, that attempted, for the first time, to identify what conditions exactly make for a “snow eater.” Compared to normal warm spells or heat waves, the researchers determined that these events happen when temperatures stay above freezing through both day and night for multiple days, typically three to five. These events can roughly double the rate at which snow melts, causing flooding and making it challenging to manage water resources. 

“Snow eaters” appear to be occurring earlier in the year and becoming more widespread in the Western United States as the climate warms. Since the 1850s, the study found, the area affected by snow eaters has increased by an average of about 40,000 square miles per century, and the first snow eater of the season has been arriving about one month earlier per century. 

The term “snow eater” has a murky history. By at least the 1880s, people in the West were talking about “snow-eating” chinooks, warm mountain winds that make snow disappear quickly. More recently, the phrase “snow-eater heat wave” first made headlines in March, when an early heat wave enveloped much of the West, quickly wiping away snowpack in the Colorado Rockies and California’s Sierra Nevada. The scientists hope the catchy, evocative term can help draw more attention to this type of heat wave, since there’s still a lot to learn. The study only looked at the Western U.S., but snow eater heat waves almost assuredly occur elsewhere, LaPlante said.

Solar radiation is a major, but sometimes overlooked, driver of snowmelt, said Noah Molotch, a professor of geography at the University of Colorado Boulder who was not involved in the new study. When it interacts with heat waves, those impacts are amplified. As snow crystals warm up, they lose some of their structure and light-reflecting abilities, causing snowpacks to absorb more sunlight and melt faster. “It’s a little bit of a — no pun intended — a snowball effect,” he said.

Much of the Western U.S. saw record-low snowpack this spring. What was really unusual about it, Molotch said, was how widespread it was. Colorado received less precipitation than normal this winter, while California got lots of precipitation, but in the form of rain instead of snow. But across the region, “the one thing in common was above-average air temperatures,” Molotch said.

These conditions have likely helped fuel exceptionally severe wildfires in the West, from Utah to Spokane, Washington, where hundreds of homes burned earlier this month. “Drought stress for mountain forests around the Western U.S. is heavily dictated by the snow that accumulates each winter and then melts through the spring and summer,” Molotch said. “There is a direct connection there in terms of the water availability and drought stress that can provide one of the important ingredients for increases in wildfire intensity and frequency.”

If scientists are able to better predict what will happen to snowpack, it could help water managers plan for what’s coming. Early or rapid snowmelt poses problems for managing water resources in the West, where snowpack serves as a key source of fresh water in the drier summer months. “Water that would otherwise be stored as snow comes out early, and then we have to deal with it as a hazard instead of a resource at our reservoirs and along the rivers and streams,” said Ben Hatchett, a co-author on the study and a scientist at Colorado State University’s Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere.

Snow-eater heat waves also may pose risks to skiers, hikers, and anyone else on or near mountains. They could be linked to hazards such as avalanches, glacial collapses, and permafrost melt, Hatchett said, though scientists are still investigating those connections. He lives in the Sierra Nevada, and he’s noticed one tangible change over his lifetime: The soundscape has changed.

“At night, it used to be quiet,” he said. “And now it’s not quiet, because everything’s melting all the time.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Scientists define a new category of heat wave: ‘Snow eaters’ on Aug 12, 2026.

In 2017, after about 10 years of discussions, then-superintendent Amy Shane finally got to see a much needed expansion at the O’Neill Public School District’s aging junior-senior high school get approved. Expanded classrooms, state-of-the-art science labs, a new gym. The difference-maker that helped push the $13.2 million project from proposal to reality: taxes on renewable energy developments. Over nine years, the school district has taken in about $7.6 million, which Shane said helped offset the expansion cost. 

“We could get something good for our students without putting a huge burden on our taxpayers,” Shane said. 

The project is an example of what economic development and renewable energy proponents have long argued: Renewable energy projects can help communities diversify their revenue streams and offset property tax burdens. The Nebraska excise tax, known as the nameplate capacity tax, requires qualifying renewable energy developments to annually pay $3,518 per megawatt of power that the facility can generate. The money flows to counties whose treasurers allocate it amongst local jurisdictions, including the county governments, community colleges, and school and natural resource districts. 

But in recent years, a number of Nebraska counties have enacted strict regulations on renewable developments, as opponents have raised concerns about property values, noise, health, safety, and fire risks. 

