Crews building Trump border wall in drought-hit New Mexico ordered to stop drilling wells

Construction crews building a border wall in New Mexico were ordered to stop drilling new wells after ranchers said that pumping groundwater to produce concrete could threaten their livestock amid a severe drought...

 https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/aug/03/trump-border-wall-new-mexico-wells

State agencies issue permits for Line 5 tunnel under Straits of Mackinac; other permits sit in queue

The Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy said the tunnel plans underwent a comprehensive review and meet regulatory and statutory requirements, including a mitigation plan for impacts to wetlands and cultural resources. 

The agency review concluded that "the public and private need for the proposed activity outweighed other public interest criteria." As a condition of the permit, Enbridge will be required to submit an improved wetland mitigation plan to address wetland impacts…

 https://www.michiganpublic.org/environment-climate-change/2026-07-15/state-agencies-issue-permits-for-line-5-tunnel-under-straits-of-mackinac-other-permits-sit-in-queue

 

Trump Plans To Speed Up Permits For Projects Over $1 Billion | HuffPost Latest News

"Any person or company investing ONE BILLION DOLLARS, OR MORE, in the United States of America, will receive fully expedited approvals and permits, including, but in no way limited to, all Environmental approvals," Trump wrote Tuesday afternoon on Truth Social. "GET READY TO ROCK!!!"

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-environmental-permitting_n_6758aedde4b00d5a137dcd1b

As Congress Considers Canceling Biden’s Export Permitting Halt, New Science Confirms LNG’s Climate-Killing Impact

"Liquified gas exports are a threat to public health, our coastlines, and our climate. Republican extremists are doing the bidding of their fossil fuel industry backers by taking aim at a commonsense policy to review the environmental and climate costs of the unprecedented expansion of a polluting industry. Senate leaders should make sure that this Republican anti-science ploy is a failure." – Jim Walsh, Policy Director, Food & Water Watch…

https://www.commondreams.org/newswire/as-congress-considers-canceling-bidens-export-permitting-halt-new-science-confirms-lngs-climate-killing-impact

Joe Biden just did the rarest thing in US politics: he stood up to the oil industry

What's more – as new research this fall showed – when you put fracked gas on a boat and send it on a long ocean cruise, so much leaks out that it's far worse than coal. If the White House had kept granting all the permits that industry wanted, within a decade US natural gas would be producing more greenhouse gas emissions than everything that happens on the continent of Europe. It's the biggest fossil fuel expansion project on Earth. 

That's half the problem with Rice's argument. The other half is, it's not coal that Rice's gas mostly undercuts. We now live on a planet where the cheapest way to produce power is to point a sheet of glass at the sun; there's no reason not to go straight from coal to renewable energy, with no intermediate stop at gas. The idea that it's a "bridge fuel" is a decade out of date, but it's an argument that big oil wants to extend four or five decades into the future, because that's how long this new infrastructure is supposed to last...

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/feb/07/joe-biden-big-oil-lng-permits