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Trump Loses Another Cabinet Secretary as 'Scandal-Ridden' Chavez-DeRemer Resigns
"Chavez-DeRemer failed to protect workers, jeopardized the Department of Labor's work to support the economy, drove down morale among agency staff, and abused federal government resources to serve her own whims."
Apr 20, 2026
President Donald Trump's "scandal-ridden" Department of Labor leader, Lori Chavez-DeRemer, resigned from her post on Monday, making her the third member of his Cabinet to leave since the beginning of the year, following the firings of former US Attorney General Pam Bondi and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.
Confirming reports of the latest departure, White House spokesperson Steven Cheung said that "Chavez-DeRemer will be leaving the administration to take a position in the private sector. She has done a phenomenal job in her role by protecting American workers, enacting fair labor practices, and helping Americans gain additional skills to improve their lives."
Her deputy, Keith Sonderling, "will take on the role of acting secretary of labor," Cheung added.
As Politico noted Monday, "Chavez-DeRemer has been under scrutiny since January, when DOL Inspector General Anthony D'Esposito opened an investigation into allegations that she was involved in an extramarital affair with a member of her security detail, that she drank on the job, and that top aides concocted official events to facilitate her personal travel plans."
That probe led to allegations—initially reported by The New York Times in February—that the secretary's husband, Shawn DeRemer, "has been barred from the department's headquarters after at least two female staff members told officials that he had sexually assaulted them." DeRemer denied the claims, and police have reportedly closed a related investigation.
As NOTUS reported Monday:
A source close to the president told NOTUS last week that the White House viewed Chavez-DeRemer as an effective spokesperson for the president's economic message and implementer of workforce policy. But the tales of the labor secretary's alleged scandals had become palace intrigue among people close to and inside of the White House.
Two Republicans who speak with President Donald Trump told NOTUS they expected him to pull the trigger on removing Chavez-DeRemer on Wednesday, when she was due for what was expected to be a bruising hearing in Congress. Some inside the White House anticipated Democrats at the hearing would focus on Chavez-DeRemer's alleged transgressions.
Responding to the resignation on social media, the Democratic Party highlighted Bondi and Noem's ousters, and declared, "This administration is imploding."
Before joining Trump's Cabinet, the outgoing secretary represented Oregon's 5th Congressional District in the US House of Representatives. Rep. Suzanne Bonamici, a Democrat who serves the state's 1st District, said that "Chavez-DeRemer failed to protect workers, jeopardized the Department of Labor's work to support the economy, drove down morale among agency staff, and abused federal government resources to serve her own whims. She should be held accountable for the damage that occurred on her watch."
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Gaza Needs $71.4 Billion for Recovery as Genocide Sets Development Back 77 Years
Only a tiny fraction of the already inadequate $17 billion pledged for Gaza reconstruction via US President Donald Trump's so-called "Board of Peace" has reportedly been received.
Apr 20, 2026
A joint assessment published Monday by the European Union, United Nations, and World Bank found that an estimated $71.4 billion is needed over the next decade for recovery and reconstruction in the Gaza Strip, where 30 months of Israeli genocide has set human development back by an entire lifetime.
The Gaza Strip Rapid Damage and Needs Assessment (RDNA) states that the $71.4 billion figure includes an estimated $26.3 billion required over the next 18 months "to restore essential service, rebuild critical infrastructure, and support economic recovery."
"Physical infrastructure damages are estimated at $35.2 billion, with economic and social losses amounting to $22.7 billion," the report continues. "The hardest-hit sectors include housing, health, education, commerce, and agriculture. Over 371,888 housing units have been destroyed or damaged, more than 50% of hospitals are nonfunctional, nearly all schools destroyed or damaged, and the economy has contracted by 84% in Gaza."
"Catastrophic impact on human development across Gaza... is estimated to have been set back by 77 years," the RDNA states. "Around 1.9 million people have been displaced, often multiple times, and more than 60% of the population has lost their homes."
"Women, children, persons with disabilities, and those with preexisting vulnerabilities bear the greatest burden," the publication adds.
