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Meg Duff

@megduff.com
2.8K followers 896 following 79 posts

Reporter for Chemical Watch News & Insights. Also a freelance climate journalist. Views and Bluesky nonsense my own. she/her signal: megduff.11 www.megduff.com

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Reposted by Meg Duff
Nitish Pahwa @nitishpahwa.com · 12/12/2025
hooooooooooooo boy
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Ed Burmila @edburmila.bsky.social · 05/12/2025
*youth pastor voice* Let me tell you kids about another carpenter who wasn’t very popular with the authorities
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Mike Sacks @mikesacks.bsky.social · 05/12/2025
CADC, 2-1, says Trump could illegally fire Wilcox and Harris. Trump judges in majority say Humphrey’s doesn’t apply to NLRB or MSPB, and so don’t have to wait for SCOTUS to overrule it. Biden judge in dissent says the ruling “paves the way to autocracy.” media.cadc.uscourts.gov/opinions/doc...
Before: KATSAS, WALKER, and PAN, Circuit Judges.
Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge KATSAS.
Dissenting opinion filed by Circuit Judge PAN.
KATSAS, Circuit Judge: These appeals present the question whether Congress may constitutionally prohibit the President from removing members of the National Labor Relations Board and Merit Systems Protection Board without cause. The district courts upheld the constitutionality of statutory removal protections for members of these boards.
We reverse. Under Humphrey's Executor v. United States,
295 U.S. 602 (1935), Congress may restrict the President's ability to remove principal officers who wield only quasi-legislative or quasi-judicial powers. But under Seila Law LLC
v. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, 591 U.S. 197
(2020), Congress may not restrict the President's ability to remove principal officers who wield substantial executive power. As explained below, the NLRB and MSPB wield substantial powers that are both executive in nature and different from the powers that Humphrey's Executor deemed to be merely quasi-legislative or quasi-judicial. So, Congress cannot restrict the President's ability to remove NRB or
MSPB members.PAN, Circuit Judge, dissenting:
The public is well served when some parts of our government are insulated from the fray of politics. That is because certain government functions are, or should be, nonpartisan. For example, courts of law and other adjudicators that apply legal standards to facts must be impartial, and their impartiality is protected when the decision-makers do not fear losing their jobs when there is a change in presidential administrations. And some agencies that employ subject-matter expertise to address technical regulatory and policy issues, such as the Federal Reserve, are better able to execute their duties and to inspire public confidence in their decision-making if they are distanced from political considerations.
Such "independent" government entities have existed in our country in some form since 1790.! And 138 years ago, Congress created the first nonpartisan expert independent agency, the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC). The Supreme Court confirmed that such agencies are constitutional ninety years ago.? Today, approximately thirty-three independent agencies apply specialized expertise to make merit-based decisions on behalf of the American people, in liverse areas like commerce, public safety, and energy. And numerous courts of law — such as the Tax Court, the Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces, and the Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims — serve as independent adjudicators, even though they are housed within the Executive Branch.
See Christine Kexel Chabot, Is the Federal Reserve Constitutional? An Originalist Argument for Independent Agencies,
96 Notre Dame L. Rev. 1,39-40 (2020) (describing the Sinking Fund Commission of 1790, which had two members who were not removable by the President).
2
See Humphrey's Executor v. United States, 295 U.S. 602
(1935).
3
See infra notes 14-20.The government urges an unprecedented interpretation of the Constitution that would lead to the full politicization of our government and a massive transfer of power to the President.
My colleagues take an alternative approach in name only.
Rather than expressly declaring Humphrey's a dead letter, they redefine Humphrey's "substantial executive power" exception such that it does not allow for any independent agencies. In so doing, they enable the government to achieve its goals while maintaining the appearance of judicial restraint. Under either approach, independent agencies as we know them cannot exist in this country. Because that outcome is not required by our Constitution and does harm to our nation, I respectfully dissent.
