ICE Doesn't Need Another $100 Billion
The supplemental funds — to be spent over the next four years — would leave vital aspects of immigration reform unaddressed. But the funding is essential to President Donald Trump's mass deportation plans. Vice President JD Vance left little doubt of that when he posted on social media, 'Everything else — the [Congressional Budget Office] score, the proper baseline, the minutiae of the Medicaid policy — is immaterial compared to the ICE money and immigration enforcement provisions.'
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
E&E News
19 minutes ago
- E&E News
Flood predictions could worsen when Trump's cuts take hold
The White House is rejecting assertions from Democrats and former NOAA officials that its cuts to weather and disaster spending contributed to the Texas flooding that killed more than 100 people. But that stance sidesteps a looming reality: The vast majority of President Donald Trump's rollbacks to the agencies' funding, staffing and science have yet to land. Scientists and weather prediction experts warned that once he fulfills his agenda, areas around the country could face new risks as federal programs are degraded — from disaster warning systems and satellite observations to funding for flood projects and disaster aid. The Trump White House has proposed cutting $163 billion from the federal budget in the next fiscal year — making it the smallest in recent history. Advertisement 'Lives are going to be lost, property is going to be damaged,' said Rick Spinrad, who served as NOAA administrator under former President Joe Biden. On Monday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt described Democrats who had pointed to Trump's cuts at the National Weather Service in the aftermath of the floods as 'depraved and despicable' and said the offices in the affected area were fully staffed. In fact, both offices had vacancies in key positions, according to NOAA's own records. A spokesperson for the White House budget office rejected the idea that Trump's policy ideas could affect the outcome of disasters. 'It is sad that while recovery efforts are ongoing, people are opportunistically trying to score political points by faulting unrelated budget cuts like the Green New Scam,' said Rachel Cauley. It's true that weather forecasts and warnings were accurate ahead of the disaster despite widespread cuts at the National Weather Service, which is part of NOAA. But weather predictions and forecast accuracy stand to change as Trump cements his agenda, according to a former top NOAA official and climate scientists. Hundreds of NWS officials have already lost their jobs, leaving vacancies in top meteorological roles that warn communities of looming weather extremes. The agency's basic functionality is already suffering. Billions more in federal budget cuts to agencies involved in weather and climate prediction and planning is slated for elimination. That includes cutting entire divisions of atmospheric research at NOAA, half of NASA's science division, labs that study extreme weather, weather-monitoring spacecraft now in orbit and thousands of additional scientists. The proposed Trump administration cuts are so steep to weather prediction and science that the forecast in Texas could be far more accurate than future predictions, Spinrad said. 'If you have a problem with the quality of that forecast, then you want to have a real problem with eliminating the National Severe Storms Laboratory,' Spinrad said, referring to one of the NOAA labs — an extreme weather research facility that Trump has slated for elimination. 'Our ability to improve the forecast, the understanding and the guidance with respect to responding to events like this is only going to degrade, not improve, and this is after decades and decades of improvement in all of these forecasts.' That includes tools for flood prediction and recovery — setting the country up for potentially worse outcomes when extreme rainfall strikes. Compromised flood predictions Chief among the proposed cuts is the elimination of NOAA's Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research, which coordinates scientific studies on everything from extreme weather to marine ecosystems. Its facilities 'provide indispensable scientific research and analysis for meteorologists across the country,' said Tom Fahy, legislative director at the union that represents NWS employees. OAR houses a network of NOAA laboratories and 16 science consortiums involving dozens of research institutes across 33 states. Many of them study extreme weather, from hurricane research in Miami to severe thunderstorm research in Norman, Oklahoma. They also help build weather models that scientists use to forecast events like the Texas floods. Trump's proposed cuts would also hamstring one of the main tools for observing weather in real time: Our eyes in space. The proposed NASA budget would severely cut funding for spacecraft that are used for weather prediction and modeling future conditions. A number of targeted satellites are already in orbit. NASA's $7 billion science division is slated to be cut in half, with the budget ax centering on climate research. That means predicting future floods — and the development of new tools for forecasting intense rainfall events — would be compromised. The next generation of Landsat satellites is a key example. For about 50 years, the satellites have been an essential tool for monitoring and mapping floods. Their data is