Trump puts US in uncharted waters with 100 days of rapid-fire science policy changes
Many of the programs being decimated date back as far as the administration of Richard Nixon, prompting questions that may take years to answer.
In his first 100 days in office, President Donald Trump has orchestrated a campaign to fundamentally reshape the government's role in protecting the climate and the environment.
He has launched a major deregulation effort, saying existing rules stifle business. And he wants to end what a Commerce Department news release called “exaggerated and implausible climate threats.”
“The Golden Age is here, and we are starting to ‘Mine, Baby, Mine’ for clean American coal,” said Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum, in an example of the administration's enthusiasm for deregulation and dismissal of climate change.
The administration has also dismantled and de-funded environmental programs and prioritized fossil fuels while penalizing wind and solar power. It has opened National Forests to substantial increases in logging and protected ocean zones to fishing. Expunged language describing climate change’s impact on Americans. Fired weather service staff. And cut scientists' jobs and their research funding.
The administration is continuing some environmental priorities. "President Trump has said the American people deserve clean air and clean water," said White House Press Secretary Taylor Rogers.
The Environmental Protection Agency and Interior Department will also "pause dangerous wind projects to protect wildlife, and use commonsense conservation practices while unleashing America’s clean oil and gas,” she said.
Scientists said the results of the broader policy changes will be significant and lasting.
“I don’t think most people understand the magnitude of the proposed cuts,” said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist with the University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources division and the University of California, Los Angeles.
Columbia University's Sabin Center for Climate Change Law has tracked 106 steps taken by the Trump administration to scale back or wholly eliminate federal climate measures.
"Environmental law as we knew it has been turned on its ear and all the guardrails are going down," said Clay Henderson, an author, environmental attorney and former president of Audubon Florida.
Many of the programs being slashed date back as far as the administration of Richard Nixon, a time when bedrock environmental laws were enacted as the United States faced significant, visible pollution. In 1969 the Cuyahoga River caught fire, an oil spill in Santa Barbara fouled miles of beach and the bald eagle was nearly extinct.
The Trump administration's actions put the nation in uncharted territory, a number of scientists have said in interviews and on social media.
"It could take a generation or more to repair the damage this administration has done, or proposed to do, in just its first 100 days," said Alexandra Adams, chief policy advocacy officer with the Natural Resourced Defense Council.
Environmental advocates say the efforts raise questions that may take years to answer:
- What will happen to threatened wildlife?
- What will be the consequences of the government deemphasizing efforts to combat climate change?
- Will shedding regulations boost the economy, cause an ecological crisis — or perhaps both?
But legal experts note that many plans announced in the last three months face stiff legal challenges and may not be implemented as announced.
The agencies facing massive cuts — including the Environmental Protection Agency, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Department of the Interior and NASA — all play critical parts in enforcing environmental laws that remain on the books, Henderson said.
Weather forecasting
Even though most people get their weather forecasts from private companies such as The Weather Channel or AccuWeather, most of the data originally comes from NOAA, the parent organization for the National Weather Service.
That's why Swain worries budget cuts to the weather service could soon affect American's access to timely forecasts, especially in rural areas.
“It’s your ability to get an accurate weather forecast when you wake up. That someone’s going to be there to warn you when there’s a tornado or hurricane or flash flood or wildfire coming your way,” Swain said.
The weather service maintains 122 forecast offices around the country, and has lost more than 500 staffers. Vacancies are as high as 20 to 40% in the offices after several rounds of retirements and buyouts.
Environmental protections
To remove regulations the administration says stifles business, it is taking steps to substantially limit the Endangered Species Act, first signed into law by Nixon in 1973.
The new proposal, announced April 17, would redefine what it means to harm a protected plant or animal, removing habitat destruction from the list of threats to species such as Florida panthers, red wolves, California condors, manatees, sea turtles and Checkerspot butterflies.
Commercial fishing will be allowed in America's largest ocean reserve, first protected by President George W. Bush as one of his last acts as president in 2009. The Pacific Islands Heritage Marine National Monument, one of the most pristine coral reef systems in the Pacific Ocean, lies about 750 miles west of Hawaii and is home to many threatened and endangered species, including green and hawksbill turtles, free sharks, parrotfish, dolphins and whales, according to NOAA.
National forests will be open to more logging, with a policy that opens over half of these public lands to timber harvest, the vast majority in the American West. Overall the U.S. Forest Service is calling for an increase of 25% in the volume of timber from national forests offered for logging.
More than 2,400 National Park Service employees have been laid off or taken buyouts ‒ roughly 10% of the rangers and other workers who keep national parks open to the more than 330 million people who visit them each year.
Taking aim at climate change work
The Trump administration says the threat of climate change has been overblown ‒ although decades of mainstream science support the concern. It also says efforts to curb climate change are stifling U.S. economic growth.
On his first day in office, Trump ordered the United States to once again withdraw from the landmark Paris climate agreement and has blocked federal scientists from participating in a meeting for the next report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Since then he has eliminated efforts to reduce – or even track – global warming, firing staff at key agencies, freezing clean energy funds and working to overturn regulations that curbed pollution.
A major push has been to champion coal, oil and natural gas – all of which release greenhouse gases that are the drivers of climate change – which the administration sees as a way to prioritize American energy independence.
At the same time, the president has moved to slow the growth of wind power – one of the cheapest forms of electricity generation even without federal subsidies – by pausing new or renewed approvals for offshore wind projects and onshore wind and solar on federal land.
References to climate change have been scrubbed from many government web pages. The administration has ordered Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate state programs trying to address emissions and climate change and announced the Department of Defense had terminated "woke climate change programs."
The White House has put the Sixth National Climate assessment on hold, after dismissing the 400 volunteer scientists who were going to author the comprehensive study, mandated by Congress in 1990 and issued every few years.
The administration has also frozen or terminated more than $20 billion in federal climate grants, though on April 15 a federal judge said the freeze was unlawful and ordered agencies to resume funding.
Following a Heritage Foundation playbook
The actions, orders and statements from the federal departments closely follow the points and tone of the Heritage Foundation's "Project 2025." The document, referred to climate change roughly 50 times in its nearly 900 pages.
For instance, it stated that some of the programs at NOAA, including atmospheric research, form "a colossal operation that has become one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry and, as such, is harmful to future U.S. prosperity."
Efforts to pull the United States away from clean energy will be costlier in the long run, said Julio Friedmann, an expert on carbon, hydrogen and biofuels at Carbon Direct, a company that provides climate solutions.
"If we retreat from these commitments, we will end up paying more for energy needlessly," said Friedmann, who worked for the Department of Energy under President Obama. "We will lose commercial opportunities. We will lose trade opportunities. And we will lose the revenues from industries that are being born."
Economists agree there are huge risks to ignoring climate change.
It is "the defining issue of our time," global investment banking firm Cantor Fitzgerald said in a policy statement last year. “Scientific evidence indicates that if left unchecked, climate change will be disastrous and life threatening.”
Elizabeth Weise and Dinah Voyles Pulver are national correspondents for USA today who write about climate change. Reach Pulver at dpulver@usatoday.com or @dinahvp on Bluesky or X or dinahvp.77 on Signal.