As of this fall, any student (including high school exchange, college, and graduate students) enrolled in a school that decides to go entirely online to keep students and faculty safe will need to leave the country, including students who are already

While the COVID-19 pandemic may have kept us from celebrating Independence Day as we should, we still have time to protect the foundation of our democracy: voting.

The vilification of public health officials in the COVID-19 crisis reminds us of their vital role as the crossing guards of science. When their vigilance gives us the green light to eat, drink, and recreate, we hardly notice them waving us onto norma

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of effective science communication – in particular, the vital importance of making research accessible for policymakers. Here, we present our top tips for researchers on how to write for policymake

Our nation’s system for safeguarding the health and safety of working people is in crisis. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration has gone from hampered to virtually absent in the face of a pandemic that has killed or sickened tens of thou

Today, US House passed their infrastructure proposal, the Moving Forward Act (H.R. 2)*. The result is a good bill that will pass out of the House – the question, as always, is what will happen in the Senate.

NOAA Fisheries has instructed its staff not to mention or explicitly refer to the COVID-19 pandemic or coronavirus in any communications. Now fishermen and women, already engaged in one of the most dangerous jobs in the country, will be less aware of

Earlier this month, NOAA forecast that this summer in the Gulf of Mexico an area the size of Delaware and Connecticut combined would have so little oxygen that marine life flees from it or dies in it. In 2017, this “dead zone” was the size of New Jer

In a win for independent science, the EPA said yesterday that it will rescind a policy banning many of the nation’s top environmental scientists from serving on the agency’s science advisory committees. The agency was under court order to remove it.

Washington, D.C., Attorney General Karl A. Racine sued four of the world’s largest oil and gas companies on Thursday for misleading consumers about the impact their products have on the climate. Coming just a day after Minnesota filed a similar suit,

UCS has published a new issue brief that looks at the essential role of public participation for solar geoengineering research and provides recommendations for decisionmaking on atmospheric experiments.

It is mid-June 2020 and another day of unrest in America. As I scan the news, I learn that the environment has been under attack. Again. President Trump recently signed an executive order to dismantle the process requiring environmental reviews of la

On Wednesday, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison filed a consumer fraud lawsuit against ExxonMobil, Koch Industries and the American Petroleum Institute (API), the leading US oil and gas industry trade association. The suit alleges that the two

UCS recently released a new analysis on the costly effects of how electric utilities operate their coal-fired power plants. Using 2018 data from the Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO) territory, our report—entitled Used, But How Useful?—

I strongly believe that unbiased government science is an essential part of the public good, and needs our civil servants to be fierce guardians of it. After being quoted in an article from the New York Times about the war on climate science and wha

For the last sixteen months, top health and nutrition experts have been hard at work reviewing the scientific research that will inform the 2020-2025 Dietary Guidelines for Americans. Yesterday, via webcast, they finally shared the fruits of their la

Today the Senate holds a hearing on the nomination of Dr Nancy Beck to chair the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC). I doubt you spend much time thinking about the CPSC, but the little-known agency plays a crucial role in ensuring that the pro

I joined former NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco and former NOAA Chief Scientist Richard Spinrad to file a complaint under the NOAA Scientific Integrity policy last September. Three other groups and individuals inside and outside government also com

Federal government scientists should be free to pursue research where it leads and communicate their results without political manipulation. The government should collect reliable data about public health and environmental threats and make it publicl

The potential health impacts of protests pales in comparison to the rioting of the virus and the looting of lives incited by the incompetence of the Trump administration and state decisions to prioritize reopening for business over public health.

The country has a long way to go, but California is providing a path to a safe and secure election.

Science has a deeply problematic relationship with race. The dimensions of this history are many, and most remain in operation to this day. Don’t expect your Black colleagues or friends to educate you on this history whenever you deem it necessary to

Here, now, the agency with its mission to protect human health and the environment is attempting to shovel tens of thousands of pollution-caused deaths off the main page and into the margins to make regulatory inaction pencil out.

After the pandemic subsides, we need to build reliable knowledge on the ground about successes and failures in “flattening the curve” in the hardest hit communities during the early phase of the pandemic. What social rhythms were disrupted and what s

Our new UCS report, Used but How Useful, How Electric Utilities Exploit Loopholes, Forcing Customers to Bail Out Uneconomic Coal-Fired Power Plants, found that utilities across 15 states in the heart of the U.S. exploited power market loopholes, cost

When an electric vehicle (EV) comes off the road, what happens to the vehicle battery? The fate of the lithium ion batteries in electric vehicles is an important question for manufacturers, policy makers, and EV owners alike. The economic potential f

As US cases of COVID-19 near 1.7 million, we continue to learn more about the nature of the disease, including the factors that influence susceptibility to COVID-19 and the severity of symptoms. Some of these risk factors, like age and certain health

We’ve decided to put out our questions for the leaders of fossil fuel companies ahead of their virtual annual shareholder meetings—so that journalists, advocates, and activists can amplify and follow up.

If you need some good news at a time when there's plenty of the less-good sort, try this: Renewable energy is crossing some really important milestones in its contribution to the US power sector. The latest involve its generation relative to coal’s:

El 28 de abril el Presidente Trump pretendió dictaminar, mediante una orden ejecutiva, que los mataderos y plantas cárnicas siguieran fungiendo en plena pandemia por constituir “infraestructura crítica.” La orden advirtió que estos planteles deberían