“Americans Will Be Less Safe”: An Author of the Country’s Biggest Climate Report Reflects on Its Gutting

The Trump administration is coming for the National Climate Assessment. Officials reportedly cut funding for the federal program behindthe congressionally mandated report, which describes how climate change impacts everything from agriculture and transportation to human health and economics in the United States.

Under the Global Change Research Act of 1990, researchers issue a new assessment, updated with the latest science, every four years. Writing it typically requires extensive peer review from federal agencies and the public. It’s aimed at helping all sorts of people—elected officials, business owners, farmers, and home-buyers alike—make climate-informed decisions.

“Effectively, it is a massive literature review,” an author working on the current assessment told Mother Jones, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “This is the core of the US government’s effort to make climate change understandable and knowable to the American people.” Hundreds of authors, customarily all volunteers, had already begun work on the next assessment, scheduled to be published in late 2027 or early 2028.

But now, that’s all been thrown into chaos. As Politico first reported earlier this month (and has since been confirmed by multiple outlets), the Trump administration cut funding for the US Global Change Research Program (USGCRP), the multi-agency body that produces the National Climate Assessment. NASA, which helps oversee the Assessment, reportedly ended its contract with a consulting firm that supplied staff to coordinate work on the report. “The operations and structure of the USGCRP are currently under review,” a NASA spokesperson said via email. (The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which also helps oversee the assessment, didn’t respond to a request for comment from Mother Jones.)

The action, although widely expected, is unprecedented. The first Trump administration published the assessment in 2018, albeit quietly—on the Friday after Thanksgiving. But completely hindering work on the project, some experts say, is illegal. “The National Climate Assessment is a report required by law,” David Doniger, a senior strategist and attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council, wrote on Bluesky. “Another example of Trump administration lawlessness.” (The administration also ended the National Nature Assessment, a similar report on the state of nature in the US; some of its authors are currently working to independently publish it anyway.)

To get a better sense of what disrupting the National Climate Assessment means for all of us, I spoke with one of its current authors, who asked that I not use their name, given the sensitivity of the situation.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Several outlets have reported that the Trump administration is gutting program funding and staff supporting the National Climate Assessment. Have you heard anything directly from the administration?

We have an internal communication system that allows all of the authors to hear from [the administration]. And we heard through that chain that work has been paused.

There was an all-hands call last week, in which we were given the opportunity to say goodbye to our departing federal colleagues, which was a very emotional call, a very frustrating one.

Were you surprised that this happened? What were you thinking over the past few weeks as all of this was unfolding?

All of this happened to coincide with a quiet stage in the process. The chapter team had produced outlines, and those outlines had been sent out to federal agencies for their comments.

That federal agency review period took longer than I think would normally, because of all the firings and disruptions that were taking place across federal agencies.

So you’d already realized something was wrong, because the process had been slowed down to begin with?

I think anyone who worked in any way with the federal government has experienced that something is wrong in the last couple of months.

It sounds like you weren’t overly shocked about the pause to your work, maybe because of how the first Trump administration delayed the assessment? And all the news of federal firings and cuts had been going around. Is that fair to say?

I think the first Trump administration fundamentally followed the law [in producing the assessment] and acknowledged that even though they didn’t believe in the purpose of the law, they were still required to do this life-saving and constructive and fundamentally patriotic work. And while I was not surprised at the decision to be lawless here, I’ll always be shocked by it.

“While I was not surprised at the decision to be lawless here, I’ll always be shocked by it.”

At the very least, the administration’s actions raise legal questions about whether or not it can put a stop to the National Climate Assessment. Do you have any thoughts on the legality of all of this?

It’s illegal. Congress was unambiguous in mandating that assessments be produced. This is not expensive. We’re not talking about vast legions of federal employees. We’re talking about a small—too small—team of incredibly hard-working, dedicated professionals who have chosen to serve the public and to make this knowledge more widely available to everyone. Obstructing their work is a very, very clear violation of the intent of Congress.

The climate assessment is not optional. It is required by law, and it appears that the Trump administration is trying to break that law.

Note: President Donald Trump did not respond to a request for comment via a White House spokesperson.

Without this report, what would that mean for people trying to get information about how climate change will affect them? What do you want people to take away from all of this?

Without a new National Climate Assessment, Americans will be less safe, and climate change will get worse. This is one of the many tools that we use to make sure that everything we know is available for anyone who needs to know it. And if we don’t produce this report, the available information will be worse. People will be working with outdated findings. It will be more fragmented and more scattered.

One of the other big benefits of this process is that it’s a way for researchers who tackle the really hard questions raised by climate change to meet each other and collaborate in understanding the state of the knowledge.

We’re going to know less, and knowing less means more people die. More people are injured. More people are impoverished. More irreplaceable cultural heritage and history are lost. More ecosystems are degraded. And climate change gets worse.

What’s next? Do you have any thoughts on what the future might hold?

That’s a really good question. I don’t right now. I think everyone is still a bit stunned.