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Climate
Sanders Says Trump Is Prioritizing Profits for 'Fossil Fuel Executive Friends' by Gutting Climate Office
"He just fired the last remaining State Department employees who work on climate change, which is undoubtedly one of the greatest threats to our national security," said Sen. Bernie Sanders.
Jul 14, 2025
U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders on Sunday condemned President Donald Trump's decision to terminate all remaining federal employees at the State Department office that works on international climate policy, a move that came as the administration hired prominent climate denialists and continued to boost the industry primarily responsible for the planetary crisis.
In a statement, Sanders (I-Vt.) accused Trump of "putting the planet and future generations at risk for the short-term profits of his fossil fuel executive friends." The president has repeatedly described climate change as a "hoax" and a "scam" and has moved aggressively to silence researchers and suppress data that contradict his false position.
Grist's Kate Yoder wrote Monday that "this isn't climate denial in the traditional sense."
"The days of loudly debating the science have mostly given way to something quieter and more insidious: a campaign to withhold the raw information itself," Yoder added.
Sanders' statement came days after the U.S. State Department fired all employees still at the Office of Global Change, which Secretary of State Marco Rubio is moving to eliminate at Trump's behest. Most of the office's staffers, who were tasked with engaging in international climate negotiations, had already departed voluntarily amid Trump's sweeping withdrawal from global climate initiatives and talks.
From May 2024 to May 2025, 4 billion people (half of the world’s population) experienced at least one extra month of extreme heat due to climate change.
And what is Trump’s response? He just fired the last remaining State Department employees who work on climate change. pic.twitter.com/IOlH9MImHU
— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) July 13, 2025
Sanders highlighted the context of Trump's assault on climate science and diplomacy, pointing to "flooding in Texas this past week and in Vermont and Brazil last summer, recent wildfires in Canada and Los Angeles, and heatwaves in the United States, Europe, India, and Pakistan"—extreme weather made more intense by fossil fuel-driven climate change.
"The past 10 years have been the warmest 10 years on record," the senator noted. "2024 was the warmest year in recorded history. January 2025 was the hottest January on record. Western Europe just had its hottest June on record. The recent heatwave in the United States put nearly 190 million Americans under heat advisories and broke heat records in more than 280 locations. Over the past 60 years, the frequency of heatwaves in the United States has tripled. According to a new study from Yale University, 64% of Americans think global warming is affecting the weather in the U.S. and almost half say they have personally experienced its effects."
"And what is President Trump's response? He just fired the last remaining State Department employees who work on climate change, which is undoubtedly one of the greatest threats to our national security," said Sanders.
While removing federal climate staffers and experts en masse, Trump's administration has hired prominent climate denialists and moved to expand planet-warming oil and gas drilling—a gift to the fossil fuel giants that poured nearly $20 million into the president's inaugural fund and helped bankroll his White House campaign.
"Every month that Donald Trump has been in power, we've seen a raft of anti-climate measures come out which are music to the fossil fuel industry's ears," said Nicu Calcea, senior data investigator at Global Witness. "From plans to steamroll through dirty new coal plants, to the attempted quashing of 'polluter pays' laws that would hold oil giants accountable, it's clear where his political priorities lie."
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'Unforgivable': FEMA Missed Thousands of Calls from Texas Flood Victims After Noem Fired Contractors
"They are intentionally breaking government—even the parts that help us when we are deep in crisis," said Sen. Chris Murphy.
Jul 12, 2025
Outrage continues to grow against U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem over her response to the deadly floods that ravaged Texas last week.
According to a Friday report from The New York Times, more than two-thirds of phone calls to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) from flood victims went unanswered after Noem allowed hundreds of contractors to be laid off on July 5, just a day after the nightmare storm.
According to The Times, this dramatically hampered the ability of the agency to respond to calls from survivors in the following days:
On July 5, as floodwaters were starting to recede, FEMA received 3,027 calls from disaster survivors and answered 3,018, or roughly 99.7 percent, the documents show. Contractors with four call center companies answered the vast majority of the calls.
That evening, however, Noem did not renew the contracts with the four companies, and hundreds of contractors were fired, according to the documents and the person briefed on the matter.
The next day, July 6, FEMA received 2,363 calls and answered 846, or roughly 35.8 percent, according to the documents. And on Monday, July 7, the agency fielded 16,419 calls and answered 2,613, or around 15.9 percent, the documents show.
Calling is one of the primary ways that flood victims apply for aid from the disaster relief agency. But Noem would wait until July 10—five days later—to renew the contracts of the people who took those phone calls.
"Responding to less than half of the inquiries is pretty horrific," Jeffrey Schlegelmilch, director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University, told The Times.
"Put yourself in the shoes of a survivor: You've lost everything, you're trying to find out what's insured and what's not, and you’re navigating multiple aid programs," he added. "One of the most important services in disaster recovery is being able to call someone and walk through these processes and paperwork."
