The Brief

The federal government's Energy Star program is in jeopardy.

Almost 90% of Americans recognize the blue Energy Star logo, which the Environmental Protection Agency awards to the most energy-efficient appliances. The EPA estimates the Energy Star program has saved Americans over $500 billion in energy costs since it was established in 1992. That's why supporters are defending Energy Star against Trump administration plans to privatize or eliminate it.

"It's like sticking a vacuum into the wallets of American families and businesses and sucking cash out for no reason," says Jeremy Symons of the Environmental Protection Network, a nonprofit group of former EPA employees. Symons says he once worked on the Energy Star program. Now, he's a frequent critic of the Trump administration's environment and energy policies.

At a May congressional hearing, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin questioned his own agency's calculations for how much money the Energy Star program has saved consumers.

"I would happily, eagerly find out from inside of the agency how they had previously calculated that figure, because I anticipate that they're taking credit for a heck of a lot more than they should," Zeldin told lawmakers.

NPR asked the EPA if Zeldin has investigated the issue since then. "It is unclear what the economic activity generated by the Energy Star program is versus what the economic activity would be without this program," Brigit Hirsch, EPA press secretary, wrote in an email. "As this program does not preclude the purchase or sales of any product this program is essentially a government-sponsored advertising regime."

While the economic benefits appear unclear to Administrator Zeldin, the EPA's own staff backed up its savings calculations with five pages of technical notes about how the calculations were made.

Ending or privatizing Energy Star

Energy Star was created in 1992. The EPA and Energy Department co-manage it, with Energy developing efficiency testing procedures. At this point, one way to kill the program would be to choke off its funding.

The President's budget zeroed out Energy Star funding at EPA. But the Senate Appropriations committee voted to restore money for the agency. The question now is whether the rest of Congress votes to keep the funding — or backs the White House's efforts to terminate Energy Star.

Calls for eliminating or privatizing Energy Star have come mostly from libertarian and conservative groups, such as the Competitive Enterprise Institute and Heritage Foundation.

"I think it's very valuable for consumers to see what energy requirements the appliances they buy are going to have, but I don't think it's necessarily a government function to provide that information," says Diana Furchtgott-Roth, director of the Heritage Foundation's Center for Energy, Climate, and Environment. "If the federal government didn't provide it, there would be a gap in the market, and other companies would come and offer that service."

At the May congressional hearing, Zeldin also expressed support for privatizing Energy Star.

"This program is an example of one that can be run outside of the government," he told lawmakers, "And I've actually had multiple entities reach out to EPA over the course of the last few weeks, because they want to take over Energy Star."

The EPA has not revealed who it's talking with about privatizing Energy Star. Hirsch, the agency spokesperson, declined an interview request and wrote in an email, "We have nothing more to share at this time."

One option for turning Energy Star into a business would be to charge companies to participate. Currently, the government pays those costs.

"Charging for participation would be an interesting and creative solution," says Sapna Gheewala Dowla, associate vice president of policy and research at the Alliance to Save Energy. But she says privatizing Energy Star and charging a fee could create "additional barriers for small manufacturers, for community-based builders, or potentially even public sector organizations that do rely on the program but operate on tight margins."

The alliance has argued that Energy Star's budget should be doubled to at least $80 million a year, to save even more energy and money. Now, the group is among those arguing to save the program.

"We would love Energy Star to stay at EPA, stay fully funded and stay fully staffed," Gheewala Dowla says. Her organization and the U.S. Green Building Council organized a letter of support for Energy Star that more than 1,000 companies and organizations signed.

Real estate industry relies on Energy Star

Eliminating or privatizing Energy Star has some in the real estate industry concerned.

"To your everyday consumer, Energy Star is typically thought of as the little blue label on your washing machine. To the commercial real estate industry, it is much more," says Leia de Guzman, co-founder of the real estate tech company Cambio.

Energy Star includes a program called Portfolio Manager that helps building owners track energy and water consumption. That information is then used to comply with local conservation regulations.

"If there were to be any diminution or dismantling of Energy Star, what we can't do is lose the underlying data," says Matt Ellis, CEO of a real estate technology firm Measurabl. That's why his company and others are offering services that collect and store that information, in case Energy Star goes away.

