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In an internal FEMA memorandum obtained by Grist, the Trump administration announced it plans to dismantle the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities program.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, is known for responding to extreme weather like hurricanes and wildfires — the kinds of disasters that are becoming more intense and common as climate change gets worse. But the agency also has a program that sends billions of dollars to communities, municipalities, and states proactively so that they can prepare for these events before they hit.
In an internal FEMA memorandum obtained and first reported by Grist, the Trump administration announced it plans to dismantle that program — the biggest climate adaptation initiative the federal government has ever funded — even as disasters incur hundreds of billions of dollars worth of damages across the United States. The decision comes as at least seven people were killed this week as tornadoes and catastrophic flooding descended on the central United States in what meteorologists called a once in a generation event.
The Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities program, or BRIC, was established in 2018 during President Donald Trump’s first term, replacing a similar FEMA initiative. BRIC’s first round of funding was launched in 2020, when Trump was still in office, and in 2023, the program awarded close to a billion dollars to scores of communities, states, and Tribal Nations across the country. In January, before Trump began his second term, the agency opened its fiscal year 2024 notice of funding, with $750 million in matching grants made available to applicants from areas that received a major disaster declaration within the past seven years.
But FEMA now aims to cancel those grants and any other BRIC grants that have not been paid out yet by the federal government, according to the pre-decisional memo dated April 2 from Cameron Hamilton, a Trump administration official who is serving as FEMA administrator until the president appoints a permanent head of the agency.
“Following the Administration’s direction, FEMA is working to … implement the principles of cost efficiency and commonsense to our approaches and investments,” the memo says. The BRIC program generally shoulders 75 percent of the cost of a given resilience project, and up to 90 percent of the cost of projects in disadvantaged communities. The program’s emphasis on equity is what may have marked it for demolition — the Trump administration has been systematically dismantling Biden-era efforts to infuse equity into governmental programs and direct more climate spending toward underrepresented groups.
FEMA employees disputed Hamilton’s argument in the memo that BRIC grants “have not enhanced the level of hazard mitigation as much as desired.”
“I don’t know where that came from,” said one agency employee who preferred to stay anonymous.
According to a source within the agency, the Trump administration asked BRIC staffers to offer justification for the program and its Direct Technical Assistance sister initiative, which offers non-financial support to help communities navigate the BRIC funding process and identify the hazards they face. The request was made on Tuesday this week with a Wednesday deadline.
With a tight turnaround, staffers offered success stories from across the country. BRIC awards have helped communities bury power lines, protect wastewater facilities from being inundated by flooding, build culverts, and upgrade power stations. If the draft memo takes effect and BRIC is frozen, communities will no longer be able to apply for the grants for fiscal year 2024 made available in January. Projects that have been selected in past years but not yet disbursed funds will no longer receive payment. Partially completed projects will be scrutinized and reviewed, the memo said.
“The administration now has one of FEMA’s most effective grant programs on the chopping block,” said Shana Udvardy, a senior climate resilience policy analyst with the Climate & Energy program at the Union of Concerned Scientists. “It’s oversubscribed almost every single year.” In fiscal year 2023, FEMA received more than 1,200 subapplications across all 50 states, 35 tribes, five territories, and Washington D.C. totaling more than $5.6 billion in requests. It was able to provide less than a fifth of the money requested.
A looming question is whether FEMA can yank grants that are being funded with money appropriated by Congress. The 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, also known as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, allocated approximately $6.8 billion to FEMA for community-wide mitigation efforts, with a portion of this funding directed to the BRIC program. “If this administration does away with the program, it goes against a law that Congress passed,” Udvardy said, “so there’s a concern there to be raised.”

