Federal officials just admitted in court, in writing, that they canceled $7.5 billion in clean energy grants for exactly one reason. Not cost. Not performance. Not compliance.

The state didn't vote for Trump.

The Energy Department reviewed 600+ Biden-era grants and recommended canceling some, in red states and blue states both.

Then OMB Director Russell Vought stepped in. He killed 284 of them. All but one landed in a state that voted for Kamala Harris. Red state grants flagged for the same reasons got left alone.

Vought's own words when he announced it: "Nearly $8 billion in Green New Scam funding to fuel the Left's climate agenda is being canceled."

Energy Secretary Chris Wright told Congress in June, under oath, "no decisions were made on politics."

The department's own lawyer just admitted in a new filing the cancellations weren't based on "any programmatic, statutory, cost-reduction or performance-based factor." Just the map.

Real projects died. Grid upgrades in California and Oregon. Methane leak reduction in Colorado. Clean hydrogen hubs in the Pacific Northwest.

Who do you trust more with a $7.5 billion budget decision? The engineers reviewing each project on its merits, or Russell Vought with a map of who voted for Trump?

#DemsUnited A federal judge already ruled on this exact scheme back in January, and called it out by name.

He wrote that the administration "freely admit" the cancellations were about the electoral map, nothing else.

CT Mirror's got the ruling, Vought's quote, and the Energy Department's non-answer, all in one place.

→ ctmirror.org/2026/01/13/cou…

They're the largest living things on Earth. Some of them have been standing since before Rome was a republic. 🌳

Now Congress wants to "save" them. By logging them.

It's called the "Save Our Sequoias Act." And it does the opposite of what it says. S. 4103 just passed the House and sits in the Senate right now, and it would let logging companies cut down mature, thousand year old sequoias, no limit on how many, no limit on their size or age.

It does this by carving out a new exemption from the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), our bedrock law requiring environmental review and public input before major logging projects.

It wouldn't stop at the groves. The bill also amends the Wilderness Act itself, opening the door to human intervention (planting, "vegetation control," possible roads) inside land that's supposed to stay untouched by law.

This applies inside Yosemite. Inside Sequoia and Kings Canyon. Inside the Giant Sequoia National Monument. Inside land Congress designated as Wilderness specifically to keep humans out.

Who do you trust more to keep a 2,000 year old tree alive? The forest that's survived every fire for two millennia, or a logging company with a 3,000 acre permit and no one watching? 🌳 What are your thoughts? Sound off below👇

#DemsUnited A ranger walks a burned grove and finds something backwards: the trees the government planted are dying, and the ones nature reseeded on its own are thriving. National Parks Traveler dug into why the "rescue" bill might be solving a problem that isn't real.

→ nationalparkstraveler.org/2025/11/save-o…

The Trump administration just made it legal to kill 400,000 wild animals a year in secret. No public notice. No comment period. Just done.

The USDA finalized rules this April gutting decades of public participation requirements on 193 million acres of national forest. Logging, drilling, mining, road building — all can now be approved before the public ever hears about it.

That includes Wildlife Services — the federal program that kills more than 400,000 native animals every year. Coyotes. Bears. Wolves. Beavers. Mountain lions. Killed on behalf of ranching interests, with your tax dollars, on your public land. Now completely out of public view.

150,000 public comments opposing these rules were thrown out. Attorneys general from 17 states objected. Tribal governments objected. The administration didn't care.

"Information is power. Our voices are power. And the Trump administration is trying to strip both away so corporations can make a quick buck off our public lands." — Wendy Park, Center for Biological Diversity.

Who gave the government permission to kill 400,000 wild animals a year and hide it from the rest of us?

#DemsUnited → The rule is final and the lawsuit is already filed - the Center for Biological Diversity breaks down exactly what was just taken from the public and what it means for every forest, every wolf, every bear on federal land:
biologicaldiversity.org/w/news/press-r…

Lisbon Valley, Utah. North of Bears Ears is to be opened for uranium mining.

