Trump’s EPA Will Let Power Plants Poison Our Air as Much as They Want

The Environmental Protection Agency no longer intends to protect any environment from the interests of America’s power plants.

Lee Zeldin, the agency’s administrator and Donald Trump’s former impeachment defense attorney, will announce plans Monday to walk back several critical national regulations limiting greenhouse gas emissions from plants that burn coal and gas, reported The New York Times.

By the EPA’s own analysis, the power sector is the second-largest contributor of carbon dioxide and greenhouse gases in the U.S., accounting for a quarter of all emissions in the country.

Zeldin is expected to announce the change while meeting with international energy ministers from the G20 countries. He intends to make the case that greenhouse gases from power plants do not endanger human health or the rest of the world, delegitimizing the legal grounds used to develop the 1963 Clean Air Act.

If U.S. courts agree with the EPA’s new parameters, it could restrict future administrations from enacting similar regulations.

Environmentalists and climate scientists that spoke with the Times argued that, if the U.S. power sector were its own nation, it would be the fifth-largest global polluter behind China, the U.S.’s various other industries, India, and Russia.

“This is another nail in the coffin for this administration’s commitment to protecting people and tackling the climate crisis,” Manish Bapna, the president of the Natural Resources Defense Council, told the Times. Bapna added that Zeldin is ending the EPA’s “legal and moral responsibility to end climate pollution.”

It’s the latest of many efforts by Trump and his allies to diminish or completely rewrite the destructive realities of climate change and global warming. Yet evidence abounds proving the catastrophic forecast: Summer 2026 was the hottest season in U.S. history (surpassing the national average temperature during the infamous 1936 Dust Bowl heatwave), the California coast—from Malibu to the San Francisco bay area—is falling into the sea due to land erosion caused by rising sea levels, and intense, sudden rainfalls in the Grand Canyon caused by a spike in temperature killed two people last month.

The changes have been even more harrowing on a global scale. Last month, a glacier several times the size of the Empire State Building melted away from its perch atop the Himalayas, which have experienced climate change at a disproportionately higher pace than the rest of the world—sometimes warming as much as twice the global rate.

The glacial chunk crashed into a valley along the Nepal-Tibet border nearly 7,000 feet below, carving into the land and reshaping the earth before landing in the Lhende Khola River, where the enormous quantity of rock and ice displaced enough water to trigger a nine-meter flash flood. The entire event killed at least 1,300 people, and more than 5,300 are still missing in the region.

President Trump doesn’t want us to know what he’s using artificial intelligence for.

The question was raised Sunday night in the Air Force One press gaggle while Trump spoke about trying to beat China in the AI arms race—something he and many others in government seem to think is of highest priority.

“Whoever wins AI—and we’re leading by a lot—whoever wins AI wins,” Trump said.

“Have you ever used it yourself?” a reporter asked.

“I use AI, yeah I do.”

“How do you use AI?”

“But uh, I would say for the most part you can use AI for a lotta things,” he continued, ignoring the question.

“What do you use it for?” the reporter pressed.

“I don’t wanna tell you that.”

The Trump administration is certainly AI-obsessed. Trump has used it to make disparaging, racist posts of his political adversaries, portray himself as Jesus Christ, depict the Gaza Strip as a post-genocide beach resort, and even literally speak for him in a campaign ad. His administration has also been extremely friendly to the AI industry, with everything from DOGE to the Department of Defense implementing it into their protocols and wars—all while the technology goes largely unregulated. And yet even with all that in mind, it’s troubling to imagine what else Trump may be using it for as president. Maybe lately he’s asking ChatGPT what “Ansar Allah” means.

Donald Trump Jr.’s lavish destination wedding was bankrolled by a member of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s inner circle, ProPublica reported Monday.

Umar Kremlev, a Russian oligarch, dropped hundreds of thousands of dollars on Don Jr.’s big day, according to records reviewed by ProPublica, as well as three people familiar with the event who spoke with the outlet.

Kremlev rented out a private island where the reception was held, and guests were housed for $100,000 per night. He paid an estimated $70,000 for a massive fireworks display, and his team even helped to plan the festivities.

Kremlev is president of the International Boxing Association, which is financed by Gazprom, a Russian state-owned energy company. The wedding payments were sourced from an entity in Dubai that IBA uses for financial transactions.

