On Feb 27, another ~800 NOAA employees were terminated, following the 880 fired in early 2025. Cuts hit weather forecasters, fisheries scientists, and climate researchers. NWS offices began reducing services citing staffing shortages. Weather balloon launches in Alaska were suspended indefinitely.

Why this matters: NOAA has now lost thousands of staff in just over a year. Weather balloon data feeds into every forecast model that predicts hurricanes, heat waves, and severe storms. Suspending those launches degrades forecasts for everyone — including the rural and coastal communities that depend on accurate warnings to survive.

Guess you won't see that hurricane coming, huh.

EPA repealed the 2009 endangerment finding — the scientific and legal determination that greenhouse gases endanger public health. This was the legal foundation for virtually all federal climate regulations. The White House called it "the largest deregulatory action in American history." The same rule eliminated all vehicle greenhouse gas emission standards for model years 2012-2027 and beyond.

Why this matters: Without the endangerment finding, there is no legal obligation for the federal government to regulate carbon emissions at all. Every future climate rule — for power plants, cars, factories — loses its legal foundation. Our children inherit a government that officially decided their air isn't worth protecting.

The EPA just said CO2 isn't dangerous. The atmosphere disagrees.

The U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Agreement officially took effect on Jan 27, 2026. But Trump went further: on Jan 7, he announced withdrawal from the UNFCCC (the foundational UN climate treaty), the IPCC, and the Green Climate Fund. The U.S. would become the first country ever to leave the UNFCCC.

Why this matters: The Paris Agreement was bad enough. Withdrawing from the UNFCCC itself — the treaty that has governed international climate cooperation since 1992 — is unprecedented. No country has ever done this. It signals the U.S. is not just pausing climate action but rejecting the entire framework of global cooperation on the crisis.

First country to leave. Out of 198. Let that sink in.

EPA announced it would no longer calculate the economic value of health benefits from reducing air pollution when setting rules. Previously, EPA estimated that clean air rules saved $2 trillion in health benefits in 2020 alone — from prevented deaths, hospitalizations, and lost work days. That number is now officially zero.

Why this matters: If you stop counting the lives saved by clean air, every pollution rule fails its cost-benefit test. This is the same trick as the social cost of carbon: rig the math so protection never makes economic sense. The people breathing that air — kids with asthma, elderly with heart disease, communities near refineries — pay with their health.

If you don't count the dead, nobody died. Right?

Within hours of his second inauguration, Trump signed an executive order withdrawing the U.S. from the Paris Climate Agreement for a second time. The U.S. is responsible for the largest cumulative share of global greenhouse gas emissions.

Why this matters: The Paris Agreement is the only global framework for coordinated climate action. When the world's largest historical emitter walks away, it gives cover to every other country to delay action. The people who suffer most — in Latin America, the Pacific Islands, Sub-Saharan Africa — had the least to do with causing this crisis.

Hours into the job. Priorities.

A presidential memorandum halted all new federal permits, leases, and approvals for onshore and offshore wind energy. Projects already under construction were stopped, threatening thousands of jobs and billions in investment.

Why this matters: Every year of delayed clean energy means more fossil fuel burned, more emissions locked in, and more extreme heat, storms, and flooding for decades to come. Wind energy jobs in rural communities disappeared overnight, and the U.S. fell further behind China and Europe in the clean energy race.

China says thanks for the head start.

Trump's regulatory freeze halted OSHA's proposed Heat Injury and Illness Prevention rule, which would have required water, shade, and rest breaks at 90°F. Heat is the leading cause of weather-related death in the U.S., and outdoor workers — disproportionately Latino and immigrant — face escalating danger.

Why this matters: Farmworkers, construction workers, and warehouse employees die from heat every summer while working without mandated protections. These are our neighbors, our family members, our communities. As temperatures rise, killing this rule is a death sentence written in policy.

Water and shade. That's what they killed. Water and shade.

EPA fired all members of the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee and the Science Advisory Board — independent panels that peer-reviewed the science behind air quality standards protecting public health.

Why this matters: Without independent scientists reviewing the evidence, air quality standards can be set by political appointees and industry lobbyists. Our children breathe that air. When science is silenced, people get sick and the most vulnerable communities pay the price first.

Who needs peer review when you have lobbyists?

Canceled 400+ environmental justice grants totaling $1.7 billion, shuttered all 10 regional EJ offices, and abolished the Office of Environmental Justice entirely. These programs served low-income communities and communities of color disproportionately burdened by pollution.

Why this matters: Environmental justice exists because pollution doesn't hit everyone equally — it concentrates in Black, Latino, Indigenous, and low-income neighborhoods. Eliminating these programs tells those communities their health doesn't matter. The asthma rates, the cancer clusters, the contaminated water — all of it continues with no one accountable.

$1.7 billion for communities that can't breathe. Gone.

The administration systematically removed climate change information from EPA, DOE, USDA, and White House websites. The EPA rewrote its "Causes of Climate Change" page to attribute warming only to natural processes, deleting all references to the scientific consensus.

Why this matters: When you erase the data, you erase the evidence. Communities can't plan for floods they aren't warned about. Researchers lose access to datasets that took decades to build. This isn't disagreement — it's deliberate erasure of truth to protect fossil fuel profits.

If you delete the thermometer, is it still hot?

Mass termination of ~880 NOAA staff, over 7% of the agency. Cuts included warning coordination meteorologists who communicate severe weather threats to the public. A proposed FY2026 budget would cut NOAA's budget by 27% and eliminate its entire research arm.

