House Republicans are proposing to gut energy savings and clean energy tax credits in President Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful” tax bill — funds that are creating thousands of jobs in GOP states and saving homeowners money on their bills. It’s all on the chopping block. The House GOP is moving closer to a final vote on Trump’s tax package, before it heads to the Senate. If Congress passes the tax bill as it stands, it could cost the US more than 830,000 jobs that would otherwise be created in the coming years, the think tank Energy Innovation found. The impacted jobs are mostly in construction and manufacturing, building factories and components for EVs, wind turbines, solar panels, batteries and other clean energy products — the vast majority of which are in GOP states and districts. It also threatens an eye-popping amount of investment from companies that piggybacked on the passage of the 2022 clean energy bill, also known as the Inflation Reduction Act. “We’re talking about an awful lot of money — approaching a trillion dollars in private sector investment that’s either been made or has been planned — that is at risk,” said Robbie Orvis, Energy Innovation’s senior director of modeling and analysis. The threatened funds are in the same places the jobs are at risk; nearly 80% of the investment sparked by the law is in Republican areas, according to data from the Rhodium Group and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Bottom line, that’s what the new tax bill is, essentially: a repeal of the clean energy provisions in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, according to independent analysis from the two nonpartisan think tanks. “It’s functionally equivalent to a full-out repeal,” Orvis said, adding the current bill proposed by House Republicans is a “sledgehammer on steroids.” It would hurt Republicans the most. Republicans represent 14 of the top 20 congressional districts that are on the cusp of gaining the most jobs from the law, which was championed by former President Joe Biden. Tennessee, Georgia and the Carolinas, among others, have gained most of the new jobs in electric vehicle and battery manufacturing and could stand to lose the most if tax credits disappear. Rep. Mark Amodei, whose Nevada district alone is poised to gain more than 20,000 jobs in mining, refining and processing lithium for EVs and batteries, previously told CNN that continuing to fund these facilities in his district is “fundamental.” Orvis said the Republican tax bill could not only hurt future projects, it will likely hurt existing manufacturing facilities as well. “Some of the proposed language in the (bill) text actually puts existing facilities at risk because they will no longer qualify to receive some of the tax credits that they got financing on,” Orvis said. The cost of electricity for everyday Americans and businesses would also go up; Energy Innovation found wholesale electricity prices would increase by 50% by 2035. This is in large part because solar and wind energy are cheaper than fossil fuels. Rhodium’s analysis found the GOP bill would slash the amount of new clean energy on the US electric grid by 57-72% through 2035. Cutting cheaper wind and solar will raise American’s energy bills, analysts said. “You don’t worry about (price volatility) with wind and solar; the sun is still free,” Rhodium analyst Ben King told CNN. “By shifting away from renewables and back to natural gas, you are exposing yourself to price volatility as well.” Some Republican lawmakers have voiced concerns that repealing the tax credits could hurt electricity generation at a time when the US needs more power than ever. The AI boom is gobbling up electricity for data centers, and companies are on the hunt for electrons wherever they can find them. That’s the central argument solar CEOs have been making to Republican lawmakers as they’ve pleaded with them to keep the credits intact. “Solar is the most effective form of energy going forward; it’s the fastest and cheapest to market,” said Zaid Ashai, CEO of solar company Nexamp. “The reality is we’re in this economic competition with China. The only way to win the technology and AI race is to be energy independent, and solar is a really key component of that.”

Memorial Day weekend marks the unofficial start of summer for many in the United States, but it won’t feel like that in the East leading up to the holiday thanks in part to a rare May nor’easter. A one-two-punch of storms will deliver heavy rain and gusty winds to the Northeast and parts of the mid-Atlantic through the end of the week and into some of the holiday weekend. The miserable weather will be made even more miserable by unusually chilly temperatures that feel more like early March. Nor’easters – coastal storms that track along the East Coast – are more common from September through April, rather than the warmer months in the US, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. They’re usually fueled by a strong jet stream that sets up between a clash of colder air sweeping south over the East and warmer air pushing north over the Atlantic Ocean. That scenario rarely comes together from late spring to early fall because temperatures in the East are typically more on par with the heat over the Atlantic during that time. Without a temperature clash, the jet stream is weaker and there will be no nor’easters. That’s not the case this week. The weather pattern underway in the East looks more like it would when winter turns to spring, despite summer being right around the corner. Right now, parts of the Arctic are unusually hot. It’s been a record-hot May in Iceland, while parts of Greenland and Arctic Canada have also been feeling unseasonable heat. All that heat has ejected colder air from the Arctic and sent it farther south than normal for nearly-June, setting up the temperature clash to fuel this rare nor’easter. A warming Arctic has already been linked to changes in nor’easters. As parts of the region heat up faster than the rest of the globe due to fossil fuel pollution, studies have shown that it may be causing winter nor’easters to get worse. What to expect Memorial Day weekend A first storm is already bringing cool, wet weather to the mid-Atlantic and Northeast Wednesday. The nor’easter will follow, developing overnight and moving just off the mid-Atlantic coast on Thursday. Nor’easters are typically powerhouse storms that can deal major impacts, but this week’s is packing a relatively mild punch. The nor’easter will strengthen some as it slowly pushes toward New England, bringing more rain and gusty winds to the Northeast and churning up rough seas for much of the coast into the weekend. Most of the Northeast will record up to 2 inches of rain through Saturday with closer to 3 inches possible in some spots in southern New England, parts of New Jersey and New York. The region has been quite wet in recent weeks, so the rain could lead to some localized flooding or rises on waterways, but widespread flash flooding is unlikely. Nor’easters are synonymous with snow, but despite temperatures dropping as low as the 40s in parts of northern New England, any chances for it are quite low and confined to the highest mountain peaks. It will be breezy in parts of the Northeast from Thursday through Saturday, especially in southern New England. The combination of saturated soils, rain and gusty winds could bring down some trees and power lines. The damp, windy weather could also hinder travel on the road or at the region’s busy airports. Some dampness will linger into Sunday but then temperatures will start to rebound. Seasonable temperatures and some sunshine will return just in time for Memorial Day on Monday in much of the Northeast.