FEMA moves to end one of its biggest disaster adaptation programs

Climate change is driving an explosion in dengue cases. Studying that connection is about to get much harder.
Last week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or CDC, issued an urgent alert about dengue fever, a painful and sometimes deadly mosquito-borne illness common in tropical and subtropical parts of the world. Some 3,500 travelers from the United States contracted dengue abroad in 2024, according to the CDC, an 84 percent increase over 2023. “This trend is expected to continue,” the agency said, noting that Florida, California, and New York, in that order, are likely to see the biggest surges this year.
On Thursday, the United Kingdom Health Security Agency put out a similar warning, noting that there were 900 cases of travel-related dengue in the U.K. in 2024, almost 300 more infections than the preceding year. The two reports relayed a similar array of statistics about dengue, its symptoms, and rising caseloads. But the U.K. Health Security Agency included a crucial piece of information that the CDC omitted: It noted why cases are breaking records. “The rise is driven by climate change, rising temperatures, and flooding,” it said.
In the past, the CDC has readily acknowledged the role climate change plays in the transmission of dengue fever — but the political conditions that influence scientific research and federal public health communications in the U.S. have undergone seismic shifts in the months since President Donald Trump took office. The new administration has purged federal agency websites of mentions of equity and climate change and sought to dismantle the scientific infrastructure that agencies like the CDC use to understand and respond to a range of health risks — including those posed by global warming.
Last week, ProPublica reported that the National Institutes of Health, or NIH — the largest source of funding for medical research in the world — will shut down all future funding opportunities for climate and health research. It remains to be seen whether ongoing grants for research at this intersection will be allowed to continue. A few days later, U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced his agency plans to cull 10,000 people from its workforce, including new cuts at CDC, an agency that was established in 1946 in order to prevent a different mosquito-borne illness, malaria, from spreading across the U.S.
Taken together, the suite of directives will prevent the U.S. and other nations whose scientists rely on NIH funding from preparing for and responding to dengue fever at the exact moment when climate change is causing cases of the disease to skyrocket. The abrupt subversion of the personnel and institutions tasked with responding to a threat like dengue bodes poorly for future health crises as climate change causes carriers of disease like mosquitoes, fungi, and ticks to expand their historical ranges and infiltrate new zones.
“The disease pressure in the last couple of years is very dramatic and it’s going in one direction — up,” said Scott O’Neill, founder of the World Mosquito Program, a nonprofit organization that deploys genetically engineered mosquitoes to fight disease in 14 countries. For example, Brazil — the country that consistently registers the highest number of dengue cases — recorded a historic 10 million cases last year. The country reported 1.7 million cases in 2023.
The two types of mosquitoes that most often infect humans with dengue, Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus, thrive in the warm, moist conditions made more prevalent by rising atmospheric temperatures caused by fossil fuel combustion. The vast majority of annual dengue cases are asymptomatic, but about 25 percent of people infected, depending on the population, develop symptoms like fever, headache, and joint pain. A small percentage of those cases result in severe sickness, hospitalization, and even death.
The number of severe dengue infections corresponds roughly to the size of the pool of people infected every year. In 2023, when there were 6 million total dengue infections, 6,000 people died. In 2024, a year when there were more than 13 million cases registered globally, over 8,000 people died.
There is no cure for dengue. Patients in wealthier countries generally fare better than patients in developing regions with limited access to medical interventions like blood transfusions and places where waves of dengue patients overwhelm already-strained healthcare systems. Two dengue vaccines are available in some countries, but both have serious limitations in terms of efficacy and how long they confer immunity.
The NIH began taking climate change and health research seriously in 2021, and the institutes have funded dozens of studies that probe every aspect of the climate-dengue connection since. NIH-funded researchers have sought to understand how warmer temperatures shift the geographic ranges of Aedes mosquitoes, which factors predict dengue outbreaks, and how communities can protect themselves from dengue following extreme weather events.
These studies have taken place in the southeastern U.S., where dengue is becoming more prevalent, and internationally, in countries like Peru and Brazil, where dengue is a near-constant threat. The NIH has also funded studies that bring the world closer to finding medical and technological interventions: more effective vaccines and genetically engineered mosquitoes that can’t develop dengue, among other solutions.
“Disease doesn’t have national borders,” said an American vector biologist who has received funding from the NIH in the past. She asked not to have her name or affiliated academic institution mentioned in this story out of fear of reprisal from the Trump administration. “I’m worried that if we’re not studying it, we’re just going to watch it continue to happen and we won’t be prepared.”
Americans aren’t just bringing cases of dengue fever home with them from trips abroad; the disease is also spreading locally with more intensity in warmer regions of the country and its territories. Last March, Puerto Rico declared a public health emergency amid an explosion of cases on the island. By the end of 2024, Puerto Rico registered over 6,000 cases — passing the threshold at which an outbreak officially becomes an epidemic. More than half of the known infections led to hospitalization. Close to 1,000 cases have been reported there so far this year, a 113 percent increase over the same period in 2024. California and Florida reported 18 and 91 locally-acquired cases of dengue, respectively, last year. California registered its first-ever locally-acquired case of dengue in 2023.
“Dengue is already found in many places in the U.S. that have never seen this disease before,” said Renzo Guinto, a physician and head of the Planetary Health Initiative at the Duke-NUS medical school in Singapore. “To combat this emerging climate-related health threat, U.S. scientists must collaborate with others working in dengue overseas. With no resources and capacity, how can such collaboration occur?”
There are limited non-government sources of funding for climate and health research. The money that is available to American researchers is primarily offered by private foundations like the Gates Foundation and the Wellcome Trust. The grants these philanthropies offer annually pale in comparison to the $40 million Congress made available annually through the NIH for climate and health research in the two years before Trump took office. Researchers will be forced to compete for a small pool of funding in the coming years, which will likely lead to fewer studies and less innovation in the years to come. “The end result will be that much less of this work would be done — we would all tell you to the detriment of Americans long term,” said the vector biologist.
As dengue spreads with more intensity in the countries where it is already common and slips across borders into zones like North America where the disease is still comparatively rare, it’s clear countries need to expand their arsenals of disease-fighting weapons. But the U.S. appears to be leading a charge in the opposite direction, with thousands of lives at stake.
“We’re at a time when we need acceleration of innovation and solutions to very pressing global problems,” said O’Neill, whose organization receives funding from governments around the world, including the U.S. “It’s not the time to let ideology drive science rather than let science drive itself.”

A deadly mosquito-borne illness rises as the US cuts all climate-health funding

A deadly mosquito-borne illness rises as the US cuts all climate and health funding

Students have big feelings about climate change. Most teachers don’t know how to help.
When the Marshall Fire swept through the grassy plains and foothills outside Boulder, Colorado, in late December 2021, it burned down more than 1,000 homes — and left many young people shaken. “It can just be pure anxiety — you’re literally watching a fire march its way across, and it’s really, really close,” said David Thesenga, an 8th grade science teacher. Some of his students at Alexander Dawson School in the small town of Lafayette lost their homes to the fire.
As more students come to school traumatized by living through fires, floods, and other extreme weather, teachers are being asked to do more than educate — they’re also acting as untrained therapists. While Thesenga’s private school has psychologists on staff, they don’t provide mental health resources dedicated to helping students work through distress related to the changing climate, whether it’s trauma from a real event or more general anxiety about an overheated future. “Sometimes you don’t need a generic [tool],” he said. “What you need is something very specific to the trauma or to the thing that is causing you stress, and that is climate change.”
Middle school teachers around the country say they feel unprepared to help their students cope with the stress of living on a warming planet, according to a new survey of 63 middle school teachers across the United States by the Climate Mental Health Network and the National Environmental Education Foundation. Nearly all of the teachers surveyed reported seeing emotional reactions from their students when the subject of climate change came up, but many of them lacked the resources to respond.
“Students are showing up in the classroom with a range of climate emotions that can be debilitating,” said Sarah Newman, the founder and executive director of the Climate Mental Health Network. “This is impacting students’ ability to learn and how they’re engaging in the classroom.”
One of the biggest concerns Thesenga hears from his students is that climate change feels out of their control and thinking about it seems overwhelming. “They just feel powerless, and that’s probably the scariest thing for them,” he said.
Katie Larsen, who teaches 6th and 9th grade biology at The Foote School in New Haven, Connecticut, says that her students have grown up knowing that climate change is a problem, but learning about the extent of environmental damage — like how many species go extinct every year — often surprises them. She tries to shift the conversation away from doom and gloom and toward something more hopeful, such as what people can do to save ecosystems. “I think the more positive you can make it, and action-oriented, the better,” she said.
A growing body of research shows that young people’s anxieties about climate change can affect their relationships and their ability to think and function. Last November, a study in The Lancet Planetary Health found that 16- to 25-year-olds were struggling with their worries about climate change. Of the more than 15,000 young Americans surveyed, 43 percent reported that it hurt their mental health, and 38 percent said that it made their daily life worse.
Then there’s the matter that surviving a specific disaster can be traumatizing for people of any age. Living through a hurricane or flood can lead to an increased risk of depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, while wildfires have been connected with anxiety, substance abuse, and sleeping problems, according to a report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2022. These problems are especially acute for children and adolescents.
To address the lack of resources for dealing with distress related to climate change, the Climate Mental Health Network and the National Environmental Education Foundation developed a new toolkit that teachers can use in their middle school classrooms. One handout, called the “climate emotions wheel,” helps students identify their emotions, arranging them into four main categories — anger, sadness, fear, and positivity — and then breaking those down to more specific feelings, such as betrayal, grief, anxiety, and empowerment.
While science classrooms are a natural fit for these resources, Megan Willig, who helped create the activities with the National Environmental Education Foundation, says she hopes that teachers can use them in English, social studies, and art classes, among other subjects. They’re designed to be quick and ready to use. “Teachers shared that they’re busy, and they have a lot on their plates,” said Willig, who’s a former teacher herself.
The exercises prompt students to reflect on how other young people are processing distress over climate change and explore how to turn their anxiety into action. One activity in the toolkit introduces “negativity bias,” referring to how the brain often latches onto negative thoughts, and asks students to counter that tendency by brainstorming happier emotions related to the Earth. Another prompts students to consider their “spheres of influence” and think about what they can do to contribute to solving climate change in their inner circle, their community, and in the wider world.
The toolkit was piloted last fall by 40 teachers who volunteered in 25 states. Afterward, all of the teachers who participated said they’d recommend it to a colleague, and a majority reported feeling more confident addressing students’ emotions — as well as their own. The tools were successful in red states like Utah, Texas, Mississippi, Florida, West Virginia, and Indiana, as well as blue ones like New York and Washington. Newman thinks it’s a sign that the need for these kinds of resources isn’t a partisan issue.
She views middle school as a crucial moment to offer mental health support. “Kids are really becoming more aware of climate change and what’s actually happening,” she said. “It’s often the first time that they’re going to be learning about it in school. They have more access to social media and online news, which is amplifying their awareness and knowledge about climate change, and they’re going through really formative times.”
Asked if he would try the exercises, Thesenga said he would give them a shot. “Absolutely, why the hell not?” he said. In his Facebook groups, he’s seen fellow teachers say they avoid the subject altogether in class. “That is not the answer — your students want to know,” Thesenga said. “You’re the frontline person. You have to buck it up, and you have to do this.”

