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The U.S. Forest Service (USFS) is undergoing one of the most consequential and likely disruptive transformations in its 121-year history. The agency plans to relocate its headquarters from Washington, D.C., to Salt Lake City and overhaul its structure and management. According to a Forest Service press release from March 31, the overhaul aims to bring leadership “closer to the forests and communities they serve,” replacing the agency’s long-standing regional model with a state-based structure. At first glance, the rationale seems intuitive. Forest management should be informed by local conditions, local relationships, and decisions made closer to the ground. But that premise raises a more fundamental question: what happens when the scientific infrastructure that informs those decisions is dismantled at the same time?

As the release date of my forthcoming book, Unlearn Power: Strengthening Communities in the Age of Environmental Crisis, approaches, naturally, I've been asked, "What's the book about?" But given the amalgamation of ecological devastation across the planet, with fallout and stakes unevenly felt across socioeconomic lines and underscored by political forces that engage in climate denialism and assaults on democratic institutions, I urge that "Why Unlearn Power?" is the more apropos question.

The pursuit of idiosyncratic grievances and obsession with exerting unconstrained power have been the hallmarks of President Trump’s second term so far. But it was only last week, during a pair of congressional hearings, that the American public received its first real introduction to the obscure administration official largely responsible for translating Trump’s worst impulses into action: Russell Vought.

The 56th Earth Day may also be the bleakest. Wave upon wave is crashing upon our system of ecological protections. But having spent years studying the full sweep of American environmental legal history, we can say with confidence: the bigger the wave, the stronger the undercurrent.

On April 18, The New York Times dropped a bombshell with a story that offered a unique window into the political inner world of the U.S. Supreme Court. Based on a series of leaked memos, the story retraces the events leading up to the Court’s extraordinary decision to halt the enforcement of the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan, a rule to limit greenhouse gas emissions from the power sector, even while the case was still pending in the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Maryland’s 2026 legislative session represented a challenging playing field for advancing climate and environmental legislation, marked heavily by the dual considerations of budget shortfalls — driven by the federal government’s abandonment of funding critical programs and sowing chaos among the numerous federal workers who live in Maryland — and uncertainty as to long-term energy reliability and affordability placing a pall on energy planning in the state.

In early April, The Washington Post published an op-ed trashing state and local efforts to hold Big Oil and Gas accountable under the law for the lies they told about their products’ connections to climate change and damages they inflict on people and the planet. I submitted a letter to the editor presenting counterpoints to the op-ed’s claims, which included the absurd notion that insulating some of the biggest companies on earth from even a small measure of justice is somehow a vital “national security” interest. The Post chose not to run that letter, so I’m sharing it with readers here.

Two congressional hearings this week will put President Donald Trump’s budget proposal under the microscope, but the real story should be the administration official sent to defend it: Russell Vought. His rare appearance before Congress will give committee members a unique opportunity to confront the administration on the full range of its anti-constitutional, illegal, and otherwise harmful actions — provided they seize it.

This Earth Day, environmental advocates are looking backward as well as forward. With the U.S. federal government so dramatically overhauling environmental policy, history shows how American social movements of the 19th and 20th centuries overcame seemingly insurmountable odds to preserve public lands and pass laws protecting human health. “I’ve been trying to look through the history of the United States to understand how we’ve gotten where we are,” said Alejandro Camacho, a Professor of Law at UCLA School of Law and co-author of Lessons for a Warming Planet: A Vital History of U.S. Environmental Law, which comes out on Earth Day, April 22, 2026. “Prior generations did meet the moment and at least partially addressed some of the major problems that were in front of them.” Camacho discusses the book in this lightly edited transcript.