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| In The Vanishing Earth, a 2026 non-fiction book regarding environmental issues, James Crawford notes how "Trump's 2024 return to power has only supercharged the isolationist instinct." Trump has disclaimed issues of climate change and pollution issues and fully backs fossil fuel corporations. His actions have cut scientific research and funding and access to the results that have already been accumulated in the past.
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| Hannah Richter noted in a 1 January 2026 issue of Science that the "White House was going to dismantle the National Center for Atmospheric Research . . . one of the world's premier climate and weather centers." She added that "last month, the Administration of President Donald Trump also canceled $109 million in green transportation grants granted to Colorado."
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| On 19 January 2026, Evan Gorelick gave a report on Trump's actions in The Morning. "He promised to cut spending, ax workers and trim fat from the government. He created the Department of Government Efficiency, put Elon Musk in charge and told it to shrink the federal bureaucracy. He dismantled entire agencies, pushing out hundreds of thousands of civil servants in the process." Gorelick went on to note that "many of the savings DOGE claimed were bogus." Rather than cutting costs, Trump focused on bringing in more funds, "but not by taxes." People noticed the effects of Trump's cuts and many were reversed. He claimed his tariffs would supplement the budget, but it has increased expenses for citizens. Gorelick also commented on Trump's effort to garner money by having other nations "cough up at least $1 billion in cash" to be on his "Board of Peace," charging millions of dollars to get his "gold card" and "platinum card" visas, "charging $100,000-a-year fee for H-1B visas" for skilled workers, requiring other nations to pay for trading deals that would lower tariffs and cutting higher education funds and conducting federal investigations until they wound up paying millions of dollars.
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| Sam Sifton noted on 21 January 2026 in The Morning that Trump "dropped out of the Paris Climate Agreement, opened nearly a million square miles of ocean floor to drilling and tried to stop new wind power projects." He added how "when Trump calls for criminal investigations of his enemies . . . he both weaponizes the government and insists on greater executive control of the Justice Department. Sometimes he calls for powers that have traditionally resided with Congress." In considering the future, chief economist reporter Ben Casselman pointed out that, compared to his first term, "Mr. Trump has begun his second term with what accounts to an all-out assault . . . that have long been seen by leaders of both major political parties as the foundation of American economic strength." He goes on to warn that the president "is setting the country on a path that will, in the long run, leave the economy less dynamic, the financial system less stable and Americans less prosperous in the decades ahead."
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| In the Winter 2026 issue of Solutions, the Environmental Defense Fund states that "the Trump administration is aggressively seeking to rescind the Endangerment Finding, which is the foundation for EPA standards limiting pollution from cars, trucks, power plants and oil and gas operations." Elsewhere in the issue is noted that "while the Trump administration attempts to roll back the clock on climate progress, there's a surprising source of quiet leadership: big business. More than 4,000 companies worldwide are now reporting climate commitments, a nine-fold increase over the past five years." As a counterpoint, H. Holden Thorp noted in an editorial in the 5 February 2026 issue of Science that "the actions of the Trump administration have not only damaged the scientific enterprise but have also sent a discouraging message to students and early-career scientists who are deciding whether to get out of the United States or out of science altogether."
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| Brian Dixon wrote an article in the March 2026 issue of Population Connection. "On the day he was sworn in, Trump froze all foreign assistance, including family planning and other global health and environmental aid. The impact was immediate and devastating." After explaining the effects, Dixon went further. "Early in 2026, while Congress was still on its holiday recess, the White House announced that the President was withdrawing the United States from more than 60 international entities and commissions, including those that deal with reproductive health, gender equity, climate and other environmental issues, and renewable energy." In a President's Note in the same issue, John Seagel added his perspective. "In a growing number of economically advanced nations, conservative religious forces are rolling back reproductive rights. Under Donald Trump (who ironically has no fixed principles, religious or otherwise, other than retribution and self-aggrandizement), policies reflect sanctimonious pronouncements. Defunding of domestic and international family planning programs by the Trump administration is applauded by right-wing religious groups."
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| Loren Blackford added her opinion in the Spring 2026 issue of Sierra, noting “emboldened by the oil and gas industry, President Donald Trump and his allies have moved with speed and spite to choke off clean energy progress and revive the same fossil-fueled economy that pollutes our environment, increases our energy bills, and puts our health and safety at risk . . . Trump's EPA has even stopped factoring in health impacts and the value of human life when regulating air pollution, basing its calculations entirely on industry compliance costs. It's that same ethos -- a disregard for life, the planet, and the health and pocketbooks of regular people, all to increase polluter profits -- that is driving the administration to block every clean energy project it can." Several issues were noted on 5 May 2026 in The Morning. Two are worth mentioning here. "President Trump decided to paint Wahington's reflecting pool . . . and then gave out a $6.0 million no-bid government contract to a firm he said had worked on his swimming pools" and "ABC accused the F.C.C. of violating its free speech rights." Regarding the first topic, it was noted in The Morning on 1 August 2026 that "Federal prosecutors said they would drop charges against a former Olympian accused of vandalizing the renovated Reflecting Pool in Washington. And they acknowledged that contractors hired by the Trump administration had 'botched' the job" and Evan Gorelick added on 6 August 2026 that an analysis by The New York Times "found dozens of areas in the Reflecting Pool's new liner that showed tears, bubbles and peeling." The latter topic led to a legal fight that included federal judge decisions against Trump. On 17 May 2026, Gary Trudeau addressed Trump in Doonesbury. He pointed out how Trump's own AI on Truth Social noted many of his statements were not true. The fallacies included that Trump won in 2020, his tariffs were "paid by the selling country," Ukraine started the war with Russia, "Trump ended eight wars," that "countries emptied their prisons or mental institutions and sent their populations to the United States" and that Trump had lowered "drug prices by 1500%."
