California regulators voted Tuesday to strengthen state safeguards for thousands of wetlands and streams that are about to lose federal protections in a Trump administration rollback of the Clean Water Act. Nearly 90 percent of California's historic wetlands have been filled in or plowed under, and the state has said it is vital to preserve what remains.

Firefighters faced more dangerously windy weather Tuesday as they struggled to keep the nation's largest wildfire from moving toward a Northern California county seat and other small mountain communities.

The war on smog has been called one of America’s greatest environmental successes. Decades of emissions-cutting regulations under a bipartisan law — the 1970 Clean Air Act — have eased the choking pollution that once shrouded U.S. cities. Cleaner air has saved lives and strengthened the lungs of Los Angeles children. But now, air quality is slipping once again.