A Democracy Drive Thread
Withdrawal from the Paris accord, a coal revival, canceled clean-energy grants, and the defunding and silencing of federal climate science — a systematic effort to strip climate change out of U.S. policy, and even off the government’s own websites.
This thread is a dated, sourced record of the second Trump administration’s campaign against climate action: the retreat from international agreements, the revival of coal and the rollback of emissions rules, the cancellation of clean-energy funding, and the firing of scientists and deletion of the data that document a warming planet. Each entry links to its source.
January 20, 2025
On the ground
On January 20, 2025, hours into his second term, Trump signed Executive Order 14162, “Putting America First in International Environmental Agreements,” directing the United States to withdraw from the Paris climate accord — the near-universal treaty to limit global warming — for the second time, having first pulled out in his initial term before President Biden rejoined. The same day he declared a “national energy emergency,” moved to expand fossil-fuel production, and paused new federal wind-power leasing.
January 23, 2025
In his own words
Addressing the World Economic Forum by video on January 23, 2025, Trump pitched coal as the backup power source for AI data centers and dismissed concerns about the dirtiest fossil fuel, claiming nothing could ever knock it offline.
“Nothing can destroy coal. Not the weather, not a bomb — nothing.”
January 27, 2025
On the ground
In a note dated January 27, 2025, Secretary of State Marco Rubio informed the United Nations that the United States was rescinding all of its outstanding pledges — about $4 billion — to the Green Climate Fund, the largest international fund helping more than 100 developing countries adapt to a warming world and cut emissions. The move, announced in early February, followed Trump’s first-day executive order revoking U.S. climate-finance commitments. The U.S. had pledged $6 billion under Presidents Obama and Biden but delivered only $2 billion.
February 11, 2025
On the ground
On February 11, 2025, Trump directed agencies to roll back modern efficiency standards for lightbulbs and to loosen water- and energy-use rules for household appliances, casting a return to incandescent bulbs and higher-flow fixtures as “common sense.” Efficiency standards cut both consumer energy bills and the emissions from generating that power; the federal Energy Policy and Conservation Act’s “anti-backsliding” provision makes rolling them back legally difficult.
February 18, 2025
In his own words
Speaking to a conservative forum in London in February 2025, Wright — former CEO of the fracking company Liberty Energy — attacked international climate targets as both unachievable and harmful.
“Net zero 2050 is a sinister goal, it's a terrible goal.”
February 24, 2025
On the ground
Beginning in February 2025, the National Science Foundation terminated grants for more than 100 already-approved climate research projects — tens of millions of dollars — as part of a broader purge of awards flagged for “climate” and diversity language. Researchers reported being told to scrub terms like “climate change” and “greenhouse gas emissions” from proposals; the share of NSF grants mentioning “climate change” in their titles or abstracts fell from 889 in 2023 to 148, a 77% drop, as scientists self-censored to preserve funding.
February 27, 2025
On the ground
On February 27, 2025, the administration fired about 800 probationary employees at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration — as much as 10% of its workforce — in a wave of DOGE-driven cuts. Those let go included National Weather Service meteorologists who produce local forecasts and staff at NOAA’s Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, whose weather and climate models are considered among the best in the world. A court briefly blocked the terminations before they were allowed to proceed; NOAA later sought a further 17% workforce cut.
February 28, 2025
On the ground
In late February 2025, the United States notified South Africa, Indonesia, and Vietnam that it was withdrawing from the Just Energy Transition Partnerships — coalitions of wealthy nations, launched under U.S. leadership, that had pledged roughly $45 billion to help developing countries shift from coal to clean energy. The pullout, following Trump’s revocation of the U.S. International Climate Finance Plan, stripped out the American grants and investment guarantees; the EU, UK, and Japan said they would remain.
March 3, 2025
On the ground
In a March 3, 2025 memo, the Trump-appointed head of the GSA’s Public Buildings Service ordered federal EV charging stations deemed “not mission-critical” disconnected “at the breaker” — part of a plan to retire roughly 8,000 charging plugs across government properties and cancel the contracts that maintain them. The GSA also suspended orders of zero-emission vehicles and moved to offload the electric cars bought under Biden’s push to electrify the federal fleet.