The new analysis follows a November 2025 UN Conference on Trade and Development report that found Israel's assault on Gaza has caused “the most severe economic crisis ever recorded."
The Israeli war has left more than 250,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing; the strip in ruins; and most of its approximately 2 million people forcibly displaced, starved, or sickened.
“Over two years of conflict has resulted in more than 71,000 Palestinian fatalities and over 171,000 injured, and many are missing under the rubble," the report notes.
With the vast majority of Gaza's buildings damaged or destroyed, separate UN analyses have estimated that it could take as many as 80 years to rebuild the obliterated coastal exclave.
So far, roughly $17 billion in pledged funding has been announced through the so-called "Board of Peace" launched by US President Donald Trump, whose ideas for rebuilding Gaza have included kicking Palestinians out and turning the strip into what he called the "Riviera of the Middle East."
Only a "tiny fraction" of that already inadequate $17 billion has been received, Reuters reported earlier this month.
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Mike Johnson to Unleash 'Catastrophic' Attack on Endangered Species Act
"When wildlife is already under immense pressure from habitat destruction, climate change, pollution, and industrial development, Congress should be strengthening the Endangered Species Act," said one advocate.
Apr 20, 2026
Conservationists warned Monday that "Earth Day could become Extinction Day" if Republican leaders in the US House of Representatives get their way.
Elected Republicans have long set their sights on the historic Endangered Species Act of 1973—and wildfire defenders sounded the alarm in December, when the Republican-led House Natural Resources Committee advanced Chair Bruce Westerman's (R-Ark.) ESA Amendments Act.
"If this bill passes, protections for species like the Florida manatee, monarch butterfly, and California spotted owl would immediately decrease," Earthjustice legislative director for lands, wildlife, and oceans Addie Haughey warned at the time.
Since then, President Donald Trump has continued his war on endangered species with his budget request for the 2027 fiscal year, and his administration's so-called "God Squad" unanimously approved an "unprecedented" exemption allowing fossil fuel operations in the Gulf of Mexico to ignore ESA protections.
Now, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) plans to take up Westerman's bill this week—potentially on Wednesday, Earth Day.
"At a time when wildlife is already under immense pressure from habitat destruction, climate change, pollution, and industrial development, Congress should be strengthening the Endangered Species Act, not tearing it apart," said Jewel Tomasula, policy director of the Endangered Species Coalition, which has hundreds of member organizations.
"If Rep. Bruce Westerman and Speaker Johnson have their way, Earth Day will become Extinction Day," Tomasula warned. "The urgency is real. This bill is catastrophic for threatened and endangered species."
Susan Holmes, the coalition's executive director, emphasized that "the Endangered Species Act works because it is rooted in science and because it recognizes a simple truth: Once a species is gone, it is gone forever."
"We should not allow politicians to dismantle protections that have saved bald eagles, gray whales, peregrine falcons, and so many other species from disappearing forever," she declared.
Holmes also noted that "the American people overwhelmingly support the Endangered Species Act" and "understand that protecting wildlife is not a partisan issue. It is about responsibility, stewardship, and ensuring that future generations inherit a world still rich with wild species and wild places."
Polling commissioned by IFAW and conducted online last year by Beekeeper Group found that over three-quarters of Americans say they are concerned about the environment, the welfare of animals, and conserving nature, and specifically support the goals of the ESA. That aligns with figures from surveys conducted over the past three decades, according to a 2025 analysis.
The U.S. House is scheduled to vote on the so-called "ESA Amendments Act" (H.R. 1897) on Earth Day, April 22. H.R. 1897 would drastically weaken the Endangered Species Act and decrease protections for threatened and endangered species.TAKE ACTION >>> wildernesswatch.substack.com/p/the-extinc...
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— Wilderness Watch (@wildernesswatch.bsky.social) April 20, 2026 at 3:23 PM
"Protecting the nation's wildlife and habitats has never been an issue of right or left—it is a shared value and a commitment to future generations," said Cassie Ferri, legislative analyst at Defenders of Wildlife, in a Monday statement. "Instead of honoring Earth Day, Congress is turning it into 'Destroy Earth Day' by attempting to dismantle one of our nation's most foundational conservation laws. We all depend on healthy ecosystems to thrive, and the vast majority of Americans want to preserve wildlife through a strong Endangered Species Act—yet time and again Congress blatantly disregards their voices."
