Trump's dream of an Alaskan oil boom is feeling more like a bust

An excellent articulation of media criticism here that applies much more broadly than to New York’s mayoral race lithub.com/maybe-dont-t...

Medicare is about to start using AI to help determine prior authorization, even as companies like UnitedHealthcare face lawsuits about similar AI use. Last year, I spoke to multiple families who had been wrongfully denied social services they qualified for because of algorithmic decisionmaking.

Ecologist Patrick Sullivan was studying the slow advance of trees into what had been tundra, a sign of the Arctic's rapidly changing climate, when he discovered something far more surprising: Rivers across northern Alaska were turning a bright, toxic orange.

Exxon funded thinktanks to spread climate denial in Latin America, documents obtained by @geoffdembicki.bsky.social reveal. The Texas-based fossil fuel company financed Atlas Network in attempt to derail UN-led climate treaty process. www.theguardian.com/environment/...

So far, the administration's Alaska agenda is still a lot of bluster and not a lot of action. Great reporting from @loisparshley.bsky.social for @grist.org

The Trump administration opened the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling last week. After drilling there drew little interest, the state’s own development agency has stepped in to buy leases and fund road projects to support private industry profits — spending $110 million of public funds.

The financial crisis these guys building towards is going to make 2008 look like a lawn party with the Queen Mum. www.wsj.com/politics/pol...

This is right -- and, to add my personal two cents of experience, independent work is more inefficient. In a well-staffed newsroom, you have story editors, writers, social strategists, fact-checkers, copy editors, and so on, each honed on their skill. On your own, you're on on your own.

New incredible detail here: ICE says a match in its facial recognition app Mobile Fortify is a "definitive" determination of a person's status, and that this overrides birth certificates. This is an app ICE is using in the field to scan people www.404media.co/ice-and-cbp-...

ICYMI, in March the US pulled out of the new fund established by wealthy nations to compensate low-income countries for loss and damage due to climate change. Despite being the largest historical emitter, the US had pledged only $17.5 million. Melissa alone will likely cause billions in damage.

More than 420 anti-science bills attacking longstanding public health protections — vaccines, milk safety and fluoride — have been introduced in statehouses across the U.S. this year. www.statnews.com/2025/10/22/a...

I’m honored and excited to have my work included by @scicommexcellence.nationalacademies.org. It's a hard time to be a freelance science journalist, and yet the stakes couldn’t be higher.

SNAP benefits to halt in some states amid government shutdown -- Jay O'Brien / ABC News abcnews.go.com/Politics/sta...

Just asked the WH if they did an asbestos abatement before demolishing the East Wing -- a project Trump began without being formally approved by the National Capital Planning Commission + on a structure built in the early 1900s, expanded in the 1940s. Not that I expect a response. But still. 😬

Sees your frogs, raises to Alaska’s megafauna.

For the first time in more than 100 years, Chinook salmon have been spotted at the confluence of the Sprague and Williamson rivers in Chiloquin, the government seat of the Klamath Tribes in Southern Oregon.

In 1972, a whistleblower leaked to the press the details of the highly unethical & racist Tuskegee Syphilis Experiments run by the United States Public Health Service. Because of that (and other unethical experiments) Congress passed the National Research Act of 1974, which includes the IRB process.

Among the citizens detained are nearly 20 children, including two with cancer. www.propublica.org/article/immi...

Just imagining Romans hitting the gym. It’s not as if lead accelerates the collapse of empires… www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/a...

This precedent-setting policy to dismantle land management plans across the country just passed the Senate today. Read more about what that means for the public lands you care about @grist.org.

Horrific reporting from the AP on the Myanmar families watching their kids starve to death from Trump and Musk’s aid cuts apnews.com/article/myan...

NVIDIA and OpenAi: Concerns that their “increasingly complex and interconnected web of business transactions is artificially propping up the trillion-dollar AI boom.“ @bloomberg.com $NVDA 👀 www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...

Journalism Fail: This implies there is a donut shop aflame in Portland, Oregon right now but the photo is 1) Not Portland 2) Not 2025 It's a 33 YEAR OLD FILE PHOTO. You have to open the story & read the fine print to find out it's Los Angeles in 1992. Come on @cnn.com. Do better.

this is wild: while Stephen Miller's guy was in Minnesota for his uncle's funeral, somebody was able to see his entire phone and take pictures of his Signal group chats talking about military deployments to Portland, and brought them to the Strib (gift link: www.startribune.com/trump-offici...)

I love when student journalists break a crazy story, especially about their own school. This one is extraordinarily macabre. www.uscannenbergmedia.com/2025/10/01/u...