Still scarred from the last uranium boom, the one the EPA hasn't even finished cleaning up.

This week, the federal government decided to do it again.

The whole approval took 11 days. Tribes got a 7-day window to respond, take it or leave it.

One leader called it outrageous and indefensible. A Canadian company gets to mine it, royalty free, under a law from 1872.

That law lets companies pull minerals off federal land without paying the public a dime in royalties, a rule written for pickaxes and mules, still running the uranium industry today.

Here's the part most people will miss: the general public didn't get a say at all this time, the emergency order waived that requirement completely.

Tribal nations are legally different. The government owes them direct, government to government consultation because of treaty and trust obligations going back generations. That legal requirement still applied here. It just got squeezed into 7 days.

Who decided 7 days was enough to weigh in on land that's been theirs for generations?

#DemsUnited → Nevada Current breaks down how Velvet-Wood became the first project ever approved under Trump's energy emergency, the Burgum quote calling it a "mineral security" win, and the five tribal nations whose concerns got steamrolled anyway.
nevadacurrent.com/2025/05/28/fed…

They’re at it AGAIN.
The Department of Interior is.

Caught them today posting a gorgeous photo of Beartooth Pass wildflowers and told everyone to "enjoy the view." Last time it was Moonscape Overlook.

This time it's the same mountain range they've been quietly leasing out for oil since at least 2018.

Same department. Same federal agency a judge had to stop in court. Same rule they just got to kill so they don't even have to pretend conservation matters anymore. They're not hiding any of this. They're using it as the marketing.

In 2018, BLM auctioned a 2,400-acre parcel for oil and gas drilling in the Beartooth foothills, Carbon County, the same range in that photo. The people who actually live there had to drag the federal government into court to stop it, and they won, because BLM skipped the environmental homework.

On May 11, 2026, BLM killed a separate rule that had required conservation to be treated as just as important as drilling and grazing when deciding what happens to public land. That's gone now, on 245 million acres nationwide, 8 million of them in Montana.

See the first source ⬇️ to check out the Department of Interior's post from today, it'll blow your mind.

Who's going to tell the wildflowers that "enjoy the view" isn't the same as actually protecting it?

#DemsUnited
→ This is the snake oil. A dreamy photo and a "have a great weekend" caption, posted by the same agency that's been fighting its own backyard in federal court for over a decade. Go read the replies. People are thanking them.

https://x.com/interior/status/2068333313475883439?s=46

The U.S. Forest Service quietly approved spraying a cancer-linked chemical above Lake Tahoe.

The public didn't find out until two months later.

The chemical is glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup. The plan covers 11,700 acres burned in the 2021 Caldor Fire, with up to 3,600 of those acres slated for herbicide treatment.

The agency used an "emergency" authorization to skip the usual public objection process. The only comment window came and went in December 2025, before most locals even knew the project existed.

About 75% of the lake's watershed sits inside that national forest land. Part of the spray zone sits on mountains above the lake, where snowmelt feeds a tributary running straight into Tahoe.

Homeowners around the lake already have to follow strict rules about what they can put on their own lawns, no high-phosphorus fertilizer, no application near runoff paths - all to protect the lake’s clarity.

None of those rules apply to the Forest Service spraying herbicide in the national forest right above it.

Most residents only learned the scale of it from a magazine investigation in late April. A town hall to organize pushback didn't happen until June 11. By then, spraying had already taken place at one local ski resort.

Who's supposed to tell you what's happening in your own backyard, the federal government or a reporter?

#DemsUnited → The Guardian just talked to the Tahoe locals living this story right now: a retiree horrified to come home to spray plans, a charter boat worker watching her brother fight cancer while the agency insists trace amounts are fine, and the South Lake Tahoe mayor who didn't even know glyphosate was still legal on public land until this year.
theguardian.com/us-news/2026/j…

Land bordering Yosemite, Sequoia, and Pinnacles National Parks — now cleared for oil rigs and fracking. YES fracking!