Multiple tornadoes and intense storms hit the eastern half of the United States on Tuesday as a relentless severe weather pattern that left 28 people dead in recent days began to wind down. Damaging storms tore through parts of 10 states – including areas already battered by this spring’s storms like Kentucky and Tennessee – on Tuesday, unleashing multiple tornadoes, damaging wind gusts and hail bigger than baseballs. There have been more than 2,000 reports to the Storm Prediction Center of damaging wind gusts, hail and tornadoes since last Wednesday and more than two dozen states have reported some sort of storm damage in that span. The stretch of violent weather killed 19 people in Kentucky, seven in Missouri, and two in Virginia. It also prompted four tornado emergencies– the most serious tornado warning issued by the National Weather Service – in Illinois, Alabama and Kansas since Friday. At least two EF4-strength tornadoes and multiple EF3s have been confirmed so far. The weather pattern behind these seven consecutive days of dangerous thunderstorms is easing up significantly Wednesday, though a few pockets of severe storms are still possible. Destructive storms hit multiple states Tuesday Tornado watches stretched across parts of 11 states Tuesday afternoon as storms roared to life. A possible tornado damaged a Kirkland’s warehouse close to Jackson Regional Airport in Madison County, Tennessee, causing substantial damage to the roof, according to the county’s emergency management agency. A “large and destructive tornado” was confirmed in Madison County, Alabama, near Huntsville in the evening, the National Weather Service said, prompting a rare tornado emergency for part of the county. Huntsville also received reports of “golf ball size hail and related damage along with a lot of power outages,” said city spokesperson Kelly Schrimsher. Authorities so far have not reported any injuries. In a video obtained by CNN, a resident in the city of Madison, Alabama, west of Huntsville, captured a massive funnel cloud moving in the background of a road. Another video from Madison shows a suburban neighborhood with a path of destruction “at least 1 mile long,” according to the resident who posted it. At least one home is missing a roof, with debris and trees scattered on the road, the video showed. Parts of northern Alabama and Georgia were battered by damaging wind gusts and heavy rain throughout the day and overnight Tuesday, with emergency authorities in both states reporting power outages and downed trees. Power was out for tens of thousands of homes and business across Alabama, Georgia, Missouri and Kentucky early Wednesday morning, according to energy tracker PowerOutage.us. A few small pockets of severe weather are possible on Wednesday, but the threat is nowhere near as expansive as what’s played out over the past week. Seven straight days of damaging storms Ferocious storms have carved through hundreds of miles of the US in recent days, and there have been more than 150 tornado reports since Wednesday. National Weather Service storm survey teams are still picking through extensive damage to determine exactly how many tornadoes tore through the central and eastern US since last week, but they’ve confirmed multiple EF3s and two EF4s. An EF4 tornado tore through Williamson County in southern Illinois on Friday with 190 mph winds, injuring at least seven people as it damaged homes and obliterated trees. An EF3 tornado rocked the St. Louis area Friday, according to the NWS, reaching its peak intensity with 152 mph winds as it stretched a mile wide over the north side of the city. The tornado killed at least five people and injured dozens, while also “damaging or destroying thousands of buildings.” Storms also left vast destruction behind in Laurel County, Kentucky, with 17 deaths reported there over the weekend. The city of London, about 75 miles south of Lexington, was hit particularly hard by an EF4 tornado with 170 mph winds. Police responding to mutual aid calls for tornado victims described the devastation as overwhelming. The twister’s track through Pulaski and Laurel was about 55 miles long and its maximum width was about a mile long, the county said. It was the deadliest tornado in the county’s history – the last tornado, and death from a twister, confirmed in the county was in 2012. Evacuations were briefly scheduled in London and other devastated parts of Laurel County Tuesday evening over fears that new storms could turn lingering debris into dangerous projectiles. Sunday night saw tornadoes tear through Kansas, with authorities reporting significant damage to homes in the city of Plevna, roughly 60 miles from Wichita, and the small northwestern town of Grinnell. Plevna was under a rare tornado emergency, the most extreme tornado warning, issued by the National Weather Service. Grinnell endured a “large and extremely dangerous tornado” Sunday evening, according to the NWS. Crews later determined it was an EF3 with 140 mph winds. About 20 homes were destroyed in Grinnell, which is home to fewer than 300 people, according to Gove County Sheriff Shawn Mesch. “Essentially the entire west of Grinnell was destroyed,” Mesch told CNN Monday. But despite the level of destruction, there have been no reports of injuries: “It’s insane that nobody was hurt,” he said. The threats didn’t let up Monday, with dangerous storms stretching more than 500 miles from northern Texas to Nebraska in the afternoon hours. Multiple dangerous tornadoes unfolded in parts of Texas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Arkansas and Nebraska. At least five counties in Oklahoma were damaged by storms, according to the state’s emergency management. Pittsburg County, in eastern Oklahoma, was hit hard by a tornado in the evening.

