WHAT’S HAPPENING TODAY: Good afternoon and happy Wednesday, readers! President Donald Trump’s cabinet members remained busy on the Hill today, with Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, Energy Secretary Chris Wright, and Environmental Protection Agency administrator Lee Zeldin all appearing before congressional committees to discuss the president’s fiscal 2026 budget.
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BURGUM TESTIFIES BEFORE SENATE APPROPRIATIONS: Interior Secretary Doug Burgum continued his series of congressional appearances today to discuss the president’s 2026 fiscal year budget, facing concerns from both Republican and Democratic lawmakers over proposed cuts to the agency.
Budget worries: During his hearing with the Senate Appropriations subcommittee on Interior, Energy, and Related Agencies this morning, Burgum again faced several questions about proposed reductions to the Department of Interior’s National Parks budget.
“When we see a skinny budget that proposes to cut $1.2 billion, or 35% from Park Service, it’s – it’s hard to square it with the claims that DOI is focused on fostering the American economy,” Republican subcommittee chairwoman Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska said in her opening remarks.
Protecting National Parks: Other lawmakers brought up similar concerns as their colleagues in House appropriations did yesterday regarding the proposed shift in responsibility of managing some National Parks lands to the states. When pressed on whether the Interior Department had a list of the sites it planned to offload as part of this program, Burgum repeatedly explained that it is still a “proposed idea.”
In an effort to break down how this program would be implemented, ranking member Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon asked Burgum whether he understood that the Interior Department would need Congress to change existing law in order to transfer some National Parks sites to the states. Burgum responded with a simple “yes.”
Other Democrats took the hearing to clarify that federally managed lands in their own states – some of which are not formally designated as national parks and therefore at risk of being offloaded under the proposed program – would not be touched by the department.
“I know there’s been some public discussion about sale of public lands, can you give an unequivocal guarantee that you will not pursue any sale of any part of the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge?” Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff of Georgia asked the secretary, referring to the 400,000+ acre blackwater refuge that stretches across the southeastern part of his state and part of Florida.
“Yes,” Burgum replied.
VOTERS BACKED TRUMP BECAUSE OF YOU, ZELDIN TELLS WHITEHOUSE: In testimony before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin got in a confrontation with Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse over the agency’s handling of grant cancellations.
The exchange culminated in Zeldin loudly criticizing the Rhode Island senator, according to The Hill.
“The American taxpayers, they put President Trump in office because of people like you,” Zeldin said. “They have Republicans in charge of the House and Senate because of people like you, because you don’t care about 99 percent of this story.”
Zeldin was responding to Whitehouse’s accusation that the agency did not individually review grants to be canceled, as promised. Whitehouse made the claim based on representations made in court by the Department of Justice.
“You’re not grasping the fact that we would have multiple employees looking at these grants,” Zeldin responded. “That concept just escapes you.” He also said that Whitehouse insists on “EPA lighting taxpayer dollars on fire.”
CHRIS WRIGHT AND TOP DEM DUKE IT OUT OVER NUKES: During an appearance before the Senate Appropriations subcommittee on Energy and Water Development, Energy Secretary Chris Wright got into a lively debate with ranking member Sen. Patty Murray of Washington over the Department of Energy’s priorities around nuclear power developments.
The details: Toward the end of her line of questioning, Murray pointed to the secretary’s frequent comments regarding the importance of nuclear power and advanced nuclear energy technologies like small modular reactors.
“Just yesterday, you said you were in favor of every incentive we can get from the federal government to restart this industry. Yet, in your budget that you’re proposing, you’ve cut the Office of Nuclear Energy by $408 million,” Murray said, referring to the proposed 2026 fiscal year budget.
“How are investors and companies supposed to have confidence in partnering with you when what you say and what your budget says are two different things?” Murray continued.
Wright hit back, insisting that individual item lines in the budget do not indicate a specific policy of the administration. He said he believed the nuclear industry is “enthusiastic” and “confident” that the administration will create an environment for the power source to grow, particularly through the DOE’s efforts to mobilize tens of billions of dollars worth of private investments.
Murray pointed out that, while the government may want to rely on private capital to boost the nuclear industry, many in the private sector are hesitant to invest without substantial federal support.
“We’ve actually seen companies in the country now pulling out of projects because…of the chaos in your department,” Murray claimed. “As a businessman, you said that you should know more than anyone the importance of certainty, and when they see the chaos and they see them pulling back, then they’re not going to invest their private money either.”
CHINA, INDONESIA, AND CONGO SEEN DOMINATING CRITICAL MINERALS PAST 2030: In a report released today, the International Energy Agency said that the top producers of critical minerals have continued to strengthen their hold on the market despite Western efforts to boost diversification.