Two hundred thousand people said NO. The federal government did it anyway.

Over 1 million acres of California public land just got opened up - land that touches ancient sequoia groves older than the country itself and sits right in Yosemite’s backyard.

Patagonia's CEO came out swinging, accusing the administration of putting oil profits over the planet's health and saying public land was never meant to be sold off to drilling companies.

And the man who'll make the final call? He was recently confirmed to run BLM after his own state party called him "an outright enemy of public lands."

Who's going to tell a tree older than the country that its time is up?

#DemsUnited → Ten miles from Yosemite's gates, the ground is already being mapped for wells. Outside breaks down exactly which parks, monuments, and forests are on the table, and why 200,000 public comments didn't slow it down: outsideonline.com/outdoor-advent…

Fifty years of rules keeping off-road vehicles on designated trails — GONE.

Lifted trucks, ATVs, dirt bikes, snowmobiles.

Anywhere they want. On your public lands.

Nixon protected it. Carter protected it. Trump just erased both quietly on a Friday afternoon.

A grizzly bear will abandon its habitat when there's just one mile of road per square mile. One mile. Now there's no limit on where these vehicles can go.

In the Mojave, desert tortoises have already lost 96% of their population in some monitored areas - partly because off-road vehicles crush their burrows. A federal judge just ordered 2,200 miles of trails closed to protect what's left.

Then Trump signed this.

No designated trails. No boundaries. No framework at all. When vehicles go off trail they shatter habitat into pieces too small for wildlife to survive in. They destroy stream banks. They push predators toward humans. And when that happens, the animals always lose.

There was no vote. No public comment. Just a signature.

Now the agencies tasked with writing replacement rules are the BLM, the Forest Service, and the National Park Service - all under an administration that has spent months dismantling every protection they had.

The Interior Department, led by Doug Burgum, is in charge of most of it. The same Doug Burgum who has opened public lands to drilling, mining, and grazing at every turn.

Don't hold your breath.

When the last quiet place is gone, what do we tell the children who never got to hear it?

#DemsUnited → Backcountry hunters and anglers are sounding the alarm too - and when the hunting community and environmentalists are saying the same thing, you know something has gone very wrong. Outdoor Life breaks down exactly what was just erased and why it matters to everyone who loves wild places.
outdoorlife.com/conservation/o…

The U.S. government just made a land deal with the world's first trillionaire. Not a sale. A trade.

Because apparently that's how we do things now.

715 acres of the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge - built by Congress in 1979 to protect one of the most biodiverse wildlife corridors left in North America - handed to SpaceX.

Endangered ocelots. Aplomado falcons. Piping plovers. Land the Carrizo/Comecrudo Nation of Texas has called sacred since long before there was a United States.

SpaceX built a rocket launch site next door. Then came the explosions. Concrete and metal hurled six miles across refuge land. A 2024 study found that after one launch, every single monitored shorebird nest near the site suffered egg damage or loss. The Fish and Wildlife Service's response was not enforcement. It was a land swap.

FOIA documents show internal planning for this transfer started as early as April 2025 - while Musk was running DOGE and threatening to fire federal workers who didn't justify their jobs to him. The agency developed what they called "the most expedited schedule possible" to get it done.

Part of what's being handed over includes the Palmito Ranch Battlefield - the site of the last battle of the Civil War. A National Historic Landmark. Once transferred, SpaceX can restrict public access whenever they want.

25,000+ people submitted public comments. Most opposed the deal. The government moved forward anyway.

A coalition of tribal and conservation groups filed a federal lawsuit this week to stop it. Because someone has to.

Why are we cutting real estate deals with a trillionaire when we could have just made him pay for it?