important 'for assessing risk, mapping the extent of damage, and planning post-disaster recovery,' according to NASA. Trump is working to eliminate its funding. A few weeks ago, Trump administration officials archived the Landsat account on X and deleted information related to the planning for Landsat Next, the tenth version of the satellite, from its webpage. Weather forecasts gradually improve as scientists add more data. But they'll likely plateau — or even degrade — as NOAA's research and observation functions vanish, many scientists warn. OAR's research 'has been amazing at developing computer models to help in the forecasting of these types of events,' said John Sokich, NWS's former director of congressional affairs, referring to the Texas floods. But if the office isn't reinstated by Congress for 2026, he said, 'that's going to stop.' Some of the agency's most valuable models for flood prediction might be in jeopardy sooner rather than later. The government's accurate forecasts of the deadly floods were made possible by a suite of high-resolution NOAA weather models designed to predict thunderstorms, Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at UCLA, said in a live YouTube talk Monday. Having multiple models in the system helps scientists evaluate a range of possible outcomes when severe weather is on the horizon. NOAA tried to consolidate the collection of models into a single forecasting system a few years ago. But meteorologists expressed concern that it might not perform as well, and the change was delayed. Trump plans to revive the plan. 'There's benefit in having multiple models,' Swain said. 'How expensive is it really to maintain that, as opposed to the cost of them missing a catastrophic flood?' 'A disconnect' Meanwhile, staffing cuts at NWS offices across the country are likely to take a toll over time, experts say. NWS offices were adequately staffed during the Texas floods, in part because agency officials called 'all hands on deck' to deal with the disaster, according to Fahy. But the offices still have vacancies in key roles, including a permanent meteorologist-in-charge in San Angelo and a warning coordination meteorologist in San Antonio. Other offices across the country face similar shortages, and experts have raised alarms about the potential for burnout — which can lead to forecasting errors — among exhausted staff working overtime during disasters. At the same time, Trump has cut funding for activities that help meteorologists engage with local authorities. Warning coordination meteorologists — a top position at NWS offices — serve as liaisons with emergency managers and other officials, attending meetings, conferences and tabletop exercises aimed at planning for extreme weather events. Trump has suspended travel funding for these activities, according to Fahy, which could lead to long-term breakdowns in communication and collaboration between forecasters and their communities. 'They need to be able to do this,' Fahy said. 'That is the core function of their duties, which is the outreach of their message.' According to Fahy, vacancies at the NWS offices in Texas didn't cause problems during the deadly floods. But some experts are worried that they contributed to a gap between the severity of the weather forecasts and the way local authorities communicated the dangers to the public. 'Clearly there was a disconnect — the message didn't get to the people who need it when they needed it or they didn't understand it,' said Swain. He added that the science was spot on during the floods. In this case, forecasters were still able to do their jobs. But if Trump's proposed cuts become reality? 'That will 100 percent be responsible for costing lives,' Swain said. Reporter Daniel Cusick contributed.
E&E News
20 minutes ago
- E&E News
DOE plays out worst-case scenarios for US grid
A Department of Energy report issued Monday warns that the United States will lose the race for leadership in artificial intelligence technology unless it slams the brakes on plans to close older coal- and gas-fired power plants and speeds up construction of new ones. To dramatize the challenge, DOE said that parts of the mid-Atlantic and Great Plains regions could face 400 hours of power outages in 2030 in a worst-case scenario where tech companies build giant energy-hungry AI data centers unabated, old coal plants keep closing and new power supplies come online slowly. Hardest hit under this scenario, according to the DOE analysis, would be eastern states served by the PJM Interconnection grid. Weeks of power shortages in Maryland, Pennsylvania and Virginia by 2030 would result from power plant closures and data center expansion. Under the most severe weather conditions based on history (not including future climate forecasts), power shortages in the area could total more than a month over the course of a year. Advertisement While the DOE scenarios are startling, the department noted that U.S. grid operators responsible for keeping the lights on would not approve data center growth that would 'jeopardize the reliability of the system.' Still, the DOE analysis sets the stage for emergency actions President Donald Trump has promised. That includes ordering coal- and gas-fired generators to cancel planned closures and to keep running. A nearly 90-year-old provision of the Federal Power Act, written for wartime use, gives him broad leeway to keep the plants open during national emergencies. The DOE report declares Trump's vow to win the AI race against China is such an emergency. 