In July the Senate Appropriations Committee approved continued funding for the program — $36 million. Now the rest of Congress likely will decide whether Energy Star will continue to be funded in coming months.
Copyright 2025 NPR

CBS News Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss has scheduled an all-staff meeting for late Tuesday morning at which she intends to announce the strategic path she wants the troubled news division to take.

Weiss is planning to tell her newsroom Tuesday that she intends to hire approximately 18 paid commentators and that she only wants top-flight performers committed to her approach to stick around.

Weiss is also expected to make significant cuts to the newsroom.

The details above are affirmed by three people inside CBS News with direct knowledge of the broad strokes of her plans. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak about internal network matters.

Overall, this story draws on interviews with eight current and former CBS News journalists. All of those still at the network spoke on condition they not be named, citing professional repercussions. Several noted that Weiss has told staffers she welcomes internal debate but cannot abide public dissent.

In her brief tenure, Weiss has alienated much of the staff of 60 Minutes, the crown jewel of the news division, sought to reinvent the CBS Evening News, and questioned whether her own journalists have been fair or worthy of Americans' trust in the past.

Weiss has expressed exuberance about the task she confronts at the third-place news division and an eagerness to learn about broadcast news. She has said she wants to appeal to centrist Americans on the right and left.

While Weiss has been welcomed by some CBS journalists, including national legal correspondent Jan Crawford, others have taken issue with her style of leadership and the editorial choices that have followed her arrival.

In addition, liberal critics outside the network have blasted her, alleging that she is doing the handiwork of the networks' owners, who are allies of President Trump and are seeking his help in trying to take over Warner Bros. Discovery. Weiss has rejected that, though she declined to comment for this story through a spokesperson.

Weiss brought in to reshape CBS News

A former conservative opinion writer and editor for the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, Weiss was hired last fall by Paramount's new controlling owner, David Ellison, to shake up CBS's news division as it came under renewed attack from the Trump administration.

The previous owners of Paramount had paid $16 million to settle a lawsuit filed by Trump as a private individual over the editing of a fall 2024 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris. That helped clear the way for approval from Trump's chief broadcast regulator, who additionally secured promises from Ellison of an ombudsman to field complaints of ideological bias.

Paramount also acquired Weiss's center-right digital startup, the Free Press, for $150 million. The Substack views and news site has approximately 170,000 paying subscribers and is built on the proposition that most of the mainstream media is reflexively liberal, though it does sometimes offer coverage that is critical of Trump.

She has been personally involved in remapping the CBS Evening News.

Ahead of his debut as the new anchor of the Evening News, CBS's Tony Dokoupil said the press has too often missed the story.

"Because we've taken into account the perspective of advocates and not the average American. Or we put too much weight in the analysis of academics or elites and not enough on you," he wrote in an online post on Jan. 1. "At certain points, I have been you. I have felt this way too. I have felt like what I was seeing and hearing on the news didn't reflect what I was seeing and hearing in my own life."

On Instagram, Dokoupil wrote in response to a critic: "I can promise you we'll be more accountable and more transparent than Cronkite or any one else of his era."

According to four people at the network's news division, It was taken as an affront by some of his colleagues: Walter Cronkite, the iconic CBS anchor who narrated the death of President John F. Kennedy, humanity's ascent to the Moon, and the resignation of President Richard M. Nixon for tens of millions of Americans, embodied the definition of the TV news anchor for the modern era.

In December, less than two days before broadcast, Weiss decided to hold a 60 Minutes story on the alleged abuse of immigrants sent to an El Salvador detention center where the Trump administration sent hundreds of Venezuelan migrants last March.

She said the segment wasn't ready, though it had been reviewed and approved by CBS News lawyers and video excerpts had been released publicly to promote the segment. Weiss later said she would not be rushed into approving it for air.

The incident became public and sparked an enormous outcry, though it did not appreciably affect the story's content when it aired this month. (The initial version was available from a Canadian distributor which had mistakenly already loaded it for streaming subscribers.)

The story ended up running almost exactly as it had been prepared, with an extra element documenting the written comments of Trump administration officials and CBS's efforts to get them to come on camera for an interview.

Initial CBS Evening News coverage choices prove divisive

Less well known are some of the incidents involving the Evening News that inspired internal discomfort.

Weiss and top producers had drawn up plan to jet Dokoupil around the country to underscore his desire to talk to Americans outside elite circles in New York, Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles.