Imagine boarding a flight from Seattle to London, but instead of burning fossil fuel, your plane’s engine runs on fuel created — quite literally — from thin air. It sounds like science fiction, but research labs are already working on making it happen. So far it’s on a very small scale. A new class of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) pulls carbon dioxide (CO₂) from the air and turns it into jet fuel, offering a glimpse into a future where aviation could be virtually emissions-free. The catch? The price tag for these e-fuels is still sky-high. The high cost – and potential – of e-fuels Sustainable aviation fuel prices vary depending on how they’re made, and none of these fuels are widely used yet. There are two main types: bio-based SAF, made from organic materials like used cooking oil and agricultural waste, and e-SAF (also known as electrofuels, e-kerosene and e-fuels), made with renewable hydrogen and CO₂ captured from the air. E-fuels are the most expensive option, largely due to the high cost of carbon capture and electrolysis. But they hold immense promise: they could be genuinely carbon-neutral. “Among all alternatives to fossil jet fuel, e-kerosene offers the most promising path to decarbonize the aviation sector,” says Camille Mutrelle, aviation policy officer at Transport & Environment, a European nonprofit focused on sustainable transport. “Unlike bio-based SAF, which is limited by feedstock availability and land use concerns, e-kerosene can be sustainably scaled up to meet aviation fuel demand without competing with food production.” Lifecycle emissions for e-SAF can approach zero — especially when it’s made using CO₂ captured directly from the air and powered by renewable electricity, Mutrelle adds. Though the market is still nascent, the first commercial flights using e-fuels, at least in part, are expected by 2030, Mutrelle says. More than 30 industrial-scale projects are already underway across Europe, and major airlines including United Airlines and IAG are beginning to invest. “We expect broader deployment in the 2030s as production ramps up and costs fall,” Mutrelle adds. According to the European Union Aviation Safety Agency, e-fuels currently average 7,695 euros (about $8,720) per ton. Bio-based SAF is cheaper, at 2,085 euros (about $2,365) per ton, but still far more expensive than conventional jet fuel, which averages 734 euros (about $830) per ton. This massive price gap explains why SAF adoption — especially e-fuels — has been slow. Turning air into jet fuel So what’s the science that could power a 280-ton Dreamliner across the Atlantic — using nothing but air, water and renewable energy? Carbon capture fuels avoid the environmental pitfalls of traditional biofuels, which often rely on monoculture crops like sugarcane that can damage biodiversity and compete with food production. Instead, e-fuels use CO₂ from the atmosphere (or industrial emissions), plus hydrogen extracted from water via electrolysis using renewable electricity. The result is a synthetic jet fuel that can be used in existing aircraft engines, recycling carbon instead of adding more to the atmosphere. Among the companies pioneering this approach is Twelve, a California-based startup developing low-temperature CO₂ electrolysis. It’s an energy-efficient method of turning CO₂ and water into syngas, the foundation of fuel that’s synthetic, or simply made of something other than natural fossil resources. “Our way is the electrochemistry way, where we’re doing CO₂ electrolysis at the front end — and we’re doing it at low temperatures,” says Ashwin Jadhav, Twelve’s vice president of business development. “There’s not many folks out there focused on that.” This low-temp process uses less energy than traditional high-heat methods and integrates easily with wind and solar, making e-fuel production more efficient and scalable. These “air-based fuels” can reduce emissions by up to 90% compared to fossil jet fuel, without the drilling, refining, and transport pollution of oil, according to representatives at Twelve. Twelve’s first commercial demonstration plant, called AirPlant One, is opening this year in Washington state and the company plans to make 50,000 gallons of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) annually. United Airlines is one of the major supporters helping to make this first round of mass-scale production possible. Twelve has also signed a major deal to supply 260 million gallons of SAF over 14 years to Europe’s International Airlines Group (which owns Vueling, Iberia, Aer Lingus and British Airways). And while Twelve’s fuel hasn’t yet powered a commercial flight, the company aims to supply e-fuel for flights within the next year. Microsoft is part of a three-way partnership with Alaska Airlines and Twelve, whereby Microsoft will offset business travel emissions resulting from employees flying on Alaska Airlines. For now, the expectation is to blend e-SAF with fossil fuels until production of e-SAF is scaled up to fill tanks. Under Europe’s ReFuelEU Aviation regulation, flights within Europe must use 2% SAF by 2025 and 70% by 2050 — with specific targets for e-fuel adoption along the way. Why e-fuels aren’t taking off yet While the technology for green skies already exists, shifting from fossil fuels to truly sustainable aviation is a long, complicated journey. Existing, longstanding investments in oil, political considerations and the pace of regulation all play a role in how quickly the transition takes flight. “Economies of scale are needed to lower prices, but the high upfront costs discourage airlines from adopting SAF widely,” says Marina Efthymiou, a professor of aviation management at Dublin City University. “Without strong policy interventions — such as subsidies, tax credits, and mandates — the financial gap is simply too large to overcome.” She notes that e-fuels have the highest emissions-reduction potential of any SAF — but also the steepest startup costs. So far, most SAF usage by airlines has involved bio-based fuels, especially HEFA-SPK (Hydroprocessed Esters and Fatty Acids), which are more commercially available. In November 2023, Virgin Atlantic flew the first transatlantic flight powered entirely by sustainable fuels — made from waste fats and plant sugars. No fossil fuel. No e-fuels either. It showed that clean aviation is possible, though next-generation options like e-fuels are still too expensive and difficult to scale. Airlines including Emirates, Cebu Pacific, Virgin Atlantic and British Airways have all flown using SAF, though details are often vague. “Airlines aren’t always transparent about how much SAF they’re using, the blend percentage, or which type of SAF they rely on,” Efthymiou says. Across the energy, technology, and aviation sectors, a growing number of companies are investing in sustainable aviation fuel (SAF). Airlines like United, Delta, Lufthansa, Japan Airlines, and Air France-KLM have committed to scaling up SAF usage, while energy giants like Shell, BP, and TotalEnergies are funding SAF production facilities. Tech companies such as Microsoft, Amazon, and Google have pledged SAF purchases to offset business travel emissions. However, investment in electrofuels (eSAF) — produced by combining captured CO₂ and renewable electricity — is still far more limited. Early adopters like United Airlines, Lufthansa Group, IAG (British Airways’ parent company), and Japan Airlines have signed partnerships with companies like Twelve, Infinium, and Synhelion. Because eSAF is significantly more expensive and energy-intensive to produce than bio-based SAF, corporate investment remains cautious, and large-scale deployment will depend heavily on regulatory support and technological breakthroughs. Barriers to entry: Why e-fuels are so expensive E-fuels are hard to make and even harder to scale. The required infrastructure — carbon capture units, electrolysis systems, fuel synthesis plants — is costly to build. Production also demands huge amounts of renewable energy. Electrolysis, which entails using electricity to isolate hydrogen in water, alone requires large-scale green hydrogen generation, which is still developing in most regions. “E-fuels have the potential to be the most sustainable form of SAF because they can be produced without land use, agricultural input, or waste feedstocks,” says Efthymiou. “But that depends on the source of electricity and CO₂. The sustainability promise only holds if the inputs are truly renewable.” In short, e-fuels will only be as clean as the grid that powers them. Still, a major upside is that e-fuels work with existing aircraft. “Most estimates suggest e-fuels could become more cost-competitive by the mid-2030s,” Efthymiou says, “depending on renewable electricity prices, carbon pricing and technological improvements.” Small-scale demo plants are already running — like Ineratec and Atmosfair in Germany, and Infinium and Twelve in the US. But volumes remain tiny, and costs are high. “Without a solid regulatory push, airlines just aren’t motivated to switch,” says Mutrelle. The road to takeoff Still, with continued investment, policy support, and technological advancements, experts believe that the idea of flying on fuel made from air could become a reality. Though pragmatic about the challenges faced, many experts are optimistic. Jonathon Counsell, head of sustainability at International Airlines Group, is one. “Of course the ultimate goal is to take CO₂ directly from the atmosphere,” Counsell says. “At first, we’re capturing CO₂ from industrial plants to prevent it from entering the air. But the next step is direct air capture — sucking carbon out of the atmosphere itself. That’s where we really want to get to.” He points out that SAF production has already grown from 100 tons to over a million tons in just a few years — evidence that scaling is possible. While carbon capture fuels remain a long-term solution rather than a present reality, if governments, airlines, and innovators align, the idea of flying on fuel made from air could take off sooner than we think.

