"We learn who is furloughed when we send an email to someone and get the out-of-office message," one employee tells WIRED. Workers at the Environmental Protection Agency tell WIRED that they have faced increasing chaos over the past five weeks. In recent weeks, varied phases of furloughs have forced staff to go home in seemingly random waves. Some employees remaining at the agency are working on policies friendly to fossil fuel and industrial interests that are a priority of the administration, even as the rest of the government shuts down. Others have had to sit on their hands, as the shutdown takes out colleagues with no notice--and remaining employees have little to no information as to what is coming next.

It's Not Going to Get It From Trump's Corporate-Friendly EPA The White House's new Make America Healthy Again strategy makes some asks of the EPA--but critics say the agency is too industry-friendly to make a difference. When Jean-Marie Kauth first read the Make America Healthy Again commission report, released by the White House in May, she was "thrilled about some of the things they identified," she says. "They clearly called out industry as a pernicious influence on why EPA has not been very successful in regulating chemicals, especially pesticides." Kauth's daughter died of leukemia at age 8 after, Kauth says, she was exposed to the insecticide chlorpyrifos, which the EPA banned in 2021. Kauth, a professor at Benedictine University in Illinois, now serves as a member of the EPA's Children's Health Protection Advisory Committee (CHPAC), a group of outside experts who advise the agency on children's health issues.

President Trump this week continued to make his environmental priorities clear by vowing to open up hundreds of coal power plants in the United States in an effort to advance competition against China. "After years of being held captive by Environmental Extremists, Lunatics, Radicals, and Thugs, allowing other Countries, in particular China, to gain tremendous Economic advantage over us by opening up hundreds of all Coal Fire Power Plants, I am authorizing my Administration to immediately begin producing Energy with BEAUTIFUL, CLEAN COAL," Trump wrote in a post on social media Monday. Though the post was not linked to any particular policy plans or documents, it arrives as the White House takes aim at various environmental agencies and clean-energy initiatives. In the last week alone, the administration has announced plans to significantly roll back regulations that govern coal production and to potentially lay off up to 65% of scientists and researchers at the Environmental Protection Agency, among other actions. Coal accounts for about 16% of the country's electricity generation, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration -- down from about 50% in 2000 as natural gas and nuclear and renewable energy have grown.

House Democrats leading the Trump impeachment inquiry are "cherry-picking what to leak," House Foreign Affairs committee member Congressman Lee Zeldin, R-N.Y., claimed Saturday. Appearing on "Fox & Friends: Weekend" with host Ed Henry, Zeldin said Democrats aren't being upfront with the American public. They're lying about other claims and the American public gets completely deceived as a result of it," he said. At a fiery rally in Louisiana on Friday, the president hit back at Democrats' "witch hunt." This is one of the great con jobs ever. We must never let it happen to another president. This should never be allowed to happen again," he told his crowd of supporters.