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| In the Spring 2026 issue of Catalyst, the newsletter of the Union of Concerned Scientists, Gretchen Goldman noted "when our leaders make decisions that affect us all without relying on the accumulated knowledge and expertise of experts including scientists, they're inevitably influenced instead by their own interests: power, money, access, even spite." Later, in an article titled "Sand in the Gears," Michelle Rama-Poccia stated that "the Trump administration appears bent on dismantling policies on climate change, clean energy, and environmental justice. And in its march toward authoritarianism, it has trampled the rights of people of color, silenced opposition, started senseless wars, and even signaled its intention to nationalize voting in the United States -- a potentially democracy-ending action."
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| Erik Stokstad noted in the 28 May 2026 issue of Science that, "countering a 2021 EPA report that the weed killer atrazine threatens more than 1000 species, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service last week announced its review found the chemical does not pose an extinction-level threat to endangered plants and animals. That may stymie calls for the United States to ban it, as Europe already does." On 2 June 2026, Sam Sifton pointed out in The Morning that "the Trump administration is dismantling an ocean monitoring network that scientists use to track climate change and marine health."
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| Sifton also stated that "for days, people close to Trump say, the president has been leaning toward scrapping his plan to establish a $1.8 billion fund to compensate people who claim to have been victims of unfair government prosecution. The retreat went public yesterday. The Justice Department announced it would abide by a federal judge's temporary order not to activate the fund -- at least until June 12, when a hearing is scheduled. Critics of the plan, including prominent Republicans, have characterized it as a scheme to lavish the president's friends with public money. And some administration officials privately expressed relief that the judge's ruling gave them a way out of what they saw as a self-inflicted mess. Still, Republicans last night were skeptical that the president would actually abandon the fund." In the Summer 2026 issue of Catalyst, it was pointed out that the "unprecedented pace of attacks on science by the Trump administration . . . include instances when political officials deleted the release of scientific reports, ordered federal scientists to withdraw peer-reviewed studies from scientific journals, or redid analyses that produced results at odds with the administration's policy preferences." Elsewhere in that issue, Michelle Rama-Poccia stated "President Trump has already appointed multiple unqualified FEMA leaders and overseen chaotic operations that have led to the cancelation of billions in aid for communities to prepare for climate extremes and disasters." And in "The Past Is Our Future," an article by Deborah Blum in the July/August 2026 issue of Scientific American, Harmit Malik of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center stated: "We're now at risk of dismantling the essential infrastructure of medical research."
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| Environmental issues are also being influenced by this administration. Sam Sifton noted in The Morning on 19 June 2026 that the "Trump administration backed off a plan to remove hundreds of ocean monitoring instruments which are critical for studying climate change." On 11 July 2026 in was noted in The Morning that "the Trump administration moved to allow farming, drilling and mining in the habitats of endangered animals. Environmentalists called it the most severe cut to wildlife protections in 50 years. The E.P.A. fired an official who wrote a memo requiring a fish farm to track microplastics, accusing him of trying to embarrass the agency. The Trump administration picked a climate science critic with no training in climate science to lead an official report on how climate change affects the U.S." In The Morning on 5 September 2026, "the Trump administration moved to strip more federal protections from millions of acres of wetlands that help feed drinking water systems. Homeland Security claimed that a border security project in Big Bend National Park was limited to 'survey and design' work." A reporter of The New York Times "found evidence that patrol roads and barriers were being built." The point was made in The Morning on 29 September 2026 that "the coal industry asked the Energy Department to use emergency powers to keep aging coal plants open, and the government obliged."
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| Sam Sifton pointed out in The Morning on 20 October 2026 that "California's latest climate change report includes dire projections like more extreme floods and a rise in deaths from wildfire smoke." On 25 October 2026, Adam B. Kushner noted in The Morning that "Trump rolled back regulations meant to protect Americans from toxic air pollution." In The Vanishing Earth, James Crawford stated that "in October 2020, in an attempt to mitigate the growth of the stacks, the EPA . . . reversed a thirty-year-old ruling against the use of phosphogypsum in road construction. Despite acknowledging that the waste was full of toxic contaminants, including radium-226 with its sixteen-hundred-year radioactive half-life, the agency (then undergoing drastic reforms under the first administration of President Trump) suddenly deemed the material safe . . . Despite President Joe Biden's administration revoking the agency's approval in July 2021, another two years on, Governor DeSantis commissioned a feasibility from Florida's Department of Transportation." And, as Sam Sifton noted in The Morning on 28 October 2026, "the Trump administration plans to loosen rules on methane emissions, a potent driver of climate change."
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| To be continued ...
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