Yet since Dokoupil's debut in early January, CBS has taken an Evening News segment off the air called "Eye On America," on since 2024, that had been doing just that.

On the first night, executives pulled Dokoupil back to New York City to cover the U.S. seizure of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. The second night was Jan. 6 and Dokoupil was in Miami. Major news organizations including NPR and the New York Times offered new projects on the January 2021 siege of the U.S. Capitol about what had been learned in the intervening five years.

Dokoupil offered this scant reference: "President Trump today accused Democrats of failing to prevent the attack on the Capitol, while House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries accused the president of 'whitewashing' it." The he-said, he-said formulation lasted about 15 seconds.

That prompted denunciations from outside critics. Sarah Longwell, the founder and publisher of the center-right, anti-Trump publication the Bulwark, wrote on X: "Trump is getting exactly what his rich buddy paid for."

David Ellison's takeover of Paramount was financed by his father, Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison. The elder Ellison is a Trump adviser who encouraged his efforts to contest the 2020 race.

CBS Justice correspondent Scott MacFarlane took great exception to Dokoupil's Jan. 6 broadcast, according to two people inside the network who spoke on condition they not be named.

The reporter has spent the past five years covering the attack on the U.S. Congress, drawing upon evidence presented in court to document the effort to deny the formal certification of President Joe Biden's win in the 2020 race.

He did not appear on the air on CBS News this Jan. 6. Instead, as he posted on the social media platform X, MacFarlane appeared on the BBC. It lasted nearly four-and-a-half-minutes.

"Here's my deep dive on the 5-year mark of Jan 6," MacFarlane wrote. "The ongoing impact on victims, the lies... and the continued malignant corrosion of democracy[.] As aired on.... The BBC."

At the tail of that night's broadcast from Miami, Dokoupil hailed Secretary of State Marco Rubio as a prominent Floridian in a flippant segment at the end. The anchor noted his key role in the administration - including on Venezuela - and shared AI-generated social media memes envisioning Rubio in a variety of roles, including as a hunter, the Michelin Man, and the leader of Greenland.

"Marco Rubio, we salute you," Dokoupil deadpanned. The light-hearted approach to the minute-long segment so close to the Venezuelan military action delighted the Trump White House and stirred backlash from journalists.

A White House threat over Trump interview

Weiss has personally gotten involved to secure major interviews in her drive for the network to make and break news.

Dokoupil landed several big-name interviews including those of Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth and Trump. The Independent reported Hegseth said he only did the interview because Weiss asked. The New York Times posted audio showing that White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt threatened to sue CBS at the end of the interview with Trump if it was not run in full, unedited. Dokoupil said it would.

In a statement, CBS News said the network had already made "the independent decision to air it unedited and in its entirety."

Several current and former CBS journalists pointed to another instance that appeared to pull a punch that could land hard on the Trump administration. Correspondent Nicole Sganga broke down video footage of the deadly shooting of Renee Good in Minneapolis by a federal immigration officer. A retired ICE agent who watched the footage frame by frame with CBS said the officer appeared to act improperly.

The segment streamed on the YouTube page of CBS Evening News. But it did not air on the flagship news program.

"There are always growing pains when you start something new," says former CBS News President Andrew Heyward, citing the reinvention of CBS Evening News with Dokoupil as anchor. "Those growing pains have been exacerbated by today's polarized political atmosphere and execution errors."

"Now comes the hard slog of, day after day, drawing on CBS News's journalistic capacities to do original reporting that delivers real value to the existing audience and attracts new people without chasing away the people who like what they say," Heyward says.

Copyright 2026 NPR

California legislative Democrats are urging their congressional colleagues to shut down the federal government and block further funding to immigration enforcement agencies after agents shot and killed another civilian in Minnesota over the weekend.

At least 50 Democratic state senators and assemblymembers — more than half the party’s caucus — on Monday decried the slaying of Alex Pretti, the Minneapolis resident and Veterans Affairs intensive care nurse who on Saturday was gunned down by federal immigration enforcement agents.

The lawmakers proclaimed their solidarity with Minnesota and other cities and states that have been targeted by federal law enforcement agents. They railed against what they called the Trump administration’s militarization of American cities as some wiped away tears.