What makes middle school even worse? Climate anxiety.

The U.S. has used tariffs to protect industry since 1789. That approach decimated American shipbuilding and could do the same to clean tech.
On Wednesday, President Donlad J. Trump announced a sweeping new round of tariffs on goods coming into the United States. Standing in the Rose Garden, he declared the moment “liberation day,” though it was hardly the first time the government has tried to protect domestic manufacturers from foreign competition. The practice dates to America’s founding.
After states ratified the Constitution and seated the first Congress, James Madison sponsored, and his colleagues passed, the country’s first major piece of legislation: the Tariff Act of 1789. President George Washington signed the bill into law, setting off centuries of spiraling consequences for American competition and innovation that experts say should serve as a cautionary tale for a litany of modern industries, including clean energy technology.
The Tariff Act levied, among other fees, a duty of 50 cents per ton on goods imported by foreign ships. The goal was to raise money and bolster American shipbuilders. Some iteration of this effort has existed virtually ever since; most recently as the 1920 Jones Act, which restricts domestic shipping to vessels that are built and registered in the United States, owned by American firms, and staffed by U.S. citizens.
In an era of wooden ships and limited globalization, these protections had little effect. American timber and American ships were naturally the best route for most companies. Before the revolution, even the British built one-third of their ships here. But, by the late 1800s, technology was changing. Steam ships and metal hulls were rapidly becoming the norm, yet U.S. shipbuilders remained insulated from competition. In 1900, America produced about 20 percent of the world’s ships, by tonnage. By 1914, U.S.-flagged merchant vessels carried just 10 percent of ocean trade. In the 1970s, U.S. shipyards were building about 5 percent of the world’s tonnage. Today it’s around two tenths of a percent — less than 5 ships per year.
“U.S. ship builders haven’t been competitive since just after the Civil War,” said Colin Grabow, associate director of the Herbert A. Stiefel Center for Trade Policy Studies at the libertarian Cato Institute. Grabow is an expert on the Jones Act and says American companies are still feeling its impacts.
The U.S. only recently, for example, gained access — via a manufacturing license – to a Finnish dredging ship that the rest of the world has been able to use for 30 years. Off-shore wind developers have pointed to the Jones Act as a major impediment to transporting turbines. The price of a US-built ship is now as much as five times higher than those built abroad — up from a difference of about 20 percent in 1920. Grabow says Trump’s tariff push is set to create the same sort of protectionist woes that the shipbuilding industry has faced, on a much larger scale.
“We’re going to keep your foreign competitors out. What’s the incentive to innovate in that kind of environment?,” he said. “If you look around the world, countries that are more closed and more protectionist don’t tend to be cradles of innovation.”
Clean energy technologies could be especially hard hit because so many key components — from batteries to solar cells — come predominantly from overseas. The tariffs Trump announced Wednesday range from 10 percent on the United Kingdom to 20 percent on the European Union. China will face duties of 34 percent, while Cambodia’s stand at 49 percent. These are in addition to a 10 percent tariff on all other countries the president announced and the recent hikes targeting aluminum, steel, and auto manufacturers.
“Taxpayers have been ripped off for more than 50 years,” Trump said in remarks at the White House. “But it is not going to happen anymore.”
Tariffs could raise hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue but those added costs are often passed on to consumers and could result in higher prices for cars, heat pumps, or utilities.
“People are focused on the immediate price impacts,” said Catherine Wolfram, an economist focused on energy at the MIT Sloan School of Management. But the longer the tariffs are in place, the greater the chance that America’s clean energy industry falls further behind the rest of the world, especially China.
Electric vehicles are one area that this could play out. If foreign competitors are tariffed out of the U.S. market, domestic automakers may not feel the need to produce cars with longer ranges, more efficient technologies, or other cutting-edge features.
“The same logic applies whether you’re talking about solar cells or any other input into the clean tech space,” said Wolfram. “One of our core strengths is that we’re innovative [and] you’re protecting American companies from pressure to innovate.”
The reverse logic is also true, says Steven Knell, president of Energy Intelligence, an industry analysis firm. Trump’s tariffs will not only ease the impetus for domestic inventiveness but also make it more expensive for American companies to adopt innovations developed abroad. “Some of what has allowed the clean tech industry to be successful over the course of the last 20 years has been globalized market opportunities,” he said. “That’s certainly a potential risk of the way in which the administration is suggesting it’s going to pursue things.”
Arguments for protectionism often fall into a few buckets, said Grabow, including national security and the need to boost fledgling industries, but those policies have tended to remain in place far beyond their stated need. “That’s one of the dangers with protectionism, is once you put that in place, it’s hard to put the toothpaste back in the tube,” he said. “Historically, you find very few examples of where the government gets rid of protectionism.”
Grabow points to decades of government support for the sugar industry as another example of a sticky situation. Using a mix of quotas, tariffs and price supports, the Government Accountability Office found, in 2023, that federal policies aimed at protecting sugar farmers are raising prices and, on the whole, costing Americans $1 billion each year. The tariffs that Trump instituted in his first term have similarly been shown to be a net drag on the American economy.
“They’ve done the studies, they’ve done the math on it and we know it’s been an economic loser. But [President Biden] didn’t get rid of them,” said Grabow, citing the historical power
interest-groups and lobbyists have shown in keeping protections in place. With Trump’s latest moves, he says, “take that dynamic and apply it all across the board.”
For Wolfram, Trump’s tariffs are only part of the problem when it comes to clean energy. Their impacts, she said, will be exacerbated by the fact that his administration is also trying to dismantle climate policy — especially the Inflation Reduction Act — and is targeting federal scientific research, and scientists, as part of its sweeping government cuts.
“It’s a triple whammy,” she said, adding that there could be even more to come. “Four years is a long time.”