March 11, 2025
On the ground
On March 11, 2025, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin moved to terminate roughly $20 billion in grants from the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund — the Inflation Reduction Act’s “green bank,” meant to finance clean-energy and emissions-cutting projects — sending immediate termination notices to eight nonprofit recipients and freezing funds already parked at an outside bank. Awardees sued and courts scrutinized the legality of the clawback; Congress later repealed the fund’s remaining money in the July 2025 tax law.
In his own words
As Hegseth moved to strip climate considerations out of Defense Department planning in March 2025, he dismissed an issue the military has long treated as a national-security and readiness risk.
“The Department of Defense does not do climate change crap. We do training and warfighting.”
March 12, 2025
On the ground
On March 12, 2025, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin unveiled 31 simultaneous deregulatory actions targeting rules on air, water, and climate pollution from power plants, oil and gas operations, vehicles, and factories — and moved to reconsider the 2009 “endangerment finding,” the scientific determination that greenhouse gases threaten public health that underpins virtually all federal climate regulation. Zeldin called it “the greatest and most consequential day of deregulation in U.S. history.” The agency also announced it was closing its environmental-justice offices.
March 14, 2025
On the ground
On March 14, 2025, the administration moved to cancel the lease on the Hawaii laboratory tied to the Mauna Loa Observatory, and its May budget proposal called for eliminating NOAA’s research office and Global Monitoring Laboratory outright. That would shutter Mauna Loa along with monitoring stations in Alaska, American Samoa, and at the South Pole — ending the pole-to-pole greenhouse-gas record that has run since 1958 and produced the “Keeling Curve,” one of the most iconic and indisputable charts documenting human-caused climate change.
On the ground
On March 14, 2025, Trump signed a Congressional Review Act resolution nullifying the EPA rule that would have implemented the Inflation Reduction Act’s “Waste Emissions Charge” — the first-ever federal fee on a greenhouse gas, levied on oil and gas operators for excess methane, a pollutant far more potent than carbon dioxide. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that scrapping the fee would cost taxpayers about $7.2 billion in lost revenue over a decade.
March 25, 2025
On the ground
In March 2025, the USDA unfroze billions in Rural Energy for America Program grants — awarded to farmers and rural businesses for solar, wind, and efficiency projects — but gave recipients 30 days to “voluntarily” rewrite their applications to remove “harmful DEIA” and “far-left climate” language and align with Trump’s “Unleashing American Energy” executive order. The department later said it would issue no new REAP grants until it rewrote the program’s rules.
April 8, 2025
On the ground
On April 8, 2025, Trump signed a package of executive orders aimed at reviving the declining coal industry: directing agencies to treat coal as a critical mineral, open public lands to coal mining, and keep aging coal plants running to meet electricity demand from data centers and AI. A companion action exempted at least 66 coal-fired power plants — including the single dirtiest plant in the country — from a 2024 rule tightening limits on mercury and other hazardous air pollutants, pushing their compliance deadline to 2029. Trump routinely praises “beautiful, clean coal,” though coal is the most carbon-intensive fossil fuel.
April 16, 2025
On the ground
On April 16, 2025, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum ordered a stop to construction on Empire Wind 1, an 810-megawatt offshore wind farm off New York that was already fully federally permitted and under construction, claiming the prior administration had “rushed” its approval. The halt followed Trump’s Day One executive order withdrawing all federal waters from offshore-wind leasing and pausing permits for wind projects nationwide. Work resumed weeks later after negotiations with New York, but the administration halted the project again in December 2025.
April 22, 2025
In his own words
Appearing on Fox Business on Earth Day, April 22, 2025, Wright disparaged the Inflation Reduction Act’s clean-energy tax credits and argued wind and solar demand far more land and materials than fossil fuels.
“I think it's a big mistake.”
April 28, 2025
On the ground
On April 28, 2025, the administration released all of the roughly 400 volunteer scientists and experts working on the next National Climate Assessment — the flagship, congressionally mandated report on how climate change is affecting the country — telling them its scope was being “reevaluated.” By June 30 the existing assessments had been removed from federal websites with no explanation or replacement. White House budget director Russ Vought pushed to scrap the work begun under Biden and install researchers reflecting the administration’s claim that climate change is not a serious threat.