Leaders promise to fight back with court challenges as Trump rescinds finding foundational to US climate rules
Climate leaders gathered outside the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) headquarters on Wednesday to condemn the Trump administration’s plans to repeal the legal finding underpinning all federal climate regulations, and promised to fight against the rollback.
“This is corruption, plain and simple. Old fashioned, dirty political corruption,” said Sheldon Whitehouse, senator for Rhode Island, at the rally. “This is an agency that has been so infiltrated by the corrupt fossil fuel industry that it has turned an agency of government into the weapon of the fossil fuel polluters.”
Long before agriculture, humans were transforming Europe’s wild landscapes. Advanced simulations show that hunting and fire use by Neanderthals and Mesolithic hunter-gatherers reshaped forests and grasslands in measurable ways. By reducing populations of giant herbivores, people indirectly altered how dense vegetation became. The findings challenge the idea that prehistoric Europe was an untouched natural world.
States are well-equipped to deal with data centers, and a new forecast shows what will drive growth in global electricity demand.
By Dan Gearino
The rise of AI data centers has sparked panic about how to provide enough electricity to support new development without overheating the planet and saddling everyone with unaffordable utility costs.
Coral reefs, worth an estimated $9.8 trillion a year to humanity, are in far worse shape than previously realized. A massive international study found that during the 2014–2017 global marine heatwave, more than half of the world’s reefs suffered significant bleaching, and many experienced large-scale coral death.
The company, long focused on cars and trucks, plans to begin manufacturing large batteries used by utilities, data centers, other businesses and homeowners.
Ford Motor shut down a battery factory and laid off 1,600 workers after President Trump and Republicans gutted government support for electric vehicles.
Budget pressures are forcing climate groups into uncomfortable compromises even as Maryland falls further behind on its climate targets.
By Aman Azhar
Maryland environmental groups are backing Gov. Wes Moore’s plan to redirect more than $700 million from the state’s main clean energy fund while at the same time pushing for legislation to prevent similar raids in the future and secure hundreds of millions of dollars in guaranteed yearly climate spending going forward.
Even when Earth was locked in its most extreme deep freeze, the planet’s climate may not have been as silent and still as once believed. New research from ancient Scottish rocks reveals that during Snowball Earth — when ice sheets reached the tropics and the planet resembled a giant snowball from space — climate rhythms similar to today’s seasons, solar cycles, and even El Niño–like patterns were still pulsing beneath the ice.
Doyne Farmer says a super-simulator of the global economy would accelerate the transition to a green, clean world
It’s a mind-blowing idea: an economic model of the world in which every company is individually represented, making realistic decisions that change as the economy changes. From this astonishing complexity would emerge forecasts of unprecedented clarity. These would be transformative: no more flying blind into global financial crashes, no more climate policies that fail to shift the dial.
This super simulator could be built for what Prof Doyne Farmer calls the bargain price of $100m, thanks to advances in complexity science and computing power.
As noted earlier today, Donald Trump is continuously engaging in assaults on US human health due to Trump’s incessant push for fossil fuels and against cleantech. The policies go beyond normal subsidies. Trump and his team are basically forcing the use of old coal power plants. And that will come ... [continued]
Meanwhile, its sales rose significantly in Spain, Italy, Sweden, and Finland. I hadn’t seen anything about Tesla’s 2026 sales so far, and US sales are impossible to come by at this stage, so I decided to go have a look at how Tesla is doing in various European markets. Using ... [continued]
The US startup SOLRITE is opening up a new energy storage opportunity for residential ratepayers to participate in money-saving VPPs, whether or not they have rooftop solar panels.
There is good news out there, even if it feels like scraps in a world on the brink. Some came last week – with plenty of caveats – when analysts at the Paris-based International Energy Agency (IEA) found coal-fired power generation decreased in both China and India last year.
This is a potentially big shift. Among other things, it exposes the hollowness of arguments in Australia that there is no point doing anything about the climate crisis because the big Asian economies are building endless new coal plants.
Exclusive: The disproportionate number of armed conflicts taking place Africa – many of which are climate-driven – has led campaigners to call for the continent to have better representation
Falling emissions from the world’s biggest greenhouse gas emitter could mean a global turning point.
By Georgina Gustin
Planet-warming emissions from China, currently the world’s largest greenhouse gas polluter, have continued to flatline or fall as cleaner forms of energy outpace coal and gas generation, according to a new analysis published Wednesday.
Mr. Trump is trying to revive coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel. At the White House, coal executives awarded him a trophy as the “Undisputed Champion of Beautiful Clean Coal.”
