Trump’s budget plan would cut climate programs, boost military spending

The Trump administration on Friday unveiled its proposed 2027 budget, a list of changes — mostly cuts — that it wants to see enacted by Congress in the next fiscal year.

Perhaps the biggest news related to proposal Trump’s Office of Management and Budget is targeting a record $1.5 trillion defense budget. But buried in the lower ranks are other important changes to climate and environmental programs that would help bolster the administration’s efforts to thwart the “green agenda.” They include cuts to clean energy programs and significant reductions for federal science agencies and environmental justice efforts.

“President Trump is committed to eliminating funding for the globalist climate agenda while unleashing American energy production,” the White House said of the plan.

Some Democrats and environmental groups have already pledged to oppose it.

“This is simply an out-of-touch plea for more money for guns and bombs, and less for the things people need, like housing, health care, education, roads, scientific research and environmental protection,” read a statement from Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley, the top Democrat on the Budget Committee.

Among the most significant climate-related items in the proposed budget is the proposed cancellation of more than $15 billion in Department of Energy funds for programs focused on “unreliable renewable energy, removing carbon dioxide from the air, and other costly technologies that burden taxpayers and consumers,” the proposal states.

“The U.S. government will no longer subsidize intermittent forms of energy that destabilize the grid or Green New Scam projects that increase consumer costs and promote radical left-wing policies,” it says.

The budget would redirect about $4.7 billion from President Biden’s Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act toward the deployment of firm baseload energy, or energy that operates 24/7 and generally does not include wind or solar power. It would also cut about $1.1 billion from the budget of the Department of Energy’s Office of Science, which runs national laboratories and funds research into energy technologies.

It would also end subsidies for electric vehicle battery makers, cancel $4 billion in Department of Transportation funds for electric vehicle charger programs and eliminate the $4 billion Low-Income Home Energy Assistance program, among other changes.

Trump has long been hostile to electric vehicles. Last year he worked at repeal California authority to set stricter tailpipe emissions standards than the federal government, which underpinned the state’s ambitious plan ban on the sale of new gasoline cars from 2035.

The proposal would also cut the budget of the federal Environmental Protection Agency by nearly half. The change would eliminate some funding for the EPA’s Superfund program as well as funds for clean water programs and environmental justice programs, which the proposal says “advance discriminatory and radical ideological agendas.”

There’s also $1.6 billion for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which oversees the National Weather Service and other climate and weather agencies. The cut would target NOAA’s climate research and educational grant programs, which the proposal says “radicalize students against markets, promote [diversity, equity and inclusion] and spreading baseless environmental alarm.

NOAA has already taken a big hit since Trump returned to power, including massive layoffs and the closure of several offices.

Environmental groups urged Congress on Friday to reject the cuts.

“Cutting NOAA’s budget would weaken weather forecasts, disrupt fisheries management and block ocean research, endangering American lives, livelihoods and global scientific leadership,” said Katherine Tsantiris, director of government relations at the nonprofit Ocean Conservancy.

Other changes in the budget include new priorities for the U.S. Forest Service, which was recently the subject of a radical structural overhaul. The budget would shift the agency’s focus toward domestic timber production and wildfire risk mitigation and response, and away from more recent directions toward conservation and recreation. Last year, the administration ordered the Forest Service to open to logging some 112.5 million acres of national forest lands, including all 18 of California’s national forests.

The proposal broadly aligns with the president’s actions so far in his second term, which include a emphasis on fossil fuel production and targeted attacks against clean energy programs, especially as offshore wind power.

In his first year in office, Trump also took on climate science, including dismantle the National Center for Atmospheric Researcha leading climate and weather research institution in Boulder, Colorado, and fire hundreds of scientists is working on the sixth national climate assessment.

Like most presidential budgets, the proposal is unlikely to pass in its current form. Congress will now pass the plan, and final spending levels are expected to be set later this year.