The event was small—just 18 people attended the ceremony, and around 50 attended the reception—which made it all the more conspicuous that there was a large delegation of Russians wandering around. None of the family’s pictures showed Kremlev, but the top of his bald head could be spotted in a group picture posted by a friend of the bride.

Kremlev has extensive ties to Putin: The Russian president has positioned Kremlev as a central figure in the sports-betting industry and chosen one of his companies to run the national lottery. In 2023, Putin nationalized Russia’s largest car dealership company—and Kremlev promptly became its owner. Kremlev is also involved in a sports education organization called Healthy Fatherland, which has been sanctioned by Ukraine for allegedly abducting and relocating Ukrainian children.

“Umar is guided by Putin. It was using the sport for soft political power,” a former IBA board member told ProPublica. “It’s geopolitics. That it’s boxing is just happenstance.”

The previously unreported relationship between Don Jr. and a Russian oligarch should raise serious concerns about the level of access Putin’s inner circle has to President Donald Trump and his family. Also in attendance at the wedding was Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, who has held a central role in negotiating a ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine.

It’s not clear why Kremlev would bankroll Don Jr.’s wedding, considering that the president’s son already has a net worth of $300 million. Frank Montoya Jr., a retired career FBI official who held senior counterintelligence roles, told ProPublica that the arrangement reeked of quid pro quo. “If I’m paying for your wedding, at some point, you’re going to owe me something,” he said. “This should be unthinkable for the son of the president. End of story.”

A spokesperson for Trump Jr. did not dispute that his wedding was paid for by a Russian oligarch, insisting that Kremlev was a “personal friend” and “not someone he has a business relationship with.” Kremlev’s press office said, “Mr. Kremlev and Mr. Trump Jr. have a friendly relationship” and they first met “a couple of years ago.”

This story has been updated.

President Donald Trump didn’t seem to remember the January 6 Capitol insurrection when asked about one of his Truth Social posts by a reporter Sunday.

On Friday, Trump posted a video of his speech on the White House lawn from January 6, 2021, urging rioters to go home. Why he chose to post that video on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the September 11 attacks is unclear, and when he was asked about it a few days later, he was clueless.

“Well, I posted about 30. Which one are you talking about?” Trump replied to a reporter on Air Force One. When the reporter tried to explain the video to him, he asked, “Who?” and then said, “I don’t know what she’s talking about.”

It’s another example of what appears to be Trump’s ongoing cognitive decline. He’s forgotten how to spell the word “dumb,” repeatedly told a fake 9/11 story, and keeps falling asleep in public. Why can’t he remember one of the final moments of his first term as president, and one of the worst, at that? Is another symptom of his declining mental state that he goes on posting binges without realizing what he’s putting on social media? He somehow remembered posting 30 videos, so he can’t pawn this off on an aide.

Either Trump is lying about the January 6 post and trying to play dumb, or he legitimately does not remember. In either case, he should not be occupying America’s highest seat of power.

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick thinks Trump’s $5,000 midterm bribe can be paid for with funds from the so-called “Trump Platinum Card,” which hasn’t even been launched yet.

Lutnick shared this ridiculous idea with NBC News on Thursday.

“Together we’re going to deliver that plan and we’re going to pay that money to the Americans, and not from taxpayer money.... We have a waitlist of more than 100,000 people who want to come,” he said, referring to the Platinum Card applicants. “That’s $500 billion.”

The Platinum Card is a $15,000 application and $5 million donation to the government for extremely wealthy immigrants looking to expedite their citizenship process. The program would allow applicants to live in the U.S. for nearly the entire year without paying taxes on foreign income.

At the Republican midterm convention on Wednesday, Trump vowed to “issue a dividend to every adult citizen in the United States of America for $5,000” if the Republicans win the House and Senate in November. Since then, the administration has scrambled to propose different ways to pay for the promise, which would cost an estimated $1.3 trillion.

Vice President JD Vance thinks they’ll be able to use tariff revenue to deliver their promise. (Tariff revenue would cover only a fraction of that sum.) National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett thinks that Congress will be able to foot the bill. Either way, Lutnick and every other administration official involved has tried to explain their way out of it, or frame the promise as some galaxy-brained moment from a genius president. In reality, they are obviously covering for a desperate president willing to say and do anything to win in November.