Donald Trump has a handful of clear areas of focus in his second term as president. One of those is to force old, polluting, expensive fossil fuel power plants on the American people. And he’s taking it to new extremes this week. “Based on reporting, today Donald Trump will give ... [continued]
The administration ended a program that documented excessive levels of a carcinogen at industrial facilities across the country. Environmental groups who say the move leaves polluted communities behind have filed suit.
By Lee Hedgepeth
BIRMINGHAM, Ala.—Haley Lewis dreamed about Charlie Powell last night.
DETROIT, Michigan — This week, the Trump Administration is expected to announce a suite of rollbacks that bolster the coal and fossil fuel industries, threatening to keep our coal plants online longer and make our environment and climate dirtier. The administration is expected to revoke the Environmental Protection Agency’s longstanding ... [continued]
Eight thousand new EV chargers will be installed in Canada at a cost of $84 million. At the moment, Canada has about 35,000 public EV chargers. Canada also supports the transition to zero-emissions vehicles with EV incentives and the country has huge sustainable transition goals, as stated here: “To help ... [continued]
When Lucid Motors announced plans to build its first manufacturing facility outside the United States in 2022, the move was framed as both symbolic and strategic. The plant in King Abdullah Economic City (KAEC) would not only become Saudi Arabia’s first car factory, but also a cornerstone of the kingdom’s ... [continued]
Continued global heating could set irreversible course by triggering climate tipping points, but most people unaware
The world is closer than thought to a “point of no return” after which runaway global heating cannot be stopped, scientists have said.
Continued global heating could trigger climate tipping points, leading to a cascade of further tipping points and feedback loops, they said. This would lock the world into a new and hellish “hothouse Earth” climate far worse than the 2-3C temperature rise the world is on track to reach. The climate would also be very different to the benign conditions of the past 11,000 years, during which the whole of human civilisation developed.
Scientists say warming is increasing faster than at any time in at least 3 million years. There is no guide for what comes next.
By Bob Berwyn
If you think of Earth’s climate system as a backyard swing that’s been gently swaying for millennia, then human-caused global warming is like a sudden shove strong enough to disrupt the usual arc and buckle the chains.
Co-ops, staff-run nonprofits and democratic newsrooms take a mix-and-match approach to how they operate
In 2021, a group of colleagues and I relaunched The Appeal as one of the nation’s first staff-run nonprofit newsrooms. In the years since, there’s been an exciting explosion of non-traditional, worker-friendly newsrooms — where journalists have a voice and a vote — launching across the country.
“Having worked for corporate media… the people who are best positioned to make decisions, not only editorially, but also in the fate and the running of the business that supports the journalism, are the people who are here on the ground who are actually doing the work and are the ones who are actually affected by it,” said Corinne Colbert, a co-founder of Athens County Independent which launched in 2022.
I interviewed a dozen similar newsrooms for my RJI Fellowship which illuminated that, despite a shared ethos, the actual internal structures of these news organizations are incredibly varied. Yet the way we talk about, and media reporters cover, these newsrooms often conflate their legal structures (non-profits cannot be worker-owned!) and oversimplifies their operations. If we’re not able to accurately talk about this corner of the news industry, it makes it harder to build resources to help them launch, grow, and succeed.
From my research, not only are there 3 overarching categories — co-ops, staff-run nonprofits and other democratic newsrooms — they have different ways of governing their organizations, overseeing daily work, and making team decisions.
To capture this variety, I plotted these newsrooms on the above matrix (which is intended to be illustrative of their differences, not a definitive account).
In the top right corner are co-ops (Hell Gate, Racket, 404 Media, and Tone Madison) and staff-run nonprofits (The 51st) with small teams where journalists are the ones making all the decisions, big and small. Just beyond those are co-ops (Defector and Range) and staff-run nonprofits (Athens County Independent, The Appeal, and The Colorado Sun) where journalists vote for representation on their boards but still make key decisions. Finally, there’s other democratic newsrooms (Canopy Atlanta, Invisible Institute and Atlanta Community Press Collective) that informally involve their staff in decision-making.
But even this doesn’t capture their full intricacies. While each newsroom describes itself in particular terms, there are three main ways to think about the internal structure of non-traditional, worker-friendly newsrooms: governance, management and decision-making approaches.
Governance
This is the way major decisions are made.
Worker board: Staff have governance authority by serving as the full board.
Internal elected board: Not all staff serve on the board, but instead they elect a smaller number of colleagues to serve on a governing body.
Mixed board: Staff elect one or several representatives to serve on the board that also includes community members or external experts.
External board: Staff donot serve on the board, which comprises only community members or external experts.
Management
This is about the way day-to-day operations are overseen.
Collective: The workers or staff oversee their own day-to-day work.