'Absent intervention, it is impossible for the nation's bulk power system to meet the AI growth requirements while maintaining a reliable power grid and keeping energy costs low for our citizens,' said the report. Presented as a technical analysis, the DOE report adopts Trump's rebuke of former President Joe Biden's goal of closing down coal power plants in favor of carbon-free wind and solar generation, which Trump recently called 'windmills and the rest of this JUNK.' 'Caused by the harmful and shortsighted policies of the previous administration, our Nation's inadequate energy supply and infrastructure causes and makes worse the high energy prices that devastate Americans, particularly those living on low- and fixed-incomes,' the report said. Advanced Energy United, a group of clean technology developers and energy users, took issue with sweeping assertions that wind, solar and battery technology are a net-negative for the grid as opposed to energy assets during a period of rising electricity demand: 'The study released today by the Department of Energy appears to exaggerate the risk of blackouts and undervalue the contributions of entire resource classes, like wind, solar, and battery storage, despite the fact that regions like Texas that have enabled rapid growth of these technologies have been rewarded with lower costs and a more reliable grid,' said Caitlin Marquis, managing director at Advanced Energy United. '[It's] troubling that this final agency action will not be subject to public scrutiny before it's used to justify retaining power plants that aren't needed for reliability — a decision that would directly add costs to consumers bills,' Marquis added. Jennifer Danis, federal energy policy director at the Institute for Policy Integrity at the New York University School of Law, questioned whether the analysis supports emergency declarations from the administration ordering aging coal and gas plants to halt their retirement plans. 'Reforms may be needed to ensure better planning for future resource adequacy to power AI,' Danis said in a statement, 'but they should focus on improving existing markets and planning standards, as well as speeding up new resource interconnection, rather than forcing customers to pay to keep old, inefficient plants online.' Biden's energy agenda — an unprecedented campaign to combat the threat of climate change fueled by the burning of coal, natural gas and oil for electricity — was only partially realized when Trump's victory last November signed death warrants for much of the plan. The DOE report does not mention climate change. 'AI is going to change our world' A consensus of grid operators in U.S. competitive power markets like PJM and the Southwest Power Pool is that grid reliability faces extraordinary stresses if the heavy rate of fossil plant retirements continues. Coal-fired plants, which supplied half of U.S. electricity two decades ago, have shrunk to just a 16 percent share, trailing natural gas plants, nuclear reactors, and just ahead of wind and solar power. The conclusion of power industry leaders at a Federal Energy Regulatory Commission conference last month was 'keep what we have' until the dimensions of the AI boom are clear and the pace of new plant construction can finally pick up. 'AI is going to change our world,' said Manu Asthana, the PJM CEO, told the FERC conference. 'In our forecast between 2024 and 2030, currently we have a 32-gigawatt increase in demand, of which 30 is from data centers,' Asthana said. PJM must 'find that intersection between reliability and affordability that works both for consumers and suppliers, and that intersection is getting harder and harder to find.' Clean energy advocates fault PJM for an overly costly, complex process for approving new solar and wind projects in the region over nearly a decade. 'As if this wasn't challenging enough,' said Lanny Nickell, CEO of the Southwest Power Pool, 'we are now projecting our peak demand to be as much as 75 percent higher 10 years from now, and that's largely driven by electrification and data center growth.' DOE reported that 104 GW of fossil fuel plant capacity is expected to retire by 2030. (One GW of power output—1,000 megawatts—supports about 850,000 average U.S. homes, with wide regional differences.) 'This capacity is not being replaced on a one-to-one basis and losing this generation could lead to significant outages when weather conditions do not accommodate wind and solar generation,' DOE said. The supply-demand balance gets much worse with DOE's assumption that at least 50 GW of new around-the-clock plant capacity will be needed to power data centers between now and 2030. The DOE report looks backward at historical weather patterns. That runs contrary to the warnings of grid officials at last month's FERC conference, urging regulators and the power industry to look ahead to worsening assaults of extreme weather fueled by climate change. While these scenarios underscore the need for harder, weather-protected energy infrastructure, they highlight the power system's dependence on just-in-time natural gas supply that can also be threatened in severe winters, officials said. Jim Robb, CEO of the North American Electric Reliability Corp., the high-voltage grid's security monitor, told last month's conference that weather models need improvements. 'We also need to have a much better understanding of natural gas, particularly in winter.'
