NOAA Staffing Cuts Threaten Years of Salmon Harvests

In Washington State, April is when millions of young Chinook salmon are released from hatcheries, where they started as tiny, pink globes, to swim downstream and rebuild the salmon population. They are part of an ecosystem that affects tribal, commercial, and recreational fishing and are a main source of food for endangered killer whales. But … Read more

Five Takeaways From Trump’s Plan to Rescue Coal

Hard hats are back. So is “beautiful, clean” coal. President Trump signed four executive orders on Tuesday to try to bolster the country’s declining coal industry, including the lifting of restrictions on mining and burning of the dirtiest fossil fuel. In addition to waiving air pollution limits and other regulations on coal imposed by the … Read more

Jared Isaacman, Trump’s Pick to Lead NASA, Calls Mars a Priority in Confirmation Hearing

NASA will prioritize sending American astronauts to Mars, President Trump’s nominee to lead the space agency will tell a Senate committee on Wednesday. The nominee is Jared Isaacman, the chief executive of the payment processing company Shift4 Payments, who is a close associate of Elon Musk, the founder of SpaceX. As someone who has led … Read more

Nuclear Testing Not Advised, Trump’s Nominee Says in Senate Hearing

Brandon Williams, President Trump’s pick to become the keeper of the nation’s nuclear arsenal, testified on Tuesday that he would not recommend that Mr. Trump restart explosive testing of the deadly weapons. His statement, during a confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee, was unexpected. Other advisers to the administration had proposed that the … Read more

Ideology May Not Be What You Think but How You’re Wired

So sharp are partisan divisions these days that it can seem as if people are experiencing entirely different realities. Maybe they actually are, according to Leor Zmigrod, a neuroscientist and political psychologist at Cambridge University. In a new book, “The Ideological Brain: The Radical Science of Flexible Thinking,” Dr. Zmigrod explores the emerging evidence that … Read more

Who Will Care for Infants With H.I.V. Overseas?

The Trump administration has dismissed the few remaining health officials who oversaw care for some of the world’s most vulnerable people: more than 500,000 children and more than 600,000 pregnant women with H.I.V. in low-income countries. Expert teams that managed programs meant to prevent newborns from acquiring H.I.V. from their mothers and to provide treatment … Read more