How Trump’s ‘Liberation Day’ tariffs could kill American innovation

Tesla has long been a leader in the electric vehicles market. Now it's facing mounting protests and plummeting sales.
Following its founding by engineers Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning in 2003, Tesla became the world’s leading electric vehicle brand in less than a decade. In the company’s early years, including after investor Elon Musk became CEO in 2008, it put out a few hundred or a few thousand cars a year. But by 2015, Tesla made the best-selling electric car model worldwide — a title Tesla has now held for seven of the last 10 years. In 2023, the company delivered 1.8 million cars and controlled about 20 percent of the world’s EV market.
But Tesla’s status as the Kleenex of EVs is now in question. After Musk’s full-throated endorsement of President Donald Trump, his Nazi salute at Trump’s inauguration, and his efforts to dismantle the United States government under the auspices of the newly created Department of Government Efficiency, Tesla is facing an organized protest movement, fading sales around the world, and a tumbling stock market valuation. As the company’s image suffers, EV market experts are watching closely to see whether the fallout from Musk’s far-right activities will affect the broader e-mobility transition.
Transportation is the second-largest source of global greenhouse gas emissions, behind power generation, and is responsible for about 15 percent of the world’s emissions. The U.S. contributes the biggest share of transportation emissions by far, and “light-duty vehicles” (including personal cars and trucks) are responsible for around 57 percent of transportation emissions in the U.S. Most of these emissions come from burning gasoline, and electric vehicles, which can run on renewable energy, have the potential to significantly reduce the sector’s carbon footprint. A recent independent analysis suggests that Tesla’s cars prevented between 10.2 million and 14.4 million metric tons of carbon in 2023 — about the same impact as 3,000 to 4,000 wind turbines running for a year.
The transformation of Tesla cars from a symbol of green progress to an embodiment of authoritarianism has been widespread and fast-moving.
In the U.S., the brand’s fall from grace has mirrored Musk’s gutting of essential government agencies like the U.S. Agency for International Development and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. In Europe, public ire has focused on Musk’s Nazi salute at Trump’s inauguration and his backing of far-right political parties in Germany, Italy, and the UK.
In mid-February, the “Tesla Takedown” protest movement began organizing demonstrations at Tesla showrooms across the U.S. and Europe. A decentralized campaign originally launched by actor Alex Winter and sociologist Joan Donovan, Tesla Takedown has organized protests around the world — including hundreds in a single Saturday for its recent “Global Day of Action.” The movement’s advocates suggest that tanking Tesla’s stock price (and therefore also Musk’s net worth) is a viable means of reducing the political power of the man who is currently running a chainsaw through American institutions.
Most of the organized opposition to Tesla has been peaceful, but vandals torched Tesla cars and chargers in France, Germany, Massachusetts, Nevada, Missouri, and other states last month. The Trump administration has called attacks on Tesla products “domestic terrorism.” Attorney General Pam Bondi said the Justice Department will seek a 20 year prison sentence for one man accused of vandalizing a Tesla dealership.
As protests have gained steam, Tesla’s global sales have plummeted. Tesla announced on Wednesday that its worldwide sales in the first quarter of 2025 were down 13 percent from the same period in 2024. The European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association reported that Tesla sales across the continent dropped in January and February by 43 percent compared to a year prior. Australia’s Electric Vehicle Council found that Tesla sales in the country were down 35 percent in the four months following Trump’s election victory compared with the year before. The country that has seen the biggest recent drop in Tesla sales is Germany, where sales fell by 76 percent year-over-year in February, according to the country’s road traffic agency.
Stateside, Tesla’s sales losses compared to a year ago haven’t been quite as dramatic — in part because sales had already begun to drop last year. But backlash against Musk appears to be having an effect — registrations of new Teslas were down 11 percent across the U.S. in January compared to a year before. And in California the number of Tesla owners trading in their cars jumped nearly 250 percent in March, compared to the same month last year.
Meanwhile, Tesla’s stock price has also taken a hit. On March 10, Tesla stock dropped 15 percent, marking the brand’s biggest single-day loss in five years. As of the end of March, the company’s stock price was down 32 percent from the beginning of the year and 44 percent since mid-December. Even insiders like Tesla chair Robyn Denholm and board member James Murdoch have recently dumped millions of dollars worth of stock. This week, 27 lawmakers in New York penned a letter to the state comptroller requesting that Tesla stock be removed from the state’s biggest public pension fund. Unfortunately for Tesla workers, the backlash aimed at Musk may take its toll on them, as many have long accepted salaries below industry norms in exchange for stock options.
Tesla has been steeped in controversy since before Musk’s interventions in the American government — and even before he bought and rapidly transformed Twitter in 2022.
While EVs may be better for the planet than their gas-burning counterparts, they also fuel lithium extraction and require tremendous energy to manufacture. And Tesla has faced criticism for years for its apparent disregard for the well-being of its labor force — from miners in the Global South facing human rights abuses to factory workers in the U.S. and Europe who’ve documented hazardous conditions and hostile, racist work environments. Musk is also starkly anti-union: Tesla is the only major auto brand whose workers are not represented by any union in the U.S., and its refusal to negotiate with workers in Sweden resulted in a mechanics strike that has been dragging on since October 2023.
Tesla has also had negative impacts on the local environments it operates in. Its factories have racked up huge fines from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for emitting toxic chemicals. The expansion of a Tesla factory in Germany was opposed unsuccessfully by local residents and climate activists who said it threatened local drinking water resources.
Tesla dissolved its public relations department in 2020, and its investor relations department didn’t respond to Grist’s request for comment for this article.
If Musk’s participation in the Trump administration continues to hurt Tesla’s brand, what will the impact be on the broader EV market? Industry analysts at S&P Global Mobility predict global EV sales will grow by nearly 30 percent this year despite uncertain market conditions. And even as European Tesla sales dropped 43 percent in the first two months of this year, overall EV sales increased 31 percent during the same period.
Still, not all experts are optimistic. Murtuza Ali, a senior analyst at the market research firm Counterpoint Research, told Grist that “some consumers may be unwilling to switch” from Tesla to other brands, especially given “Tesla’s key attraction — an expansive charging network, which other automakers cannot replicate overnight.”
But others in the industry suggest that the EV market is now robust enough that Tesla’s continued decline won’t dampen growing EV adoption. “The EV market has gotten so much stronger in the past year that buyers can find a good alternative should they decide not to buy a Tesla,” said Will Roberts, automotive research lead at the EV market analysis firm Rho Motion.
Steffen Schaefer, head of future cities and mobility at AFRY Management Consulting, who has worked with automakers, utility companies, and charge point operators on EV charging projects, agreed. “If Tesla would go down, it would not be the end of the e-mobility movement,” he said. “The industry is now solid enough that it’s going to continue.”
Meanwhile, Tesla’s competitors are not missing their chance to profit from its demise. In February, the Norway division of the South Korean automaker Kia posted an ad on one of its social media pages showing a Kia EV with a bumper sticker on it reading “I bought this after Elon went crazy” — a play on stickers adopted by Tesla owners protesting that they bought their cars “before Elon went crazy.” (Kia headquarters quickly clarified that it hadn’t approved the ad.)
Swedish EV maker Polestar went a step further and offered a $5,000 “conquest bonus” toward a lease of the Polestar 3 to current Tesla owners in the U.S. who are willing to make the switch. Polestar initially offered the deal for one week in February — but after its head of U.S. sales reported above-average orders during that period, the brand extended the promotion through the end of March.

