Undermine | Environment.org

Photo credit: Adam Michael Szuscik, via Unsplash

Several offices within the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) provide legal guidance, oversight, and accountability for actions the Department takes, and these offices have endured significant staff losses in 2025. Their work, though often invisible to the public, is essential for ensuring that USDA follows its own rules and those set by Congress. It makes the Department transparent, accountable to the public for its decisions, and ensures it treats farmers and other stakeholders fairly. The major staff losses these offices are experiencing threaten that work.

This post is the sixth in our ongoing series on the staffing crisis at USDA. It examines the massive cuts to legal oversight offices within the Department including the National Appeals Division (NAD), the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights (OASCR), the Office of the …

Negative verbal probabilities undermine communication of climate science

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| Climate

Nature Climate Change, Published online: 06 November 2025; doi:10.1038/s41558-025-02472-1

Effective communication of uncertainty is vital for public accurate understanding of climate science. Here the authors find that projections using positive probability terms (for example, a small probability) are perceived as more scientific and trustworthy than those using negative terms (for example, unlikely).
Nature Climate Change…

USDA Staffing Crisis: Mass Departures Undermine Local Ag Support

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| Sustainability

On July 24, 2025, US Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins released a memo (SM-1078-015) describing the planned reorganization of the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) staff. This reorganization plan was drafted without any consultation with farmers or other stakeholders. While the reorganization plan does not directly include planned layoffs or reductions in force (RIF), USDA has already lost at least 18,000 staff since January 2025. If the reorganization moves forward as planned, it will likely result in the loss of thousands more staff.

After swift bipartisan pushback to the proposed reorganization, USDA opened an impromptu and unofficial public comment opportunity. The National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC) encourages organizations and individuals to submit their comments, questions, and concerns regarding the reorganization to USDA at reorganization@usda.gov by August 31, 2025. NSAC also notes our concern that the …

Financials threaten to undermine the functioning of emissions markets

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| Climate

Nature Climate Change, Published online: 29 December 2022; doi:10.1038/s41558-022-01560-w

With the development of carbon emission allowance markets worldwide, concerns that they could attract excessive speculation have also grown. This Perspective discusses the potential scale and impacts of financial trading, as well as approaches to improve carbon market monitoring and oversight.
Nature Climate Change…