Why Trump Axed a Bedrock U.S. Climate Program
The dismemberment of the U.S. Global Change Research Program was outlined in Project 2025 as a way to elevate the “benefits” of climate change when fighting regulations in court
U.S. President Donald Trump, listens to a question as he visits Chez What Furniture Store which was damaged during Hurricane Helene on September 30, 2024 in Valdosta, Georgia.
Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images
CLIMATEWIRE | The Trump administration is dismantling a 35-year-old effort to track global climate change that was used to shape regulations and policies across the government.
Federal employees at the U.S. Global Change Research Program were removed from their positions Tuesday, and a government contract with ICF International, which has supported the National Climate Assessment for years, was severed, according to two former officials who were granted anonymity to avoid reprisals.
The move marks a key step by the administration to undermine federal climate research as it rolls back environmental regulations and promotes additional fossil fuel production.
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The program was established by Congress in 1990 and signed into law by President George H.W. Bush. In addition to climate science, it focused on land productivity, water resources, fisheries, ecosystems and the atmosphere. Its most visible product was the National Climate Assessment, a Congress-mandated report that comes out every four years and is used to help shape environmental rules, legislation and infrastructure projects.
Decades ago, the program identified how a depleted ozone layer was harming Americans, leading to regulations to address the issue.
The next version of the National Climate Assessment is due late next year or in early 2027.
The changes mirror the writings of Russ Vought, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, who wants to eliminate the program so its work can’t be used to bolster federal climate regulations in court battles.
Vought wrote a chapter in Project 2025, the conservative blueprint that has been closely followed by President Donald Trump, in which he outlined how to “reshape the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) and related climate change research programs.”
The chapter spells out how the program could make it harder to enact pro-industry policy and fight court battles that challenge environmental regulations. The USGCRP would “be confined to a more limited advisory role,” he wrote.
“USGCRP actions can frustrate successful litigation defense in ways that the career bureaucracy should not be permitted to control,” the chapter said.
Under Vought’s proposal, OMB would help select researchers to produce a National Climate Assessment that relies on a small pool of scientists who question humanity’s contributions to climate change and give equal weight to industry-produced studies.
An OMB spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment. Neither did ICF International, the contractor that supported the climate assessment.
Vought has been aided by David Legates, who briefly served as the head of the USGCRP in the waning days of the first Trump administration. Legates was removed from his post after he attempted to publish research papers that questioned basic climate science.
“Take a look at the U.S. Global Change Research Program, because that needs to be closed down, lock, stock and barrel,” Legates said recently on a podcast hosted by the Heartland Institute, a conservative advocacy group that spreads climate misinformation.
Legates also said on the podcast that Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency had been “alerted” to the need to eliminate the program.
White House officials have explored producing a version of the National Climate Assessment, or another type of scientific report, that highlights the “benefits” of global warming. That, in turn, could become part of an effort to challenge the 2009 endangerment finding, which required EPA to regulate greenhouse gases because they’re harmful to human health. Legates has proposed creating a second body of alternative climate research that shows “carbon dioxide is not an evil gas.”
The National Climate Assessment is considered the gold standard of climate science by both Republican and Democratic administrations, said Katharine Hayhoe, a climate scientist at Texas Tech University who has served as a lead author on multiple versions of the report.
“If you care about transportation, or energy, or food, or health, or communities, or rural areas or Indigenous tribal nations — whatever it is you care about, it’s got that chapter,” she said.
“We need the information to actually factor into the decisions that will help us build a better and more resilient future,” she added.
Shutting down the Global Change Research Program is going to “have a huge impact on our society in the long run,” said Don Wuebbles, an emeritus professor of atmospheric science at the University of Illinois who worked on all five of the previous National Climate Assessments.
He pointed to the current flooding in Kentucky as an example of extreme weather that the assessment can help plan for. The program has warned the public that a warmer atmosphere holds more water vapor, which drives larger storms and flooding. Infrastructure could be built to withstand such risks, he said.
“Adapting and being resilient, we could save a whole lot of money, billions of dollars, and so they’re going to end lots of lives,” Wuebbles said.
Reprinted from E&E News with permission from POLITICO, LLC. Copyright 2025. E&E News provides essential news for energy and environment professionals.