The Republican-led Senate moved Wednesday to overturn key Biden-era waivers allowing California to set its own vehicle emissions, a major blow to that state’s effort to regulate pollution from cars and trucks that could have broad environmental impacts for the rest of the country. And they will do it bypassing the 60-vote threshold typically needed to approve such a measure, infuriating Democrats who warned Republicans — despite their promises not to — were weakening the legislative filibuster. Republican leaders denied that was their intent and vowed to preserve the filibuster forever. Republicans were livid when at the end of former President Joe Biden’s term, the Environmental Protection Agency greenlit California’s plan to phase out the sale of gas-powered cars by 2035, shifting the state towards electric vehicles. Republicans say the California plan will hurt the US economy and impact the rest of the country because other states follow its emissions rules. In response, they readied action under the Congressional Review Act, which allows Congress to claw back agency rules without needing 60 votes to overcome a filibuster. Tensions have built for weeks as Senate Republicans deliberated behind closed doors about whether to push the measure through despite a finding from the House’s Government Accountability Office that the CRA could not be used to nullify the California emissions waiver. Senate Republicans don’t believe the GAO has the authority to determine that. The Senate parliamentarian — the neutral arbiter of Senate procedure — deferred to the GAO viewpoint. Despite that, the Senate took a series of votes to put it on a track to pass these CRAs in the coming days. California has for many years set its own emission standards separate from the federal government. For decades, federal law has granted California the authority to do so, but the waiver has become a partisan football in recent years. President Donald Trump revoked that authority during his first term in 2019, before Biden reinstated it in 2022. In one of the Biden administration’s last major actions on climate, the EPA in 2024 finalized California’s waiver – effectively greenlighting the state’s plan to phase out sales of new gas vehicles by 2035, the first regulation of its kind in the US. California’s vehicle regulations matter a great deal to the auto industry because close to 20 other states and the District of Columbia have adopted them. And they have a big impact on climate policy; emissions from vehicles are one of the largest sources of planet-warming pollution in the US. Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso called California’s efforts a “fantasyland” that will hurt ranchers and farmers in his home state of Wyoming. “California’s EV mandates ban the sale of gas-powered cars and trucks. They threaten the freedom of every American to choose what they drive,” he said on the floor. “EVs currently make up 7 percent of the U.S. market. Even in California, they account for only 20 percent of vehicle sales. And sales are stalling. Yet California’s radical mandates require 35 percent of all vehicle sales to be electric by 2026 – 6 months from now. By 2035, it jumps to 100 percent.” Senate Democrats have argued that not accepting the parliamentarian’s guidance sets a dangerous precedent, and they are particularly concerned that the GOP may do it again as she sets some of the perimeters of what will be allowed in the massive tax, spending cuts and immigration reconciliation bill moving through Congress now. “It’s going nuclear, plain and simple. It’s overruling the parliamentarian. And second, what goes around comes around,” Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer told reporters on Tuesday, referring to the so-called nuclear option, which is when the majority party changes Senate rules on a party line vote instead of 67-vote supermajority typically required to make a change. Democrats insist that the Californian regulations were created as “waivers” under the Clean Air Act, meaning that they are not considered “rules” that can be overturned through the CRA. The GAO — which weighed in on the issue when that chamber passed these CRAs recently with bipartisan support — agreed. However, Senate Republicans insist that they are not defying the parliamentarian and have said that Democrats’ concern for weakening the filibuster is hypocritical, coming from the party that has expressed opposition to the filibuster’s role in recent years. “The only people that have attempted to get rid of the legislative filibuster – the Democrats – every single one up there that’s popping off and spouting off has voted, literally, to get rid of the legislative filibuster,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune told reporters at a press conference on Tuesday. “This is a novel and narrow issue that deals with the Government Accountability Office and whether or not they ought to be able to determine what is a rule and what isn’t, or whether the administration and the Congress ought to be able to make that decision,” he added. Sen. Martin Heinrich of New Mexico, the top Democrat on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, echoed Schumer’s concerns in a statement ahead of Wednesday’s vote. “If Senate Republicans force a vote on the California Clean Air Act Waivers, they set a precedent that will allow Congress to overturn nearly any agency decision nationwide,” he warned. “I urge my colleagues to reject this gross overreach.” “By opening this door, Republicans threaten to destroy our permitting and regulatory system, leading to higher energy costs for Americans and making it impossible for new developments to come online. Indeed, nearly every major and minor project the federal government touches could be stalled, creating significant uncertainty if not complete chaos. That is not what the American people want, and it cannot be what Senate Republicans want, either,” continued Heinrich.