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Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham @paulgp.com · 13/11/2025
For folks (and journalists) who want to search the Oversight Committee email texts, I made a database for searching the 20k text files: splendorous-chaja-f79791.netlify.app
splendorous-chaja-f79791.netlify.app
Epstein Document Search
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terror @weedlejuice.bsky.social · 13/11/2025
Oh to be a spiky little guy snuffling around in the mossy ground
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Andrew D Thaler @drandrewthaler.bsky.social · 11/11/2025
In the century leading up to 1975, nearly 6000 freighters went down in the Great Lakes. The Edmund Fitzgerald was the last. The last. In 50 years, not a single commercial freighter has been lost in the Great Lakes. Why? It's NOAA. Of course it's NOAA.
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Jessica Ellis @baddestmamajama.bsky.social · 08/11/2025
I just keep thinking “Elon Musk just got a trillion dollars”
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Glenn Fleishman @glennf.com · 10/10/2025
Have you filled a city kermit for this protest?
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Jameel Jaffer @jameeljaffer.bsky.social · 06/10/2025
It's a pretty big deal that the NYC Bar Association--one of the most prominent and respected bar associations in the country--is accusing the President of ordering the "unlawful summary execution," i.e. murder--of civilians in violation of US and international law. www.nycbar.org/press-releas...
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Meg Duff @megduff.com · 27/09/2025
More cities, NGOs, even HOAs are getting disaster insurance. 'Parametric' plans pay out at key triggers: hurricane hits cat 5, wildfire crosses line, etc. Now, some of those plans are rewarding climate adaptation with big discounts. with @jojofoshosho.bsky.social for @kneedeeptimes.bsky.social !
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Joanna Thompson @jojofoshosho.bsky.social · 26/09/2025
The insurance industry is broken, especially in wildfire-prone states like California that have been hit hard by climate change. Could a community-based risk reduction model be the solution? Proud to have gotten to co-write this story for @kneedeeptimes.bsky.social with @megduff.com 🌎🧪
kneedeeptimes.org
Insurance Innovations Reward Communities Reducing Climate Risk
Fires and floods are scaring insurance companies away from disaster zones, but communities are doing their part to improve outcomes.
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John Kostyack @kostyack.bsky.social · 18/09/2025
As global heating produces more wildfires, "Americans have increasingly been bombarded by toxic smoke." 41K people in the US now die from this smoke each year, "one of the most costly and important climate impacts.” www.washingtonpost.com/climate-envi...
washingtonpost.com
See where wildfire smoke is getting worse in the U.S.
The past six summers have been the smokiest on record. New research shows that smoke could become the costliest consequence of climate change for Americans.
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Robert E. (He/him) @robertemond.bsky.social · 17/09/2025
#ColorADay | #RedWed “Memories of Autumn Past” alternate title “Roll Out the Red Carpet” #Photography 📸 #WestCoastKin #PNW #Oregon #PhotographersOfBluesky #PhotographersUnited #BlueskyPhotography #ArtistsOfBluesky #BlueskyArt #Landscape #Nature
Hundreds of red leaves form a carpet bellow the Japanese maple. Two red leaves cling to the otherwise bare tree. Photo by Robert Emond.
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Adam Sternbergh @sternbergh.bsky.social · 18/09/2025
reminder: Jimmy Kimmel is enough of a mensch that he devised a segment on which actors who are just short of having enough work to qualify for union healthcare come on his show and deliver a single line of dialogue deadline.com/2024/07/jimm...
deadline.com
‘Jimmy Kimmel Live’ Once Again Aims To Help Working Actors Get Health Insurance With New Casting Notice
Jimmy Kimmel wants to help actors get health insurance with a new casting notice for his talk show
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Mary Dineen 📷 𓀡𓆀 @marysunshineisgone.bsky.social · 18/09/2025
A bee is here
Bee on a white pink flower
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David Ho @davidho.bsky.social · 17/09/2025
A new study led by @clairbarnes.bsky.social shows that human-caused global warming tripled heat wave deaths in European cities this summer to 24,400. These 16,500 people would still be alive if we weren't burning fossil fuels like there's no tomorrow.
insideclimatenews.org
Human-Caused Warming Tripled the Death Toll of European Heat Waves This Summer, New Report Shows - Inside Climate News
Public health researchers struggle to track the accelerating pace of global warming impacts.
