How the Trump Administration is Attempting to Erase Climate
By Erika Pietrzak, September 4, 2025
The Trump administration erased climate data and limited access to environmental information, hiding the true risks of climate change. They also censored climate discussions and shut down key research sites, effectively hiding the truth about our planet’s future.
Source: National Security Archive
With a continuous wave of attacks on climate change mitigation and alleviation, the Trump administration has declared a war on climate. By promoting ecocide not only domestically but globally, the Trump administration has relentlessly destroyed environmental protections, eradicated organizations, and thus worsened climate change’s impacts. Now the administration is attempting to erase governmental climate action altogether.
Between January 20 and February 6, two thousand datasets on climate disappeared from data.gov. In the first few weeks of the administration, personnel proceeded to “delete all webpages, fact sheets, and emissions and financial incentives calculators related to President Obama’s 2015 Clean Power Plan.” The current Trump administration also erased the White House pages on the Council of Environmental Quality (CEQ) and the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). These divisions “coordinate federal environmental and scientific efforts and work closely with federal agencies and other White House offices on environmental energy policies and initiatives.” This deletion included removing access to the CEQ’s Climate and Economic Justice Screening Tool which helps the public identify communities in the United States facing disproportionate climate impacts, making it easier to provide these communities in need with the tools and assistance needed to make them climate resilient.
Source: National Security Archive
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was also hit by these changes within the first month as all mentions of climate change were removed from prominent parts of its website. The areas that still have this term are now buried in the depth of the website without easily accessible tabs. Other agencies are experiencing similar alterations. The State department saw the “Climate Crisis” part of the website was deleted and the Department of Homeland Security saw the same for its “Addressing the Climate Crisis” section. The White House also ordered the Department of Agriculture to take down all references to the climate crisis. By mid-March, two hundred government websites had their climate information erased.
In the first hours of Donald Trump’s second term in office, an executive order was signed titled “Restoring Freedom of Speech and Ending Federal Censorship.” Since then, the Trump administration has imposed strict rules on speech and significantly censored the climate movement. In one executive order signed on Inauguration Day, the term “energy” was redefined in order to exclude solar and wind power. Scientists were told that in order to receive federal funding, they could not use certain terms and to stop researching particular topics around environmental justice. Words common in the climate sphere (such as marginalized, trauma, accessibility, advocacy, community, alternative energy, at risk, emission, sex, and vulnerable) are now banned from government websites and materials and flagged in research proposals. Other specific climate-related terms were targeted as well, including pollution, carbon footprint, clean energy, clean water, environmental concern, environmental justice, microplastics, global warming, green, and even the word climate itself. You can see the full list here.
On June 30th the Trump administration “shut down a federal website that had shared congressionally mandated reports and research on climate change.” The U.S. Global Change Research Program’s website (globalchange.gov) was also taken down, along with all its information on the impacts of climate change in America. Scientists worry about the loss of the public’s ability to access “scientific information that the American taxpayers paid for, as it’s their right to have it.” Along with the website, the Trump administration removed all five versions of the National Climate Assessment (NCA) report. These acts have been cited as “scientific censorship at its worst.” Along with this congressionally mandated research, the website was also home to numerous public education podcasts and videos.
Source: Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
This unprecedented data scrubbing ends access to the work of the U.S. Global Change Research Program that spanned over three decades of research. After being implemented in 1990, climate assessments are required to be prepared every four years. Yet, in April, the Trump administration fired hundreds of scientists working on the upcoming report. Katharine Hayhoe, a climate scientist at Texas Tech University and an author of four previous climate assessment reports, says the information the administration now hides from the public “is absolutely critical to making good decisions for the future, whether you’re a farmer, a homeowner, a business owner, a city manager, or anyone really who wants to ensure a safe and resilient future for themselves and for their children.”
Additionally, the Trump administration took down another site, climate.gov. This removal came after recent funding cuts to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The climate.gov website now redirects users to noaa.gov/climate. While this information has technically not been taken away, simply relocated, NOAA has been forced to streamline its information, presenting to the public only surface level facts in order to fit everything on their website. Experts call this change a “pale substitute” for the previous expansive climate education website.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) had a small team working on assessing the future risk index of climate disasters in various regions across the country so that all communities could properly prepare for any climate emergencies. Scientists tried to change the name of the program to protect it, but in February, the Trump administration deleted the index, its years of work, and hope it gave to help American citizens. The tool “is crucial for planning by local governments, insurers, utilities and others that look to FEMA to help contend with a growing list of disasters.”
Source: Bruce Plante | Cagle Cartoons
The removal of public, easily accessible climate science and sustainability education is part of the Trump administration’s attempt to hide the risks of fossil fuels and greenhouse gases that the administration promotes and protects. This is not only dangerous for public knowledge, but for future climate disasters and the price of mitigating climate change. The Trump Administration is “weakening the country’s capacity to understand global warming and to prepare for its consequences.” With disastrous consequences for public health due to a pronounced war on climate conducted during the first Trump administration the current all-out attack on climate policy this term is bound to create more dire health consequences.
So, what can you do if even a national agency cannot protect itself? Scientists are working tirelessly to fight the removal of these precious databases and we must support them. The National Security Archive’s Climate Change Transparency Project works to protect this data from erasure. The Guardian has compiled some of the deleted data from the FEMA into this interactive future risk index. The WayBack Machine holds deleted websites for access. The Environmental Data and Governance Initiative works tirelessly to preserve this crucial research as well.
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