#DemsUnited → The full breakdown of what's in this land swap - the acreage, the wildlife, the 25,000 public comments that got ignored, and who's suing to stop it. Outdoor Life did the math and it doesn't add up:
outdoorlife.com/conservation/e…

I told you they were coming for the Roadless Rule.

Yesterday, Republicans made their move — and they hid it inside a wildfire bill.

Here's what makes this so enraging:

59 million acres of America's wildest national forests are now on the table.

The 2001 Roadless Rule has protected nearly 60 million acres across 39 states for 25 years. No logging. No road construction. No drilling. No mining.

Built after 1.6 million Americans showed up — at 430 public hearings nationwide — to demand it.

What lives here: bald eagles, elk, black bears, Cerulean warblers, marbled murrelets. Species that need large, intact, unfragmented habitat to survive. For many of them, roadless forests aren't just home — they're the last places left.

What the amendment does: guts the rule. Opens the backcountry to logging and road construction under the cover of "fire prevention."

The administration is pursuing repeal through the executive branch at the same time. And unlike the original rule — they aren't holding a single public hearing.

1.6 million people showed up to protect these forests.
The administration isn't asking anyone this time.

What do you call a wildfire bill that opens forests instead of protecting them?

#DemsUnited → Audubon lays out exactly why roadless forests aren't just scenery — they're climate refuges for hundreds of bird species on the edge of extinction, and why even limited road construction could be the thing that tips them over.
audubon.org/news/protectin…

Six weeks ago I told you they were coming for Big Bend. Yesterday a court cleared the way for border wall construction in the Big Bend National Park region.

Here's what makes this so enraging:

Big Bend National Park is one of the quietest stretches of the entire southern border. In FY2025, the Big Bend sector recorded just 3,096 apprehensions — 1.3% of all crossings nationwide. Border encounters there have dropped 74% since 2023. The land is remote, rugged, and brutal. It has always been its own deterrent.

And yet — a 30-foot steel wall is coming anyway.

What that wall will actually do: fragment critical habitat for black bears, mountain lions, and the endangered black-capped vireo. Sever one of the last wildlife corridors connecting the U.S. and Mexican Chihuahuan Desert — an ecosystem that doesn't recognize borders.

Block the natural movement of over 450 bird species that pass through Big Bend. Flood one of the darkest night skies in North America with construction lights. Slice through 100+ miles of the Wild and Scenic Rio Grande.

To stop 1.3% of border crossings. On land that was already stopping them on its own.

The administration has now waived the Endangered Species Act, the National Park Service Organic Act, and the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act — all at once — to make this happen. The first time in U.S. history any of that has been done inside a national park.

They awarded $4.3 billion in contracts. Steel bollards are already on the ground near Van Horn. Construction starts this summer.

Who do YOU think this wall is actually for?

#DemsUnited → The vote that just killed Big Bend's last legislative shield — and what it means for the park, the river, and everyone who fought to protect them. The Texas Tribune has the full breakdown of how each rep voted and what comes next:
texastribune.org/2026/06/10/tex…

Imagine an underwater Grand Canyon where corals have been growing since before the United States was founded. 🐠

Plunged in total darkness. Untouched. Protected.

Until one signature changed everything.

On February 6, 2026, that's exactly what happened.

The Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument is bigger than Yellowstone.

Its submarine canyons drop into depths we're still mapping. There are sea creatures here science hasn't even named yet.

It’s underwater mountains — millions of years old, rise from the ocean floor, drawing sperm whales and endangered right whales from miles away.

The cold-water corals living here? Some have been growing for over a thousand years. A trawl net destroys them in seconds. They don't grow back in our lifetimes.

The monument was created in 2016 for one reason — to keep this ecosystem off limits from exactly this kind of destruction.

It worked. Until February.

One person. One signature. Zero public input. No congressional vote. No comment period. Just a proclamation — and a thousand-year-old ecosystem lost its protection overnight.

Proclamation 11009 — "Unleashing American Commercial Fishing in the Atlantic"— erased the ban overnight. Trawl gear, dredges, otter nets. Now permitted inside monument boundaries.

