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donald trump
Trump Quits Key Treaties Amid 'Increasingly Deadly and Expensive' Weather Disasters
"The Trump regime is sending a clear message to the world that the US refuses to take responsibility for its own actions," said one campaigner.
Jan 08, 2026
President Donald Trump's withdrawal of the United States from dozens of international treaties and organizations and his administration's cuts to climate research and emergency response come as the frequency, lethality, and cost of major extreme weather disasters grow, according to an analysis published Thursday.
The Climate Central analysis of billion-dollar US weather and climate disasters revealed that 2025 saw the third-highest annual number of such events, trailing only the two previous years. At least 276 deaths and $115 billion in damages are attributable to such disasters.
This analysis also came as California observed the one-year anniversary of wildfires that killed 31 people and caused billions of dollars in damages, making them among the most expensive wildfires on record.
The new research is the first update of Climate Central's US Billion-Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters database, which was launched last October. The resource will help fill an information void caused by the Trump administration's move in May ending updates to the government's own database that tracked climate disasters causing more than $1 billion in damage.
After the US admin cancelled the $B Climate + Weather Disaster dataset, @climatecentral.org hired the scientists who ran it and set it back up. Now the 2025 numbers are in: it's 3rd highest year on record and highest year w/o land-falling hurricanes. More: www.climatecentral.org/climate-serv...
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— Katharine Hayhoe (@katharinehayhoe.com) January 8, 2026 at 9:33 AM
Key findings of Climate Central's update include:
- The past three years rank highest for the annual number of billion-dollar disasters: 2023 (28 events), 2024 (27 events), and 2025 (23 events);
- The number of billion-dollar severe storms set a new record in 2025, with 21 such events, reflecting near-record numbers of damaging high wind and tornado reports during the spring and summer of 2025;
- A billion-dollar drought affected the western US in 2025, and was primarily driven by heat, rather than by a lack of precipitation; and
- The catastrophic flash flooding in the Texas Hill Country in July 2025 was one of the deadliest inland floods in US history—even though it did not even result in economic losses of $1 billion.
"This trend of increasingly deadly and expensive disasters is occurring as the Trump administration continues to defund and cut staff at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the nation’s foremost science agency whose mission includes tracking and studying weather and climate, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) that prepares for, responds to, and helps communities recover from disasters," the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) said Thursday in response to the new research.
Additionally, Trump on Wednesday signed a legally dubious executive order under which the US will become the first country to ever quit the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the parent treaty serving as the foundation for international accords including the Kyoto Protocol and Paris Agreement.
Trump's order also pulls the US from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), International Renewable Energy Agency & International Solar Alliance, International Union for Conservation of Nature, and numerous other agreements and organizations, even as the human-caused climate emergency worsens.
Experts stress that this is the opposite of what governments should be doing amid a worsening planetary crisis.
“As a nation, we must invest much more in resilience measures as well as sharply cut the heat-trapping emissions driving climate change," UCS Climate and Energy program senior policy director Rachel Cleetus said Thursday. "This administration has instead clawed back funding for climate resilience projects, politicized disaster aid, and is doing its utmost to boost fossil fuels and worsen the climate crisis. Congress must step up to oppose these harmful actions and help keep people safe.”
Basav Sen, a climate leader at the Institute for Policy Studies, on Thursday noted that the US is "the world’s largest cumulative greenhouse gas emitter, and the largest producer and exporter of oil and gas today."
"By walking away from the UNFCCC and the IPCC," Sen added, "the Trump regime is sending a clear message to the world that the US refuses to take responsibility for its own actions."
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'We'll Hit Them Very Hard': Trump Threatens Iran Again as Protest Death Toll Rises
Critics pointed out that Trump has often endorsed violence against protesters when they opposed him.
Jan 08, 2026
President Donald Trump doubled down on his threats to attack Iran on Thursday in response to its government's increasingly violent crackdown on ongoing protests.
"If they start killing people, which they tend to do during their riots—they have lots of riots—if they do it, we're going to hit them very hard," he said.
Addressing the Iranian people, he added: "You must stand up for your right to freedom. There is nothing like freedom. You are a brave people. It’s a shame what’s happening to your country."
The Norway-based Iran Human Rights (IHR) reported on Thursday that Iranian security forces have killed at least 45 protesters since demonstrations against the regime began in late December. Wednesday was the bloodiest day yet, with 13 people reportedly killed.
On Thursday, Iranian authorities shut down internet access for the population, which has limited the flow of information in and out of the country.
The protests kicked off in response to the sudden collapse in the value of Iran's currency, the rial, which exacerbated the country's already spiraling cost-of-living crisis, heightening inflation and putting many basic goods out of reach for many Iranians.
This economic crisis has been shifted into hyperdrive since Trump returned to office last year and re-implemented his “maximum pressure” strategy against Iran, including more severe economic sanctions and a 12-day war in June during which the US struck several Iranian nuclear sites. Over the past year, the average cost of food has increased by 70%, while the cost of medicine has increased by 50%.
The rial has lost 95% of its value since 2018, when Trump withdrew the US from the nuclear agreement with Iran, which included sanctions relief.