The previously bipartisan spending package, which would fund the departments of Defense, Labor, Health and Human Services and Homeland Security, awaits a vote in the U.S. Senate, where an increasing number of Democrats have vowed to filibuster it.

But California lawmakers warned that Senate Democrats, many of whom represent battleground states, might cave and give Republicans the votes they need to push the measure to President Donald Trump’s desk.

“This message is for Sen. Chuck Schumer,” said Assemblymember Liz Ortega, Democrat of Hayward. “Do your job. Stand for something. Don't fold again.”

Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas, Democrat of Salinas, called for Schumer to “step aside” if he couldn’t keep his caucus in lockstep.

Rivas and his colleagues also had a message for Republican lawmakers.

“We need you to speak out. You cannot watch these videos coming out of Minneapolis, Minn. and think that this is acceptable,” Rivas said. “We need your voice, we need your solidarity, and standing up for American values.”

In reference to the fact that Pretti was apparently carrying a permitted weapon, Assemblymember Mark Gonzalez of Los Angeles quoted a 2018 tweet from the late Charlie Kirk, which stated that the Second Amendment wasn’t for hunting or self protection, but “to ensure that free people can defend themselves if, god forbid, government became tyrannical and turned against its citizens."

“What do you call a masked agent killing people in the street? What do you call children being taken from families?” Gonzalez said.

He noted that the National Rifle Association condemned premature conclusions about the shooting as “dangerous and wrong.”

“Even the NRA is calling out the dangerous ignorance of federal officials trying to excuse the killing of Alex Pretti,” Gonzalez said. “When even staunch defenders of the Second Amendment recognize the need for accountability, we must listen.”

Senate President Pro Tem Monique Limón addresses the media while flanked by Democratic members of the Senate and the Assembly at the Capitol Annex Swing Space in Sacramento.

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Maya C. Miller

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CalMatters

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So far, California Republicans have targeted their criticism mainly at Democrats. Republican legislative leadership deferred to other members of their caucus when asked for comment.

Sen. Tony Strickland, Republican of Huntington Beach, said Democratic officials have created risky and unsafe conditions for both the agents and civilian onlookers through so-called “sanctuary” policies that limit local and state law enforcement from working with federal immigration agents. They argue that those policies create risky situations where civilians like Pretti feel they need to monitor and track officers.

“Stop the rhetoric that ICE agents are Gestapo, that they’re secret police, that they’re Nazis,” said Assemblymember James Gallagher of Chico, the former Republican Assembly leader who recently announced his bid for the special election to fulfill the final months of the late Rep. Doug LaMalfa’s congressional term. “This type of rhetoric is helping to contribute to the chaotic environment in places like Minnesota.”

Gallagher called Pretti’s death a “terrible thing” and called for an independent investigation and accountability.

Legislation calls for greater ICE oversight

Some lawmakers are committing to introduce new measures to curtail the power of federal agents.

“Certainly this is a frustrating situation because so much of the power and the authority here is in the hands of the federal government in Washington, D.C., but that doesn't mean that the answer for us is to do nothing,” said Assemblymember Jesse Gabriel, Democrat of Encino.

Gabriel plans to introduce a bill that would require the California attorney general to conduct an independent investigation into any shooting by federal immigration enforcement agents in the state, an extension of an existing law that already requires such investigations for shootings by local and state law enforcement. He will also co-author a bill with Assemblymember Juan Carrillo that would ban federal immigration enforcement agencies from using state resources to facilitate their operations, such as staging equipment and personnel on state property.

“We have to use every tool at our disposal, every lawful opportunity that we have to use our power, our authority to think of all of the different ways that we can push back,” Gabriel said.

Also on deck for a vote in the California Senate this week is Senate Bill 747 co-authored by Sen. Aisha Wahab of Hayward and Sen. Scott Wiener, a San Francisco Democrat who is running to replace Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi in Congress, that would allow Californians to sue federal agents for civil rights violations. The bill builds upon Wiener’s measure from last year that banned federal immigration enforcement agents from wearing masks, which Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law.

Wiener argued that the issue should not be partisan.

“This is really about everyone's rights under any federal administration,” Wiener told CalMatters on Monday. “Local and state law enforcement are already subject to civil rights liability if they violate someone's rights, and federal agents effectively are not,” he said.

“This is simply seeking to apply the same standards for all law enforcement.”