Executive team: This is a smaller group, like a leadership team, that oversees daily work.
Decision-making
Consensus: Everyone is in agreement.
Majority/ Modified consensus: Most people are in agreement.
Consent: Agreement is found through a lack of objections.
If we look at the dozen or so newsrooms I interviewed, here’s how their internal structures breaks down:
Newsroom
Type
Governance
Management
Team Decisions
Defector
Co-op
Internal elected board
Collective
Critical decisions by ⅔ majority
Hell Gate
Co-op
Worker board
Collective
Most decisions by consensus (75% majority, if needed)
Racket
Co-op
Functions like a worker board
Collective
All decisions by consensus
Range
Co-op
Mixed board(staff representatives + investor/s)
Collective
Most decisions by consent
The 51st
Staff-run nonprofit
Worker board
Collective
Most decisions by consent
The Appeal
Staff-run nonprofit
Mixed board (external + 1 staff representative)
Executive team
Most decisions by consent
Athens County Independent
Staff-run nonprofit
Mixed board (external + 1 staff representative)
Collective
Almost all decisions by majority (50%+1)
The Colorado Sun
Staff-run nonprofit
Mixed board (external + 3 reps)
Executive team
n/a
Atlanta Community Press Collective
Democratic
External Board
Executive team
Most decisions by consensus
Canopy Atlanta
Democratic
External Board
Executive team
Most decisions by consensus
Invisible Institute
Democratic
External Board
Executive team
Most decisions by consensus
Note: The Appeal staff voted to close its staff-run nonprofit newsroom in 2025, and its journalism is now published by Truthout.
What becomes clear here is the way we talk about and flatten these newsrooms often just as “co-ops”, or ignoring some altogether, does a disservice to the hard work of building the mix-and-match approaches these newsrooms have taken to involve journalists in the organizations beyond just their journalism.
So if you’re wanting to launch a non-traditional, worker-friendly startup, not only must you choose between being a for-profit co-op, staff-run nonprofit, or a democratic for/non-profit, it’s critical to think through who and how decisions will be made.
“The most evergreen advice is, a business can be whatever you want. Don’t be held down by conventions, you can do whatever you want,” said Defector co-founder Jasper Wang.
Cite this article
Chan, Tara Francis (2026, Feb. 11). Worker-friendly newsrooms are not all the same. Reynolds Journalism Institute. Retrieved from: https://rjionline.org/news/worker-friendly-newsrooms-are-not-all-the-same/
XPENG has aggressively overhauled its Southeast Asian strategy in early 2026, transitioning from a niche importer to a regional powerhouse with localized manufacturing and an integrated infrastructure backbone. Central to this shift is a blueprint established in Indonesia: the integration of world-class ultra-fast charging to eliminate the primary barrier to ... [continued]
Four questions on repeal of its 2009 endangerment finding on greenhouse gases
By Marianne Lavelle
Following three of the warmest years on record, as scientists reckon with climate tipping points and states and cities grapple with the escalating cost of extreme weather and more intense wildfires, the Trump administration this week is expected to formally eliminate the U.S. government’s role in controlling greenhouse gas pollution.
The US startup Faraday Future is positioning its new Super One BEV as a stepping-stone to more affordable EVs, targeting the domestic market among others.
Hair extensions used primarily by Black women contain a “shocking” range of dangerous chemicals, including breast carcinogens, new research shows.
By Liza Gross
Elissia Franklin is an analytical chemist with an infectious laugh, a penchant for braided hair extensions and a fierce commitment to reducing health disparities for Black women.Growing up on Chicago’s South Side, she saw firsthand the systemic barriers Black women face and resolved to help her community benefit from all she learned as she pursued her career as a chemist.
VinFast’s Retreat From America Was Inevitable A recent Nikkei Asia report said that Vietnamese carmaker VinFast was targeting a 300,000 annual vehicle sales in the coming years, with India and Southeast Asia positioned as core growth markets. That global total still has Europe and North America in mind, and underscores ... [continued]
With the UK saying that it wishes to become an ‘investor’ rather than a ‘donor’ in the era of foreign aid cuts, reforming UK supply chain laws could ensure that overseas investment maximises the benefits to people in developing countries. Nick Ferris reports
The Environmental Protection Agency is eliminating a Clean Air Act finding from 2009 that is the basis for much of the federal government's actions to rein in climate change.
Activists say the decision is the latest sign of growing grassroots opposition to the industry in the U.S.
By Jon Hurdle
A Pennsylvania county on Tuesday rejected a plan to rezone land so a data center could be built there, becoming the latest locality to push back against an electricity-hungry industry growing rapidly nationwide.
