In the first six months of the second Trump administration, some 60,000 federal workers have been targeted for layoffs, even more have taken buyouts, and up to trillions of dollars in funding has been frozen or halted. Many more people could still be facing cuts under additional planned reductions. President...
There’s a surprising climate solution right under your feet
Like so much of an iceberg is hidden underwater, much of a tree is hidden underground. While the trunk and branches and leaves sequester planet-warming carbon dioxide, trees and other plants have long formed subterranean alliances with mycorrhizal fungi, which intertwine with their roots to establish a mutually beneficial trade...
Rising seas, vanishing voices: An Indigenous story from Martha’s Vineyard
When former Grist fellow Joseph Lee tells people that his family is from Martha’s Vineyard, an island off the coast of Massachusetts, they invariably look confused about what it means to be from a popular vacation spot for U.S. presidents and celebrities like Oprah. Their confusion deepens when he explains...
The science behind the heat dome — ‘a mosh pit’ of molecules
From Texas clear to Georgia, from the Gulf Coast on up to the Canadian border, a mass of dangerous heat has started spreading like an atmospheric plague. In the days and perhaps even weeks ahead, a high-pressure system, known as a heat dome, will drive temperatures over 100 degrees Fahrenheit...
Kerr County’s tragic flood wasn’t an outlier. It was a preview.
The country watched in horror as torrential rain drenched Texas earlier this month, sweeping at least 135 people to their death. Kerr County alone lost 107, including more than two dozen children at Camp Mystic. From afar, it would be easy, even tempting, to think that the floods like these...
This EPA research office safeguarded Americans’ health. Trump just eliminated it.
For more than half a century, the Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Research and Development, or ORD, has furnished the EPA with independent research on everything from ozone pollution to pesticides like glyphosate. Last week, after months of speculation and denial, the EPA officially confirmed that it is eliminating its...
The surprising reasons floods and other disasters are deadlier at night
It was 4 a.m. on July 4 at Camp La Junta in Kerr County when Kolton Taylor woke up to the sound of screaming. The 12-year-old boy stepped out of bed and straight into knee-deep floodwaters from the nearby Guadalupe River. Before long, the water had already risen to his...
Trump and the energy industry are eager to power AI with fossil fuels
AI is “not my thing,” President Donald Trump admitted during a speech in Pittsburgh on Tuesday. However, the president said during his remarks at the Energy and Innovation Summit, his advisers had told him just how important energy was to the future of AI. “You need double the electric of what we have...
The race to build solar and wind in New York before Trump’s tax credit deadline
As negotiations over President Donald Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” came down to the wire in early July, renewable energy developers were holding their breath. Until the eleventh hour, it looked like Congress was ready to make good on Trump’s promise of “terminating” key subsidies for wind and solar virtually overnight. In...
Trump is fast-tracking new coal mines — even when they don’t make economic sense
It looked for a while like the coal mining era was over in the Clearfork Valley of East Tennessee, a pocket of mountainous land on the Kentucky border. A permit for a new mine hasn’t been issued since 2020, and the last mine in the region shuttered two years ago....