“Reasonable voices must act now and build opposition to this unprecedented plan.” Manning Argue. “Progressives should be steadfast in defining this proposal as a blank check to the same contractors who can’t afford it Deliver ships on time, ordnance at scale, or perform clean audits. Pumping money into a defense sector that has repeatedly failed basic tests of accountability will not miraculously lead to innovation.
In addition to objecting to the budget for the Pentagon — the world’s largest corporate climate polluter — after it was officially released on Friday, progressive voices have drawn attention to some specific proposed cuts and their consequences.
To fund the Pentagon’s massive budget for waging the war, “the Trump administration is asking to eliminate billions of dollars in funds for renewable energy, environmental justice, decarbonization, space science, and climate change education,” says Emily Gardner. I mentioned friday to ios, American Geophysical UnionNews magazine.
As Catherine Tsantiris, director of government relations at Ocean Conservancy, noted, among the federal agencies targeted is the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). She said the proposed cuts “are in direct contrast to the clear bipartisan support Congress demonstrated earlier this year by protecting funding for this important agency.”
“Cutting NOAA’s budget would weaken weather forecasting, disrupt fisheries management, and halt ocean research — putting Americans’ lives, livelihoods, and global scientific leadership at risk,” Tsantiris continued. “Congress must once again reject these cuts to ensure NOAA has the resources it needs to support our economy, protect our oceans, and keep Americans safe.”
“This proposed budget is exactly what America does not need when facing rising energy bills, frequent extreme weather, and rising insurance rates,” said Quentin Scott, director of federal policy at the Chesapeake Climate Action Network Fund.
“By draining funds for climate science and innovation, the budget jeopardizes our ability to understand and respond to the accelerating climate crisis,” Scott said. “Defunding NOAA’s climate research doesn’t make the problem go away, it just makes those risks more serious and more expensive. Households across the country are already paying the price in higher utility bills, flooding, and storm damage. This budget will only exacerbate those burdens.”
Trump’s budget proposal backed by major oil companies came in the wake of devastating floods in Hawaii and as temperatures rise in the western United States. It also follows the World Meteorological Organization’s annual report on the climate emergency caused by fossil fuels, which last month prompted UN Secretary-General António Guterres to declare that “every major climate indicator is flashing red.”
Trump also proposed cutting the EPA’s budget, amid calls to fire its director, Lee Zeldin, for “brazenly” betraying the EPA’s core mission of “protecting human health and the environment.” Trump also proposed cutting the agency’s budget. Referring to this attack, Climate Action Campaign Director Margie Alt said described The president’s plan as “nothing but a serious plan” and “a declaration to whom this administration is willing to allow to suffer.”
Pointing to some of the wealthy CEOs whose campaign money helped Trump return to power after he promised to repeal his predecessor’s climate policies and enact a “drill, baby, drill” agenda, Alt also called it “a reiteration of this president’s devotion to fossil fuel interests.”
“This budget would cut the EPA’s budget by 52%, undermining the agency’s ability to protect the air our children breathe, the water our families drink, and the communities already enduring the worst of extreme weather and climate change,” she said. “It is a cruel, deliberate choice to remove protections that keep families safe, healthy and protected from the impacts of pollution and climate change.”
According to the alternative:
This is not just a continuation of last year’s declines. It is an escalation of the Trump administration’s polluters-first agenda and its assault on public health safeguards. Since January 2025, among other violations, this administration has committed Fired 600 National Weather Service employees, proposed Judiciary critical climate research institutions, I gave up Mercury pollution standards for 60 dirty power plants, and I devoured it Clean Air Act. This budget is the Trump administration’s response to its friends and major shareholders in the oil, coal, and gas industry. It reduces resources allocated to clean energy Zeros It departs from environmental justice, pushing oil, gas and coal, at a time when the prices of these energy sources are skyrocketing.
Never before have we had an administration that so blatantly treats American lives as expendable, as this budget demonstrates. Congress must reject this inhumane budget in its entirety. The American people deserve a federal government that protects them, not a government that trades their health, safety, and future for huge profits in oil, coal, and gas.
As Gardner reported, Trump’s budget “also proposes strengthening the Endangered Species Act and the Marine Mammal Protection Act, but did not provide details beyond noting that the program would be in the Interior Department,” among other changes and cuts.
“The Administration is once again demanding that an overworked and severely understaffed federal workforce do more with less,” said Chris Westphal, senior legislative counsel for government relations at Defenders of Wildlife. “The proposed budget recklessly merges the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries without the resources needed to sustain scientific expertise, opens our lands and waters to extractive industries, and hollows out an already overworked workforce that provides critical conservation work.”
“This proposed budget pushes us further in the wrong direction, which could result in more layoffs and fewer resources for wildlife conservation, which is pivotal to the recovery of America’s endangered species,” Westphal warned. “Our nation’s lands and the wildlife that depend on them as habitat deserve better than to be ignored by agencies that have become mere shells of their former selves.”
The president’s proposed attack on endangered species came just days after the administration’s so-called “God Squad” voted unanimously in favor of an exemption that would allow fossil fuel operations in the Gulf of Mexico to ignore policies meant to protect them. In response, Andrew Bowman, president and CEO of Defenders of Wildlife, said, “I cannot stress enough how illegal and unprecedented this action is.”
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