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In an internal FEMA memorandum obtained and first reported by Grist, the Trump administration announced its plans to dismantle that program — the biggest climate adaptation initiative the federal government has ever funded — even as disasters incur hundreds of billions of dollars worth of damages across the United States.

“BRIC was yet another example of a wasteful and ineffective FEMA program,” a FEMA spokesperson told Grist. “It was more concerned with climate change than helping Americans effected by natural disasters.”

BRIC generally shoulders 75 percent of the cost of a given resilience project, and up to 90 percent of the cost of projects in disadvantaged communities. The program’s emphasis on equity is what may have marked it for demolition — the Trump administration has been systematically dismantling Biden-era efforts to infuse equity into governmental programs and direct more climate spending toward underrepresented groups.

The decision comes as at least seven people were killed this week as tornadoes and catastrophic flooding descended on the central United States in what meteorologists called a once in a generation event.

In Central Texas, a bitter fight over a $1 billion water project offers a preview of the future for much of the state as decades of rapid growth push past the local limits of its most vital natural resource.

On one side: Georgetown, the fastest growing city in America for three years straight, which in 2023 signed a contract with an investor-funded enterprise to quickly begin importing vast volumes of water from the Simsboro Formation of the Carrizo Wilcox Aquifer, 80 miles to the east.

On the other side: the cities atop the Simsboro that rely on its water. Bryan, College Station and the Texas A&M University System, a metro area with almost 300,000 people, have sued a local regulator to stop the project. A trial is set for the first week of May.

District manager Alan Day feels for the cities of Bryan and College Station. To an extent, he said, they are right. The more pumping from the aquifer, the sooner everyone will reach conditions of scarcity, though he doesn’t think it will happen as quickly as city leaders say.

At the same time, he said, “Bryan can’t claim the water.” Groundwater is a private property right in Texas as sacred as any other. Everyone is allowed to pump whatever their land produces.

“Water is the new oil,” said Day, a former ranch manager of 27 years. “They have a commodity that can be sold and they have every right to sell it.”

The White House is weighing an executive order that would fast-track permitting for deep-sea mining in international waters and let mining companies bypass a United Nations-backed review process, according to two sources with direct knowledge of the deliberations.

If signed, the order would mark U.S. President Donald Trump's latest attempt to tap international deposits of nickel, copper and other critical minerals used widely across the economy after recent efforts in Greenland and Ukraine. Trump earlier this month also invoked emergency powers to boost domestic minerals production.

The International Seabed Authority - created by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, which the U.S. has not ratified - has for years been considering standards for deep-sea mining in international waters, although it has yet to formalize them due to unresolved differences over acceptable levels of dust, noise and other factors from the practice.

Trump's deep-sea mining order is likely to stipulate that the U.S. aims to exercise its rights to extract critical minerals on the ocean's floor and let miners bypass the ISA and seek permitting through the U.S. Department of Commerce's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's mining code. The plans are under discussion and could change before Trump signs the order, the sources said.

https://archive.ph/5w0z0

More than 1,900 members of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine signed an open letter warning Americans about the “danger” of the Trump administration’s attacks on science. The letter comes amid the administration’s relentless assault on US scientific institutions which has included threats to private universities, federal grant cancelations and ideological funding reviews, mass government layoffs, resignations and censorship.

“We see real danger in this moment,” the letter states. “We hold diverse political beliefs, but we are united as researchers in wanting to protect independent scientific inquiry. We are sending this SOS to sound a clear warning: the nation’s scientific enterprise is being decimated.”

“The administration is slashing funding for scientific agencies, terminating grants to scientists, defunding their laboratories, and hampering international scientific collaboration,” the letter states. “The funding cuts are forcing institutions to pause research (including studies of new disease treatments), dismiss faculty, and stop enrolling graduate students – the pipeline for the next generation’s scientists.”

The letter continued: “The quest for truth – the mission of science – requires that scientists freely explore new questions and report their findings honestly, independent of special interests. The administration is engaging in censorship, destroying this independence. It is using executive orders and financial threats to manipulate which studies are funded or published, how results are reported, and which data and research findings the public can access. The administration is blocking research on topics it finds objectionable, such as climate change, or that yields results it does not like, on topics ranging from vaccine safety to economic trends.”

Scientific institutions have seen major upheaval since the beginning of this Trump administration and there are fears that the cuts are in preparation for privatization.

https://archive.ph/YM3g1

The world is fast approaching temperature levels where insurers will no longer be able to offer cover for many climate risks, said Günther Thallinger, on the board of Allianz SE, one of the world’s biggest insurance companies.

The argument set out by Thallinger in a LinkedIn post begins with the increasingly severe damage being caused by the climate crisis: “Heat and water destroy capital. Flooded homes lose value. Overheated cities become uninhabitable. Entire asset classes are degrading in real time.”

“We are fast approaching temperature levels – 1.5C, 2C, 3C – where insurers will no longer be able to offer coverage for many of these risks,” he said. “The math breaks down: the premiums required exceed what people or companies can pay. This is already happening. Entire regions are becoming uninsurable.”

“This applies not only to housing, but to infrastructure, transportation, agriculture, and industry,” he said. “The economic value of entire regions – coastal, arid, wildfire-prone – will begin to vanish from financial ledgers. Markets will reprice, rapidly and brutally. This is what a climate-driven market failure looks like.”

https://archive.ph/gc27x

One of the most extended U.S. flood episodes of recent years is on tap to begin late Wednesday, April 3, and stretch into the following weekend. The NWS Weather Prediction Center has issued four consecutive days of moderate flood risk for Wednesday through early Sunday.

The threat of tornadoes, destructive winds, and damaging hail will peak from Wednesday afternoon, April 2, into early Thursday. Then comes the deluge — perhaps a foot or more of rain, adding up to what could be some of the heaviest three- or four-day totals ever recorded in what is normally a moist region notorious for flooding.

According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, approximately one-third of the nation’s residents don’t have driver’s licenses. In her 2024 book “When Driving is Not an Option: Steering Away from Car Dependency,” disability advocate Anna Zivarts argues that not only is America’s car-centric infrastructure harmful to the climate, it also fails to meet the everyday needs of many Americans.