The advocacy group director of legislative affairs, Mary Beth Beetham, said that "shameless attempts by some members of Congress to dismantle the Endangered Species Act demonstrate a profound disregard for how valuable this law is to wildlife conservation."
"The Endangered Species Act isn't just rhetoric—it's proven effective and has safeguarded imperiled species for more than 50 years," Beetham stressed. "This bill could be the driving force behind future extinctions and would set a dangerous precedent for wildlife legislation moving forward."
The U.S. House is expected to vote on H.R. 1897 next week—the most dangerous bill facing endangered species right now! It prioritizes profits over science-based safeguards and blocks judicial review. ACT NOW and tell your lawmakers #NOHR1897!ACT NOW at TeamWolf.Org!
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— Team Wolf (@team-wolf.bsky.social) April 17, 2026 at 4:01 PM
Defenders of Wildlife is among nearly 300 groups that have signed on to a Monday letter—shared with Common Dreams by another signatory, Humane World for Animals—urging US House members to "vote NO on HR 1897, which is a damaging bill that would dramatically weaken the ESA and make it harder, if not impossible, to achieve the progress we must make to address the alarming rate of extinction our planet now faces."
Westerman's bill, the letter says, "would significantly rewrite key portions of the ESA to prioritize politics over science and inappropriately shift responsibility for key implementation decisions from the federal government to the states, many of which do not have sufficient resources or legal mechanisms in place to take the lead in conserving listed species."
"It would place significant new administrative burdens on already overburdened agencies," the letter continues. "It would turn the current process for listing and recovering threatened and endangered species into a far lengthier process that precludes judicial review of key decisions."
While Republicans can pass legislation along party lines in the House, they usually need at least some Democratic support in the Senate—due to chamber rules, which can be changed—to send a bill to Trump's desk.
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'This Is a Fight for Humanity': Meet the 2026 Winners of the Goldman Environmental Prize
“The 2026 prize winners are proof positive that courage, hard work, and hope go a long way toward creating meaningful progress," one foundation leader said.
Apr 20, 2026
The Goldman Environmental Foundation announced the six winners of the 2026 Goldman Environmental Prize on Monday, honoring an all-female slate of advocates who protected wildlife, took on extractive industries, and won important legal victories in the movement to halt the climate crisis.
The announcement comes as world leaders have failed to make progress in addressing environmental challenges, and President Donald Trump, leader of the world's largest historical climate polluter, has withdrawn the US from the Paris Agreement, rolled back climate and environmental regulations domestically, and made efforts to supercharge the extraction and use of fossil fuels.
“While we continue to fight uphill to protect the environment and implement lifesaving climate policies—in the US and globally—it is clear that true leaders can be found all around us,” John Goldman, vice president of the Goldman Environmental Foundation, said in a statement. “The 2026 prize winners are proof positive that courage, hard work, and hope go a long way toward creating meaningful progress."
The 2026 prize is notable because it marks the first time that all of the winners—Iroro Tanshi of Nigeria, Borim Kim of South Korea, Sarah Finch of the United Kingdom, Theonila Roka Matbob of Papau New Guinea, Alannah Acaq Hurley of the US, and Yuvelis Morales Blanco of Colombia—are women.
'There's lots of people doing really good things and, together, we are going to make the world a better place than it would otherwise have been."
"I am especially thrilled to honor our first-ever cohort of six women, as this is a powerful reflection of the absolutely central role that women play in the environmental community globally,” Goldman said.
The winners also exemplify the prize's 2026 theme "Change Starts Where You Stand," as each of them began with a fight to protect a local community or ecosystem that has global implications for the climate, biodiversity, and environmental justice.
As US-based winner Alannah Acaq Hurley said, "At the end of the day, this is a fight for humanity, and, honestly, our ability to continue as humans on this planet."
Here is how six remarkable women waged this fight and won.
