The Trump campaign is reportedly seeking a list of "climate change victories" that can be attributed to Donald Trump's presidency, reflecting a shift in strategy ahead of the 2020 election as polls show growing voter concern over global warming. A spokesman for the Trump campaign said they were unaware of White House conversations on messaging with EPA officials, but confirmed that the campaign is gathering research for an aggressive defense of the president's climate change record.

Climate change issues — and, more specifically, demands by Democratic activists for policies grouped under the label of a Green New Deal — are fast becoming a marquee issue in the 2020 presidential race. Increased voter anxiety over the warming planet and a deft marketing campaign by progressive activists have pushed candidates to take positions substantially bolder and louder than those of past elections. A recent poll found the idea of a Green New Deal has the support of 81 percent of registered voters, including nearly two-thirds of Republicans; and the Brookings Institution recently produced data showing that some of the regions at most risk of suffering economically from climate change are also the places most fiercely resistant to addressing it.

Liberals around the country are talking about the idea of a Green New Deal, a sweeping set of policy goals to combat the effects of climate change 90 years after President Franklin Roosevelt's expansion of federal agencies and regulations in response to the Great Depression. The idea, prominently promoted by New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez after she upset a Democratic Party leader, has gained widespread attention in recent months. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the first high-profile Democrat to announce a 2020 White House bid, signaled support for the idea.

The partial government shutdown has snagged progress on President Donald Trump's ambitious agenda to boost fossil fuel use and extraction, including the administration's repeal and replacement of the Clean Power Plan, which has a March deadline.

The Interior Department has acknowledged that Secretary David Bernhardt's staff intentionally left controversial meetings with representatives of fossil fuel, timber and water interests off his public calendar, citing "internal protocol" governing his schedules. The department also confirmed that Bernhardt used a personal itinerary kept on a single Google document that was regularly overwritten by his scheduling staff and said he is still doing so as House Democrats probe whether the practice adheres to federal records laws. Until now, the department had denied that any schedules were being overwritten.

Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., introduced the Green Real Deal on Wednesday, a competing resolution to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's Green New Deal, a sign the ambitious plan to combat climate change championed by the Democratic freshman has convinced some in the Republican Caucus of the need for a conservative counterproposal. "History will judge harshly my colleagues who deny the science of climate change, and similarly those Democrats who would use climate change as an excuse to regulate the American experience out of existence," Gaetz said at a news conference outside the Capitol.

One member of the House committee created to address climate change stands out for what he owns: hundreds of oil and gas wells in North Dakota oil fields worth millions of dollars. A review by CQ Roll Call of the personal finances of all 15 members of the Select Committee on the Climate Crisis, a House panel created in January, found that a majority of the members have some personal investment in fossil fuel companies, often through broader investments such as mutual or index funds, or through their spouses.

Conservation groups are alarmed by the Trump administration's proposal to rename some radioactive waste left from the production of nuclear weapons to make it cheaper and easier to achieve permanent disposal. The U.S. Department of Energy is considering a change in its legal definition of high-level radioactive waste, which is stored at places like the Hanford.

Water managers from seven Southwestern states that depend on the Colorado River for drinking and irrigation water are getting closer to finalizing an unprecedented drought contingency plan they may have to enact in 2020. Arizona and Nevada are would be the first states to feel the pinch if a shortage is declared as expected next year. Supplies to California also could be curtailed.

President Donald Trump tried repeatedly to gut funding for a wide-ranging Great Lakes cleanup, only to be stymied by Congress. Suddenly, he did an about-face. It happened Thursday during a campaign-style speech in the battleground state of Michigan. For years, the program the Obama administration established in 2010 enjoyed bipartisan support, and Trump — who proposed a 90 percent cut just three weeks ago — toyed with the crowd before revealing his belated advocacy. "We have some breaking news," Trump told cheering supporters in Grand Rapids. "You ready? I don't know. Can you handle it? I don't think you can handle it.