Reading archive 2025-07-30

The American chestnut tree is coming back. Who is it for? As federal agencies prepare to deregulate transgenic chestnuts, Indigenous nations are asserting their rights to access and care for them. - "The trees huddled along the Gulf Coast for some 8,000 years during the most recent ice age, sheltering in the relatively warm stretch from Florida to the Mississippi River, because mountain peaks even in the southernmost part of the Appalachians were too cold for chestnut trees to grow. Then, as the snow receded northward 20,000 ago, the trees slowly migrated from their coastal refuges. They worked their way up the Appalachian Mountains — helped by Indigenous peoples, whom they helped in turn."

D.C. Council’s compromise on tipped wages undermines voters’ will, advocates say: The council’s budget amendment will modify Initiative 82, which voters passed by an overwhelming majority in 2022. - "This month, the Economic Policy Institute conducted its own analysis of the full-service restaurant industry in the nation’s capital based on publicly available data. It found 'no evidence that increasing the tipped minimum wage has caused measurable harm to industry employment or business growth,' the EPI wrote in its report. 'If anything, D.C.’s restaurant industry has done well relative to most jurisdictions over this period.'"

Five winners and losers in D.C.’s 2026 budget: Facing a difficult economy, the lawmakers struggled with decisions over investing in the city’s growth and cutting services for residents.

The Northeast's hemlock trees face extinction. A tiny fly could save them." The region can't affored to lose these trees - or the carbon they store.