Politics
As Earth warms, California gets federal funding to train climate-ready workforce
California is among nine U.S. states and territories selected to receive $60 million in federal funding as part of a significant effort to build a nationwide climate-ready workforce.
The investment from the U.S. Department of Commerce and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration will support job development efforts in coastal and Great Lakes communities around the country, including $9.5 million to establish the Los Angeles County Climate Ready Employment Council at Long Beach City College.
The LBCC program will help develop training, internship and job placement services for occupations in the water and solar sectors that are demanding workers, officials said. Similar programs were announced Tuesday in American Samoa, Alaska, Washington, Texas, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Ohio and Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
The investment in public, private and educational organizations “will train workers from around our coasts and help them find good-paying jobs that strengthen climate resilience and local economies,” read a statement from U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo. “Climate change accelerates the need for a new generation of skilled workers who can help communities address a wide range of climate impacts including sea level rise, flooding, water quality issues and the need for solutions such as renewable energy.”
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The program is funded by President Biden’s landmark Inflation Reduction Act and includes $50 million in direct awards and $10 million in technical assistance to support the grantees. Federal officials told reporters they received 95 applications for the program requesting a total of $615 million in funding — or more than 10 times the amount available.
“Even with this generational investment that’s being made, we think it shows the need and the demand in communities nationwide for programs like this,” said Jonathan Pennock, director of NOAA’s National Sea Grant College Program, which is helping to manage the initiative.
The program arrives at a key moment for the country, which is continuing to experience worsening climate impacts such as extreme wildfires, floods, heat and storms. Las Vegas, Phoenix and Albuquerque are currently sweltering amid a record-breaking heat wave while portions of Florida are bracing to receive a month’s worth of rain in just a few days.
California has set ambitious targets for adapting to climate change, including cutting greenhouse gas emissions nearly in half by 2030 and achieving carbon neutrality by 2045, but to get there will require significant overhauls of its transportation and energy sectors, as well as upgrades and investments in manufacturing and infrastructure.
A 2021 study on California’s clean energy transition found that the investments needed to meet and strengthen the state’s goals could create 1 million new jobs through 2030. About 14% of those jobs are related to solar, 5% to onshore wind and 4% to wastewater, among other sectors.
Such efforts are urgently needed: In the 1980s, the U.S. averaged a billion-dollar weather disaster every four months, according to NOAA. Today, such events happen once every three weeks.
Wind turbine blades for South Fork Wind, an offshore wind farm, are stored at State Pier in New London, Conn., in December 2023.
(Seth Wenig / Associated Press)
“It’s a stark reminder of the escalating risks we’re up against,” said Jainey Bavishi, assistant secretary of commerce for oceans and atmosphere and a deputy NOAA administrator. “The demand for adaptation and resilience solutions is increasing, and with that comes an increasing demand for a climate-ready workforce that’s trained to help communities and businesses prepare for the effects of climate change.”
Bavishi noted that since 2018, the number of city- and state-level climate adaptation plans have risen by 32%, “but translating those into action fairly and effectively is proving to be tougher.” One barrier is the lack of a diverse skilled workforce, she said.
What’s more, the Fifth National Climate Change Assessment, released in November, underscored the ways in which historically underserved communities, communities of color, and tribal and indigenous communities face disproportionate risks and impacts from climate change. The same communities are often on the sidelines of the labor market as well.
The workforce initiative is intentionally reaching out to those communities with the training opportunities, Raimondo told reporters Tuesday. Support services — such as child care and transportation — are components of the initiative that will help ensure that “folks can finish the training, graduate and actually get high quality, good paying jobs.”
“We have to be clear-eyed about the need to prepare workers with skills for the jobs and connections to real jobs, and that’s what this initiative is designed to do,” she said.
The $9.5 million program at Long Beach City College represents the second-largest investment, following only the Greater Boston Coastal Resilience Jobs Alliance in Massachusetts, which will receive $9.8 million for a similar endeavor.
LBCC will serve as the “backbone” for the establishment of the Los Angeles County Climate Ready Employment Council — an expansive project that will convene parties from the public, private, nonprofit, tribal and educational spheres to improve the county’s climate resiliency workforce and develop training and job placement in all sectors across the county, college officials said.
“Although climate change repercussions may be inevitable, we still hold the power to lessen the severity of the outcomes by changing both our collective behavior and infrastructure,” read a statement from LBCC superintendent-president Mike Muñoz. “Our students will be at the forefront of developing and implementing innovative solutions that are essential for sustaining our planet’s health and ensuring a resilient future for all.”
LBCC this week also announced a $750,000 grant from the California Municipal Utilities Assn.’s water, wastewater and energy workforce development program. Both grants will “address the unique needs of those communities most disproportionately impacted by climate change and will connect underserved and under-resourced workers with training and job placement in climate-resilient careers,” school officials said.
The federal program will begin six to nine months after the funds are received, according to the college. NOAA officials said they aim to disperse all funds to awardees by Aug. 1.
The Biden administration has already created more than 270,000 clean energy jobs across the country, but officials underscored that there is still more work to be done.
“The impacts of the climate crisis are diverse, and the skills needed to empower workers and communities are also diverse,” Raimondo said. “If we’re going to ensure that American workers can take advantage of the jobs that we’re creating by tackling climate change, then we have to be proactive about training folks so they have the skills they need to get the jobs that are available.”