What Tesla’s massive image problem means for the world’s transition to EVs

It's not just high-profile lawsuits — climate solutions need contracts, corporate advice, and IP filings.
The vision
“Every lawyer has skills that can help the climate. We’ve just gotta make the connections.”
— Environmental lawyer and advocate Matthew Karmel
The spotlight
“How many lawyers does it take to break a Guinness World Record?”
Matthew Karmel posed this question on LinkedIn in February, adding, “No, this isn’t a bad lawyer joke; it’s a reason for climate optimism.”
Karmel, a principal at the law firm Offit Kurman and the chair of its environmental and sustainability law practice group, is one of the organizers of the Climate Pro Bono Bootcamp, a two-day virtual conference dedicated to helping more lawyers and legal professionals figure out how to donate their time and skills to advance climate work.
When people — including lawyers themselves — think of the intersection between climate and law, their minds may go straight to high-profile climate lawsuits or other legal action aimed at holding big polluters and inactive governments accountable. But there are many other forms of legal support that climate causes might need, from simple contracts to forming a new business or nonprofit to legal defense. “There are so many attorneys working at large law firms, small law firms — attorneys everywhere who just don’t do litigation, but are still very passionate about climate change and want to apply their skills in that way,” said Stephanie Demetry, the executive director of Green Pro Bono, an organization that matches attorneys with companies, nonprofits, grassroots leaders, and others who need legal assistance to advance climate solutions.
Karmel had the idea for the conference in late 2023, after he had been working with Green Pro Bono for a few years. “I was sitting there thinking, Why isn’t everyone doing this?” he recalled. “The things I’m doing aren’t unique. It doesn’t require specialized legal skills. It requires passion, and the general legal knowledge that every lawyer has.” He approached Demetry with the idea of hosting a training to help demystify what climate-related pro bono work can entail and build up the network of attorneys interested in offering it.
They held the first bootcamp in January of 2024 and had around 700 attendees — far exceeding their expectations. After the event, Demetry said, Green Pro Bono more than doubled the number of attorneys in its network and also saw a 53 percent increase in the number of projects that got picked up.
But for this year’s bootcamp, planned for late April, they’re aiming to increase that attendance — and setting the ambitious goal of growing it a hundredfold. That’s the number that would break a Guinness World Record for the largest attendance at a virtual law conference in one week (yes, this entry truly does exist). It might be a longer-term goal, but it’s one they’re serious about. Breaking the record, Karmel said, would be a powerful way to demonstrate the growing interest in climate action among the legal community, and also an opportunity to reach thousands more attorneys, students, and others with the event’s key message: that you don’t have to choose between your day job and working for the causes you care about.
I spoke with Karmel and Demetry about the goals of the conference, the wide array of skills and expertise that legal professionals have to offer to climate solutions, and the value of having pro bono work built into a career. Our conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Q. Would you say that there is a growing appetite among legal professionals to volunteer their time and skills for the climate cause?
Demetry: From our organizational perspective, absolutely. I joined [Green Pro Bono] three years ago, and every year since I’ve been there, there has been huge percentage growth in our network of attorneys who want to take on cases — but there’s also a huge increase in the amount of clients and work that we actually have. So it’s growing in a proportional rate, which is great. We’re seeing a lot of interest from younger people, from students, too.
Even within the last couple of months, I would say we’ve gotten a lot of attorney volunteer requests, but also organizational volunteer requests — people who are just trying to get involved in this space in some way, at a time where it’s quite pivotal.
Karmel: The legal industry has a tremendous history of pro bono. That volunteerism is something that’s baked into the legal industry. When I started as a junior lawyer, my firm encouraged it. I got credit at the firm for doing pro bono. This is something that the legal community recognizes as something we have a responsibility to do, and that benefits the rule of law.
Lawyers see themselves in this white-knight sort of way, and I do, too. The access to justice — we facilitate the movings of policy and of everything through law. That gives a tremendous opportunity for lawyers.
Q. Like you mentioned, this isn’t just about environmental law or high-profile climate lawsuits. What are some of the other ways that lawyers might help facilitate climate solutions?
Karmel: I’m an environmental lawyer. That’s what I do. But the pro bono work I do isn’t even limited to environment — it’s oftentimes even the reverse of what people think. There is some, but the majority of the climate pro bono requests are not environmental requests. That first thing is almost a misnomer.
I’ve done a software licensing agreement for a software-as-a-service sustainability platform for art galleries. The idea was, art galleries don’t have enough of their own resources to hire sustainability coordinators, so let’s have this software that takes in inputs of what you’re doing at the gallery and outputs sustainability recommendations. They needed a simple agreement — that was just a very simple licensing and funding agreement, and had nothing to do with environmental law. Just a basic contract. And anyone with basic contracting skills and access to a couple of CLE [Continuing Legal Education] online videos could have done this.
There’s lots of things like that. Basic corporate contracts, basic corporate formation, that’s a huge part of it. There’s also lots of policy-based things which aren’t purely environmental.
Demetry: I see a lot of intellectual property requests that are very, very pivotal to these organizations. Recently, we helped a medical organization that was developing a compactable syringe to get a patent on that technology. And their projected environmental impact was a 40 percent reduction in the carbon emissions from shipping syringes to rural and remote medical settings around the world. We try at Green Pro Bono to be as expansive and as non-gatekeeping as possible with the clients that we accept.
We also get a lot of nonprofits that are looking for advice on, “Hey, we wanna start maybe some sort of community thrift store to bring in additional income to the nonprofit. Is that appropriate? Can a nonprofit do that?” The simple questions that can make a big difference to those organizations, and help them to reinvest the money they would be spending on legal services into their actual innovations and the services they’re providing in their communities — it’s kind of a backdoor way to use the lawyering skills that you have to expedite those innovations and make sure those organizations can continue to carry out their mission. So you’re maybe not directly involved in anything that looks climate-like at all on the backend, but the impact of what you’re doing is actually moving that needle forward a lot.
Q. How does all of that inform your curriculum for the bootcamp? What are you planning to cover this year?
Karmel: This second year, we’ve really grouped around two topics. One is the master topic of litigation and advocacy, and two is the master topic of corporate work or transactional work. We have one day devoted to each of those pillars.
So in the first day, we’re gonna focus on litigation and advocacy and talk about creating policy, advocating for policy, what those skills look like, how that gets done. Then also: What litigation is happening right now? How is litigation that’s happening, matters before the Supreme Court, how do those things impact pro bono that is getting done, and how is it going to continue to impact it? On day two, we’re going to dive deeper than we did last year on specific transactional-related issues and give people skills and give them perspectives on using those.
Q. I know that you all are going for a Guinness World Record. Can you tell me a little bit more about that?
Karmel: We’re thinking about transformation constantly. That’s why we created this. We’re looking at the world, seeing how it can be different — seeing this untapped resource and saying, What can we do to crack this thing open? What can we do that is going to excite people, energize them? And honestly, I was just randomly brainstorming and someone posted online about a Guinness World Record they had seen and how weird it was. So I just went online, and they have a Guinness World Record for the largest online virtual law conference, and I did not know that such a world record existed. It was [in 2020], about 66,000 people on legal impacts relating to COVID and pandemic-time issues — which were huge, hot issues.
And we thought, Geez, how impactful would it be to break that record? For climate, for lawyers, for the country where it is now — it would be such a statement to break that record this year, to say no matter what is going on, we did that. We know that people are coming to this to be part of a community, to be part of a movement that’s trying to do this work. And so it was a way to try to make it even more meaningful, to take it up to the next level.
It is partially a cheeky idea: 700 was beyond our concept last year — 66,000, frankly, we haven’t even figured out how we’re gonna pay for the Zoom if we get 66,000 people on there. But we will! If we can do that, we will.
Stephanie, what did you think when I came to you with this idea?
Demetry: Yeah, I thought it was wild. And exciting, though. I think it’s good to shoot for the moon in these situations. It’s what the moment demands, so why not try? Last year we only had a month or two to prepare, and we really weren’t even sure if we’d get a hundred people. So we were very invigorated coming off of that.
Karmel: We’re gonna break it one year. My goal is to have this conference be something that happens every year until forever. I was going to say until it’s not needed anymore, but the fact is, this will always be needed because this is about showing people that they can craft careers that matter to them. You don’t have to choose between a soulless job and a soulful job. Any job can be something that you bring your heart and soul to.
— Claire Elise Thompson
More exposure
Read: an opinion piece by Karmel about the importance of pro bono work (Grist)
Read: about the end of the youth climate lawsuit Juliana v. United States — and the movement it ignited (Grist)
Read: an interview with legal scholar Carol Liao about how climate change will impact different areas of law, and why “all lawyers will need to be climate lawyers” (Canadian Lawyer)
Read: a profile of Julian Aguon, an attorney from Guam fighting for climate justice on a global stage (Grist)
A parting shot
Another example of a group of professionals with special skills and resources, who have often rallied to support causes and communities, is chefs. In the aftermath of the L.A. fires earlier this year, a number of chefs and restauranteurs offered free meals to those affected by the fires and to first responders. Here, a taco truck contracted by the food-aid organization World Central Kitchen set up shop to feed emergency and utility workers.
IMAGE CREDITS
Vision: Mia Torres / Grist
Parting shot: Robyn Beck / AFP via Getty Images

