“Residents of Washington, DC, on Sunday briefly experienced the worst air quality of any major city in the world, according to a company that ranks pollution globally, as the capital reckoned with the aftermath of a massive, 40-minute Fourth of July fireworks show,” CNN reports.

Gizmodo: “The weather report is rarely spot-on, but if forecasts have seemed particularly inaccurate recently, it’s because they have been.”

“The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration was among several agencies gutted by the Trump Administration’s Department of Government Efficiency in 2025… These sweeping staff cuts forced the National Weather Service, the forecasting arm of NOAA, to halt or reduce weather balloon launches at 11 locations.”

“President Trump on Friday announced pardons for six people whom he said had been wrongfully prosecuted for ‘fixing their car’ in what he called an act of ‘weaponization and stupidity’ by federal prosecutors,” CBS News reports.

“The Environmental Protection Agency on Friday proposed to weaken limits on emissions of ethylene oxide, a cancer-causing gas, from manufacturing facilities that use it to sterilize medical devices,” the New York Times reports.

“The move revived a long-running debate about the paradoxical effects of ethylene oxide on public health. While it plays a crucial role in sterilizing lifesaving medical devices like pacemakers and syringes, long-term exposure can cause leukemia and other types of cancer among people who work in or live near medical sterilization facilities.”

“The momentous end to the federal government’s legal authority to fight climate change makes it official,” the New York Times reports.

“The United States will essentially have no laws on the books that enforce how efficient America’s passenger cars and trucks should be.”

“That’s the practical result of the Trump administration’s yearlong parade of regulatory rollbacks, capped on Thursday by its killing of the ‘endangerment finding,’ the scientific determination that required the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate greenhouse gases because of the threat to human health.”

“Nearly 17 years after the Environmental Protection Agency declared that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases threaten the public’s health and welfare, the agency on Thursday rescinded the landmark legal opinion underpinning a wave of federal policies aimed at climate change,” the Washington Post reports.

“The Trump administration is planning this week to repeal the Obama-era scientific finding that serves as the legal basis for federal greenhouse-gas regulation, in the most far-reaching rollback of U.S. climate policy to date,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

“The finding provided the legal underpinning for the Environmental Protection Agency’s climate rules, which limited emissions from power plants and tightened fuel-economy standards for vehicles under the Clean Air Act.”

The Trump administration is cancelling $30 billion in green loans and revising another $53 billion, NewsNation reports.

“Six years after the financial industry pledged to use trillions to fight climate change and reshape finance, its efforts have largely collapsed,” the New York Times reports.

“By pulling the United States out of the main international climate treaty, seizing Venezuelan crude oil and using government power to resuscitate the domestic coal industry while choking off clean energy, the Trump administration is not just ignoring climate change, it is likely making the problem worse,” the New York Times reports.

In recent days Trump has slammed the door on every possible avenue of global cooperation on the environment. At the same time, it is sending the message that it wants the world to be awash in fossil fuels sold by America, no matter the consequences.”

New York Times: “Under President Trump, the EPA plans to stop tallying gains from the health benefits caused by curbing two of the most widespread deadly air pollutants, fine particulate matter and ozone, when regulating industry.”

“It’s a seismic shift that runs counter to the EPA’s mission statement, which says the agency’s core responsibility is to protect human health and the environment.”

“President Trump said on Wednesday that the United States would withdraw from the bedrock international agreement that forms the basis for countries to rein in climate change,” the New York Times reports.

“The agreement, which has been in place for 34 years, counts all of the other nations of the world as members.”

New York Times: “The environmental rollbacks came one after the next this week, potentially affecting everything from the survival of rare whales to the health of the Hudson River…”

“If the Trump administration’s proposals [to narrow the Clean Water Act, change the Endangered Species Act and expand offshore oil and gas drilling] are finalized and upheld in court, they could reshape U.S. environmental policy for years to come, environmental lawyers and activists said.”

“Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva called late Wednesday for a global winding-down of fossil fuels — and said he hoped to someday get the U.S. behind it,” Politico reports.

Said Lula: “We must reduce greenhouse gas emissions. If fossil fuels emit too much, we must begin thinking about how to live without them.”

He said he hoped “one day to convince the president of the United States that the climate crisis is serious, that green development is necessary.”