About 15 years after the tax was implemented, it’s worth looking at where the money has actually gone. Revenue distributed from the tax and the number of counties receiving it has risen over the years. In 2015, just nine counties received nameplate capacity tax revenue, which totaled $2.03 million, including penalties and interest, according to data from the Department of Revenue. In 2025, communities received over $13.6 million. But there’s an imbalance. More than 88 percent of that money went to just 10 of Nebraska’s 93 counties.

Lawmakers created the nameplate capacity tax in 2010 to replace personal property tax for renewable developments. This allows local taxing authorities to continue to receive a steady amount of tax revenue, said Jon Cannon, executive director of the Nebraska Association of County Officials. The landowner still pays property taxes.

“In county budgets, nameplate capacity tax revenue functions like other general fund revenue,” said Candace Meredith, deputy director of the Nebraska Association of County Officials, in a statement. “It helps offset the amount that would otherwise need to come from property taxes, allowing counties to keep up with state mandated essential services and inflationary costs.”

On average, counties get about 23 percent of the nameplate tax revenue, Cannon and Meredith said.

Recently, lawmakers have discussed increasing the rate. A 2025 proposal would have raised it from $3,518 per megawatt to $6,560. But the bill, part of a larger tax package, ultimately died. However, lawmakers did pass a bill this year that expands the tax to include qualifying battery energy storage developments. 

According to the state, 1 in 4 jobs in Nebraska are tied to agriculture. The state’s top commodities include cattle and calves, corn, soybeans, and hogs. So it may be no surprise that Nebraskans have raised concerns that renewable energy projects, specifically solar, will reduce farmland. However, there are areas of the state where the land isn’t productive and landowners could benefit from the added revenue. John Hansen, president of the Nebraska Farmers Union, said urban sprawl and acreage housing developments are leading threats to farmland in Nebraska.

“The one thing that we know in the ag sector is that we continue to be extremely dependent on off-farm jobs to subsidize our farming operations that are not working, and so every wind turbine is like an off-farm, part-time job, except that the farmer or rancher doesn’t have to leave their farm or ranch to get paid for it,” said Hansen, who chairs the Nebraska Wind and Solar Conference.

Some Nebraska counties have gone so far as to adopt moratoriums or strict zoning regulations that have effectively banned renewable energy developments or made them more difficult to site. 

But with rising power demand, advocates and experts see renewables as a contributor to future economic development in Nebraska. Pushback against renewables comes as utilities in Nebraska and across the country wrestle with an energy crunch caused by skyrocketing demand from electrification, manufacturing, and data centers.

Renewable developments, like this solar farm in Nebraska’s Saunders County, can help the utility manage energy costs and address peak demand when the grid is stretched thin.
Lily Smith / Flatwater Free Press

The Omaha Public Power District, which serves a large swath of eastern Nebraska, is taking an all-of-the-above approach, where coal remains on the grid, natural gas assets are expanding, and the utility plans to have more power purchase agreements with renewable energy developments. 

Renewables can help the utility manage energy costs and address peak demand when the grid is stretched thin, said Dustin Marvel, manager of government and community relations at OPPD.

Right now, renewables are affordable compared to other energy sources and can be built quickly, said Kenneth Gillingham, a professor of environmental and energy economics at Yale University. This is especially important for utilities since new nuclear plants can take time to build and the natural gas generator supply chain remains tight.

For Nebraska, adding more power to the grid now isn’t just about serving existing customers, it could also spur more economic growth from other industries, said Hunter Traynor, an executive vice president at Nebraska Chamber of Commerce and Industry. A recent report commissioned by the Nebraska Chamber Foundation recommended the state take a more active role in promoting energy development.

“We have a lot of stated economic goals in Nebraska, and energy and public support for energy infrastructure, in particular, is a bedrock necessity right now to keep our economies all across the state flourishing and growing,” Traynor said.

Nevertheless, these projects face a few challenges. Currently, the infrastructure that transmits energy across the state is limited, which restricts where new energy generation can be located. It also takes time for new projects to connect to the grid. And then there’s community opposition.

“We do see oftentimes where a developer has an opportunity, maybe the project is advantageously located. However, due to community opposition or feedback, maybe that project loses steam or loses the ability to actually come to market,” Marvel said.