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ali alkhatib @ali-alkhatib.com · 11/08/2025
hey just an FYI: we're not yet at the part where AI companies and the state are so closely intertwined that disclosing energy usage would constitute a threat to national security or some other such bullshit, making transparency into the environmental impact of data centers all but impossible
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Ketan Joshi @ketanjoshi.co · 19/08/2025
It bears repeating: choosing to double down and accelerate our burning of fossil fuels will kill off a substantial proportion of humanity That is something we want to avoid - and can choose to avoid www.theguardian.com/environment/...
theguardian.com
‘A climate of unparalleled malevolence’: are we on our way to the sixth major mass extinction?
The long read: Churning quantities of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere at the rate we are going could lead the planet to another Great Dying
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Brendan Nyhan @brendannyhan.bsky.social · 16/08/2025
"Putin appears to have gained the upper hand...[He] was treated as an equal on U.S. soil, managed to sidestep any potential American sanctions for now and announced no battlefield concessions. Trump, who vowed...to end the war on his first day in office, failed to secure even a temporary cease-fire"
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Mel Buer @melbuer.bsky.social · 15/08/2025
Eyeopening walkthrough of DC by this creator. If you aren’t in DC, worth a watch all the way to the end—
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Andrew Freedman @afreedma.bsky.social · 13/08/2025
Remarkably, NASA is looking for partners (wealthy individuals, philanthropic orgs, companies etc.) to keep crucial climate satellite missions like the Orbiting Carbon Observatory going. Whether they make such a deal before $$ runs out remains to be seen... www.cnn.com/2025/08/13/c...
cnn.com
The perfectly fine, already-paid-for satellites Trump wants to destroy in a fiery atmospheric reentry | CNN
NASA is planning to decommission premier satellite missions that gather information on planet-warming pollution and other climate vital signs beginning as soon as October, sources inside and outside o...
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I Scare You Like Sound Dog @chadstanton.blacksky.app · 12/08/2025
"“I ain’t ever bought no prostitutes. I ain’t never raped nobody. I ain’t never paid anybody off. None of that stuff,” said G, a resident from one of the photographed tents. “He’s much more of a criminal than I am”" streetsensemedia.org/article/home...
streetsensemedia.org
Donald Trump threatens to clear encampments in D.C.
With D.C.’s MPD now under federal control and the National Guard coming to D.C., the fate of people in encampments remains up in the air.
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Chris Cantwell @ifyoucantwell.bsky.social · 12/08/2025
This is a wonderful read.
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hannah gais @hannahgais.bsky.social · 12/08/2025
Once again, if you know anything about who is behind the DHS or ICE social media accounts, particularly on X, I'm very interested in talking to you. hannahgais@proton.me or 334-315-8634 on Signal.
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Andy Revkin 🌎 ✍🏼 🪕 ☮️ revkin.substack.com @revkin.bsky.social · 03/08/2025
Good Peter Baker article ⤴️ on Trump's brutish abuse of power in service of narrative. But words matter. When is a behavior an "echo" of something in the past, and when is it that thing incarnate?... 1/2
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Kevin J. Kircher @kevinjkircher.com · 03/08/2025
Well done, New York! The state's building code now requires most new buildings to be all-electric. This makes good economic sense: It's cheaper to install a two-way heat pump to both heat and cool, vs a one-way AC plus a one-way furnace. Outgrowing indoor combustion also benefits climate and health.