Yahoo
20 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Documentary Leaders Urge Senate Not Axe Funding For Public Television And Radio
Some of the most respected figures in documentary film are calling on Congress to protect funding for public television and radio. 'It's critically important,' Gordon Quinn, a founding member of Kartemquin Films, said during a recent panel discussion at DC/DOX, the prestigious film festival in the nation's capital – where senators will determine the fate of funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), which supports the work of PBS and NPR. More from Deadline 'Grantchester' To Conclude After Season 11 On PBS Masterpiece & ITV "The Declaration of Independence Applied To The Communications World": Ken Burns Defends PBS, Tells CBS News That Defunding Public Media Is "Foolhardy" Bill Moyers Dies: Influential Public Media Journalist And Commentator And Former White House Press Secretary Was 91 Last month by a 214-212 vote, the House approved a 'rescissions package' to claw back $9 billion in funding previously approved by Congress, including $1.1 billion for CPB, as demanded by Pres. Trump. Now the measure is moving to the upper chamber, where it could be voted on as soon as next week. 'It's up to the Senate,' noted Prof. Patricia Aufderheide of American University, a prominent media scholar and author of a widely read book on documentary film. 'There are only 45 Dems [plus two Independents]. We have to find… Republicans who want to not rescind public broadcasting's money. It has been advance-funded for two years as protection against exactly this kind of politicization. And now they want to claw it back.' If the Senate does not act by July 18, the rescission effort will fail and the CPB funding will remain intact. As my colleague Ted Johnson reported on July 4, documentary great Ken Burns is speaking out on the issue, saying it would be 'foolhardy' for Congress to strip federal funding from public media. Burns told CBS News, 'I couldn't do any of the films I've done without them being on PBS.' The Republican-led push to claw back PBS and NPR funding follows an executive order issued by Pres. Trump on May 1 that called NPR and PBS biased, ordaining 'The CPB Board shall cease direct funding' those outlets. 'The CPB Board shall cancel existing direct funding to the maximum extent allowed by law and shall decline to provide future funding.' PBS and NPR have filed separate federal lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of the president's order. But if the Senate passes the rescission, that might nullify their legal action. About 16 percent of PBS's $373.4 million annual budget comes directly from grants from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, according to the New York Times. But CPB also provides important funding support to public radio and television stations across the country – which buy PBS and NPR content. 'If stations have their core funding cut out from under them,' Aufderheide commented, 'which is what will happen with rescission instantly, NPR and PBS have no customers.' 'It's the small rural stations that will be most affected,' Quinn commented. 'We're not going to lose our station in Chicago.' 'But Peoria will be very affected,' Aufderheide said, referring to a much smaller Illinois market. 'And Carbondale will be very affected.' Burns, in his interview with CBS News, addressed the impact of potential rescission on PBS outlets. 'It's the largest network in the country. There's 330 stations. It mostly serves – and this is where the elimination of funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting is so shortsighted – it mainly serves rural areas in which the PBS signal may be the only signal they get,' Burns said. 'They also have not only our good children's and prime time stuff, they have classroom on-the-air continuing education, homeland security, crop reports, weather emergency information. That we're going to take away?' Historically, PBS has been the most important platform for documentaries in the U.S., airing countless nonfiction films of every genre across its series including POV, Independent Lens, Frontline, American Masters, American Experience, NOVA and more. PBS has aired the full Burns canon, from The Civil War to Muhammad Ali and Hemingway. Many Kartemquin Films productions have likewise been released on PBS, among them Hoop Dreams, the Steve James film that is considered one of the greatest documentaries of all time. Said Quinn, 'It's been a longtime partner of ours in many, many ways.' PBS is home to diverse content not by coincidence but through legislative mandate: in 1988 Congress created ITVS specifically 'to expand the diversity and innovativeness of programming available to public broadcasting.' 'Some of that [CPB] money flows to independent producers,' Quinn said, 'and people who sort of represent the diversity of stories that should be a part of our democratic process.' Quinn played an important part in arguing for the creation of ITVS and has testified on Capitol Hill in favor of continued funding of PBS. 'The most important thing about PBS is that 'public' in the name,' he said. 'When you deal with PBS, that little sliver of public money — and it is a sliver that Congress is just trying to claw back and take away from PBS — means they have to be accountable to a public. They have to be accountable to the country at large and all of the different parts that make up America… Public money makes them accountable in a way that is different from the marketplace.' Best of Deadline 2025 TV Series Renewals: Photo Gallery 2025 TV Cancellations: Photo Gallery Everything We Know About Christopher Nolan's Next Film – 'The Odyssey': Release Date, Cast And More