Amid growing concerns within the Federal Emergency Management Agency that internal turmoil has left it unprepared for the fast-approaching hurricane season, the agency is taking significant steps to bolster its disaster response workforce and training infrastructure. In a series of internal memos issued this week and obtained by CNN, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, whose department oversees the disaster relief agency, approved requests by FEMA to reopen several training facilities and lengthen contract extensions for thousands of staffers who deploy during natural disasters. This comes days after CNN reported on an internal FEMA assessment acknowledging that the agency “is not ready” to handle catastrophic storms this summer. The document outlined FEMA’s struggles in recent months, including a general uncertainty around its mission moving forward, lack of coordination and training with states and federal partners, and plummeting morale among its diminishing workforce. The Trump administration – which has vowed to “eliminate” FEMA – is in the process of overhauling the agency’s operations and drastically shrinking its workforce as it shifts far more responsibility for disaster response and recovery onto the states. With these new memos, the Trump administration is taking steps to shore up disaster preparations. But multiple FEMA officials tell CNN it could be too little, too late with the official start of hurricane season less than two weeks away. “It will help stop the bleed, but I also feel the damage is done for this season,” a FEMA official said, speaking to CNN anonymously out of fear of professional reprisals. As part of the administration’s last-minute push, FEMA is restarting training courses at the Center for Domestic Preparedness, National Disaster & Emergency Management University, and National Fire Academy – three of its training centers – after a months-long pause due to funding cuts and program reviews by the Department of Government Efficiency. Those programs train federal and state emergency managers and first responders to prepare for natural disasters, including hurricanes and wildfires. The internal assessment obtained by CNN last week found that most hurricane preparations have “been derailed this year due to other activities like staffing and contracts.” As a result, trainings have largely been frozen and critical exercises and collaborations have not happened between FEMA and its state partners, whom the Trump administration expects to take the lead on future disasters. Roughly 10% of FEMA’s total staff have left since January, including a large swath of its senior leadership, and the agency is projected to lose close to 30% of its workforce by the end of the year, shrinking FEMA from about 26,000 workers to roughly 18,000, according to a FEMA official briefed on the numbers. At Noem’s direction, thousands of FEMA staffers that serve in public-facing roles during disaster response, many of whom work on 2- to 4-year contracts, must be individually approved for extension by her office. But according to the new memos, most of those staffers will now be renewed for 180 days at a time, instead of the 30-day extensions they’ve been receiving in recent weeks, which had raised concerns that more positions could be cut in the middle of hurricane season. These changes offer a semblance of stability to FEMA’s staff amid growing uncertainty about the agency’s deployment plans and capabilities this summer. But during a call last week, FEMA’s new acting chief, David Richardson, told the agency that additional steep staffing cuts are still expected in the months ahead. “This doesn’t address the brain drain, external hiring freeze, the culture of fear being stoked that is pushing folks out, and the fact that the federal agencies we coordinate with are also being gutted,” a second FEMA official told CNN, calling these changes “too little and not reassuring.” When Richardson took the helm less than two weeks ago, he announced an agency-wide “complex problem-solving session” to assess how prepared FEMA is to handle natural disasters like hurricanes, wildfires and tornadoes in the months ahead. In a recent interview with a conservative radio channel, Richardson stressed that the agency will be well-prepared for hurricane season, adding that he believes there is no uncertainty at FEMA about its mission. “We’re already putting together teams that are going down range to do some evaluation on what readiness has been done at the state level,” Richardson said. “So, we will be ready, we will meet the president’s intent, and we will make sure that the American people are safe. We may do it a little differently. We will be criticized for it. But we will do it very, very effectively.” Meanwhile, federal and state emergency managers are worried about dire consequences for communities ill-equipped to handle disasters without federal support. At a hearing on Capitol Hill last week, Noem told lawmakers “there is no formalized, final plan” for restructuring the agency and shifting responsibilities to states. In a memo issued Wednesday and obtained by CNN, Richardson officially rescinded FEMA’s 2022-2026 strategic plan, saying it “contains goals and objectives that bear no connection to FEMA accomplishing its mission.” The memo states that a new 2026-2030 strategy will be developed this summer, though it does not mention a plan for the months ahead. President Trump has created a FEMA review council, which met for the first time Tuesday and is expected to submit recommendations to further reform the agency. During the meeting, Noem reiterated the goal of dismantling and even renaming FEMA. “I don’t want you to go into this thinking that we’re going to make a little tweak here, a little delegation of authority over here, that we’re going to maybe cut a few dollars somewhere. No, FEMA should no longer exist as it is. (President Trump) wants this to be a new agency,” Noem told the council. “Our goal is that states should manage their emergencies, and we come in and support them, and we’re there in a time of financial crisis.”

Robert M. LaFollette School on North 9th Street in Milwaukee on Friday, March 14, 2025. The school will temporarily close due so lead hazards can be addressed. What caused Milwaukee's school lead crisis? 3:54 US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told a Senate subcommittee on Tuesday that the federal government has “a team in Milwaukee” helping the city address a lead crisis in its schools. The city says that that’s not true and that it’s still not receiving requested aid from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s childhood lead poisoning experts to deal with the ongoing contamination. During a Senate Appropriations subcommittee hearing to review the president’s HHS budget request for 2026, Kennedy fielded questions about programs and staff already slashed from federal health agencies. CNN reported in April that the CDC had denied the city’s request for help with lead exposures in Milwaukee Public Schools’ aging buildings after the agency’s lead experts were swept up in widespread cuts at US health agencies. Kennedy and HHS have said that the government plans to continue the work of lead poisoning prevention and surveillance at the new Administration for a Healthy America, rather than the CDC. The CDC’s experts have not been rehired. “None have been rehired from our lead program or our division,” Dr. Erik Svendsen, who was director of the Division of Environmental Health Science and Practice, which oversaw the childhood lead program, told CNN on Tuesday. In response to questions Tuesday from Sen. Jack Reed, D-Rhode Island, about the demise of the CDC’s childhood lead poisoning prevention program, Kennedy said, “We are continuing to fund the program, and in Milwaukee, we have a team in Milwaukee, and we’re giving laboratory support to that, to the analytics in Milwaukee, and we’re working with the health department in Milwaukee.” Caroline Reinwald, a spokesperson for the City of Milwaukee Health Department, said Kennedy’s statement “is inaccurate.” “The City of Milwaukee Health Department is not receiving any federal epidemiological or analytical support related to the MPS lead hazard crisis. Our formal Epi Aid request was denied by the CDC,” she wrote in an email from CNN. Reinwald said the department did recently get help from a lab technician from the CDC’s Laboratory Leadership Service, who was there from May 5 to May 16 to help calibrate a new instrument in the city’s laboratory. “This support was requested independently of the MPS crisis and was part of a separate, pre-existing need to expand our lab’s long-term capacity for lead testing,” Reinwald said. Beyond the contamination in schools, the city has ongoing programs to test for and remediate lead in its aging homes. Earlier this month, CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta asked the city’s health commissioner, Dr. Michael Totoraitis, if the agency had enough resources to accomplish what it needed to do. “We have enough of a team right now,” Totoraitis said. “I think the long-term investigation into the potential chronic exposures of students at the districts is a part that we were really looking to the CDC to help us with, and unfortunately, HHS had laid off that entire team for childhood blood exposure. “These are the best and brightest minds in these areas around lead poisoning, and now they’re gone.” Andrew Nixon, director of communications for HHS, says the CDC is helping the Milwaukee health agency’s lab. At the health department’s request, he said in a statement Tuesday, “CDC is assisting with validating new lab instrumentation used for environmental lead testing. Staff from [the Milwaukee lab] are focused on the lead response and other routine testing while CDC will assist with testing validation, laboratory quality management, and regulatory requirement documentation to onboard the new laboratory instrument.” The city says that the CDC lab technician has left and is not expected to return. As of now, it doesn’t anticipate any further help from the CDC. “MHD is proud of the team currently serving Milwaukee families, managing its regular caseload while also responding to the lead crisis in MPS schools. While we would have welcomed federal support, we continue to move forward without it,” Reinwald said in a statement. At the end of Tuesday’s hearing, Wisconsin Sen. Tammy Baldwin, a Democrat, made a statement to “correct the record.” “There are no staff on the ground deployed to Milwaukee to address the lead exposure of children in schools, and there are no staff left in that office at CDC, because they have all been fired,” Baldwin told Kennedy. “I look forward to working with you to reestablish that. It sounds like you have a commitment to that, but we need staff in order to make it function.”