Iroro Tanshi
Iroro Tanshi is a Nigerian conservation ecologist who has worked successfully with local communities to protect endangered bats and their rainforest habitat from wildfires.
Tanshi was elated in 2016 when she discovered the short-tailed roundleaf bat, previously believed to be extinct in the area, living in Nigeria's Afi Mountain Wildlife Sanctuary. However, two weeks later, a devastating wildfire ignited, forcing Tanshi to evacuate and ultimately impacting around half of the park.
Tanshi then turned her attention to preventing wildfires, which are sparked by traditional farming practices rubbing against the climate crisis.
"The way people manage these farms is they use fire to clean the farms every year, but climate change has completely toppled the pattern of rainfall and people can no longer predict when to burn safely," she explained in a video.
Tanshi and her team worked with local communities on a Zero Wildfire Campaign, which includes educating farmers on when it is safe to burn and forming a team of "forest guardians" to patrol and fight fires on high-risk days. Due to her efforts, these guardians put out 74 fires between 2022 and 2025, preventing any of them from becoming major blazes.
"My hope for the future is that people would take these small-scale projects as signals for what the future should look like," she said. "Let's stay nimble. Let's try to work in our small communities and solve those problems there on the ground."
Borim Kim
Borim Kim helped win Asia's first successful youth climate lawsuit, inspiring people across the region to demand government action on climate.
Kim was first motivated to take collective action when a heatwave baked Seoul in 2018, killing 48 people including a woman near her mother's age, who died in her home.
"I realized that even home wasn't safe from the climate crisis," she said in a video. "I started looking for what I could do."
Inspired by the international youth climate movement, she founded Youth 4 Climate Action (Y4CA) and helped organize school strikes and walkouts. After her activism led to meetings with policymakers, she realized that national leaders had no real plans to address the climate crisis. In 2020, she and Y4CA mobilized 19 young people to sue the South Korean government for violating the constitutional rights of future generations. Once the case was launched, she also continued to build a social movement for climate action.
In August 2024, the country's Constitutional Court ruled in favor of the young people, mandating that South Korea reduce its emissions in line with the scientific consensus, a decision the environmental minister accepted. The ruling is projected to prevent between 1.6-2.1 billion tons of carbon dioxide from reaching the atmosphere.
"Youth may be seen as having a lower position in society, but now this decision has affirmed our right to live safely and the state's duty to protect us," Kim said.
Sara Finch
On the other side of the world, Sarah Finch also secured a precedent-setting legal climate victory.
Finch lives in a part of southeastern England called the Weald. While it is currently a rural area, it hosts oil and gas reserves that were eyed for exploitation during the fracking boom of the 2010s. Finch helped form the Weald Action Group to push back against many potential wells, but they were not able to stop the Surrey County Council from approving the operation and expansion of a drilling site called Horse Hill in 2018.
In gearing up to challenge the decision, Finch discovered that the council's environmental impact statement had only considered emissions from direct drilling at the site, but not the emissions generated from the burning of the fuel once it was extracted, also known as Scope 3 emissions, which make up around 90% of oil and gas' contribution to the climate emergency.
"It became apparent that it was actually the norm that Scope 3 emissions were being emitted from these kinds of decisions, and we realized that actually it was happening everywhere and in much bigger developments than Horse Hill," Finch said in a video.
She and her team challenged the environmental impact statement over its failure to consider Scope 3 emissions, losing multiple times before finally securing a groundbreaking victory from the UK Supreme Court in 2024, which has come to be known as "the Finch ruling."
The UK government cited the "Finch ruling" when it revoked its backing of two North Sea oil developments. Overall, the projects canceled or delayed in 2024 due to the ruling would have generated enough Scope 3 emissions to equal the UK's domestic greenhouse gas emissions that year.
"It wasn't just a win on Horse Hill," Finch said. "It wasn't even just a win on a handful of sites. It was a win on the whole future of the UK oil and gas industry. And I feel like, there's lots of people doing really good things and, together, we are going to make the world a better place than it would otherwise have been."
