With so much happening in the industry and at-large, we’re looking to provide a wrap of three topics you should know each week before you head out the door. Think of it as a two-minute preparation drill for the work, you do each and every day. 

No. 1: PEER says there is a “sharp dropoff" in EPA scientific publications

On Tuesday, the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) put out a report that the number of peer-reviewed studies produced by the Environmental Protection Agency have dramatically declined during this second go-around of the Trump Administration. Why? There are less EPA scientists, mainly, but the ones that remain have tighter restrictions on what they can and can’t research.

In 2026 to date, there have been only 61 released peer reviewed EPA studies. At that rate, PEER notes that the EPA is on pace to release just 183 articles this year, a dramatic decline from the 338 that were released in 2024. The agency is also dealing with the dismantling of several of its sectors, most notably, its research and development department.

“These numbers represent a diminution of scientific contributions from the fewer, remaining EPA scientists,” stated PEER science policy director Kyla Bennett, a scientist and attorney, who formerly worked for the EPA. “It is as if EPA is seeking to reduce the sum total of human knowledge.”

No. 2: Americans are OK with data centers going up in their communities -- even if they don’t know exactly what they are.

With the idea that geothermal drilling could become the solve for the rise of data centers and the sheer amount of resources it takes to keep them cool, many Americans say they know that the AI boom is steadily on the rise and that they’re OK with these centers popping up in their communities, even if they admit to not quite understanding what they do and how they correlate to the GPTs used everyday.

In a recent poll conducted by POLITICO, over 2,000 people said they were willing to support a data center in their area, even if the building causes the rise in their own electricity bills. But by just how much? A range between $10-25 appeared to be where respondents took issue with their rate hike. But of all the respondents who saw an increase of $10 or fewer? More than half supported the idea.

No. 3: Lithium mining has become the new Wild West gold rush

If you’re a driller with work in the Southwest, you probably already are aware of this next one, but if you’re from anywhere else you might not know that the United States is very quietly, but also very quickly becoming a key player in lithium production, used in everything from cell phones to electric vehicles.

This dual report from Inside Climate News, and the investigations team at Columbia Journalism, found that the desire to source and extract lithium has been supercharged in the advent of the Trump Administration’s “Drill, Baby, Drill” mandate. 

According to this in-depth report, the U.S. is supposed to go from one mine to at least six in the next five years, with many more to come as  companies source and stake (literally using wooden stakes in some cases) their claim in parts of Wyoming, the Dakotas, Arizona and more.