The climate movement needs lawyers. This ‘pro bono bootcamp’ helps connect the dots.

Mentions of environmental concerns on S&P 500 earnings calls have plunged.
Just a few years ago, pledges to tackle climate change were a staple of corporate PR. Amazon trumpeted its climate pledge and stamped it on the name of Seattle’s biggest arena. Walmart promised to slash a gigaton of carbon emissions from its supply chain, and the world’s largest money manager, BlackRock, with its $11 trillion in investments, pressured companies to come up with a plan to zero out their emissions by 2050.
Now, many corporations are avoiding the subject altogether. During earnings calls, mentions of many well-known terms related to the climate are down 76 percent compared to three years ago, according to a recent analysis of S&P 500 companies by Bloomberg. The sharpest declines came from financial firms and consumer discretionary companies, the category for those offering optional purchases, like Starbucks and Airbnb.
The hesitancy to talk about climate change — sometimes called “greenhushing” — could decrease pressure on the big corporate polluters that have been slow to cut their emissions. The trend has been linked to a growing backlash against sustainable investing, as well as a shifting political landscape with President Donald Trump’s second term underway. “I think large companies in particular today are very, very cautious,” said Hortense Bioy, the head of sustainable investing research for Morningstar, a financial services firm.
Companies have been caught in a tug-of-war: On one hand, investors are pressuring them to be serious about the risks of climate change to their business. On the other, the mention of any word related to so-called ESG — the polarizing acronym that refers to “environmental, social, and governance” investing — threatens blowback from the Trump administration. The way to thread the needle, experts suggest, is to stay away from flashpoints like ESG and talk specifically about the financial risks that the warming planet poses to companies.
John Marshall, the CEO of the Potential Energy Coalition, a nonpartisan marketing firm focused on climate action, says that silence isn’t a winning strategy. “We do not think that voters or consumers are at all impressed, regardless of their political stripes, by taking the concept of climate change out of any language,” Marshall said.
His research shows that investors and the public want companies to talk about climate change — as an investment risk, not a matter of morality. According to a Potential Energy report from last September, 3 in 4 Americans surveyed think companies have a responsibility to limit their impact on the climate. What’s more, roughly 9 in 10 U.S. retail investors want companies to reduce emissions and prepare for the ways increasingly unpredictable weather could lead to risks like supply chain disruptions and rising insurance costs.
The first signs of greenhushing appeared in 2023, when the Swiss consultancy South Pole found that a quarter of large companies around the world had decided not to publicize their progress on climate targets. The reason, South Pole later found, was that companies wanted to avoid the legal risks that came with high-profile pledges. It was a response to countries crafting new laws against “greenwashing,” the term for deceptive environmental advertising.
At the same time, financial institutions were already dealing with the backlash against ESG, which heated up in 2022. Lawsuits targeted asset managers, pension funds, and federal agencies, claiming that “woke capitalism” was putting politics over financial interests. Red states including Florida and Texas pulled billions in state funds out of BlackRock and other ESG-friendly firms. BlackRock, which in 2021 had supported almost half of shareholder proposals to address environmental and social issues, pulled a U-turn. Between July 2023 and June 2024, it only backed 4 percent of them.
“They were too visible and too vocal about what they were doing in that space,” Bioy said. She expects that companies with big climate plans may now have to disclose the opposition to ESG as a risk in their annual reports. That sense of caution is showing up in the markets, too: Over the last two years, there has been more money leaving sustainable funds in the U.S. than what’s coming in, according to Morningstar’s research.
Bioy suspects that trend still has room to run, given Trump’s hostility to climate action. Already, corporations including Apple, Walmart, and Siemens have stepped away from the climate coalition that formed during Trump’s first term. Bioy pointed to the guidance circulating in government organizations warning against using terms like “pollution,” “clean energy,” and “climate science.” “Companies that do business with the administration or any state organization, they will be careful not to use those terms,” Bioy said.
In the past, some companies have used language around climate change that embraced a moral framing, such as “do the right thing.” But most people don’t think that’s the province of what businesses should be doing, Marshall said. Two-thirds of Americans believe that businesses should avoid taking a stance on political issues, according to his firm’s research. The moral framing provokes backlash because it feels like “forcing an idea on somebody,” Marshall said. “We have seen it’s much more effective to have language in the business community that’s about money and reality.”
It raises the broader question of how regular people should talk about climate change when many of the terms environmental advocates use can provoke a knee-jerk reaction. “I think that the climate movement needs to be very thoughtful about and strategic about whether or not it is a DEI or ESG initiative,” said Austin Whitman, CEO of The Change Climate Project, a nonprofit offering tools to help businesses cut their emissions. “I think for all of us across the spectrum, regardless of what cause we’re fighting for, we need to distance ourselves from these lightning-rod acronyms and topics that are really easy to just cut down with a single swipe.”