And here's the part that should make you angry — this administration tried this exact move in 2020. Conservation groups sued. They won. Biden restored protections.

Now we're back here.

How many more monuments have to lose their protections before Congress does something? 🐠

#DemsUnited → NOAA published the official bulletin confirming exactly what gear is now permitted and where inside the monument - and the details are more alarming than the headline.
fisheries.noaa.gov/bulletin/comme…

I'm a grizzly.

They just decided one acre is all I need.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service just redefined "secure habitat" for grizzly bears in Montana.

The science said 2,500 acres minimum.

They changed it to one.

No public input. No new science. Just a rewrite.

And it wasn't random. The change conveniently cleared the way for a 17,700-acre logging project cutting straight through the corridor grizzlies use to travel between two of their last strongholds in North America.

A former Forest Service wildlife biologist said it plainly: "A one-acre island of forest surrounded by roads isn't secure habitat. It's a death trap."

Courts already rejected this same playbook when agencies tried 10-acre patches near Yellowstone. They lost. Then they came back with one acre.

Who's going to tell the grizzly it only gets one acre?

#DemsUnited → The lawsuit: Courthouse News breaks down exactly how federal agencies rewrote grizzly habitat standards behind closed doors — and why conservationists say it's a legal shell game designed to greenlight logging. This one's worth your time.

courthousenews.com/environmentali…

The federal government just banned bison from public land in Montana.

Not cattle.

Bison.

Interior Secretary Burgum revoked grazing permits for 950 bison
on 63,000 acres of federal land in northeastern Montana.

The reason?

Bison raised for conservation don't count as livestock
under a 1934 law.

Bison raised for meat and milk? Fine.

Bison raised to restore a native species to its native land? Get out.

Meanwhile, cattle ranchers across the West keep grazing on your land.

For $1.69 a month.

One cow. One calf. Thirty days. $1.69.

On land that belongs to every American.

The Cheyenne River Sioux. The Coalition of Large Tribes —
50+ Native nations. Defenders of Wildlife.

They all filed formal protests.

They called it exactly what it is.

"DEI for cows."

The bison have until September 30 to be gone.

Who decided cattle belong on public land more than bison do?

#DemsUnited → Inside Climate News broke down exactly how Burgum rewrote a
90-year-old law to make it happen — and what it could mean
for tribal herds next:

insideclimatenews.org/news/15052026/…

245,000 acres of ancient volcanic canyon.
Wild & Scenic river.
Petroglyphs older than memory.
Wildlife corridors that have never
known a fence.

A U.S. Senator stood at the edge
of that gorge last week and told the crowd:
"We could lose this one."

The administration's "Unleash American Energy" order has it in the crosshairs. The BLM rangers who managed it?
Fired.

The management plan conservationists fought for? Protested as inadequate
before the ink dried.

The Congressional timeline?
Before July.

The local fly shop owner who's lived there his whole life said it plainly:
"Our entire way of life would be in jeopardy."

This isn't hypothetical.
The reconciliation vote is weeks away.

When they call it "energy development" — what exactly do you imagine happening to a place like this?

#DemsUnited → Sen. Heinrich stood at the Rio Grande Gorge and said out loud what most officials won't — that we could actually lose this. His words, his crowd, his warning:

heinrich.senate.gov/newsroom/in-th…

1 in 10 people in the American West get their drinking water from federal public lands.

Trump just stripped the main protection those lands had.

On May 11th, the administration quietly erased the rule that required conservation to be weighed equally with drilling, mining, and grazing on 245 million acres of land that belongs to every American.

Here's what those 245 million acres actually hold:

Over 300 threatened and endangered species.
Another 2,460 at-risk species already trending toward extinction.

And before this rule existed?
81% of that land was already open to oil and gas drilling.
60% already grazed by livestock.
Only 14% set aside for lasting conservation.