Theonila Roka Matbob
Theonila Roka Matbob was born into an environmental disaster. Rio Tinto's Panguna Mine had devastated the ecosystem of Bougainville in Papua New Guinea’s (PNG) Autonomous Region of Bougainville (ARB), destabilized its society, and led to a civil war that killed 15,000-20,000 Bougainvilleans, including her father.
"Our environment was tortured, and then the land was tortured, and the third party that was tortured were my people," Roka Matbob said in a video.
Rio Tinto closed its copper, silver, and gold mine in 1989 due to the war, but had done nothing to clean up the 150,000 tons of tailings it had dumped into local rivers or take responsibility for the havoc the mine had caused. As an adult, Roka Matbob began to wonder why justice had not been done and to gather testimony from people impacted by the mine.
This led to a successful campaign that persuaded Rio Tinto first to fund an assessment of the mine's impacts and then to sign a memorandum of understanding in 2024 to act on the assessment's findings and develop a plan with local communities to remediate the area.
"It doesn't mean we will restore everything as it was, but at least the story that my grandchildren and my great-grandchildren can remember [is] that our grandparents fought," she said.
Alannah Acaq Hurley
As Theonila Roka Matbob secured justice for the impacts of one major mine, Alannah Acaq Hurley helped prevent another one from being dug in the first place.
Hurley grew up as a member of the Yup’ik Indigenous group in Alaska's Bristol Bay, a haven of biodiversity that also hosts the world's largest wild sockeye salmon run. But in 2001 a new danger emerged: Canadian company Northern Dynasty Minerals announced plans to construct the Pebble Mine, the largest open-pit mine in North America.
"The pit would be so big, you could literally see it from the moon," Hurley said in a video. "It didn't take long for us to understand the level of threat that this mine posed—acid mine drainage, toxic tailings left in perpetuity. It was not a matter of if something goes wrong, it was a matter of when."
Chosen to lead the United Tribes of Bristol Bay in 2013, Hurley built a coalition to oppose the mine, uniting tribes, commercial fishers, and environmentalists to make their cause to the US Environmental Protection Agency and push back against the company's multiple attempts to move forward with the copper-and-gold mining project. Finally, in 2023, the EPA canceled the project via its rarely used veto power.
"It's just really a testament to the power of the people," she said. "We just never stopped until we were heard."
Yuvelis Morales Blanco
Yuvelis Morales Blanco also defended her community from an extractive industry.
Blanco was born to subsistence fishers on Colombia's Magdalena River in the Afro-Colombian community of Puerto Wilches.
“We had nothing but the river—she was like a mother who took care of me," she said in a statement.
However, even as a child she saw the river was threatened by oil spills from Ecopetrol, Colombia's leading oil company headquartered nearby. The potential threat level was raised even further when she learned while attending college in 2019 that Ecopetrol planned to build two pilot fracking projects near Puerto Wilches.
"Man, I'm like, 'They're going to do that in Wilches?' No sir!'" she recalled in a video.
Blanco joined the Colombia Free from Fracking Alliance and began to raise awareness in her community about the plans. As the campaign's momentum grew, so did her reputation as a spokesperson. This ultimately led to threats of violence against her that forced her to seek asylum in France in 2022, yet she continued to mobilize against the fracking plans from abroad.
She and the alliance saw success in 2022, as a local court halted the permitting process, newly elected President Gustavo Petro pledged there would be no fracking during his administration, and Ecopetrol suspended its contracts. In 2024, the Colombian Constitutional Court further ruled that the fracking projects had violated the Afro-Colombian community of Puerto Wilches' right to free, prior, and informed consent.
Blanco continues to fight for a ban on fracking and for legal protections for environmental defenders—over 140 of whom were reported missing or killed in 2024, the most recent year for which Global Witness has a full tally. Colombia was also the most dangerous countries for defenders that year, with 48 deaths.
"I am very hopeful because I have a river that always accompanies me, and I know we're going to win," she said.
The Goldman Environmental Prize was founded in 1989 by Rhoda and Richard Goldman, and has since honored 239 winners in 37 years. The 2026 awards will be presented live in San Francisco on Monday evening at 8:30 pm ET. Watch it on YouTube here.
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