by Jennifer Shutt, Alabama Reflector
May 8, 2025

WASHINGTON — The case of the missing Federal Bureau of Investigation budget request was on full display Thursday, when senators repeatedly asked the law enforcement agency’s director what resources he needed Congress to provide in the upcoming fiscal year.

FBI Director Kash Patel did not disclose a dollar amount, an unusual development at a hearing at which an agency head traditionally discusses a budget request in detail with lawmakers who hold the purse strings.

The Senate Appropriations Commerce-Justice-Science Subcommittee hearing came one day after Patel testified before a House panel that he needs more money from Congress than was asked for in the Trump administration’s budget request.

Patel’s written statement to the House subcommittee said the FBI’s total request was $10.1 billion, but during that hearing he told appropriators the agency needed at least $11.2 billion.

Patel rejecting the Trump administration’s official budget request in support of his own proposal to Congress was significant in that Cabinet secretaries almost always stick to the official request, at least during public hearings.

“The skinny budget is a proposal, and I’m working through the appropriations process to explain why we need more than what has been proposed,” Patel said during the House hearing Wednesday.

Never mind

Less than 24 hours later, he reversed course during the Senate hearing, saying his comments were misconstrued.

“President Trump has set new priorities and a focus on federal law enforcement. I’m here today in full support of the president’s budget, which reprioritizes and enhances our mission of law enforcement and national security,” Patel said in his opening statement. “We’re fighting for a fully funded FBI because we want a fully effective FBI.”

What that dollar amount might be was unclear, though.

During an exchange with Washington state Democratic Sen. Patty Murray, ranking member on the full Appropriations Committee, about what exactly the FBI needs in terms of funding, Patel said: “I’m not asking you for anything at this time.”

Murray responded by asking if he believed the FBI could “operate without a budget.” Patel responded that he “never said that.”

Republicans and Democrats on the Senate panel repeatedly brought up that the Trump administration’s “skinny” budget proposal, released last week, doesn’t actually include a total funding level for the FBI. It only has one paragraph calling for lawmakers to cut funding by $545 million.

Patel testified during the two-hour Senate hearing that he had identified most of the accounts that could lose funding, though he wasn’t prepared to share that information with the committee or give a timeline when he would.

Patel also declined to tell lawmakers when the FBI would send Congress its spending plan for the current fiscal year, which is required by law and past due.

“I don’t have a timeline on that,” Patel said.

Kansas senator pleads with Patel for details

Kansas Republican Sen. Jerry Moran, the subcommittee’s chairman, said he was holding the hearing to get the ball rolling on the upcoming appropriations process and encouraged Patel to get the committee more details.

“We wanted to get every piece of information we could as early as we could, even though the budgetary process and now the appropriations process is disjointed and things are lacking,” Moran said.

Moran said that he was “concerned by the scale of the cut, especially as I know full well it comes on the heels of two years where the FBI’s budget was essentially held flat, forcing it to absorb hundreds of millions of dollars in unavoidable inflationary increases.”

Patel declined to say if he would testify before the committee again after the Trump administration releases its full budget request, which should include considerably more detail and is expected to come out sometime later this year, though the White House hasn’t said when.

The House and Senate Appropriations subcommittees that fund the FBI will write the bill over the summer and will likely negotiate final bipartisan, bicameral bills this fall.

That bill is one of a dozen that provide funding for many of the departments and agencies that make up the federal government, including Agriculture, Energy, Defense, Health and Human Services. Homeland Security, Interior, State, and many more. 

Alabama Reflector is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Alabama Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Brian Lyman for questions: info@alabamareflector.com.

The post Puzzled senators question Trump’s FBI chief on nonexistent spending plan appeared first on alabamareflector.com

Note: The following A.I. based commentary is not part of the original article, reproduced above, but is offered in the hopes that it will promote greater media literacy and critical thinking, by making any potential bias more visible to the reader –Staff Editor.

