SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
war on science
Trump 'Taking a Sledgehammer' to One of World's Most Vital Climate Research Center, Scientists Warn
"This is self-sabotage by a wildly ignorant and malicious administration cutting off their nose to spite their face," said one hurricane researcher.
Dec 17, 2025
One US House Democrat pledged Tuesday night that Colorado officials will fight the Trump administration's latest attack on science "with every legal tool that we have" after top White House budget adviser Russell Vought announced a decision to break up a crucial climate research center in Boulder.
Rep. Joe Neguse (D-Colo.) called the decision to dismantle the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) "a deeply dangerous" action.
"NCAR is one of the most renowned scientific facilities in the WORLD—where scientists perform cutting-edge research every day," said Neguse. "We will fight this reckless directive."
Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) said the National Science Foundation (NSF), which contracts the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) to run NCAR, "will be breaking up" the center and has begun a "comprehensive review," with "vital activities such as weather research" being moved to another entity.
He added that NCAR is "one of the largest sources of climate alarmism in the country.”
But scientists pointed to the center's 65-year history of making major advances in climate research and developing systems that scientists use regularly.
NCAR developed GPS dropsondes, which are dropped from the center's aircraft into the eye of hurricanes to gather crucial data and improve forecasts, as well as severe weather warnings and analyses of the economic impacts that weather can bring, Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California, told USA Today, which first reported on the plan to dismantle the facility.
Neguse also called the decision to shutter NCAR "blatantly retaliatory." The breakup of the center was announced days after President Donald Trump announced his plan to pardon Tina Peters, despite uncertainty over his authority to do so. The former county clerk was convicted in Colorado court on felony charges of allowing someone to access secure voting system data—part of an effort to prove the baseless conspiracy theory pushed by Trump that the 2020 election had been stolen from him.
Trump attacked Colorado's Democratic governor, Jared Polis, over the Peters case last week, calling him "incompetent" and "pathetic."
Also on Tuesday, the administration announced it was canceling $109 million in environmental transportation grants for Colorado that were aimed at boosting investment in electric vehicles, rail improvements, and other research.
Writer Benjamin Kunkel said the dismantling of NCAR is evidently "what happens to a state whose leading officials do accept climate science... and don't accept that Trump won the 2020 election."
Polis said Tuesday that his government had not received any communication from the White House about the NCAR review and dismantling, but "if true, public safety is at risk and science is being attacked."
"Climate change is real, but the work of NCAR goes far beyond climate science," he said. "NCAR delivers data around severe weather events like fires and floods that help our country save lives and property, and prevent devastation for families.”
The White House Tuesday said it objected to UCAR's "woke direction," including its efforts to "make the sciences more welcoming, inclusive, and justice-centered" via the Rising Voices Center for Indigenous and Earth Sciences and wind turbine research that aims to "better understand and predict the impact of weather conditions and changing climate on offshore wind production.”
The administration also said the review of NCAR will eliminate "green new scam research activities"—green energy research completed by many of the center's 830 employees.
Climate scientist Katherine Hayhoe warned that the dismantling of NCAR was an attack on "quite literally our global mothership."
"NCAR supports the scientists who fly into hurricanes, the meteorologists who develop new radar technology, the physicists who envision and code new weather models, and yes—the largest community climate model in the world," said Hayhoe. "Dismantling NCAR is like taking a sledgehammer to the keystone holding up our scientific understanding of the planet."
Hurricane specialist Michael Lowry said the center is "crucial to cutting-edge meteorology and improvements in weather forecasting."
"It's far, far bigger than a 'climate' research lab," he said. "This is self-sabotage by a wildly ignorant and malicious administration cutting off their nose to spite their face."
The president this year has also pushed massive cuts to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, where major climate and weather research takes place. The cuts have come as 2024 has been named the hottest year on record and scientists have warned that planetary heating has contributed to recent weather disasters.
“Any plans to dismantle NSF NCAR," UCAR president Antonio Busalacchi told the Washington Post, "would set back our nation’s ability to predict, prepare for, and respond to severe weather and other natural disasters."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Sanders Leads Call for Senate to Force RFK Jr. to Answer for 'War on Science'
"Failure to conduct an oversight hearing on Secretary Kennedy's actions would be an abdication of our responsibility—both from a moral perspective and as a matter of sound public health policy."
Dec 09, 2025
On the heels of a federal panel appointed by US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. voting to reverse a recommendation that newborns receive the hepatitis B vaccine, Sen. Bernie Sanders led a Tuesday call for the HHS leader to be hauled before a relevant congressional committee to answer for his actions that "undermine the health and well-being of the American people and people throughout the world."
In a letter signed by Democrats on the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee and Sanders (I-Vt.), its ranking member, the lawmakers wrote to Republican Chair Bill Cassidy (La.), a medical doctor, to argue that "Kennedy has waged an unprecedented war on science and vaccines that have saved millions of lives," and demand his testimony.
The letter highlights Kennedy directing the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention "to publish false information on its website suggesting that childhood vaccines cause autism," ousting a CDC director "who refused to rubber-stamp his dangerous and unsubstantiated" recommendations, spreading misinformation about the measles vaccine during an outbreak, and defunding research "that will leave us woefully unprepared for future pandemics and public health emergencies."
