Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s hefty legislative agenda has been dealt a series of expected blows in the first half of the General Assembly session by the Democrat-controlled Senate.

Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin has apologized after mistaking one Black legislator for another in a text message.

A senior Republican state senator says Republican Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin seems ready to move on from a fight with Senate Democrats over the appointment of former Environmental Protection Agency administrator Andrew Wheeler to his Cabinet.

Democrats who narrowly control the Virginia Senate stuck together Tuesday and voted unanimously against approving former U.S. Environmental Protection Agency administrator Andrew Wheeler to Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin's Cabinet.

A Democrat-controlled Virginia Senate committee has voted against Gov. Glenn Youngkin's choice for secretary of natural and historic resources.

A group of about 130 former U.S. Environmental Protection Agency employees and others who have worked directly with Andrew Wheeler wrote to the Virginia Senate over the weekend to urge lawmakers to approve the former EPA administrator’s nomination to Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s Cabinet.

Virginia Governor-elect Glenn Youngkin is slated to be sworn in as Virginia’s next governor on Saturday, Jan. 15.

More than 150 former Environmental Protection Agency employees are writing to the Virginia Senate, asking the Democrat-controlled chamber to oppose the nomination of former EPA administrator Andrew Wheeler to GOP Gov.-elect Glenn Youngkin’s cabinet.

The Trump administration has completed action on one of its biggest remaining rollbacks of public health and environmental rules. EPA administrator Andrew Wheeler has wrapped up what he calls a transparency rule. The change could bar the agency from considering the findings of public-health studies unless the studies' raw data is made public. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais, File)WASHINGTON – A federal judge has blocked a last-minute rule issued by the Trump administration to limit what evidence the Environmental Protection Agency may consider as it regulates pollutants to protect public health. The Trump rule would restrict regulators’ consideration of findings from public health studies unless the underlying data from them are made public.

FILE - In this Sept. 21, 2017, file photo, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Building is shown in Washington. The Trump administration has completed action on one of its biggest remaining rollbacks of public health and environmental rules. The change could bar the agency from considering the findings of public-health studies unless the studies' raw data is made public. Opponents say the latest rule would threaten patient confidentiality and privacy of individuals in public health studies, and call the requirement an overall ruse to handicap future regulation. The new regulation would restrict regulators' consideration of findings from public health studies unless the underlying data from them are made public.

Florida accounts for about a fifth of the country’s wetlands and includes the Everglades, among the state’s most important environmental jewels. “The fact is that Florida’s proposed program to take over wetlands permitting doesn’t comply with federal environmental laws,” she said. Florida becomes the third state to gain broader permitting authority of wetlands under the federal Clean Water Act. Florida's request to gain sole permitting authority was launched under the administration of Gov. Ron DeSantis, also a Republican, took on that mantle and earlier this year formally petitioned the federal government to transfer that authority.

The Trump administration on Monday made final its decision to leave limits for a deadly kind of air pollutant unchanged, overriding scientific findings that tougher standards could save tens of thousands of lives yearly. The tougher air standards called for by many scientists in and out of the federal government “could have been a huge blow to the coal industry,” Douglas Buffington, West Virginia’s senior deputy attorney general, told reporters. Wheeler's decision leaves unchanged limits for what is broadly called “fine particulate matter” – the tiny bits of soot we breathe in unseen from tailpipes, wildfires, factory and power plant smokestacks, and other sources. Wheeler on Monday said the country’s levels for the invisible, deadly pollutant were better than the global average. The decision was part of a five-year review of limits required under the Clean Air Act.

After months of travel to battleground states before Election Day, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency now is looking at taxpayer-funded trips abroad, including the tropics, in the Trump administration's last weeks. Administrator Andrew Wheeler had been invited next month to Taiwan, a trip with an estimated cost of $45,000, EPA spokesman James Hewitt said Thursday. “Administrator Wheeler remains head of the agency and will continue to advance environmental progress both here and abroad,” Hewitt said. The New York Times, which first reported Wheeler’s travel plans, said Wheeler and other EPA officials were expected to travel by chartered flight to minimize exposure to the coronavirus. Hewitt, the EPA spokesman, did not immediately respond to a question asking whether Wheeler was doing any planning to help the agency transition from one administration to the next.