Multiple tornadoes on Tuesday have threatened the Southeast as nonstop severe weather that killed 28 people in recent days enters its final stretch, with millions in the eastern half of the United States still in the path of dangerous storms. More than 7 million people are at risk of strong tornadoes on Tuesday with severe weather underway in parts of the Mississippi, Ohio and Tennessee valleys. The threat includes areas already battered by this spring’s storms, like western Kentucky and western Tennessee. Tornado watches were in effect for parts of 11 states by mid-afternoon, with damaging wind gusts, hail and heavy rain also possible in any storm. A tornado touched down in Madison County, Tennessee, near the city of Jackson, on Tuesday afternoon at a Kirkland’s warehouse, close to Jackson Regional Airport, causing substantial roof damage, according to the county’s emergency management agency. Additional tornadoes and damaging winds are possible through the evening as the storms approach the Appalachians. A tornado watch was in effect for the area, including parts of Kentucky and Virginia. Here’s the latest: Deadly weather: Violent storms have killed at least 28 people in three states since Friday: 19 in Kentucky, seven in Missouri – including five in St. Louis – and two in Virginia. There have been at least 1,800 reports to the Storm Prediction Center of damaging wind gusts, hail and tornadoes in the days of storms since Wednesday. Communities assess damage: Powerful storms slammed parts of the Plains and Mississippi Valley on Monday, with tornadoes reported in Texas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Arkansas and Nebraska. At least five counties in Oklahoma sustained storm damage that ranged from downed trees and power lines to a destroyed fire station, but that number could rise as officials continue to assess the aftermath, according to the Oklahoma Department of Emergency Management. Rare tornado emergencies: In line with extreme tornado warnings issued by the National Weather Service, on Friday an EF4 tornado roared through Illinois’ Williamson County and injured at least seven people. Two extreme warnings on Sunday turned into “large and destructive” tornado emergencies in Greensburg and Plevna, Kansas. Severe threat targets hard-hit areas Tuesday Millions of people in the eastern half of the US are at risk of severe thunderstorms on Tuesday as the storm system that spurred Monday’s damaging weather tracks east. More than 13 million people – including in Nashville and Memphis, Tennessee – are under a level 3-of-5 risk of severe thunderstorms, according to the Storm Prediction Center. Some parts of the Tennessee and Ohio valleys could be hit by multiple rounds of storms. Storms lingering from Monday night intensified Tuesday morning in parts of Tennessee. These storms tracked east and expanded in scope early in the afternoon, bringing gusty winds to eastern Kentucky and at least one tornado to northern Alabama. The “large and destructive tornado” was confirmed in Madison County near Huntsville, Alabama, on Tuesday, the National Weather Service said. The city is also receiving reports of “golf ball size hail and related damage along with a lot of power outages,” said Huntsville spokesperson Kelly Schrimsher. Authorities so far have not reported any injuries. The focus is shifting back to the Mississippi Valley late Tuesday, where a new round of storms – including some supercells – started to fire up and will continue to track east through the evening. Multiple tornado watches were issued for the region Tuesday afternoon as the threat started to increase. Wind gusts of up to 70 mph are also possible with these storms, the National Weather Service warned. Any supercells will bring the day’s highest risk of strong tornadoes – rated EF2 or higher – in the afternoon hours before most storms start to merge into unbroken lines in early evening. Lines of storms will pose more of a widespread damaging wind threat through the evening but could still spawn tornadoes. Six straight days of damaging storms Ferocious storms have carved through hundreds of miles of the US in recent days, generating more than 1,800 reports of damaging wind gusts, hail and tornadoes since Wednesday. More than 100 of those reports were tornadoes. National Weather Service storm survey teams are still picking through extensive damage to determine exactly how many tornadoes tore through the central and eastern US since last week, but they’ve already found at least three EF3 tornadoes and one EF4. The EF4 tornado tore through Williamson County in southern Illinois on Friday with 190 mph winds, injuring at least seven people as it damaged homes and obliterated trees. An EF3 tornado rocked the St. Louis area Friday, according to the NWS, reaching its peak intensity with 152 mph winds as it stretched a mile wide over the north side of the city. The tornado killed at least five people and injured dozens, while also “damaging or destroying thousands of buildings.” Storms also left vast destruction behind in Laurel County, Kentucky, with 17 deaths reported there over the weekend. The city of London, about 75 miles south of Lexington, was hit particularly hard. Police responding to mutual aid calls for tornado victims described the devastation as overwhelming. The storm on Friday spawned a powerful EF4 tornado in London with 170 mph winds, comparable to windspeeds in a Category 5 hurricane. The twister’s track through Pulaski and Laurel was about 55 miles long and its maximum width was about a mile long, the county said. It was the deadliest tornado in the county’s history – the last tornado, and death from a twister, confirmed in the county was in 2012. Officials are working to get residents to safety as they face the threat of more damaging storms Tuesday evening. Evacuations were set to go into effect at 6 p.m. local time in London and other devastated parts of Laurel County over fears that new storms could turn lingering debris into dangerous projectiles. The evacuation ends at 11 p.m. “It is simply unsafe to be around that much debris with this level of wind,” Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear said at a Tuesday morning news conference. Sunday night saw