Why this matters: NOAA is the agency that warns you a hurricane is coming, that a heat wave will be deadly, that flooding is imminent. Fewer meteorologists means slower warnings and more people caught off guard. These cuts cost lives — in the U.S. and across the Caribbean and Central America, where NOAA data feeds local forecasting systems.

Hurricane season doesn't care about budget cuts.

Attempted to cancel the BRIC program and return $882 million to the Treasury. BRIC funded projects making homes and infrastructure resilient to floods, fires, and storms. FEMA staffing dropped 9.5% in the first six months. A federal judge later ruled the cancellation unlawful.

Why this matters: Every dollar spent on disaster prevention saves six in recovery costs. Without resilience funding, the next hurricane, wildfire, or flood hits harder and recovery takes longer. Poor communities that can't self-fund rebuilding are left behind permanently.

Save a dollar now, spend six later. Brilliant.

NOAA retired the Billion-Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters database, which had tracked the cost and death toll of 403 major U.S. weather disasters since 1980 — totaling over $2.9 trillion. The first half of 2025 was the costliest on record.

Why this matters: You can't manage what you refuse to measure. This database was how insurers, cities, and emergency planners understood the escalating cost of climate disasters. Without it, the economic devastation becomes invisible — and invisible problems don't get solved.

$2.9 trillion in disasters. Easier to just stop counting.

Federal environmental complaints dropped to just 16 in 2025 — a 76% drop from Biden's first year, 87% from Obama's second term. About 2,000 EPA staff were lost, crippling the agency's capacity to pursue polluters and protect communities.

Why this matters: When enforcement disappears, polluters pollute freely. Factories dump more, refineries cut corners, and the people living downwind and downstream — overwhelmingly poor and of color — absorb the toxins. No enforcement means no consequences, and no consequences means no protection.

16 complaints. In a year. For the entire country.

In its final weeks, the administration held a rushed lease sale for drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge — 1.6 million acres of pristine ecosystem home to polar bears and caribou. The sale was a commercial failure but set a damaging precedent.

Why this matters: Opening the Arctic to drilling signals that no ecosystem is sacred, no matter how fragile. The Arctic is warming four times faster than the global average. Drilling there accelerates the very feedback loops — permafrost thaw, ice loss — that make climate change irreversible for our children and grandchildren.

Nobody even bought the leases. It was performative destruction.

EPA rolled back rules requiring oil and gas companies to monitor and fix methane leaks. Methane is ~80x more potent than CO2 over 20 years. Even BP and Shell opposed this rollback.

Why this matters: Methane is the fastest lever we have for slowing near-term warming. Letting it leak freely accelerates the timeline for extreme heat, crop failure, and water scarcity — the exact crises already devastating communities in Guatemala, Honduras, and across Latin America.

Even BP thought this was too much. BP.

The SAFE Vehicles Rule cut fuel economy improvement requirements from 5% to 1.5% annually and revoked California's authority to set stricter standards. Transportation is the single largest source of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.

Why this matters: Cars and trucks emit more greenhouse gases than any other sector in the U.S. Weakening standards by 70% means billions of additional tons of CO2 over the lifetime of vehicles sold during this period. Our children inherit those emissions and the warming they cause.

70%. Not a typo.

The administration revoked California's waiver to set stricter vehicle emission standards — a waiver that had stood for over 50 years and that 13 other states followed.

Why this matters: California's standards drove cleaner cars nationwide. Revoking them meant dirtier air in communities near highways — disproportionately low-income and Latino neighborhoods. More emissions, more asthma, more climate damage, all to protect automaker margins.

50 years of precedent. Gone because one state was doing too well.

EPA repealed the most significant U.S. regulation cutting power plant emissions. The replacement rule was so weak that analyses showed it would increase emissions compared to no regulation at all.

Why this matters: Power plants are one of the largest sources of greenhouse gas emissions. Repealing the only rule limiting them locked in decades of additional emissions. Every ton of CO2 released today warms the planet for centuries — this wasn't a policy pause, it was permanent damage.

The replacement rule actually increased emissions. On purpose.

Trump reduced Bears Ears National Monument by 85% and Grand Staircase-Escalante by nearly half, the largest rollback of federal land protections in U.S. history. The freed land was opened to mining and drilling.

Why this matters: Public lands are carbon sinks, biodiversity reserves, and sacred sites for Indigenous communities. Shrinking them for extraction accelerates emissions and erases cultural heritage. The land we lose now, our children will never get back.

85% of a national monument. For mining leases nobody asked for.

Trump announced the U.S. would leave the Paris Climate Agreement, making it the only country to withdraw from the landmark accord among 195 nations to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

Why this matters: The U.S. walking away from the only global climate accord sent a message to every nation: the largest historical polluter won't take responsibility. Developing nations — the ones already drowning, burning, and migrating — lost their most powerful potential ally.

One country out of 195. Guess which one.

The "Energy Independence" executive order directed agencies to suspend, revise, or rescind regulations that "burden" fossil fuel production, including the Clean Power Plan, methane rules, and the social cost of carbon.

Why this matters: This single order set the blueprint for the systematic dismantling of climate protections. By redefining the social cost of carbon to near zero, the administration made it mathematically impossible for climate regulations to pass cost-benefit analysis. It rigged the system.

Set the social cost of carbon to near zero. Problem solved, right?

Days after inauguration, Trump signed executive orders to advance the Dakota Access and Keystone XL pipelines, overriding environmental reviews and the objections of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, whose water supply was directly threatened.

Why this matters: Indigenous sovereignty was overridden for fossil fuel profits. Pipeline spills contaminate water that communities depend on for generations. This signaled from day one that Indigenous rights and environmental protection would be sacrificed for oil.

Day four. He couldn't even wait a week.