Cannon, with the Nebraska Association of County Officials, said that in order for renewable developers to actually make headway with communities that are skeptical, they need to be transparent about their intentions and address concerns early on.

Traynor said that these projects involve layers of regulatory approvals that can allow communities to assess if they are suitable. However, some projects get stopped by local resistance before they go through the regulatory process. He is concerned these experiences could cause a chilling effect on companies that are considering moving to Nebraska.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Some Nebraska communities are cashing in on renewables. Others are being left behind. on Aug 12, 2026.

This story is published through the Indigenous News Alliance.

When the chief of the Okanagan Indian Band looked down on his community from a helicopter last week, much of what he had known all his life was gone.

Homes had burned. Photographs, memorabilia, and Salish baskets had disappeared with them. More than 30 band members had lost their homes, naspəpʕásəs Dan Wilson said, along with around 200 homes and other structures belonging to non-band members.

“Our loss is measured in the family histories that have been lost — especially the Elders who have lost their homes,” he said.

The destruction left by the Bradley Creek wildfire at nk̓maplqs (the head of Okanagan Lake) comes amid a wildfire season that has repeatedly forced Indigenous peoples across Canada from their homes. As of Tuesday, 601 wildfires were burning across the country, including 113 classified as out of control and another 371 that remained out of control but were being monitored rather than actively suppressed.

Those numbers have translated into a summer of evacuations, displacement, and, in some communities, devastating losses for First Nations. Wildfires have affected at least 81 First Nations and forced 9,131 people from their communities since April 1; 2,524 people remained evacuated as of Tuesday. As fires have threatened communities from British Columbia to Ontario, Indigenous leaders have raised concerns about inadequate firefighting equipment, delays in emergency assistance, and the information used to make evacuation decisions.

In Ontario, a fast-moving fire devastated Namaygoosisagagun First Nation in July as residents fled by boat. At least 12 First Nations in the province have been fully or partially evacuated because of wildfires this summer, according to Chiefs of Ontario. The organization is demanding an independent public inquiry into what Ontario Regional Chief Abram Benedict called a “catastrophic and systemic failure” in the response.

And last week, leaders of Kiashke Zaaging Anishinaabek were still fighting an Ontario government decision to withdraw wildfire implementation and evacuation orders while massive fires remained out of control nearby.

For the Okanagan Indian Band, the immediate danger has eased. The wildfire, which started July 31 on reserve lands near Vernon, British Columbia, had burned about 6,550 acres as of Monday. It was classified as being held over the weekend, meaning it was expected to remain within its existing boundaries under prevailing and forecast conditions. Some evacuation orders have since been rescinded or downgraded.

Although the community faces a long recovery, it “is getting stronger every day,” Wilson said last week. “We’re holding up. We’re very resilient. We have a long history — we’ve been here for 10,000 years.”

Read Next Wildfire season is changing. Spokane is showing how. Sachi Kitajima Mulkey

Wilson praised the band’s firefighters, who were first on the scene and worked alongside provincial wildfire crews. “They went above and beyond. I can’t say enough,” he said.

Wilson said the band’s fire department, which consists of around 30 trained firefighters, was equipped only with a fire truck designed to tackle structural fires. “If we had a proper wildland firefighting truck that’s able to access rough terrain … I’m told that if we had that equipment, our first responders would’ve been able to put that fire out immediately,” he said.

He said that concern was relayed to Mandy Gull-Masty, the federal minister of Indigenous Services.

Wilson noted that the one bright spot from the helicopter tour was seeing the Komasket powwow arbour grounds — as well as the nearby daycare and Nk̓maplqs Iʔ Snm̓am̓ay̓aʔtn Iʔ K̓l Sqilxʷtət Cultural Immersion School — unscathed by the fire. 

The disaster comes five years after the Whiterock Lake wildfire destroyed 10 homes belonging to Okanagan Indian Band members and displaced the community for weeks.

For communities facing this summer’s fires, the challenges have extended beyond escaping the flames. The devastation of Namaygoosisagagun, also known as Collins First Nation, has raised questions about whether the remote community will receive federal recovery and rebuilding assistance. Although its residents are recognized as First Nations people under the Indian Act, Namaygoosisagagun is not recognized as a First Nation. A lawyer representing the community wrote to Gull-Masty that denying it the emergency and rebuilding assistance available to recognized First Nations could threaten its ability to rebuild.