tornadoes tear through Kansas, with authorities reporting significant damage to homes in the city of Plevna, roughly 60 miles from Wichita, and the small northwestern town of Grinnell. Plevna was under a rare tornado emergency, the most extreme tornado warning, issued by the National Weather Service. Grinnell endured a “large and extremely dangerous tornado” Sunday evening, according to the NWS. A preliminary rating put the tornado at EF2-strength, but that rating could rise as NWS survey crews continue surveying damage on Tuesday. About 20 homes were destroyed in Grinnell, which is home to fewer than 300 people, according to Gove County Sheriff Shawn Mesch. “Essentially the entire west of Grinnell was destroyed,” Mesch told CNN Monday. But despite the level of destruction, there have been no reports of injuries: “It’s insane that nobody was hurt,” he said. The threats didn’t let up Monday, with dangerous storms stretching more than 500 miles from northern Texas to Nebraska in the afternoon hours. The worst-case scenario tornado threat didn’t come to fruition, but storms still produced multiple dangerous tornadoes in parts of Texas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Arkansas and Nebraska. At least five counties in Oklahoma were damaged by storms, according to the state’s emergency management. Pittsburg County, in eastern Oklahoma, was hit hard by a tornado in the evening. Sheriff’s deputies, fire personnel, and emergency management services were assessing damage, authorities said Monday. They were also checking for individuals who may be injured or trapped, the sheriff’s office said on Facebook. “Please avoid the areas damaged by the storm at this time as emergency services are in the area,” the agency said.

The world’s ice sheets are on course for runaway melting, leading to multiple feet of sea level rise and “catastrophic” migration away from coastlines, even if the world pulls off the miraculous and keeps global warming to within 1.5 degrees Celsius, according to new research. A group of international scientists set out to establish what a “safe limit” of warming would be for the survival of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets. They pored over studies that took data from satellites, climate models and evidence from the past, from things like ice cores, deep-sea sediments and even octopus DNA. What they found painted a dire picture. The world has pledged to restrict global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels to stave off the most catastrophic impacts of climate change. However, not only is this limit speeding out of reach — the world is currently on track for up to 2.9 degrees of warming by 2100. But the most alarming finding of the study, published Tuesday in the journal Communications Earth and Environment, is that 1.5 might not even be good enough to save the ice sheets. Even if the world sustains today’s level of warming, at 1.2 degrees, it could still trigger rapid ice sheet retreat and catastrophic sea level rise, the scientists found. The Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets together hold enough fresh water to raise global sea levels by around 213 feet — an unlikely scenario but one that must be acknowledged to fully understand the risk. Since the 1990s, the amount of ice they’ve lost has quadrupled; they are currently losing around 370 billion tons a year. Ice sheet melting is the dominant contributor to rising seas and the rate of annual sea level rise has doubled over the past 30 years. Multiple studies suggest 1.5 degrees of warming is “far too high” to prevent rapid ice sheet retreat that would be irreversible on human timescales, and the world should prepare for many feet of sea level rise over the coming centuries, according to the study. “You don’t slow sea level rise at 1.5, in fact, you see quite a rapid acceleration,” said Chris Stokes, a study author and glaciologist at Durham University. It’s an existential threat to the world’s coastal populations. Around 230 million people live less than 1 meter (3.2 feet) above sea level. Even small changes in the amount of ice held in the ice sheets will “profoundly alter” global coastlines, displacing hundreds of millions of people and causing damage that stretches the limits of adaptation, the study found. Seas could surge by 0.4 inches a year by the end of the century, within the lifetimes of young people now, the scientists found. At this level, which equates to 40 inches a century, “you’re going to see massive land migration on scales that we’ve never witnessed since modern civilization,” said Jonathan Bamber, a study author and glaciologist at the University of Bristol. There are still huge uncertainties about where tipping points lie. The way climate change unfolds is not linear and it’s unclear exactly when warming might trigger rapid retreat and even collapse. What’s hugely concerning, the study authors say, is that the best estimates of “safe” temperature thresholds for saving the ice sheets keep going down as scientists better understand their vulnerability to climate change. Early modeling suggested temperatures would need to hit around 3 degrees of warming to destabilize the Greenland ice sheet, for example, but recent estimates suggest it would only take around 1.5 degrees. To avoid the rapid collapse of one of more ice sheets means limiting global warming to closer to 1 degree above pre-industrial levels, the study authors concluded. This would require drastic cuts to the amount of fossil fuels humans burn, something which looks exceptionally unlikely as countries including the US continue to embrace oil, coal and gas. The world is already starting to see some of the worst-case scenarios play out in terms of ice loss, Stokes said. “There’s very little that we’re observing that gives us hope here,” he said. “The absolute best-case scenario is that sea level rise is slow and steady,” he added. The findings don’t mean the world should give up on climate targets, as every fraction of a degree of warming translates to worse impacts, Stokes said. “Limiting warming to 1.5 will be a major achievement. It should absolutely be our target, but in no sense will it slow or stop sea level rise and melting ice sheets.”

