The Trump administration on Monday took another step to make it harder to find major, legally mandated scientific assessments of how climate change is endangering the nation and its people.

Earlier this month, the official government websites that hosted the authoritative, peer-reviewed national climate assessments went dark. Such sites tell state and local governments and the public what to expect from a warming world and how best to adapt to it. At the time, the White House said NASA would house the reports to comply with a 1990 law that requires the reports, which the space agency said it planned to do. But on Monday, NASA announced that it aborted those plans.

“The USGCRP (the government agency that oversees and used to host the report) met its statutory requirements by presenting its reports to Congress. NASA has no legal obligations to host globalchange.gov’s data,” NASA Press Secretary Bethany Stevens said in an email. That means no data from the assessment or the government science office that coordinated the work will be on NASA, she said.

On July 3, NASA put out a statement that said: “All preexisting reports will be hosted on the NASA website, ensuring continuity of reporting.”

“This document was written for the American people, paid for by the taxpayers, and it contains vital information we need to keep ourselves safe in a changing climate, as the disasters that continue to mount demonstrate so tragically and clearly,” said Texas Tech climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe. She is chief scientist at The Nature Conservancy and co-author of several past national climate assessments.

Copies of past reports are still squirreled away in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s library and the latest report and its interactive atlas can be seen here.

Mexican tomatoes face 17% tariff

The U.S. government said Monday it is placing a 17% duty on most fresh Mexican tomatoes after negotiations ended without an agreement to avert the tariff.

Proponents said the import tax will help rebuild the shrinking U.S. tomato industry and ensure that produce eaten in the U.S. is also grown there. Mexico currently supplies around 70% of the U.S. tomato market, up from 30% two decades ago, according to the Florida Tomato Exchange.

But opponents, including U.S. companies that grow tomatoes in Mexico, said the tariff will make fresh tomatoes more expensive for U.S. buyers.

Tim Richards, a professor at the Morrison School of Agribusiness at Arizona State University, said U.S. retail prices for tomatoes will likely rise around 8.5% with a 17% duty.

The duty stems from a longstanding U.S. complaint about Mexico’s tomato exports and is separate from the 30% base tariff on products made in Mexico and the European Union that President Donald Trump announced on Saturday.

The Commerce Department said in late April that it was withdrawing from a deal it first reached with Mexico in 2019 to settle allegations the country was exporting tomatoes to the U.S. at artificially low prices, a practice known as dumping.

Court restores Afghans’ protections, for now

An appeals court Monday kept in place protections for nearly 12,000 Afghans that have allowed them to work in the U.S. and be protected from deportation after they were set to expire as part of the Trump administration’s efforts to make more people eligible for removal from the country.

The Department of Homeland Security in May said it was ending Temporary Protected Status for 11,700 people from Afghanistan in 60 days. That status had allowed them to work and meant the government couldn’t deport them.

CASA, a nonprofit immigrant advocacy group, sued the administration over the TPS revocation for Afghans as well as for people from Cameroon — those expire Aug. 4. A federal judge last Friday allowed the lawsuit to go forward.

CASA appealed the case Monday and won a stay keeping in place the temporary status for Afghans that was set to expire Monday.

Dems: Trump moves make China stronger

President Donald Trump’s foreign aid cuts, tariffs on allies and restrictions on international students have “deeply” undermined America’s ability to compete with China, Senate Democrats say.

In a report released Monday, Democrats on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee called for congressional action toward restoring the country’s global reputation and influence to ensure the U.S. will not be unseated by China as the world’s leading power.

“America’s retreat from the world will have real and lasting consequences for the American people,” the report says. “And a retreat from the system that we helped build following the Second World War — based on democracy, economic interdependence and American values — means China is increasingly able to set the global agenda at the expense of U.S. interests.”

The report comes about six months after Trump returned to the White House and began taking drastic measures that his administration says will improve government efficiency and protect U.S. interests, triggering condemnation from Democrats that the moves could amount to ceding global influence to China.

White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said the U.S. is strong again under Trump and that his foreign policy is effective “because of his willingness to look anyone in the eye to get better deals for the American people.”

— From news services