Last Friday, just one day before he bombed Venezuela as part of an operation to overthrow its leader Nicolás Maduro and seize the nation's oil reserves, Trump wrote on Truth Social that "if Iran shoots and violently kills peaceful protesters, which is their custom, the United States of America will come to their rescue. We are locked and loaded and ready to go."
On Tuesday, US Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), a leading proponent of regime change, warned Iran's leaders that "if you keep killing your people who are demanding a better life—Donald J. Trump is going to kill you." Just days before, Graham said that Iran's "weakened" state was thanks in part to Trump's efforts to "economically isolate" the country.
Iran has blamed the unrest on "interference in Iran’s internal affairs” by the United States. The nation's president, Masoud Pezeshkian, has urged authorities to exhibit the “utmost restraint” in handling protesters. But earlier this week, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khameini said "rioters" must be "put in their place," while a top judge accused demonstrators of being agents of the US and Israel.
The latest swell of protests began after Reza Pahlavi, the former crown prince and son of Iran's former US-backed shah, called for demonstrators to take to the streets. On Thursday, Pahlavi, who has lived most of his life in the US after the royal family was run out of Iran during the 1979 revolution, met with Israeli leaders, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Isaac Herzog.
Critics pointed out that Trump has often endorsed violence against protesters when they opposed him. Just a day before he issued his latest threat, he defended a federal immigration agent who fatally shot an unarmed mother in Minneapolis, while members of his administration falsely described her as a "domestic terrorist."
He has previously advocated for the US military to be deployed to use force against protesters and threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act to quell peaceful protests, including the No Kings demonstrators who mobilized nationwide in October.
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Hochul Backs Mamdani Childcare Expansion Plan With Two Years of State Funding
"New York just got a lot more livable for thousands of families."
Jan 08, 2026
Thousands of parents in New York City will have access to free childcare after Gov. Kathy Hochul joined forces with Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Thursday to roll out the first steps of his campaign promise to make childcare universal throughout the city.
The governor announced $1.7 billion in this year's budget that will seek to create childcare access for 100,000 more children, part of a plan to spend $4.5 billion on childcare across the state during this fiscal year.
She said she is committed to “fully fund the first two years of the city’s implementation" of Mamdani's program, which he hopes will one day provide free childcare to kids between 6 weeks and 5 years old.
According to the childcare marketplace website TrustedCare, the average cost of daycare for children in New York City ranges from $2,000 to $4,200 per month, depending on the child's age and schedule.
"This is something every family can agree on," Hochul said at a press conference Thursday at a YMCA in the Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn. "The cost of childcare is too damn high."
The governor and mayor will begin by increasing funding for the city's existing 3K program, created under former Mayor Bill de Blasio, which extended free pre-K, which was already available to all 4-year-olds, to 3-year-olds when spots are available. Hochul said she and Mamdani will seek to "fix" the program and make it truly universal.
After initially promising to make it available to all 3-year-olds, Mamdani's predecessor, former Mayor Eric Adams, instead slashed funding for it and other early childhood education programs, which children's advocates said drove kids out of the public school system and left many unable to find seats in nearby areas.
"We stand here today because of the young New Yorkers who were no longer willing to accept that the joy of beginning a family had to be paired with the heartbreak of moving away from a city that they have always loved," Mamdani said.
In addition to making that program universal, Hochul and Mamdani are rolling out a program offering childcare for 2-year-olds, known as "2 Care," which will first be available in "high-need areas" before being rolled out to all parents by 2029.
Mamdani has estimated that the plan to make pre-K fully universal will cost about $6 billion per year, with funding made more challenging by the fact that President Donald Trump recently cut off federal childcare subsidies to states, including $3 billion to New York, amid a manufactured panic about rampant fraud. Hochul has said the state is mulling its legal options to fight the funding freeze.
In the meantime, she plans to spend $73 million in the first year to cover the cost and creation of 2 Care, and $425 million in the second year as more children enroll.
While the source of the funds was not immediately clear, Hochul has said that money for the initial phase of the rollout will come from revenue already allocated by the legislature and not from any tax hikes in the coming year.
"We’re barely six months away from people dismissing Zohran Mamdani for running on universal childcare," said Rebecca Katz, an adviser to the new mayor's campaign. "And now here we are. Incredible. New York just got a lot more livable for thousands of families."
Some New Yorkers who supported Mamdani's campaign expressed excitement on social media about having one of their highest costs lifted.
"Universal 3K is the major reason we could afford to stay in our apartment in NYC," said Jordan Zakarin, a producer at the labor-focused media company More Perfect Union. "Making care free for 2-year-olds will be a game-changer for so many families and keep so many of them in NYC."
Andrei Berman, a father of three children, said that "this will save me 40 grand and eliminate my biggest expense a year early."
The high cost of childcare is an issue that has brought Mamdani, a self-described democratic socialist, together with the centrist Hochul. The endorsement of New York's "first mom governor," a leading Democratic power-broker in the state and the country, proved a critical stepping stone for Mamdani on his unlikely ascent to the city's highest office last year.
"To the cynics who insist that politics is too broken to deliver meaningful change, to those who think that the promises of a campaign cannot survive once confronted with the realities of government, today is your answer," Mamdani said. "This is a day that so many believed would never come, but it is a day that working people across our city have delivered through the sheer power of their hard work and their unwavering belief that a better future was within their grasp."
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