President Trump says he is pro-agriculture, so why would the Department of Agriculture announce that it plans to vacate the nation’s largest agricultural research center?[1] Some actions taken by the Trump administration have already disrupted agricultural research, so the Trump … Read More
On July 24, 2025, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced that it would vacate the Beltsville Agricultural Research Center (BARC). BARC is the largest agricultural research facility in the country. The USDA proposed moving all BARC employees to five … Read More
On July 24, 2025, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced that it would close the Beltsville Agricultural Research Center (BARC). This blog post examines the plan’s legal justification. The July 24 announcement was made in the form of a … Read More
On Thursday, July 24, 2025, a Trump appointee announced a major reorganization of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) (Rollins 2025). The plan includes winding down operations at the Beltsville Agricultural Research Center (BARC) over a few years and … Read More
This April, 17 students from Greenbelt’s Eleanor Roosevelt High School traveled to Dallas, bringing 3 robots that they had designed and built. They traveled to the 2024 VEX robotics World Championship, which is billed as the largest robotics competition in … Read More
A black-gum tree lived to an unusually old age in Greenbelt, Maryland, near Research Road and the Beltsville Agricultural Research Center. Within a few years of 1720, this black gum sprouted in an old-growth forest, based on growth rings visible … Read More
In March 2023, four robots built by students at Eleanor Roosevelt High School competed at the US Open robotics championship that was held in Council Bluffs, Iowa. Pictured below is one of these robots at the US Open and three … Read More
A status update on the Baltimore-Washington maglev proposal, 17 months after the federal government halted its environmental review On November 14, 2022, a maglev representative spoke at NASA Goddard in Greenbelt, and he seemed inexplicably confident that the proposed maglev … Read More
Reference data suggest that the official ridership forecast is more than a factor of ten too high for the proposed Baltimore-Washington maglev A cartoon depicting the question: Is the maglev’s official ridership forecast accurate? With the maglev public-comment period drawing … Read More
A simple calculation suggests that an individual would have to earn at least $363,000 a year for him or her to find the maglev ticket price worth the modest reduction in door-to-door travel time A cartoon depicting area residents reacting … Read More
According to the project’s draft environmental impact statement, operating the proposed Baltimore-Washington maglev would increase annual carbon dioxide emissions by more than 200 million kilograms, contradicting the claims of maglev promoters A cartoon depicting how operating the proposed maglev would … Read More
Most maglev customers would start and end their trips near a maglev station, limiting the project’s utility to the region. The maglev’s draft environmental impact statement leaves it to the reader to piece this story together. How much time would … Read More
The recently released draft environmental impact statement forecasts that a proposed maglev—a magnetic-levitation rail line—would have an insignificant impact on road congestion in the Baltimore-Washington region. The maglev’s ability to reduce car traffic in the region would be far smaller … Read More
By Guest post by Owen Kelley (This article was originally posted to the Prince George’s County Issues Forum on the Sierra Club website.) The Sierra Club is devoted to fighting climate change, and it does not take kindly to companies greenwashing … Read More
Guest post by Owen Kelley It is clear from emails flying around, Facebook posts, and items in the News Review that many Greenbelters are concerned about the impact on Greenbelt of the magnetically levitated (maglev) train that has been proposed … Read More