The rule said: before you do more damage, you have to weigh the cost.

That rule is now gone.

The government asked for public input before killing it.
The overwhelming majority of responses said keep the rule.
Didn’t matter.

26 retired federal land managers called the repeal legally unsupportable.
State attorneys general called it illegal.
60+ members of Congress said don't do this.

The oil, mining, and cattle industries said do it.

Guess who won.

So who exactly are America's public lands being managed for?

#DemsUnited 🔎 This goes deeper than the headline. ForestWatch maps out exactly which landscapes just lost protection — condor sanctuaries, endangered species corridors, desert grasslands most people have never heard of. If you want to know what's actually at stake on the ground, this is the read.

forestwatch.org/news/trump-adm…

Over a million acres of pristine wilderness lakes in Minnesota.

The most visited canoe country in America.

Generations of families have paddled it, fished it, camped it.

The Senate just sold it out outright.

They called it "America First."

Then handed it to a Chilean billionaire — so his company can ship the copper to China.

The Senate voted 50-49 to gut 20 years of Boundary Waters mining protections.

Here's the deal they made.

A Chilean billionaire's company digs the mine.

America can't smelt the copper — we don't have the capacity.

So the ore ships to China.

China processes it.

Sells it on the world market.

Chile keeps the profits.

Minnesotans don't even get the jobs.

Minnesota keeps the pollution.

And Americans get to buy it back from China at full market price.

This same company has a documented history at their Chilean mines: pipeline spills, regulatory fines, and locals fighting back for years.

They paid a former Trump Interior Secretary $380K.

The protection died by one vote.

Here's exactly how it happened — and who made it happen.

Who do YOU think this mine actually serves?

#DemsUnited A former Trump Interior Secretary forms a lobbying firm.

A Chilean mining giant pays it $380K.

Republican senators who were leaning against the mine suddenly flip.

The White House applies pressure behind closed doors.

And a 20-year wilderness protection dies by one vote.

Outdoor Life pulled back the curtain on every backroom deal, every vote, and every senator who caved.

This is the full breakdown.

outdoorlife.com/conservation/b…

She spent her whole career as a nurse racing down hospital hallways doing CPR.

When she retired, she trusted a nursing home to take care of her. They weren’t supposed to give her solid food. They did. Doctors found scrambled eggs in her lungs.

Her name was Doris Coulson.

Her family sued for wrongful death. The owner never showed up to contest the case. A judge awarded them nearly $19 million.

He never paid.

While the family waited, that same owner was spending more than $1 million lobbying the president of the United States.

It worked.

Trump pardoned him. The White House called his prosecution “an example of over prosecution.” A top DOJ official declared him “free to rebuild.”

His name is Joseph Schwartz. Prosecutors say he still has $58 million in assets. None of it is in his own name.

Doris’s daughter Amanda fought for that judgment for years.

Amanda has since died. Her family still hasn’t seen a dollar.

When Schwartz briefly returned to prison on a separate state fraud charge, a lawyer for the family raced to serve him with a subpoena - one last shot to locate his assets and force payment.

He was released within three weeks. The subpoena never reached him.

There was a machinery working to shorten his punishment.

There was nothing to help his victims.

What do we call a system where a man can owe $19 million to a grieving family, spend $1 million lobbying a president, walk free — and still can’t be found to serve a subpoena? Full Story:

propublica.org/article/trump-…

💦1/6 As our Glaciers cont to melt, it leaves less reflective white that normally would bounce the heat from our sun off our planet, leaving more Ocean mass absorbing that heat. Once our EarthnOceans warm up just 2c’s,
#OVEarth #OneVoice1

theguardian.com/world/2020/feb… 💦 2/6 we will be in serious trouble as our Ocean levels will rise nearly eight inches. There are many island inhabitants that are already being displaced. Imagine Manhattan...where are all the people going to go? Also

#OneVoice1 #OVEarth