Companies used to tout their climate plans. Under Trump, they’ve gone quiet.

The Department of Transportation has threatened to pull funding for high-profile climate-friendly projects in California, New York, and Washington, D.C.
Major crime is down 29 percent compared to last year on New York City’s subways and buses — a seemingly positive trend. But that’s not how the U.S. Department of Transportation sees it.
The Department of Transportation, or DOT, sent a letter to New York’s Metropolitan Transit Authority on March 18 warning that it must address safety on its system or risk losing federal funding. The department sent a similar letter to the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, which runs public transportation in the nation’s capital, earlier in March.
The moves represent an emerging pattern in the DOT’s approach to transportation under President Donald Trump: target the highest-profile climate-friendly programs in states with Democratic leadership.
Over a two-day period in February, the department rescinded the Federal Highway Administration’s approval for New York City’s congestion pricing program and announced a review of funding for a section of a project to build high-speed rail between Los Angeles and San Francisco. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy proudly listed the accomplishments in an X post.
“1. Terminated NYC elitist, anti-worker congestion pricing,” he wrote. “2. Launched an investigation into the $16 billion in taxpayer dollars wasted on a high-speed rail project that, after 17 years, has yet to lay a single mile of track.”
These attention-grabbing threats and cancellations have faced legal challenges — but if the department prevails in cutting funding, it could mean millions of tons of unnecessary annual carbon emissions over the coming decades. Meanwhile, Duffy has promised to review federal funding for all manner of climate projects across the country — a significant departure from agency norms. Ann Shikany, a former DOT deputy assistant secretary for policy, said the actions taken by the department in the past two months run counter to how recent transitions of power have gone.
Previously, “each administration has followed through with the previous administration’s grants, but now they’re saying they’re going to renegotiate those,” Shikany said. “Those are projects that are already in construction, already spending their money.”
On Trump’s first day in office, he signed a slew of executive orders instructing federal agencies to eliminate programs that focus on climate change, greenhouse gas reduction, and environmental justice, among other priorities. Duffy quickly directed DOT staff to begin reviewing all programs that meet those criteria.
In March, agency leadership sent staffers an internal memo instructing them to freeze projects focused on climate and equity, specifically calling out projects focused on bike infrastructure or electric vehicles. Current and former staffers told Grist there is still confusion within the agency about which programs are at risk of being cut.
A coalition of nonprofits and cities has sued the administration over the leaked March memo, arguing that the DOT’s freezing of funding violates the Impoundment Control Act, which limits the president’s ability to rescind funding approved by Congress, and the Administrative Procedure Act, which requires that agency actions not be “arbitrary” or “capricious.”
Emily Conner, who spoke to Grist after her position as a grant management specialist with the Federal Transit Administration was terminated in February, said there was a push within the agency to award as many discretionary grants as possible in the waning weeks of Biden’s presidency. Conner, who since speaking to Grist has been reinstated to her position, said she was worried that federal transit funding could come to a “screeching halt,” due to the administration’s chaotic transportation policy approach.
As grant recipients across the country await word on the fate of the programs they once thought would fund projects in their states and cities, the department has chosen to make examples of large-scale projects that aim to reduce transportation emissions in blue cities and states.
Public transit
Taking a subway, bus, or other form of public transit is more climate-friendly than driving a car. The United Nations estimates that choosing public transportation over driving “can reduce up to 2.2 tons of carbon emissions annually per individual.” Similarly, a 2009 DOT report showed that transit emitted less than half as much carbon per passenger-mile traveled compared to private autos.
In Duffy’s letters to the Metropolitan Transit Authority and Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority — or MTA and WMATA, respectively — he outlined safety, specifically reducing crime and fare evasion, as a priority.
But crime on the MTA and WMATA transit systems has trended down in recent years. WMATA’s general manager and chief executive officer, Randy Clarke, wrote in a letter to the DOT that the number of crimes per million riders has fallen from 8.03 in 2023 to 2.9 so far in 2025. The MTA has seen an expansion of police officers on the subway system under New York Governor Kathy Hochul’s safety plan, which began in March 2024, and recently reported that crime is down even compared to pre-pandemic levels.
In the letter to the MTA, Duffy threatened to withhold funding — a significant threat, as about 20 percent of the agency’s budget for major infrastructure projects for the next five years, or $14 billion, comes from the federal government. That budget includes plans to purchase 500 electric buses — part of the MTA’s plan to shift entirely to zero-emissions buses by 2040. It estimates that the transition will save 500,000 metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions every year.
Justin Balik, a vice president at the climate advocacy organization Evergreen Action, said that prioritizing public safety on public transit is important but that the DOT letters are not productive.
“I think what you’re seeing, to use the New York letter for example, is a hammer in search of a nail,” Balik said. DOT appears to be “walking backwards from a predetermined outcome, which is, ‘We want to really rake New York over the coals and other transit systems over the coals.’”
Duffy has already hinted at targeting other cities, adding the Chicago Transit Authority to the list of public transit agencies that could be in danger in an interview on Fox News. “If people can’t go to the subway and not be afraid of being stabbed or thrown in front of tracks or burnt … We’re going to pull your money,” he said.
Congestion pricing
Another climate-friendly project with a target on its back is New York City’s congestion pricing system. The program, designed in part to reduce traffic and improve air quality, charges drivers a toll when they enter the busiest parts of Manhattan, south of 60th Street. Most of the revenue will go to the MTA, which is banking on getting $15 billion for infrastructure projects as a result of the tolls
After years of debate and delay, the program went into effect in January. The impact has been dramatic: The MTA’s data shows that traffic in the tolled portion of Manhattan was down 11 percent this February compared to February 2024. A 2023 MTA report — based on a version of congestion pricing with higher tolls than were actually implemented — found that the tolled area would see decreases in fine particulate matter and carbon dioxide emissions by more than 10 percent by 2045.