Sometime between today and 200 years from now, scientists say “the big one” will hit the United States. There is danger lurking on the sea floor off the Pacific Northwest’s coast: After centuries of two tectonic plates pushing up against each other, the Cascadia subduction zone that runs from Northern California all the way up to British Columbia is due to rupture — possibly in our lifetimes. “We know that we have the potential for a really massive scale earthquake, the largest we’ve ever seen on the planet,” said Harold Tobin, a professor at the University of Washington and director of the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network. “We know that the Pacific Northwest has that possibility.” The resulting earthquake could be a devastating magnitude 9.0, and the subsequent tsunami could be 100 feet high, overwhelming coastal cities and towns. Around 13,800 people could die and more than 100,000 others could be injured, the Federal Emergency Management Agency has estimated. In short, it could be the worst natural disaster the United States has seen in modern times. And many scientists say we are less prepared for it than ever before. The league of experts and scientists who have spent decades keeping watch — the guardians at the gate — is being decimated by the Trump administration’s staffing cuts. It’s not just earthquakes and tsunamis; experts who sound the alarm for volcano eruptions say the cuts will be felt most when there’s a crisis. The scientists who watch the sun for invisible-yet-crippling solar storms are not just losing staff; they face being moved into an entirely different agency. A spokesperson for US Geological Survey, the federal agency tasked with monitoring earthquakes and volcanoes, declined to comment on personnel matters in a statement to CNN, but added it “remains committed to its congressional mandate as the science arm of the Department of the Interior.” The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which oversees tsunamis and solar storms, did not return a request for comment from CNN. In addition, new spending restrictions for some federal agencies are creating extra hoops for scientists to jump through to fix earthquake seismographs and deep ocean sensors that capture how fast tsunami waves are traveling, four separate people with knowledge of the situation told CNN. The same goes for equipment that monitors earth tremors before volcanoes erupt. “We are already underprepared for these events,” said Corina Allen, the former tsunami program manager at NOAA’s National Weather Service Tsunami Program. Allen was recently fired from her position, like thousands of other probationary federal employees who had been on the job less than a year. “Being able to detect forecast and alert people of an incoming tsunami will save hundreds, if not hundreds of thousands of lives,” Allen added. “That is the impact. That is the risk we face by reducing the capability to do this work at NOAA.” Here’s more on four major earth hazards that experts are warning will get tougher to plan for due to staffing cuts and funding restrictions. Earthquakes A network of roughly 800 seismographs in the West is the first line of defense against “the big one.” It senses shaking and movement deep underground, alerting scientists when tremors occur. “Many of (the sensors) have to be in remote locations,” Tobin said. “Up on mountaintop, the back end of a logging road. It’s pretty rugged terrain. And every one of them needs maintenance one way or another.” Teams of scientists from the USGS typically go out every summer to fix broken instruments or dig them out of deep snow. It’s gotten more difficult after federal workers there and at other agencies were told they could spend no more than $1 on any single expense, making that critical task increasingly difficult. There are loopholes to the limit, but getting travel approved has become onerous, and a culture of fear is spreading through the agency, a person familiar with the matter told CNN, creating more of a barrier to getting the work done. Tobin, who along with USGS oversees the ShakeAlert early warning system for major earthquakes, is particularly worried about what could happen if Trump’s budget passes without funding for the program. “We wouldn’t be able to have the staff we have right now without that funding,” Tobin said. “All by itself, it represents something like 50% of my budget.” Without enough staff or funding for maintenance to support the ShakeAlert system, “it wouldn’t shut off on day one, but I don’t know how long it would sustain,” Tobin said. Tsunamis Tsunamis are deadly disasters that can emerge from an earthquake in the ocean — giant waves that push far inland, inundating miles of normally dry land. Similar to the seismographs scattered along the West coast, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration keeps a network of sensors deep in the ocean, designed to alert scientists when a tsunami wave rolls through. NOAA’s two tsunami warning centers and the National Weather Service program working to modernize their outdated software systems have been hit with probationary firings and several staffers taking the so-called “buyouts,” according to Corina Allen, who used to work as the tsunami program manager at NWS. The 24/7 monitoring centers were already thinly staffed, Allen said, and the further reductions are deeply concerning, especially given the threat of an earthquake and tsunami in the Pacific Northwest. “These programs are already at the bare bones,” Allen said. “They’ve been reduced; they’ve been cut. The vacancies haven’t been filled.” At the time she was fired, Allen was tasked with modernizing the tsunami warning program’s software to integrate it more seamlessly into the alerts system used by the National Weather Service — a critical upgrade to help get alerts out to communities faster. “These staff cuts and the potential budget cuts make the United States more at risk for a tsunami and earthquake, and they will have devastating impacts for coastal populations and the US economy,” Allen said. Volcanoes The Kilauea volcano in Hawaii has been erupting on and off since last year – spewing lava and ash. USGS, which monitors volcanoes in addition to earthquakes, predicts more eruptions to come, according to its website. Its scientists are also closely watching Great Sitkin, a volcano in Alaska’s islands that has been slowly spewing lava since it began erupting in 2021. Another volcano that’s actively being monitored right now is Alaska’s Mt. Spurr, where small volcanic earthquakes have been recently detected. There are two main USGS offices monitoring volcano activity – one in Hawaii and the other in Alaska. Some USGS volcano scientists have taken the deferred resignation program, according to Jeff Freymueller, a professor at Michigan State University who used to work at the Alaska Volcano Observatory and who remains in touch with the remaining USGS staff. The volcano observatories are monitored 24/7, and if there is a big volcanic eruption, it turns into an all-hands-on-deck situation. “The staffing shortages will be made much, much worse when there’s a volcanic crisis, because you simply need to bring everybody on board to cover the workload,” Freymueller said. For now, data is continuing to flow. But Freymueller is watching to see if seismograph maintenance happens this summer. He says, “they’re hoping that there’s been enough blood to appease the higher ups so that there won’t be further” staff cuts. Solar storms While many of the biggest hazards that take constant monitoring happen on earth, there are others in the cosmos. Particularly, from our sun. Solar storms happen when the sun flings plasma and other charged particles carrying the sun’s magnetic field toward Earth. The resulting storms, which are otherwise invisible to the naked eye, can create awe-inspiring auroras, but can wreak havoc on our electric grids and radio systems. And these kinds of storms have been happening more because the sun is in a particularly active phase. There are roughly a dozen experts who work at NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center in Boulder, Colorado, with generally two scientists on any given 24-hour shift. They have recently lost three employees, according to Tim Keebler, a space weather researcher at the University of Michigan. “They’re wildly understaffed for a small team,” Keebler said. More big changes could be coming to the program, which is one of just a handful like it in the world. The Trump administration has proposed moving it from NOAA to the Department of Homeland Security. The program is preparing to launch a new satellite to better measure and predict space weather, but so much uncertainty could threaten the future of a small but important program. “Many, many people rely on these few people at this one office,” Keebler said. “It’s the power companies, it’s the satellite operators, cell phone operators, railroad companies.”