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

Federal immigration enforcement authorities are facing scrutiny and widespread criticism over their tactics, including the lack of body-worn cameras, following the killing of two U.S. citizens by immigration officers in Minneapolis.

Several factors have led to this: Federal law does not mandate the use of body cameras by the two agencies tasked with leading the efforts to arrest and detain illegal immigrants — Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection. Additionally, there is a shortage of cameras and a de-prioritization of body-camera programs in the second Trump administration.

This month, immigration officers shot and killed two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis — Renee Macklin Good and Alex Pretti – in separate incidents, and have since been confronted by large crowds of protesters and legal observers. The administration has defended the actions of the two officers involved in the shootings.

After Pretti's killing Saturday, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said the VA nurse was committing an "act of terrorism" by "attacking" officers and "brandishing" a weapon. The video evidence and eyewitness accounts that have surfaced so far refute that assertion. There has been no evidence that NPR has verified of Pretti brandishing his handgun at any time during the encounter with federal agents.

"There is body camera footage from multiple angles which investigators are currently reviewing," a DHS official told NPR in a statement Monday. The investigation is being led by Homeland Security Investigations, a division of ICE, and supported by the Federal Bureau of Investigations. CBP will also do an internal investigation.

There are about 2,000 immigration officers rotating through Minneapolis for what the administration dubs "Operation Metro Surge." Democratic lawmakers and immigration advocates have criticized the rapid deployment of ICE officers and Border Patrol agents, as well as the officers' tactics to control crowds and conduct arrests. Minnesota officials are suing the administration over these tactics. Criticism has also centered on whether officers are or should be using body-worn cameras that can document these incidents.

A shortage of body cams

ICE is struggling in Minneapolis to use body-worn cameras: first, there are none available in the area; second, officers deployed are not properly trained in their use.
In written testimony, Samuel Olson, field office director in St. Paul for ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations, said that body-worn cameras had not been implemented for ICE officers out of his office.

"To equip every ICE law enforcement personnel operating out of Minnesota with a BWC [body worn camera] device will require approximately 2,000 devices," Olson said, adding that ICE would also need 180 days to ship, install, and test the necessary equipment and train hundreds of law enforcement personnel on proper usage, maintenance, and storage.

Furthermore, there are no body-worn cameras "physically located" at the St. Paul field office and that the agency would have to ship in additional devices, potentially needing more than ICE nationally has.

"At this time, the ERO St. Paul Office is not scheduled or funded for BWC deployment. ICE law enforcement personnel out of the ERO St. Paul Offices are not properly prepared, trained, or equipped for an immediate deployment of BWC use," Olson said.

Customs and Border Protection has a slightly different situation.

According to court filings, body cameras "will be used to record official law enforcement encounters, except when doing so may jeopardize agents and officers or public safety."

"For purposes of Operation Metro Surge, CBP personnel who are equipped with and trained in [body cameras], have been instructed to have their body-worn camera on their person for use in operations," said Kyle Harvick, deputy incident commander with Border Patrol overseeing border patrol operation in Minneapolis during "Operation Metro Surge."

Changing policy on body cameras

In 2021 Congress mandated ICE work with the Homeland Security Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties to design a pilot program for body-worn cameras. A 2024 report says the agency expected body cameras to be implemented agency wide by September 2025.

This was a part of a broader Biden administration executive order to expand the use of body cameras to federal law enforcement.

When President Donald Trump began his second term in 2025, he rescinded Biden's executive order related to body camera use by federal law enforcement. The office tasked with helping to oversee the ICE pilot program was also depleted.

The use of body cameras has surfaced several times during the Trump administration's immigration crackdown. In Chicago, District Judge Sara Ellis issued a temporary restraining order in October ordering federal agents conducting immigration enforcement in her district to activate their body cameras if they have them and unless exempted by agency policy. An appeals panel in the seventh circuit later overturned Ellis' order, which also included broader limits on use of force.

In order to address concerns about the lack of body cameras, lawmakers in the House recently passed a spending bill that would provide DHS with $20 million for cameras for ICE and CBP. But the bill only mandates the money be spent -- it does not mandate the use of the cameras.

After the latest deadly shooting, the broader package is in limbo. Senate Democrats are seemingly more resistant to passing the package, which would fund the entire federal government.
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