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Marisa Kabas @marisakabas.bsky.social · 23/07/2025
In the past when I sat down to write about Israel, I’ve had a moment where I take a deep breath and accept that, as a Jewish woman, it’s going to be difficult. This time, there was no such moment. I wrote about the intentional starvation of Gaza by Israel/US, and the moral imperative to say enough:
thehandbasket.co
Gaza is starving
Palestinians seeking food are being killed by the IDF. It's time for the entire world to say enough.
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Democracy Now! @democracynow.org · 21/07/2025
Alex de Waal has worked on humanitarian causes across the globe for over 40 years. “There is no case, over those four decades, of such minutely engineered, closely monitored, precisely designed mass starvation of a population as is happening in Gaza today.”
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Tony Corsentino @notalegalrecord.net · 18/07/2025
WGBH building in Boston today
View of the WGBH building in Boston with an electronic marquee reading “Local. Trusted. Defunded.”
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comfort foods @primpker.bsky.social · 14/07/2025
Pilot over the intercom: uhhhhhhh we are all just flesh. We exist so briefly.
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Jacob Bogage @jacobbogage.bsky.social · 21/06/2025
👀 Scoop: Trump and Republicans want USPS to sell off its brand new EVs and chargers. That would mean literally **ripping up post office parking lots** to auction off assets with no private-sector value. It’s buried in the Senate’s “One Big Beautiful Bill.” www.washingtonpost.com/business/202...
The Senate’s version of Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill would see the General Services Administration take possession of the nearly 7,200 new postal EVs and associated infrastructure and put the assets up for auction. The proposal is unlikely to generate much revenue for the government; there is almost no private-sector interest in the mail trucks, and used EV charging equipment — built specifically for the Postal Service and already installed in postal facilities — generally cannot be resold.

“The funds realized by auctioning the vehicles and infrastructure would be negligible. Much of infrastructure is literally buried under parking lots, and there is no market for used charging equipment,” Peter Pastre, the Postal Service’s vice president for government relations and public policy, wrote to senators this month.
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Harms Committed @harmscommitted.com · 18/06/2025
"About a fifth of the coal miners in Central Appalachia have black lung." "And from 1970 to 2016, more than 75,000 died." "It comes down to how much is a life worth. You want more coal, but you don't care about the coal miners." #WestVirginia #USA #Healthcare
capitalandmain.com
A Coal Miner’s Daughter Takes on DOGE to Protect Miners’ Health
Since 1970, more than 75,000 miners have died of black lung disease. Now, researchers working to prevent those deaths get layoff notices.
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Meg Duff @megduff.com · 18/06/2025
When I started reporting this story for @capitalandmain.bsky.social, 90% of NIOSH staff had received layoff notices. Now, the situation is more complicated. 🧵1/7 capitalandmain.com/a-coal-miner...
capitalandmain.com
A Coal Miner’s Daughter Takes on DOGE to Protect Miners’ Health
Since 1970, more than 75,000 miners have died of black lung disease. Now, researchers working to prevent those deaths get layoff notices.
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Marcus Baram @marcusbaram.bsky.social · 17/06/2025
Must-read by @megduff.com on @capitalandmain.bsky.social: “It comes down to how much is a life worth,” Wolfe said. “You want more coal, but you don’t care about the coal miners and what’s happening to them.” capitalandmain.com/a-coal-miner...
capitalandmain.com
A Coal Miner’s Daughter Takes on DOGE to Protect Miners’ Health
Since 1970, more than 75,000 miners have died of black lung disease. Now, researchers working to prevent those deaths get layoff notices.
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Apoorva Mandavilli @apoorvanyt.bsky.social · 15/05/2025
RFK Jr. said multiple times during his house and senate hearings today that no scientists have been fired from federal agencies. Our reporting has shown that hundreds, if not thousands, of scientists have been let go from NIH/CDC/FDA
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Mo Ryan @moryan.bsky.social · 07/05/2025
I for one welcome our new orca overlords
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Bilbo Yaga @bilboyaga.bsky.social · 11/05/2025
The next orca attack will be very different.
