Climate

Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) placed 22 California offices for environmental protection and research on its list of leases to terminate, the Los Angeles Times reports.

The agency is axing the Office of the Chief Scientist and the the Office of Technology, Policy and Strategy.

Trump plans to “all but eliminate” the Office of Community Planning and Development as part of widespread layoffs across the federal government, the New York Times reports. It would slash the workforce within that office by 84 percent, the Times says, citing a document it obtained.

That includes at least 168 employees at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) who worked in its Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights. The Trump administration is following a play out of Project 2025, which calls for “eliminating” the office.

The Senate confirmed his nomination today. Zeldin has been tasked by Donald Trump to “ensure fair and swift deregulatory decisions that will be enacted in a way to unleash the power of American businesses.” That seems to include removing roadblocks to building energy-hungry AI data centers in the US.

It’s 89 seconds to midnight on the Doomsday Clock. Rest assured, the clock merely “visualizes humanity’s metaphorical proximity to global catastrophe,” according to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists that sets the time each year and updated it today.

It’s “going to look a little different” as it migrates to a more general science site, according to NASA. President Donald Trump has called climate change a “hoax,” and researchers have been archiving environmental data in case it starts to disappear from federal websites.

Necropsies tie whale deaths off the east coast to ship strikes, not offshore wind, as Trump claimed during his inauguration eve rally. The US has very few offshore wind turbines anyway.

“Emissions of greenhouse gasses trap heat,” Lee Zeldin, said during today’s Senate confirmation hearing when pressed about climate science. Whether he’ll take action is another issue.

The US Supreme Court denied petitions from fossil fuel companies seeking to thwart a climate lawsuit filed against them — allowing the case to go to trial.

The LA-based tech company has 150 employees who have been displaced from the wildfires, Spiegel wrote in a letter published on the company’s website. Snap has donated $5 million to local relief efforts and “will do more,” he says.