The lapse is a direct result of a policy introduced by Noem last month, which required any payments made by FEMA above $100,000 to be directly approved by her before taking effect. Noem, who has said she wants to eliminate FEMA entirely, described it as a way of limiting "waste, fraud, and abuse."
Under this policy, Noem allowed other critical parts of the flood response to wait for days as well. Earlier this week, multiple officials within FEMA told CNN that she waited more than 72 hours to authorize the deployment of search and rescue teams and aerial imaging.
Following The Times' piece, DHS put out a statement claiming that "NO ONE was left without assistance, and every call was responded to urgently."
"When a natural disaster strikes, phone calls surge, and wait times can subsequently increase," DHS said. "Despite this expected influx, FEMA's disaster call center responded to every caller swiftly and efficiently, ensuring no one was left without assistance. No call center operators were laid off or fired."
This is undercut, however, by internal emails also obtained by The Times, which showed FEMA officials becoming frustrated and blaming the DHS Secretary for the lack of contracts. One official wrote in a July 8 email to colleagues: "We still do not have a decision, waiver, or signature from the DHS Secretary."
Democratic lawmakers were already calling for investigations into Noem's response to the floods before Friday. They also sought to look into how the Trump administration's mass firings of FEMA employees, as well as employees of the National Weather Service (NWS) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) may have hampered the response.
Following The Times' revelations, outrage has reached a greater fever pitch.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) called it "unforgivable and unforgettable" and an "inexcusable lapse in top leadership."
"Sec. Noem shows that dismantling FEMA impacts real people in real time," he said. "It hurts countless survivors & increases recovery costs."
In response to the news, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) simply wrote that "Kristi Noem must resign now."
Others pointed out that Noem has often sought to justify abolishing FEMA by characterizing it as slow and ineffectual. They suggested her dithering response was deliberate.
"She broke it on purpose," said Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.) in an interview on MSNBC. "So that when it fails this summer, she can say, 'Oh, see, we told you—FEMA doesn't work.'"
"It's not really incompetence because they know what they are doing," said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.). "They are intentionally breaking government—even the parts that help us when we are deep in crisis."
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After Delaying FEMA Response for Three Days, Noem Calls to 'Eliminate' Agency Due to Slow Texas Response
Congressional Democrats want investigations "at every level of government of what went wrong" and to "stop the dismantling of federal agencies."
Jul 10, 2025
U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem renewed her call Wednesday to "eliminate" the Federal Emergency Management Agency, calling it "slow to respond" to the deadly floods that have killed more than 120 people in Texas over the past week.
But that "slow" response was the direct result of a policy put in place by Noem herself, according to four FEMA officials who spoke to CNN.
Last month, the network reported on a new policy introduced by Noem that required any contract or grant above $100,000 to cross her desk for approval.
The administration billed the move as a way of "rooting out waste, fraud, [and] abuse." But multiple anonymous officials, including ones from FEMA, warned at the time that it could cause "massive delays" in cases of emergency, especially as hurricane season began to ramp up.
That appears to be what happened in Texas. According to the four officials who spoke to CNN, "FEMA ran into bureaucratic obstacles" as a result of this requirement. Compared to the billions that are typically required to respond to disasters, officials said $100,000 is essentially "pennies."
FEMA officials said they were left to ask for Noem's direct approval on virtually every action they took in response to the catastrophic flood, which created massive delays in deploying Urban Search and Rescue Teams.
The sources told CNN that "in the past, FEMA would have swiftly staged these teams, which are specifically trained for situations including catastrophic floods, closer to a disaster zone in anticipation of urgent requests."
Multiple sources said Noem waited until Monday to authorize the deployment of these search and rescue teams, more than 72 hours after the flooding began. Aerial imagery to aid in the search was also delayed waiting for Noem's approval.
On Wednesday, Noem used these very delays to justify her calls to disband FEMA entirely.
"Federal emergency management should be state and locally led, rather than how it has operated for decades," she said. "It has been slow to respond at the federal level. It's even been slower to get the resources to Americans in crisis, and that is why this entire agency needs to be eliminated as it exists today, and remade into a responsive agency."
President Donald Trump said last month he is in the process of beginning to "phase out" FEMA and that it would begin to "give out less money" to states and be directed out of the White House.
He first took a hatchet to FEMA back in February using the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which eliminated 2,000 permanent employees, one-third of its total staff.
Noem has also boasted about using FEMA funds to carry out Trump's mass deportation crusade, including allocating hundreds of millions from the agency to build the so-called "Alligator Alcatraz" immigrant internment camp in Florida, as well as other detention facilities.
Before a House panel last month, former FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell noted that the administration's cuts have made it harder for FEMA to respond in disaster areas.
"It just slows down the entire response and delays the recovery process from starting," Criswell said. "If the state director asks for a resource, then FEMA needs to be able to quickly respond and mobilize that resource to come support whatever that is. They still need the staff that are going in there. And so when you have less people, you're going to have less ability to actually fill those senior roles."
The revelation that Noem's policy may have contributed to the slowdown has only amplified calls by congressional Democrats to investigate how Trump administration cuts to FEMA and other services like the National Weather Service may have contributed to the devastation.
"During disasters, every second matters," said Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas). "Noem must answer for this delay."
Congressman Greg Casar (D-Texas) said this disaster in his home state highlighted the need for federal agencies like FEMA.
"Year after year, Texans face deadlier fires, freezes, and floods." Casar said. "As we continue to support first responders and grieving families after the terrible flooding, we will need investigations at every level of government of what went wrong and what could save lives in future."
"We must stop the dismantling of federal agencies that are supposed to keep us safe from the next disaster," he added.
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NYC's Congestion Pricing Has Caused 'Quality-of-Life Improvement' in Just Six Months
After six months, the policy of tolling drivers has reduced traffic and raised hundreds of millions of dollars for the city's transit system. But the Trump administration is still trying to shut it down.
Jul 09, 2025
New York City's congestion pricing program has now been in place for six months as of Saturday, and according to state officials, it has already proven remarkably successful. It has survived despite efforts by the Trump administration to shut it down.
The program, which tolls drivers who drive through designated "congestion zones" below 60th Street in Manhattan has dramatically reduced traffic, which in turn has sped up commute times, reduced pollution, and raised hundreds of millions of dollars for the city's Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA).
"Six months in, it's clear: congestion pricing has been a huge success, making life in New York better," Governor Kathy Hochul (D) said Saturday. "In New York, we dare to do big things, and this program represents just that—traffic is down throughout the region, business is booming, transit ridership is up, and we are making historic upgrades to our transit system."
Since the program started, the number of vehicles driving through the congestion zone has decreased by 11%, with a total of 10 million fewer cars having entered compared to last year. In just the first three months of the program, traffic in the congestion zone sped up by 15%.
This has led to reduced wait times for commuters, not just in the congestion zone but in surrounding areas like the Bronx and Bergen County, New Jersey.
The number of crashes is down 14% in the congestion area, while traffic fatalities have reached "historic lows" citywide.
The data has also borne out the predictions from environmentalists and public transit activists who said the program would reduce pollution, both by capping the number of cars on the road and funding long-term investment in the public transit system.
The MTA is on track to raise $500 million from congestion pricing in 2025, as was projected when the policy went into effect. The agency also reports that subway and bus usage have gone up since congestion pricing began, while service speed has improved to "near record levels."
Beyond improving convenience, data shows the program is already improving quality of life in other ways. Early estimates from a working paper by the National Bureau of Economic Research show that within the first month of congestion pricing, CO₂ emissions from vehicles decreased by 2.5% with other forms of air pollution and soot levels also declining. These numbers will likely continue to rise as public transit usage expands.
Ben Furnas, executive director of Transportation Alternatives, a New York-based pro-transit group that supported congestion pricing, told The Guardian that the program exceeded his already-high expectations.
"It's been even more obviously beneficial than even the most fervent proponents had hoped, and there have been really tangible improvements that are really gratifying," he said. "Reducing pollution is often seen to involve a lot of sacrifices, but this has been different. People can see the improvements to their lives. There was this cynical assumption that this was a bullshit charge and life will stay the same, but that assumption has gone away now."
During the tumultuous year leading up to congestion pricing's implementation, business groups raised fears that charging drivers would bankrupt small business owners. Hochul even blocked the policy from going into effect for months last year, citing those concerns.
Trump's Transportation Secretary, Sean Duffy, has called the charge a "slap in the face to working class Americans and small business owners."
But the city reports more pedestrian traffic and faster commutes, increasing economic activity.
"Gridlock is bad for the economy," noted a statement from the state of New York. "Commuters are saving as much as 21 minutes each way. Time savings help businesses make deliveries and save costs."
The city also reports increased Broadway ticket sales, hotel occupancy, and commercial office leasing since the policy went into effect, as well as record employment figures.
Despite nearly immediate indicators of the congestion scheme's success, the Trump administration has been attempting to kill it since he returned to office in January.
"We've...fended off five months of unlawful attempts from the federal government to unwind this successful program and will keep fighting–and winning–in the courts," Hochul said.
In February, the White House infamously posted an artificially generated image of Trump wearing a crown. It quoted President Trump saying: "CONGESTION PRICING IS DEAD. Manhattan, and all of New York, is SAVED. LONG LIVE THE KING!"
That same month, U.S. Transportation Secretary Duffy withdrew federal approval for the congestion pricing pilot program, threatening to pull funding for other state transportation projects if it was not halted.
But a U.S. district judge issued a temporary restraining order in May that has, for the time being, halted the Trump administration's efforts.
Attempts to kill the program may prove more difficult in the future, as it has overcome initial skepticism to grow broadly popular with a majority of New Yorkers. Hochul herself was once among those skeptics, but she has grown to become one of its greatest champions.
"You are seeing in the governor… the zeal of the convert," said Daniel Pearlstein, a spokesperson for the pro-transit Riders Alliance.
"People who had their doubts, they saw it up close. They saw it working," he said. "They are saving New Yorkers and people from New Jersey valuable time every single day. Who would want to rip that away?"
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