The Future of Extreme Weather Under the Trump Administration

By Erika Pietrzak, August 14 , 2025

Extreme weather is hitting harder than ever, but instead of boosting protection, the Trump administration is slashing climate programs and emergency funding. Critical tools are being dismantled, leaving vulnerable communities exposed and unprepared for the next disaster.

Source: Environmental Health News

With floods, heat waves, and hurricanes sweeping the nation from coast to coast, extreme weather is on the minds of countless Americans. From planning for power outages to picking up the pieces of homes lost to disasters, the impacts of extreme weather events are catastrophic and life-altering. Reactions from federal agencies have been lackluster and criticized by many citizens. As of this writing, people are still missing from the floods in Texas almost a month ago.

The cost of these disasters is higher than ever with increased frequency and severity of storms as a result of climate change. America has averaged nine extreme weather events per year between 1980 and 2024 that exceeded more than one billion dollars in damages. However, between 2020 and 2024, this increased to 23 events annually, including 27 events in 2024. Today, half of Americans have been affected by extreme cold or heat waves in the last five years and, according to a survey conducted by The Hill, eight in ten American adults have recently experienced extreme weather. These figures are only expected to increase as the Trump administration continues to weaken existing support systems for extreme weather and erase federal protections.

The “One Big Beautiful Bill” was signed into law by President Donald Trump on July 4, 2025. The bill has been criticized for many reasons, including its attacks on climate policy. The League of Conservation voters called this legislation “the most anti-environmental bill of all time.” While the bill was making its way through the halls of Congress, heat waves struck Washington D.C. and severe thunderstorms rattled the entire DMV region (D.C., Maryland, and Virginia). Alice Hill, a David M. Rubenstein senior fellow for energy and the environment, claims the bill “undermines U.S. resilience to extreme weather by reducing investments in energy efficiency and ending tax breaks for rooftop solar.” The funding cuts to energy efficiency programs will weaken power grids across the country, requiring more dirty energy to power homes and businesses.

These cuts in clean energy coincide with dramatic cuts to the Federal Emergency Management Authority (FEMA) and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) that place federal response to these extreme weather events at a drastic disadvantage. The Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities initiative under FEMA has been completely cut, stripping the agency of 880 million USD allocated to improving existing communities and structures abilities to survive extreme weather events. The Trump administration has also ended NOAA’s “billion-dollar weather and climate disasters” database that tracks the cost of climate disasters, a critical tool for assessing risk and planning disaster responses.

Source: New York Times

Similarly, the National Climate Assessment, the most comprehensive source of information on climate in the United States for t more than three decades, has been halted by the current administration. Decades of precedent will be ended with these cuts while programs to prevent extreme weather events and increase community resilience will be left without proper information to protect from catastrophic damage. This will also plague the public’s understanding of climate change and prevent Americans from being informed about their climate and disaster risk.

More than a hundred people perished in summer floods in Texas so far this year, yet the Trump administration has paused research on flooding risks. Experts have been working on updating Atlas 14 to give “precise estimates of the likelihood of extreme precipitation events in a warming world” by compiling a new database under Atlas 15. This new database would help millions understand their risk and save costs by properly preparing for floods and properly designing infrastructure to withstand future risks. Atlas 14 currently works on data from decades ago and funding from the first phase during the Biden administration is drying up.

The National Weather Services (NWS) also saw ten percent of its employees be fired or forced to leave due to funding cuts. These cuts will make forecasting less accurate and specific to localities, creating confusion and ill prepared communities for extreme weather events. Staffing shortages are already harming specific areas as four weather forecasting offices no longer have the capacity to offer 24-hour weather services, including announcing evacuations. More than ten NWS weather balloon launching sites are experiencing delays or reduced launch allowances. In early May, five former NWS heads released a letter warning that these staffing cuts and decreased forecasting efforts would cause “needless loss of life.”

The NWS is experiencing specific cuts to Meteorologists-in-Charge (MIC), especially in the midwest and central United States, who bring leadership and expertise to weather forecasting. They also serve as the main point of contact with local emergency managers during extreme weather events and control communications between different agencies in regards to climatic disasters. As of early May, 25 percent of all weather forecasting offices did not have MICs on staff due to budget and staffing cuts, affecting nearly 78 million Americans or 23 percent of the United States population. This will prevent our tax dollars from reaching life saving measures before and during extreme weather events.

USAID funding cuts will further worsen the devastation caused by extreme weather events around the world. USAID’s investments in climate risk reduction saved $15 in disaster recovery for every dollar spent. These cuts mean communities will face higher recovery costs, be less prepared when disasters strike, and see slower, less effective emergency response. Instead of building resilience, we will be left paying far more for damage that could have been prevented.

At the same time, the administration’s push to Increase investments in artificial intelligence (AI) while slashing clean energy funding puts dangerous pressure on an already strained U.S energy grid while increasing global warming and decreasing water availability. AI’s data centers, physical structures, technology, and energy needs place significant burdens on the entire world. Without coinciding with investments in clean and sustainable use of AI, the increase in AI capacity the Trump administration seeks will exacerbate the current climate crisis. These pressures on the energy grid will result in frequent power outages, more expensive energy, and cascading blackouts during life-threatening heatwaves. 

Many experts believe that the intention of these cuts, beyond simply denying climate science, is to create space in the private sector for these holes to be filled for profit. However, privatizing life-and-death weather services means that the poorer communities that are most likely to experience extreme weather events will not be able to access services that could prevent dozens, even hundreds, of deaths each year. These areas, along with sparsely populated rural areas, will likely have less accurate predictions than other areas that would provide higher economic returns. Even current privatized weather apps rely on public data for some of their information and predictions.

Source: CNN

Beyond just the impact of these disasters, extreme weather has life-long impacts on many vulnerable communities. Heatwaves have been connected to lower birth weights and premature birth. Wildfire smoke can worsen asthma and lung diseases.  Attacks on the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) weaken worker protections against extreme heat. These impacts will be worse for individuals who do not speak English as the administration ended the translation of National Weather Service alerts into different languages. People without health insurance and impoverished communities may not be able to fully recover from climate disasters. The reckless defunding of necessary programs to protect Americans from the impacts of extreme weather events leave vulnerable people and communities to fend for themselves against climate disasters. These changes will not only place thousands at risk, but will likely cause many vulnerable individuals their lives.

Extreme weather goes beyond party lines and politics– they cause suffering for people of all political affiliations. These disasters cost lives, destroy communities, and create harm lasting long beyond the event itself. The Trump administration is worsening the impacts of these events while damaging communities’ abilities to prepare.

Source: Fiona Katauskas

Change The Chamber is a nonpartisan coalition of young adults, 100+ student groups across the country, environmental justice and frontline community groups, and other allied organizations.