The details: China, Indonesia, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo remain the top three producers of critical minerals like copper, lithium, nickel, cobalt, graphite, and other rare earth minerals, the IEA said. China dominates most supply chains for these minerals and won’t be losing that advantage anytime soon. The report estimates that the top three refining nations held an average market share of 86% in 2024. That is only expected to drop to 82% by 2035.
China’s reach on the market doesn’t stop with the mining, as the IEA found that the Asian nation is also the dominant refiner globally for 19 out of 20 minerals analyzed.
The impact: Given this concentration of mining and refining, the IEA emphasized the need to diversify the market with alternative producers like the United States, Australia, and Canada. This won’t happen through market forces alone, the agency warned, saying policy support, public financing, and market collaboration are necessary to reduce reliance on top producers like China.
“We have all the reasons to be worried about the concentration of critical minerals, especially on the refining side,” Fatih Birol, IEA’s executive director, told the Financial Times.
“We cannot rely only on market forces if we want diversification and to move away from this concentration,” Birol said.
MAJOR CARBON REMOVAL COMPANY LAYS OFF DOZENS: Swiss carbon capture company Climeworks is laying off roughly 22% of its staff, as the startup has faced backlash in recent days for only capturing a fraction of the carbon promised to investors.
The details: The company confirmed to Bloomberg this week that it will be letting go 106 employees. It previously staffed around 483. Co-founder and co-CEO Jan Wurzbacher told the outlet that Climeworks is exiting a “phase of extreme growth,” and attributed the cuts to unfavorable market conditions.
“We need to consolidate a little bit,” Werzbacher said, adding that the company will continue to raise money and seek out acquisitions of smaller carbon capture startups to continue to grow and create profit.
Something related: The cuts come just days after the Icelandic newspaper Heimildin accused Climeworks of failing to hit its CO2 removal goals since it launched in 2021. The company operates two massive carbon removal facilities in southern Iceland, and is poised to use its technology in a Department of Energy-backed direct air capture hub in Louisiana.
Climeworks estimates that its removal facilities can capture 4,000 tons of CO2 each year. But, between 2022 and 2024, the company has failed to even reach 1,000 tons of removals, failing to offset its own carbon footprint of 1,700 tons of CO2, according to Heimildin.
Werzbacher admitted that both of the Iceland plants are falling behind. He claimed, though, that outdated technology and slow construction phases have prevented the facilities from hitting their capture targets.
GLOBAL SOLAR GENERATION SET TO SURPASS NUCLEAR FOR FIRST TIME: The amount of electricity generated by solar power is reportedly set to exceed the amount generated by nuclear reactors for the first time as soon as next month.
The details: Electricity generation data collected by energy think tank Ember reviewed by Reuters shows that solar generation surged by 34% in the first three months of 2025, when compared with the same time period last year.
If solar generation continues to grow at this rate, worldwide generation from solar energy will likely be more than 260 terawatt hours per month for June, July, and August. That would be well above the output expected from nuclear reactors, which averaged around 223 terawatt hours a month in 2024. Nuclear power hit a monthly peak of just shy of 252 terawatt hours in 2019, according to Reuters.
If solar does see these generation growth rates this summer, it would be a massive milestone for the industry, which has faced increased pressure from the Trump administration and congressional Republicans as they look to clamp down on the renewable energy industry.
This spike in electricity generation can be attributed to the increased number of daylight hours in the northern hemisphere during the summer season, which will begin to drop again following the summer solstice on June 20.
ICYMI – NOAA FINDS OFFSHORE OIL AND GAS ACTIVITIES THREATEN ENDANGERED WHALE: The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Fisheries service has released a new biological opinion on offshore oil and natural gas production in the Gulf of Mexico, determining that the activities do in fact endanger marine life and endangered species like the Rice’s whale.
The details: The biological opinion is a required analysis to ensure that drilling and other oil and gas activities do not threaten endangered species or their habitat. Oil drilling is not permitted to occur without an issued biological opinion.
In the analysis released yesterday, NOAA Fisheries estimated that there are approximately 51 Rice’s whales found in the Gulf, which has since been renamed as the Gulf of America by the Trump administration. The analysis determines that this type of whale is critically endangered and threatened by oil and gas activities in the region – such as large oil spills, vessel noise, surveys and more – as it overlaps with the species’ habitat. NOAA Fisheries did note that its proposal, if followed, would help mitigate risk for the rare whale.
Some background: The environmental analysis comes after it had been delayed five months by the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland at the request of oil companies that claimed the 2020 biological opinion threatened to shut down production in the Gulf.
The federal government had been facing a deadline of December 2024 to issue a new opinion after the Maryland district court ruled the 2020 version was unlawful. The National Marine Fisheries Service and several energy groups all called on the court to approve a more lenient timeline, saying it could halt oil and natural gas production if the opinion was unable to be approved by the end of the year. The court ultimately ruled in favor of the energy companies, giving the federal government until May 21.
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