Politics
Biden special counsel’s ‘runaway train’ scooped up sensitive lawmaker info: ‘Abuse of power’
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Former special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into President Donald Trump swept up text messages from nearly 50 members of Congress, bypassing a required review process in what one victim alleged is a direct constitutional violation.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, said the situation is more proof Smith’s probe was a “runaway train” of abuses of power, and the elder statesman and Senate Investigations Subcommittee Chairman Ron Johnson, R-Wis., jointly released their filings Tuesday evening.
Grassley and Johnson’s findings were from a full-scale probe of Operation Arctic Frost, the code name for Smith’s endeavor to investigate Trump for alleged corruption and election malfeasance, an operation top Senate Republicans call “worse than Watergate.”
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Jack Smith, former U.S. special counsel, arrives for a closed-door deposition before the House Judiciary Committee in Washington, D.C., Dec. 17, 2025. (Getty Images)
Forty-four members of Congress had the contents of their text messages obtained and reviewed by Smith’s team in a way that bypassed protocol. A “filter team” was tasked with reviewing millions of documents in the case and should have had first crack at determining whether such messages were relevant or potentially violated statute or ethics.
Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., one of the lawmakers whose texts were swept up in this way, said Tuesday such reviews amounted to clear violations of the Constitution’s speech and debate clause that protects lawmakers from being questioned in “any other place” than the Capitol for legislative acts.
Internal communications have been historically included in that clause in the courts as technology has advanced.
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Stefanik said in a statement that the new records prove Smith’s team “unlawfully and unconstitutionally accessed my private text messages, along with 43 other Members of Congress, in clear violation of the Constitution.”
She said she long suspected there had been “unconstitutional spy[ing] on members of Congress.”
The records were provided by the Trump Justice Department to Grassley and Johnson, which the chairmen said indicated Smith’s team had “circumvented its own filter review process.” The process is additionally meant to protect attorney-client privilege, they said in a statement.
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Former special counsel Jack Smith says the Pledge of Allegiance before he prepares to testify during a hearing before the House Judiciary Committee in the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill Jan. 22, 2026, in Washington, D.C. (Al Drago/Getty Images)
The news also complicated some of Smith’s prior depositions under oath, including an excerpt in which he answered “no” to a question from a congressional counsel whether records he requested from congresspeople included text messages.
Johnson called the situation a “grotesque example” of Biden-era “weaponization” of the executive branch.
“Jack Smith’s criminal investigation of President Trump was a runaway train that had no brakes,” Grassley added Tuesday.
“Based on the information that’s been produced to me and Senator Johnson, Biden DOJ and FBI investigators apparently ignored their own routine investigative protocols to obtain and review work-related messages from me and dozens of my Republican and Democrat colleagues who were outside the scope of the government’s investigation.”
Grassley added that he hopes Democrats caught up in the otherwise bipartisan text tranche will finally discard their partisanship and recognize the severity of the alleged violations by Smith.
He also indicated he planned to recall Smith before Congress to “hold him accountable.”
Of the 44 members swept up in the text reviews, several were Democrats, including Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, Rep. Josh Gottheimer, D-N.J., Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., and the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, Rep. Adam Smith of Washington.
Grassley, Johnson and Stefanik were also swept up in the situation, along with top figures like senators Mike Lee, R-Utah; Josh Hawley, R-Mo.; Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska; Rand Paul, R-Ky., former Senate Republican Conference Chairman Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn.; and the late Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.
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Former House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif., was one of the victims, along with current House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, as well as House Freedom Caucus member Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin of New York, Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins of Georgi, and prominent Trump critic Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky.
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Several lawmakers sounded off on the news soon after Grassley announced his findings, including Hawley, who called for “everyone involved [to] be prosecuted.”
“Joe Biden’s DOJ not only tapped my phone; I just learned they illegally obtained my texts with members of President Trump’s administration,” the Missourian fumed.
Paul called the allegations a “blatant abuse of power and exactly what our Founders warned about,” while citing Smith’s past denial under oath.
Fox News Digital reached out to a representative for Smith for comment.
The federal government agreed to temporarily hold off on construction of a planned Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Northern California.
The voluntary pause until Sept. 9 comes after the California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta and Santa Clara County officials sued the Trump administration last month to block the facility from being developed near Gilroy. The lawsuit remains ongoing.
“This pause in the construction, demolition, and development at the site of the challenged ICE facility is a significant step towards protecting our people, our communities, and our environment while the case remains ongoing,” Bonta said in a statement Monday night.
The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment.
State and local officials believe the facility will be used for short-term detention of up to 150 people at a time, though ICE denied that it would be a detention center.
Community members and advocates for immigrants swiftly opposed the project. ICE has consistently looked to increase its detention capacity in California, where eight detention centers can now hold a combined 9,000 people, though the state has long been a thorn in the agency’s side.
The halt is part of a compromise between both sides involved in the legal action. After the state and county submitted a request for the court to temporarily halt the project, a hearing was set for Oct. 7.
Now, state and federal officials jointly requested that the court move up the hearing by at least a month. The agreement also extends how much time the federal government has to respond.
A federal judge signed off on the agreement Monday night.
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in San José, alleges that the leased land is zoned exclusively for agricultural use and that the federal government violated laws requiring state and county notification, as well as procedural steps before beginning construction.
Supreme Court justices are asking lawmakers on Capitol Hill to increase their 2027 budget, with most of the additional funding earmarked for security. Ann E. Marimow, a New York Times reporter, explains why the justices say these measures are necessary to protect them from rising threats.
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