Kennedy has also "packed a critical scientific body, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), with vaccine deniers, completely upending the rigorous scientific process for reviewing and recommending vaccines to the public despite a commitment he made to you that ACIP would be 'maintained without changes,'" the letter continues, citing last week's hepatitis B vote.
"Mr. Chairman: Holding an oversight hearing on Secretary Kennedy’s ill-conceived actions is more important now than ever," argued Sanders and Democratic Sens. Angela Alsobrooks (Md.), Tammy Baldwin (Wis.), Lisa Blunt Rochester (Del.), Maggie Hassan (NH), John Hickenlooper (Colo.), Tim Kaine (Va.), Andy Kim (NJ), Ed Markey (Mass.), Chris Murphy (Conn.), and Patty Murray (Wash.).
"Under Secretary Kennedy;s leadership, over 1,700 people have been infected with measles. Whooping cough cases are surging nationwide, and concerns about a severe flu season continue to grow. Vaccination rates across the country are falling. Children are dying from illnesses that vaccines could have prevented," the senators stressed.
"Secretary Kennedy's response to these crises has been to spread misinformation, end campaigns encouraging flu vaccinations, fire officials who disagree with him, and place individuals with significant conflicts of interest in positions of power—completely undermining Americans' faith in our nation's public health institutions," they wrote.
The senators pointed out that "dozens of scientific and medical groups" have called for Kennedy's resignation or removal, as have more than 1,000 current and former HHS staffers. They also noted a September warning from nine former CDC directors that the secretary "is endangering every American's health," a similar joint statement the following month by ex-surgeons general, and another this month from a dozen previous Food and Drug Administration commissioners.
The letter also references Cassidy's comments about ACIP, the safety and effectiveness of vaccines, and Kennedy's supposed commitment during the confirmation process to come before the HELP Committee on a quarterly basis, which hasn't happened.
"Failure to conduct an oversight hearing on Secretary Kennedy's actions would be an abdication of our responsibility—both from a moral perspective and as a matter of sound public health policy," the letter argues, calling for his testimony as soon as possible.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Trump Energy Dept. Under Fire for Banning 'Climate Change' and Related Terms
"It's like they're trying to cover up a homicide," said the Environmental Voter Project.
Sep 29, 2025
President Donald Trump's administration has faced a flood of criticism since Politico reported Sunday that the US Department of Energy has added "climate change" and other related terms to its "list of words to avoid" at a key office.
According to a Friday email obtained by the news outlet, other banned words at the DOE's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy include carbon/CO2 "footprint," clean, decarbonization, "dirty" energy, emissions, energy transition, green, sustainability/sustainable, and tax breaks/tax credits/subsidies.
“Please ensure that every member of your team is aware that this is the latest list of words to avoid—and continue to be conscientious about avoiding any terminology that you know to be misaligned with the administration's perspectives and priorities," Rachel Overbey, acting director of external affairs, reportedly wrote.
While the DOE did not respond to Politico's request for comment, critics were quick to blast the administration for yet another anti-science move.
" Censorship can't erase facts: The climate crisis is real, it's human-made, and deadly."
"Welcome to the Donald Trump post-truth world," Dr. Ali Khan, a retired US assistant surgeon general, responded on social media.
Since returning to power in January—after raking in campaign cash from Big Oil by promising to "drill, baby, drill"—Trump has also ditched the Paris Agreement (again), declared an "energy emergency" to benefit the fossil fuel industry, and claimed during his speech to the United Nations General Assembly last week that scientists' predictions about the climate crisis were "wrong" and "made by stupid people."
Trump also nominated climate liar and former fracking CEO Chris Wright as energy secretary. Under his leadership, the department has celebrated planet-wrecking coal on social media while spreading disinformation about solar and wind energy. It also published a July climate report that independent experts said is "biased, full of errors, and not fit to inform policymaking."
The department crafted that report as part of the Environmental Protection Agency's effort to scrap the "endangerment finding," the 2009 legal opinion that greenhouse gases endanger public health and the welfare of the American people, which underpins federal climate policy.
Responding to the DOE's newly revealed directive on banned words, the Environmental Voter Project charged, "It's like they're trying to cover up a homicide."
Paul Dorfman, chair of the Nuclear Consulting Group and a Bennett scholar at the University of Sussex, said, "Death cult does its thing."
Climate Rights International's advocacy director, Lotte Leicht, declared: "Ridiculous! Banning words won't change reality... Censorship can't erase facts: The climate crisis is real, it's human-made, and deadly. Silencing science = endangering lives."
Rakesh Bhandari, associate director of interdisciplinary studies at the University of California, Berkeley, warned of the likely impacts of the DOE's banned words.
"This will not only affect research and policy directly, it will also affect what we see and don't see and what we say and don't say. The state has this power in virtue of its legitimate and cognitive authority," Bhandari said. "Note that the Democrats are pretty silent about what matters most to the GOP: The protection of fossil fuels."
Nodding to the Trump administration's broad assault on First Amendment rights, Ross Seidman, senior counsel for a Democratic state senator in Maryland, said, "More 'banned words' from the party of free speech."
The New York Times in March compiled a list of nearly 200 terms that agencies' leaders have told staff to limit or avoid as part of Trump's purge of "woke" initiatives. They range from clean energy, climate crisis, and climate science to activism, disability, diversity, gender, hate speech, mental health, pregnant people, sexuality, racism, stereotypes, and victim.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular