How the Blue Wave Will Ripple Across Our Public Seas

The historic impact of the November 3 "Blue Wave" election that swept Democrats into power in both chambers of Congress, statehouses, and elsewhere is widely understood to be a vast rejection of the Trump regime and will be felt across the land and also on our public seas.

The Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee that oversees the Coast Guard, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), weather, and climate will, come January, likely be chaired by Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) who’s chaired it in the past, after Ted Cruz (R-Texas) hands over the gavel. Cantwell has been a strong opponent of offshore drilling along the West Coast proposed by President Donald Trump and played a major role in blocking the administration’s attempt to shut down a $386 million Ocean Observation System and other federal science projects. She is likely to also work to restore full—pre-Trump—funding for NOAA (the Coast Guard has already gotten a major boost in funding under Trump).

On the House side the change will be even more dramatic with Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) expected to take the gavel of the House Committee on Natural Resources for the first time. A longtime climate advocate within Congress and one-time environmental attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council, he’s seen some of the worst marine impacts of climate change including the collapse of some 300 miles of kelp forest habitat in his large district that includes all of coastal California north of the Golden Gate. He’s introduced marine protection legislation in the past, including a Help Our Kelp act in 2025, and is likely to highlight the ocean-climate connection from his position as Chair.

For marine conservation groups there will be new opportunities starting now to work with both Congress and with newly elected state officials.

The challenge for the new Congress will be to reverse some of the impacts already felt during the first two years of Trump’s second non-consecutive term. At NOAA they’ll not be able to reverse the loss of both senior managers and new employees who were fired under Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency if they’d worked for the agency less than two years.

Nonetheless the new Congress will likely seek ways to restore autonomy and scientific integrity to NOAA, the National Science Foundation, US Fish and Wildlife, and other agencies that were set up to be non-political, but have become corporate and military tools under Trump’s appointees, promoting—along with the elimination of polluter penalties onshore—offshore oil drilling, deep-sea mining, commercial fishing in protected marine monuments, and extrajudicial killings of small boat operators (suspected drug runners), while also attacking and undermining the offshore wind industry to the tune of $4 billion in taxpayer money to date.

Despite efforts by Democratic leaders such as Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) to downplay climate change during the hot smokey summer campaign (and stay focused on "affordability") elected activists working within the new congressional majorities such as Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D RI) and Huffman will likely start connecting extreme weather events costing citizens their lives and livelihoods to fossil fuel-fired climate change. They will certainly focus on (and maybe investigate) the oil companies making obscene profits off of the extreme weather events they contribute to as well as from the war in Iran.

At the same time Whitehouse and Huffman differ on a lame duck congressional bill that would allow fast-track permitting for infrastructure plans including offshore wind farms but also onshore gas lines, mines, and data centers.

Ongoing climate disasters have been “non-issues" under Trump’s compliant Congress, including global marine heatwaves that have devastated commercial fisheries, marine mammals, and key habitats such as coral and kelp while spreading diseases linked to harmful algal blooms. Those impacts will be magnified by this year’s historic El Niño.

For marine conservation groups there will be new opportunities starting now to work with both Congress and with newly elected state officials in places such as Kansas and Iowa to address issues including polluted runoff from agriculture that impacts both local drinking water quality and—following gravity down rivers—generates coastal dead zones along with harmful algal blooms.

There will also be opportunities to develop effective coalitions and legislation around plastic marine pollution (holding the manufacturers responsible), illegal fishing operations and seafood traceability, establishing sustainability standards for seafood aquaculture and for coastal development, along with many other creative approaches to living well with our coasts and ocean.

And while much of this legislation may be vetoed by a lame-duck president, it, along with model legislation for more popular ideas such as increasing the minimum wage and universal healthcare, will at the least set the stage and create the platform for the next elections in 2028.

The job of marine conservation groups will be to highlight the opportunities, educate the public around less familiar issues such as kelp and climate or coastal adaptation, engage with policymakers, and hold them accountable while training and collaborating with the next generation of youth activists. As Sen. Jeff Merkeley (D-Ore.) told a group promoting an Ocean Climate Action Plan: “Let’s bring all the best ideas forward and craft legislation. We need an outside force and an inside force to make anything happen in Congress, so let’s forge that together and help save our ocean and our world.”