Ontario Regional Chief Abram Benedict also criticized bureaucratic obstacles First Nations encountered while trying to access emergency assistance. On July 30, Chiefs of Ontario called for an independent public inquiry into the province’s response, saying at least 12 First Nations had been fully or partially evacuated during the wildfire season.

“There has been a catastrophic and systemic failure at nearly every level and at nearly every step of this process,” Benedict said in a statement. “We need to know how and why this happened. But most importantly, we need to learn from it so it never happens again.”

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Communication has emerged as another concern. When an out-of-control wildfire threatened Xeni Gwet’in First Nation in British Columbia in April, authorities did not provide emergency alerts in Tŝilhqot’in — the only language spoken by many Elders in the community — leaving the Nation’s own forestry crew to alert them directly.

Sara Wilson, a communications researcher at Simon Fraser University, has described such shortcomings as part of a broader “crisis communication gap,” pointing to language barriers, underfunding, and the exclusion of Indigenous communities from decision-making during emergencies.

Those concerns extend beyond how emergency information is communicated to questions about who decides when a First Nation is safe. That question remained at the center of a dispute last week at Kiashke Zaaging Anishinaabek, also known as Gull Bay First Nation, in northwestern Ontario. The Nation’s leaders objected to the government decision to withdraw wildfire implementation and evacuation orders around the community. “Our members are still at risk and our infrastructure is at risk,” Chief Wilfred King told CBC Thunder Bay.

Several large fires remained near the community, and King said one of the community’s greatest concerns was that one of them could block its only road out, leaving residents trying to flee across Lake Nipigon. “The only escape would be jumping on boats and crossing Lake Nipigon, and that’s not an alternative,” he said.

King said the community was also concerned about delays in receiving information about changing fire conditions. Before residents return, he said, the Nation also must ensure its water treatment and sewage systems are functioning safely.

Ontario’s Ministry of Natural Resources told CBC that changes to evacuation orders would be made only when fires no longer posed a risk, based on advice from fire behavior experts. But King said the provincial order should have remained in place until the community was confident it was safe. He told CBC that Indigenous Services Canada supported the Nation’s decision to maintain its own evacuation order.

At Okanagan Indian Band, support came from other First Nations and Indigenous leaders. Penticton Indian Band and Westbank First Nation opened their communities to evacuees, while leaders from across the syilx Okanagan Nation Alliance reached out.

At an emotional community meeting in Vernon, drummers Bruce Manuel and his sister Trish Manuel, sent by Upper Nicola Band Chief Dan Manuel, performed a closing drum song. Wilson said the response was “really bolstering our spirits here.”

“We say our prayers,” he said. “We have a strong faith in kʷuləncútn, the Creator.”

This story was originally published by IndigiNews and updated with additional information by Grist.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Canada’s wildfire season is taking a heavy toll on First Nations on Aug 11, 2026.

Over the last two weeks, oil companies have announced eye-popping profits from the spring quarter. Exxon Mobil pulled in $14.5 billion. Chevron landed $12 billion, its highest quarterly profit on record. Shell posted $9.8 billion — more than twice its earnings from the same time last year.

These profits are largely a product of supply constraints brought on by the war in the Middle East. With the Strait of Hormuz effectively blockaded, oil suppliers have rerouted shipments over land and through pipelines. The resulting supply shortages, constrained refining capacity, and higher transportation costs have driven up oil and gasoline prices, delivering windfall profits for producers. 

But companies aren’t using those profits to drill lots of new wells or explore untapped oil fields. Instead, they’re pocketing the cash and paying their shareholders, experts say. What was once an industry defined by the “drill, baby, drill” ethos is now defined by another term: “capital discipline.” It’s a phenomenon in which rampant drilling and production growth has given way to tightened belts and bigger payouts to investors. 

Oil executives expected a weak financial year in 2026 due to a supply glut, but the closure of the Strait of Hormuz constrained oil production and allowed companies to charge top dollar for use of their refineries outside the Middle East. 

“While we didn’t anticipate the current situation, we were prepared for it,” Exxon CEO Darren Woods said in a July call with analysts, according to the Wall Street Journal. “Despite the temporary loss of approximately 10 percent of our upstream production, we delivered exceptional financial results.”