(AP Photo/John Flesher)WASHINGTON – Education Secretary Betsy DeVos planned a “Moms for Trump” rally in her home state of Michigan. It's long been one of the benefits of incumbency that a president can enlist his Cabinet to promote administration accomplishments. “The Trump administration has completely obliterated that line," said Austin Evers, executive director of American Oversight, which describes itself as a nonpartisan watchdog organization. "The White House is now the seat of government, where the president lives, and one of his chief campaign props. “The Trump administration takes the Hatch Act seriously and all events are conducted in compliance with the law,” White House spokesman Judd Deere said.

An executive order from Trump put Interior Secretary David Bernhardt and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Andrew Wheeler in charge of the interagency water body. Establishment of a water subcabinet “will streamline decision-making processes" across federal agencies, the EPA said in a statement. The first priority set out by the executive order is increasing dam storage and other water storage, long a demand of farmers and farm interests in the West in particular. That includes California’s Westlands Water District, the nation’s largest agricultural water district. Westlands was one of Bernhardt’s main lobbying and legal clients before his appointment to the Interior Department under Trump.

WASHINGTON President Donald Trump is out to claim the mantle of environmental steward on Tuesday as he highlights conservation and restoration projects in Florida. But his administration has overturned or weakened numerous regulations meant to protect air and water quality and lands essential for imperiled species. The trip comes as Trump steps up his travel to battleground states eight weeks out from Election Day. Under Trump, the Environmental Protection Agency stripped federal protection from millions of acres of streams and wetlands. Environmental groups and former EPA chiefs from both parties have criticized Trumps environmental record.

Andrew Wheeler, administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency, front, speaks during a news conference Wednesday, Sept. 2, 2020, in San Diego. The U.S. government announced work has begun to stop a decades-old problem of millions of gallons of sewage from Tijuana, Mexico, flowing into the United States and polluting the waves where Southern California meets the border. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull)SAN DIEGO Work has begun to stop a decades-old problem of millions of gallons of sewage from Tijuana, Mexico, flowing into the United States and polluting San Diego County beaches, the Trump administration's top environmental protection official said Wednesday. Mexico is also doing work on the system, and pollution flows are already being reduced, Wheeler said. The agency is also funding work in coming months that will replace a mile of old, leaking pipes that should further stop the sewage from overflowing, Wheeler said.

Environmental Protection Agency chief Andrew Wheeler on Thursday defended the Trump administration's record on protecting the nation's air and water and said a second term would bring a greater focus on pollution cleanups in disadvantaged communities and less emphasis on climate change. Some of the nation's bedrock environmental laws, such as the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act, were enacted during his administration. Wheeler, an EPA and Senate staffer in the 1990s and a former coal industry lobbyist, said the agency had accomplished much. "Americas environment today is cleaner than its ever been in our lifetimes, he said, adding that during the Trump administration, air pollution has fallen while Superfund cleanups have accelerated and EPA programs have pumped $40 billion into clean-water infrastructure upgrades. Instead of confusing words with actions, and choosing empty symbolism over doing a good job, we can focus our attention and resources on helping communities help themselves, Wheeler said.

The oil and gas industry was responsible for nearly 30% of the nations methane emissions in 2018, and methane accounted for 10% of the nation's greenhouse gas emissions, according to the EPA. Supporters of the rule maintained that, based on reports the companies file, it seemed to be helping reduce methane emissions. But, far more importantly, killing the methane emissions rule also blocks a legal requirement for the EPA to extend the rule to cover many more pieces of equipment installed before 2015, environmental advocates say. Methane emissions are increasing rapidly, and the oil and gas industry is clearly part of the problem." Oil and gas industry representatives pushed for the methane rollbacks, fearing tougher, more expensive rules covering emissions from older equipment.

The Trump administration said Wednesday that it plans to adopt aircraft emissions standards modeled on international ones, a move it says will not further reduce climate-damaging emissions from planes. The rules are too weak to address the severity of the climate crisis, said Clare Lockwood, the group's climate legal director. The U.S. needed to adopt a rule at least as tough as the one being put in place by the International Civil Aviation Organization to sell and operate planes overseas. The Obama administration concluded that aviation contributes to climate change, endangering public health. The EPA says U.S. aviation accounts for 3% of the country's overall climate-changing emissions.

With President Donald Trump confronted by skyrocketing joblessness and the coronavirus pandemic as he campaigns for reelection against Democrat Joe Biden, members of his Cabinet are busy making time in pivotal states. They are carrying a message to voters about what the Trump administration is doing for them. A Trump campaign spokesperson did not respond to questions about the Cabinet members' trips. Biden campaign spokesperson Michael Gwin accused the Trump administration of focusing on "scoring political points, not delivering for the people they work for. It was unclear whether the Trump campaign or the federal government paid for Bernhardt's costs on the trip.

The Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday ended an Obama-era drive to regulate a widespread contaminant in drinking water linked to brain damage in infants. Administrator Andrew Wheeler's announcement was the latest in a series of Trump administration rollbacks or eliminations of existing or pending public health and environmental protections, targeting Obama administration initiatives in particular. The Trump administration says the regulations are burdensome to business and are unnecessary. He said that partly because of the steps that some states and public drinking water systems have taken to reduce perchlorate contamination, federal regulation was not warranted. The EPA required some nationwide testing for perchlorate in drinking water only from 2001 to 2005, making it impossible to determine how severe a problem remains nationally, Olson said.

(Kevin Dietsch/Pool via AP)WASHINGTON Democrats on Wednesday blasted the Trump administration's moves to roll back environmental regulations during the coronavirus crisis, with one senator saying a "pandemic of pollution'' has been released. Administrator Andrew Wheeler said the EPA remains open for business" and "at work meeting our mission of protecting human health and the environment.'' While the rest of the country works around the clock to combat and overcome this deadly respiratory pandemic, the Trump EPA has been spearheading a pandemic of pollution, Carper said. An EPA spokeswoman disputed Democrats claims that the temporary enforcement waiver allows companies to openly exceed pollution limits. He said that Trump's EPA has saved U.S. businesses more than $5 billion in regulatory costs.

A pedestrian walks by a homeless man who is begging for money on May 17, 2019, in San Francisco, which has seen a 17 percent surge in 2019 in homeless individuals in the city and county of San Francisco. (CNN) - President Donald Trump on Wednesday escalated his political fight with California by threatening to have the Environmental Protection Agency pursue action against San Francisco for its homelessness problem. "It's a terrible situation that's in Los Angeles and in San Francisco," Trump said of homelessness to reporters aboard Air Force One, according to a pool report. "And we're going to be giving San Francisco -- they're in total violation -- we're going to be giving them a notice very soon." Responding to Trump's threat, San Francisco's Mayor London Breed on Thursday defended the city's efforts to combat homelessness in a series of tweets.

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Andrew Wheeler (2nd R) and Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao (C) make a policy announcement at EPA headquarters on Sept. 19, 2019, in Washington, DC. The state's Clean Air Act waiver allowed it to set vehicle emission standards that are more stringent than the federal standards. The Trump administration is in the process of relaxing federal emission standards set by the Obama administration, but for those to be controlling, needs to also eliminate the California levels. At the Thursday morning event, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Andrew Wheeler took California to task for having "the worst air quality in the United States." Wheeler said the revised federal standards are still in development but will be announced in the coming weeks.

CNN image(CNN) - The Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday announced the repeal of the Obama-era Waters of the United States rule that extended federal authority and protections to streams and wetlands. EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler said repealing the rule was "at the top of the list" of items the administration wanted to roll back, because it was an "egregious power grab." Jay Timmons, the CEO of NAM, introduced Wheeler and said the rollback is a "big accomplishment for manufacturers." The 2015 regulation, commonly known as WOTUS, defined what bodies of water are protected under the federal Clean Water Act but was a favorite punching bag of Republicans, who ridicule it as government overreach. The next step for the Trump administration is finalizing its proposal for a replacement regulation.

The 2015 regulation, commonly known as WOTUS, defined what bodies of water are protected under the federal Clean Water Act but was a favorite punching bag of Republicans, who ridicule it as government overreach. A source who's been invited to the announcement tells CNN that EPA administrator Andrew Wheeler is expected to sign the finalized rule repealing the regulation. First the regulation has to be repealed then the EPA will move to replace it with a new regulation," the source said. The EPA announced Wednesday that Wheeler will "make a major water policy announcement" but did not specify what the announcement would be. President Donald Trump has repeatedly called clean water a priority for his administration.

(CNN) - The Environmental Protection Agency announced a commitment to fully eliminate animal testing by 2035. The EPA has relied on animal testing to evaluate the risks of chemicals and pesticides to human health but has taken steps in recent years to move toward new alternatives and technologies. The Toxic Substances Control Act that was amended in 2016 to reduce reliance on animal testing as well. Animal rights groups, including the Humane Society and PETA, praised the move. "PETA is celebrating the EPA's decision to protect animals certainly, but also humans and the environment, by switching from cruel and scientifically flawed animal tests in favor of modern, non-animal testing methods," said Dr. Amy Clippinger, director of PETA's regulatory testing department.