Political Bias Rating: Center-Right

The article maintains a relatively neutral tone while discussing the FBI’s budget hearings. It presents facts about FBI Director Kash Patel’s testimony, including discrepancies between his statements in the House and Senate hearings. While the article does reference the Trump administration’s “skinny” budget proposal and the challenges faced by the FBI, it does so within the context of Patel’s lack of a clear funding plan. The mention of the Trump administration’s proposal and Patel’s fluctuating statements subtly implies criticism of the administration’s handling of the FBI’s budget. However, the focus is more on the bureaucratic process and the lack of clarity, without a strong ideological stance. This makes the overall tone more neutral, though there are subtle undertones reflecting the challenges the Trump administration faces in providing adequate government funding for its agencies.

by Lee Hedgepeth, Inside Climate News, Alabama Reflector
May 8, 2025

This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, non-partisan news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. Sign up for their newsletter here.

BROOKWOOD — The Trump administration has announced it will aim to fast track the permitting and environmental review of a major coal mine expansion in central Alabama as part of a larger effort to accelerate the construction of what the government has labeled “critical mineral” infrastructure.

While administration officials said the change is aimed at “significantly reduc[ing] our reliance on foreign nations,” coal produced as part of Warrior Met’s expansion in Alabama is almost entirely exported overseas to support foreign steelmaking markets, according to the company.

Warrior Met’s Blue Creek mine expansion, set to be one of the largest coal build-outs in Alabama history, is one of 20 planned developments deemed “transparency projects” by the administration over the last two months. The mine expansion will be placed on the federal government’s permitting dashboard as it moves its way through the regulatory and permitting process.

The projects’ inclusion on the dashboard authorized under the 2015 Fixing America’s Surface Transportation Act (FAST) will, according to the Trump administration, “make the environmental review and authorizations schedule for these vital mineral production projects publicly available and allow all of these projects to benefit from increased transparency.

“The public nature of the dashboard ensures that all stakeholders, from project sponsors and community members to federal agency leaders have up-to-date accounting of where each project stands in the review process,” the administration said in its announcement. “This transparency leads to greater accountability, ensuring a more efficient process.”

During the Biden administration, the so-called FAST-41 dashboard was used to fast-track projects aimed at benefiting tribal nations, as well as various projects advancing renewable energy, coastal restoration, broadband and electricity transmission sectors. The program was created as a means “to enhance transparency and increase the efficiency of the permitting process,” the Biden administration said at the time. With a new president, though, the programs designated to participate in the program—and the policy priorities they represent—have now changed.

The Trump administration has already signaled its support of the Alabama project. In April, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum visited an existing Warrior Met mine outside Tuscaloosa and took a windshield tour of the Blue Creek facility currently under construction.

During that visit, Burgum emphasized the administration’s stated commitment to fossil fuel production and said that its actions would “unleash American energy.” He did not acknowledge Warrior Met’s checkered safety and environmental record or that nearly all of its product—metallurgical coal—is shipped overseas for foreign steelmaking operations, not used in the U.S.

“We sell substantially all of our steelmaking coal production to steel producers outside of the United States,” a recent Warrior Met corporate filing said. “For the three months ended March 31, 2025, our geographic customer mix was 37% in Europe, 43% in Asia, and 20% in South America.”

The planned expansion of Blue Creek involves a major build-out of Warrior Met’s ability to mine for underground coal using the longwall method, a particularly destructive form of mining in which large machines shear walls of coal, leaving vast, empty expanses in their wake. Land above those empty caverns sinks, causing what is often permanent damage to the surface and structures there.

Longwall mining has devastated communities in Alabama and beyond. In March 2024, an Alabama home exploded above a longwall mine with a different owner after methane—a gas released during mining—seeped into the residence and ignited. The resulting blast killed an Alabama grandfather and seriously injured his grandson. Since then, the community above the Oak Grove mine in western Jefferson County has continued to crumble, homes’ foundations cracking as the longwall mine expands below.

