Statista provides data on over 60,000 topics from over 18,000 sources. Quantitative data on media, business, finance, politics, and a wide variety of other areas.
ICPSR maintains a data archive of more than 250,000 files of research. Although most datasets are related to the social and behavioral sciences, there are many datasets about issues in geography, science, and the environment, especially if they relate to US federal law.
City-Data.com gives city-specific information about median income, racial demographics, local businesses, etc. for each city that it covers. It also provides links to local newspapers with up-to-date news headlines about what is going on in each city.
If asked to login, you can X out of the login box to access a limited, public version of this tool.
Use the filters to look at 'layers' of city info like demographics, housing, education, health, and quality of life (including things like public transportation, farmer's markets in the area, quality of broadband internet access, etc.).
This is a map I made in PolicyMap. It shows Maryland and surrounding states, looking at the correlation between economic diversity and institutions of higher education. Right click and select "open in new tab" to view a larger version of this image.
Search by topic (such as Coasts, Natural Hazards, or Water) or by search term (such as Delmarva, Assateague, or Eastern Shore).
The US Geological Survey is also a great government agency to find articles and reports.
One-stop-shop for publicly available data from the US Government and various government agencies. Datasets in agriculture, business, climate, education, science, and much more. Refine the dataset options using filters - topic, dataset type, tags, format, organizations, and publisher.