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Lupita Nihongo @otsumamiboy.blacksky.app · 08/05/2025
Impossible to communicate to people that once you decide that a group more vulnerable than you can be sacrificed in the name of your own safety or interests that you have already entered into an tacit agreement that you can also be sacrificed in the interests of a group less vulnerable than you.
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David Ho @davidho.bsky.social · 06/05/2025
I wrote to one of the best government climate scientists I know, and jokingly asked if he's been fired. The fact that our best scientists, even if they haven't been fired, cannot focus on work due to mental strain, hurts us all.
Amazingly, not yet. I've pretty much stopped doing any meaningful work and spend much of my time worrying how the CO2 group will make it
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Pookleblinky @pookleblinky.bsky.social · 06/05/2025
The most likely place one of the US scientists fired by a 19 year old will end up isn't in some other country's version of Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study, but like, McDonalds or Doordash. The brain drain will be mostly into shitty gig jobs, not picking up that research elsewhere.
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Leah Sottile @leahsottile.bsky.social · 29/04/2025
In @highcountrynews.org, @shaun505.bsky.social writes brilliantly about what trucks can do, and how they can bring people together, and how the Cybertruck is just a baking sheet on wheels for dysfunctional men. www.hcn.org/issues/57-5/...
hcn.org
The Cybertruck is all tricks and no truck, a musky Tesla fail - High Country News
The Cybertruck is nothing but a baking sheet on wheels that's riding to recall lane toward a dead end.
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Erik Loomis @erikloomis.bsky.social · 21/04/2025
This Day in Labor History: April 21, 1894. Bituminous coal miners went on strike. This early attempt to fight against employer oppression and the low wages of the mines failed pretty badly, in the face of overwhelming state violence, employer intransigence, and the deep poverty of the miners!!
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Meg Duff @megduff.com · 21/04/2025
www.washingtonpost.com/climate-envi...
washingtonpost.com
Trump touts ‘clean coal’ — but cuts programs that protect miners
A federal program that screens coal miners for black lung disease has been shuttered because of layoffs and budget cuts.
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Joshua J. Friedman @joshuajfriedman.com · 13/04/2025
Twelve of them! They got Zuck too
paloaltoonline.com
Silicon Valley crosswalk buttons apparently hacked to imitate Musk, Zuckerberg voices
Crosswalk buttons along the mid-Peninsula appear to have been hacked, so that when pressed, voices professing to be Mark Zuckerberg or Elon Musk begin speaking.
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Dr. Genevieve Guenther (she/they) @doctorvive.bsky.social · 08/04/2025
Calling solar geoengineering a "solution" now establishes the conversation on totally unwarranted assumptions, as if we already knew whether it was going to work in a systemic way or not. We do not know this yet. 6/n
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Ed Carr @edwardrcarr.com · 08/04/2025
Regina George from Mean Girls saying “stop trying to make RCP8.5 happen”
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Maggie Koerth @maggiek.bsky.social · 08/04/2025
Inside you there are two wolves. Neither of them is a dire wolf.
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Meg Duff @megduff.com · 06/04/2025
Professional update! I just started a new job reporting on chemical regulations for Chemical Watch News & Insights. Work at the EPA? Work in chemicals policy or compliance? I have lots to learn, so please reach out! You can find me here or on signal: megduff.11
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George Takei @georgetakei.bsky.social · 04/04/2025
If you think this can’t happen, remember that of the 125,000 Japanese Americans who were interned during WWII for years without charge or trial, two-thirds were U.S. citizens. Including me.
The image is a screenshot of a tweet from Brandon Bradford (@BrandonLBradfor
). The tweet reads: "Deporting Americans without due process then saying they no longer get due process because they aren’t in America means no one has rights, FYI. Nightmare scenario."
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