Chevron executives offered a similar assessment. In July, Chief Financial Officer Eimear Bonner told Bloomberg that the company didn’t adjust their production as prices rose. “We did not change any of our plan,” she said. 

The Trump administration’s focus on “unleashing” U.S. energy is running headlong into oil companies’ growing commitment to financial discipline. For instance, the administration assured the public that oil majors would leap at oil fields in Venezuela after the country’s leader, Nicolas Maduro, was detained in January. But drilling stayed low throughout the administration’s efforts to pry open public lands for oil development, and corporations have been wary and selective about new opportunities in Venezuela. Similarly, even as the administration has opened up U.S. federal lands for drilling, companies have shown only a lukewarm response. As Americans bleed cash at the gas pump, President Donald Trump has even accused oil companies of “making too much money” from the war, unable to otherwise influence them to significantly ramp up their production.

“Oil and gas companies respond more to financial incentives than they do to political signaling,” said Clark Williams-Derry, an energy finance analyst at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis. “They’re going to be looking at their finances first rather than politicians’ demands.”

If the U.S.-Israel war with Iran had occurred in 2012, oil companies might have seen the price spike as a chance to drill more wells. As fracking took off and prices rose during the 2000s, many companies tied their CEO compensation to production growth. Investors poured money into oil companies. But those days of aggressive production eventually ran into price crashes, especially after a Saudi-led coalition of oil-producing countries flooded the market with crude in 2014 and the COVID-19 pandemic sank prices again in 2020. 

In the last five years, as investors soured on drill-happy oil companies, they embraced a new, more disciplined approach to capital expenditure. Investors wanted steadier returns. Rather than rewarding aggressive production growth, they pushed companies to focus on lower-cost drilling, restrain spending, and return more cash to shareholders.

“What is perhaps most telling about the corporate response to the turbulent forces impacting the oil and gas sector is just how little changed [in 2026],” Tom Ellacott, senior vice president of corporate research at Wood Mackenzie, said in a July press release. “Capital discipline has proved more durable than either the bears or bulls expected.”

Drilling in the U.S., as measured by the number of oil rigs, has ticked up during the summer, Williams-Derry noted, but only after the president launched a war in Iran that drove up oil prices. As of June, it had only recovered to the rate recorded at the same point last year, according to data from Baker Hughes, an energy technology company.

In this new mode, Williams-Derry said, international oil companies have used wars, notably the conflicts in Ukraine and Iran, to boost their revenues so they can maintain large payments to their Wall Street investors. In times without price spikes, oil majors collectively took out debt as they paid their investors, their revenues unable to support the payments on their own, according to Williams-Derry’s internal analysis of their cash flow statements. In an ironic twist, oil companies have benefited more from constraints on global oil production than from “unleashing” it.

The climate implications of this new ethos are complicated. Already, oil companies’ tight spending has drawn most of them away from renewable energy investments. France’s TotalEnergies is the one supermajor that has charged ahead with its renewables business, though the Trump administration agreed to pay the company more than $900 million to cancel two offshore wind projects off New York and North Carolina. More discipline may also push companies to capture and resell the leaking natural gas from oil fields because maximizing revenue from existing wells has become more attractive than drilling expensive new ones. And this new attitude could keep oil and gasoline prices higher for longer, maintaining the appeal of electric vehicles and renewable energy sources. (Chinese solar panel and EV exports to some countries have spiked during the war.)

At least one analysis firm, Wood Mackenzie, believes disciplined oil companies could fall behind global demand, causing them to lose a share of the global oil market to nationally owned oil companies like Saudi Arabia’s, potentially changing the politics of energy security for Western countries.

Ultimately, however, this phase of “capital discipline” may only be temporary, Williams-Derry said. No oil company wants to be so disciplined that it begins to decline. Eventually, some growth will likely be necessary. 

Still, those companies have proven as capable of benefiting from energy shocks to U.S. consumers as they are of relieving them, an important note for political actors hoping to rely on oil companies for energy security. 

“At least for now, production of oil is no longer the way executives are getting paid,” Williams-Derry said. “What matters is their ability to generate cash.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline They’re making record profits, but oil companies still won’t ‘drill, baby, drill’ on Aug 11, 2026.