The Senate on Thursday voted to repeal Biden-era protections for a contentious wilderness area in Minnesota, sending the question to President Trump’s desk. The Senate voted 50-49 to overturn a Biden-era move to block mining in an area around Minnesota’s Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. Trump is likely to sign the measure, which has already passed the House,… Source link
The Trump administration said it’s canceling almost $30 billion of financing from the Energy Department’s green bank after reviewing transactions approved under former President Biden. The Energy Department said Thursday that its Loan Programs Office — now called the Office of Energy Dominance Financing — also plans to revise an additional $53 billion of funding. In a statement, the department said it has eliminated about $9.5 billion in financing for wind and solar projects as part of the adjustment and plans to redirect the funding toward natural gas and nuclear projects. The Energy Department, which didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment, didn’t provide specific details on which other deals were affected. The Energy Department’s loans office swelled into a $400-billion green bank under Biden, partly due to an infusion in funds from his signature Inflation Reduction Act. The office has been used to finance Tesla Inc.’s Model S sedan and some of the first new nuclear reactors built in the U.S. in decades by Southern Co. But the program drew criticism from Energy …
For more than a decade, the United States has faced a relentless and heartbreaking increase in fatal drug overdoses driven by synthetic opioids. A new analysis suggests this trend has suddenly reversed due to a major disruption in the global supply chain of illicit fentanyl. Published in Science, the study indicates that regulatory actions taken by the Chinese government, following high-level diplomatic engagement with the Biden administration, may be the primary driver behind this unexpected decline in mortality. The trajectory of the American overdose crisis has been grim for fifteen years. Deaths attributed to synthetic opioids rose more than 25-fold during that period. The annual toll reached a record high of 76,000 deaths in 2023. Yet, starting in the middle of that year, the numbers began to fall. By the end of 2024, the rate of fentanyl overdose deaths had dropped by more than one-third. Public health officials and policymakers have struggled to explain this abrupt shift. It is often difficult to determine the cause of market fluctuations because illicit drug trafficking organizations operate in …