Earlier this year, just as President Donald Trump was announcing efforts to promote “clean, beautiful coal,” a West Virginia woman was hospitalized after a methane explosion in her home atop a longwall mine left her seriously injured. Workers from the mine beneath her home had stood behind Trump during his White House announcement.

Once completed, Warrior Met’s Blue Creek expansion will increase the company’s coal production by 60 percent, providing additional supply for overseas steelmaking markets hungry for met coal that can meet production needs. Taxpayer-funded support for the facility may top $400 million.

The company has also asked the federal government to allow it to mine publicly owned coal as part of the Blue Creek project. The federal Bureau of Land Management announced last year that it would conduct an environmental assessment related to Warrior Met’s Blue Creek project and, specifically, its proposal to mine 14,040 acres of federal minerals underlying privately owned land in Tuscaloosa County. Warrior Met’s applications to lease the coal rights propose the extraction of approximately 57.5 million tons of recoverable public coal reserves.

Initial government scoping documents indicated that any environmental assessment of the Blue Creek project would include an analysis of its impact on climate change, both direct and indirect. Since those initial documents were released, however, federal guidance on the inclusion of climate change considerations in government decision-making has been in flux.

A day one executive order by Trump, for example, disbanded the Interagency Working Group on the Social Cost of Greenhouse Gases (IWG), which was established pursuant to a Biden executive order. The order said “any guidance, instruction, recommendation, or document issued by the IWG is withdrawn as no longer representative of governmental policy.”

That guidance had emphasized the importance of government analysis of the social cost of carbon, a way of putting a dollar figure on the economic damage that comes from emitting a ton of carbon dioxide. The Trump White House has said without evidence that the concept “is marked by logical deficiencies, a poor basis in empirical science, politicization, and the absence of a foundation in legislation.”

Public comments on the project already submitted to BLM included concerns around greenhouse gas emissions and Warrior Met’s contribution to the climate crisis.

“Please do not approve any new or expanded coal mining,” one commenter wrote. “The climate crisis is already deadly and rapidly getting worse. There is an overwhelming international consensus on the severity of this crisis and the urgent need to phase out the use of harmful fossil fuels.”

The draft environmental impact statement for the Blue Creek project, originally set to be released sometime in the fall, is now scheduled to be published on May 30, according to BLM.

Alabama Reflector is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Alabama Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Brian Lyman for questions: info@alabamareflector.com.

The post Trump cites US need in fast-tracking Alabama coal build-out. Most of that coal is exported. appeared first on alabamareflector.com

Note: The following A.I. based commentary is not part of the original article, reproduced above, but is offered in the hopes that it will promote greater media literacy and critical thinking, by making any potential bias more visible to the reader –Staff Editor.

Political Bias Rating: Center-Right

The content primarily focuses on the Trump administration’s efforts to fast-track coal mine expansion projects, highlighting the administration’s pro-fossil fuel stance and efforts to reduce reliance on foreign minerals. It also addresses environmental and safety concerns related to coal mining, including negative impacts on communities and climate change. While the coverage acknowledges these issues, it presents them within the context of the administration’s economic and energy policies, reflecting a center-right perspective that favors energy development and deregulation, albeit with some recognition of environmental challenges.

SUMMARY: Stillman Softball is heading to the NAIA tournament for only the second time in program history, with the tournament set for June 22nd. The team recently learned their destination and celebrated a historic season marked by winning their conference—the most successful achievement to date. Third-year shortstop Lauren Haskins highlights the strong camaraderie among teammates as the best part of playing. Coach Joel Pinfield credits the team’s close-knit nature for their ongoing success. Over the past two seasons, Stillman Softball has reached new milestones, including winning the HBCU Athletic Conference Championship twice and becoming the first HBCU to attend consecutive NAIA championships. This success boosts recruiting prospects, but the team remains focused on winning the tournament.

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