As climate change has grown from a distant threat to a present danger, federal support for global change research also grew: from about $1 billion in 1990 to $2.6 billion per year in the 2010s, peaking at $4.3 billion in 2023. Over the decades, NASA and NOAA have produced crucial records of changes in atmosphere, sea level, greenhouse gas emissions, and more. Among many other benefits, U.S. investments in climate research have helped cities design flood protection, farmers make cropping decisions, and communities prepare for hurricanes.
Over the past year, as part of its broader assault on governmental capacity and independent institutions, the Trump administration has withdrawn from global scientific leadership, shrunk the federal scientific workforce, and sought to defund climate research. As part of its broader politicization of nonpartisan institutions and subordination of evidence to political goals, it has scorned climate science and promoted disinformation about what it calls “climate alarmism.”
Targeted assaults on climate institutions
In February, NASA canceled the contract by which the U.S. was supporting the technical support unit for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s mitigation working group. The administration subsequently fired all the State Department staff responsible for international climate diplomacy, including for governmental engagement with the IPCC. (In January 2026, the Trump administration formally announced that the U,S. government would no longer participate in the IPCC and the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change—memorializing a state of affairs that already existed in practice.)
DOGE early-exit incentives decimated the National Weather Service and took out about one-third of staff at the Energy Information Administration, a key source of information for understanding the state of the U.S. energy system.
The three flagship U.S. climate-modeling centers have all been targeted too. In April, NOAA cut $4 million in funding for the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, claiming that the lab promotes “exaggerated and implausible climate threats” and “climate anxiety.” In May, NASA evicted the Goddard Institute for Space Studies from its 59-year home on the Columbia campus, iconically located above the Seinfeld diner. GISS has yet to find a new building, and the federal government remains on the hook to Columbia for the lease—so the eviction has resulted in zero taxpayer savings, merely a transfer of expense from one federal agency to another.
The president’s vision for the federal budget
Censorship and propaganda
It has also begun actively promoting scientific misinformation about climate change. Last July, in support of the administration’s attempt to reject the 16-year-old EPA finding that greenhouse gases endanger human health and welfare, DOE released a report that read like a time capsule of climate denial from the early 2000s, full of oversimplification, cherry-picking, omissions, straw-man arguments, and simple errors. The report was not peer-reviewed in a manner that would meet the legal standard for inclusion in EPA rulemaking, and was also written in violation of the Federal Advisory Committee Act, which requires advisory committees to hold public meetings, comply with open records requirements, conduct broad outreach for nominees, and be balanced in viewpoint.
The broader autocratic and anti-science turn
Meanwhile, international graduate students and postdoctoral researchers are choosing not to come to a country where they are told that they don’t have free speech rights and could find themselves disappeared for months into a semi-secret detention system. Proposed changes to the student visa system could prevent international students from staying long enough to complete a Ph.D., and a hefty new fee for H-1B visas could effectively block universities from recruiting faculty from outside the U.S.
Candles in the dark
When it first became apparent that the U.S. was withdrawing from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a coalition of U.S. academic institutions with IPCC observer status (including my own institution, Rutgers University) worked with AGU to form the U.S. Academic Alliance for the IPCC. The alliance nominated experts for participation in the IPCC’s Seventh Assessment Report and worked with philanthropies to ensure that selected U.S. authors have funds to travel to IPCC meetings. As a result, despite the U.S. government withdrawal, the IPCC has a full complement of scientists participating in this cycle. (I am one of those scientists.)
Scientists are also mobilizing to counter the administration’s misinformation. When DOE put out its disinformation-rich “critical review” in July, Andrew Dessler of Texas A&M asked on Bluesky whether there would be a coordinated response. He ended up coordinating it. I joined a couple of weeks later to help him coordinate. By the time DOE’s call for comments on the 141-page report closed, a little over a month after its first public release of the report, 85 authors had produced a comprehensive, 450-page technical review.
Where to go from here
The scientific community has long tried to act as though it were apolitical. This myth was credible when all parties, left and right, subscribed to a shared set of liberal values—a society where it was agreed, as Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan wrote, that “real patriots ask questions.”
The research community also needs better strategy. When opposition to the Trump administration has succeeded, it has been focused around specific, relatable issues with strong polling. For example, Minnesotans’ defense of their neighbors and the summary executions of Renee Good and Alex Pretti have solidified public opinion against mass deportations; as of late January, only 37 percent of U.S. adults approved of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and a plurality supported its abolition.
Whatever the case, it’s clear that saving American climate science—and American science in general—requires that the community discard the myth of political neutrality, engage in a concerted defense of liberal democracy, and stand in solidarity with this administration’s other targets.
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