(1/3) Trump promised cheaper energy. But today his DOE is pulling $8B from projects that would lower costs and strengthen the grid, just as AI data center demand soars. That chills investment, slows construction, and leaves families & small businesses facing higher power bills and weaker reliability

GAO: Forest Service upgrades to wildfire communications and tracking imperiled by Trump’s workforce downsizing www.govexec.com/oversight/20... via @GovExec

Thrilled to have my reporting on how fossil fuel companies are starting to be tried for murder in this year's Best American Science and Nature Writing "Notables." It's wonderful to be included with writers I’ve looked up to for years, and still learn from all the time!

Your electric car needs graphite. Do you know where it comes from? This story explores how the push for climate solutions is colliding with Indigenous rights, as a proposed mine in Alaska advances without tribal consultation. grist.org/indigenous/i...

A massive Alaskan graphite mine is being fast-tracked—even though federally required tribal consultations haven’t been held with local Inupiaq communities. The acceleration is tied to Trump-era moves to streamline federal permitting. Some environmental reviews could be done in as little as 30 days.

According to Oregon, Trump got the idea that Portland is on fire because Fox News illustrated a September 5 story on protests of ICE with video from the George Floyd riots in 2020. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

NEW WIRED led the way in reporting on Elon Musk's efforts to dismantle the US government. My colleagues and I spoke to 100s of employees at dozens of agencies to understand what happened. This is the definitive story of DOGE as told by those who experienced it www.wired.com/story/oral-h...

And note that the lede reporter on the Homan scoop ended her 25-year career at the Washpost just last month, decamping to NBC News. Will Lewis, the Post’s CEO, had urged people to leave if they didn’t “feel aligned” w/ the company’s “significant reinvention journey” www.thewrap.com/carol-leonni...

we wrote about this WH tactic recently. they’re asking journalists for expert source names and then using them to look up political donations in FEC records to try to discredit those sources as biased. www.npr.org/2025/08/18/n...

For the record. My posts were not even about Kirk directly, but about America's apathy towards political violence, and the coddling of white male shooters and hate peddlers. I was fired because I mentioned race: white men and violence-- that was my "gross misconduct."

Do you like hiking on public lands? You’re going to want to know what Congress is voting on this week👇

Remember the public lands giveaway fight this spring? It’s quietly happening again. Republicans are using the Congressional Review Act to permanently undo federal land management plans—overturning public process and opening millions of acres to drilling & mining.

The Trump administration is asking a court to kill drinking water limits on four types of PFAS. They are part of the Biden-era rule that set the EPA's first enforceable limits on PFAS in drinking water.

This data adds fuel to upcoming climate homicide litigation.

Holy shit: Stateline spoke to nearly a dozen firefighters, agency staffers and contractors, who said that top officials assigned to the fire deployed the crews to a remote location under false pretenses so federal agents could check their immigration status. www.hcn.org/articles/fir...

Wild story on the stillborn death of a baby via surrogate, which truly has it all—capitalism run amok, America's unregulated surrogacy industry, maternal mortality crisis, VC hubris, class conflict, weaponization of fetal personhood laws, Facebook echo chambers. www.wired.com/story/the-ba...

Reminder: the financial situation for rural Alaska public radio stations remains dire. These stations provide vital, even lifesaving info. For example, KOTZ is the only radio for Northwest Arctic Borough, which is larger than the state of Maine. Please donate if you can. #AlaskaSky www.kotz.org

"The first wave of grocery-price increases will likely hit this winter. Roberson predicted produce prices could rise 50% to 100% by early next year as inventories clear and new contracts kick in." fortune.com/2025/08/28/t...

I’ve wondered if any Canadian/other foreign crews being exported stateside to help fight American wildfires would get hassled or even detained at the border; I seriously did not ever imagine this scenario.

If you're wondering, "Why is Trump so obsessed with Greenland?" my reporting this winter dove into his top donors' financial interests -- and sometimes even personnel -- involved in mining there. www.levernews.com/trumps-tech-...

What could go wrong?

I'm incredibly honored to have my work recognized here. Climate reporting isn’t just about weather or science—it’s about people. As the Trump admin dismisses experts, buries research, and ignores perils, media has to keep holding leaders accountable and centering the people policies leave behind.

After firing too many people this spring, NOAA is now re-hiring. Like other federal hires since May, the application requires people to discuss their loyalty and willingness to advance the President's policies. Critics warn they act as political litmus tests.

When I heard the Trump administration was making big changes to the Endangered Species Act this spring, I wanted to know what difference it might make for species already on the verge of extinction. Often, these policy shifts make headlines, but it's hard to quantify the consequences.