During his 2024 election campaign, Trump called for the end of the program, and Duffy has sought to make good on that promise, writing that it is too expensive for working-class Americans. In February, the DOT’s Federal Highway Administration rescinded approval for the toll program, just three months after approving it under the Biden administration. It gave New York until March 21 to end the program, but the state sued Duffy for trying to block the program and ignored the DOT’s deadline. The DOT did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Balik said the Trump administration is out of touch with New York City residents. “Trump’s moves to undermine congestion pricing, if you look at recent surveys, are not exactly endearing the administration to voters in the area,” Balik said.
Indeed, a March Siena poll found that 42 percent of New York City residents support the program, compared to 35 percent who say it should be eliminated. The support figure is up from 32 percent in December, before tolling had begun.
Hochul, who unilaterally paused the program last summer shortly before it was initially supposed to go into effect, has transformed into a champion of congestion pricing. In a March press conference, she invited critics “to come here now and feel a very different New York City that is very alive, and it’s vital. It is not jammed and stuck in traffic.”
High-speed rail
Like congestion pricing, the California High-Speed Rail project has been a long journey. California voters approved $9.95 billion for a high-speed rail system in 2008. It was originally supposed to be completed by 2020 but has been delayed by legal challenges and because it started construction before certain pre-construction activities, like relocating utility infrastructure in the train’s path, had been completed in some instances. In its current form, the project aims to connect San Francisco to Los Angeles.
The rail line, which will be entirely solar-powered, has the potential to shift the state away from more carbon intensive forms of transportation, like driving and flying. It would reduce annual greenhouse gas emissions by between 0.6 million and 3 million metric tons of carbon dioxide — equivalent to removing between 142,000 and 700,000 cars from the road — according to the California High-Speed Rail Authority’s 2024 Sustainability Report.
Trump canceled around $1 billion in federal funding for the project in his first term, and his administration is scrutinizing it once again with a review led by the Federal Railroad Administration, a DOT subagency, of the $4 billion in federal funding for the Central Valley portion of the project.
“President Trump is right that this project is in dire need of an investigation,” Duffy said in a press release. If the project has violated any of the terms of its grants, he added, “I will have to consider whether that money could be given to deserving infrastructure projects elsewhere in the United States.”
The first Trump administration’s efforts to cancel $1 billion faced legal challenges, and the Biden administration wound up reinstating the funding. This time around, the legality of the DOT taking back funding hinges on whether the probe finds a violation of a grant agreement or regulation, or fraud.
About 80 percent of the $13 billion the program has spent so far has come from the state of California, according to California High-Speed Rail Authority spokesperson Carol Dahmen. The estimated total cost for the program is now $106 billion, and it expects to begin operating between 2030 and 2033. Of the 494 miles of planned track, 171 miles are under design or construction and 463 miles have been cleared through the state’s required environmental impact review process, with approval expected for the last stretch from Anaheim to Los Angeles later this year.
Even as the Trump DOT casts doubt on the viability of public high-speed rail, it appears to be promoting the role private companies can play in the industry. In the press release, the department called the Brightline West project, a private high-speed rail project from Los Angeles to Las Vegas expected to begin running in 2028, “impressive.”
Rick Harnish, executive director at the high-speed rail advocacy nonprofit High Speed Rail Alliance, said Brightline is a good example of how high-speed rail can work — and emphasized that even private infrastructure projects are rarely entirely privately financed. “It fits the Tesla model a lot better, where it looks like a private company, but it’s in large part federally funded,” he said. Brightline West received a $3 billion grant from the Federal Railroad Administration in September.
Despite the seemingly bleak outlook for climate-friendly projects under the Trump administration, some experts see this as a galvanizing moment for states like California and New York to reconsider their transportation policy. Corrigan Salerno, a policy manager at the advocacy group Transportation for America, said states have the tools to introduce more climate friendly transportation policies. For instance, Colorado and Minnesota have implemented policies designed to reduce highway building and boost investment in public transit, biking, and walking in recent years.
“I think the Trump administration represents a major setback for climate, but I don’t think it’s a death blow,” he said. “The federal government does not provide the majority of investments in transportation in the United States, and at the end of the day, the fight is in the states.”

How the Trump administration is targeting green transportation in blue states

After mass firings and rehiring, thousands of federal employees are bracing for deeper cuts — just as wildfires, floods, and rising temperatures threaten national parks.
Reporting for this story was supported by the Climate Equity Reporting Project at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism and is part of a project on how the Trump administration’s funding cuts are affecting Californians.
The last few months have been a tumultuous time for National Park Service employees. After President Donald Trump took office, the federal agency laid off roughly 1,000 employees in a purge dubbed the Valentine’s Day massacre. Then, after two judges ruled that the layoffs were unlawful, they were rehired. Now, as the Department of Government Efficiency begins executing an official and much larger plan to slash the federal workforce, many employees are anxiously awaiting the next round of cuts. The White House has reportedly directed the agency to reduce its workforce by as much as 30 percent in the coming months.
Despite the agency’s murky future, some changes are clear: As the days get warmer, the numbers of visitors to the parks will begin to tick up. As spring gives way to summer, the Western landscape will begin to dry out, and the risk of drought and wildfires will also increase. The stakes for the climate — and for the parks in the face of climate-fueled disasters — couldn’t be higher.
“Cities and places that are more developed are more resistant to changes in climate, but in these wild areas, we can see more warning signs, more indicators if the patterns start changing dramatically,” said one National Park Service employee. “With all of these positions lost, there will be no one on watch anymore.”
The employee, who works at Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks in California, was among those laid off in February and rehired. He returned to work on Saturday and requested anonymity to speak freely without fear of reprisal. The February layoffs targeted probationary employees who had been hired or promoted within the last year.
National parks are on the frontlines of climate change. Temperatures in the parks have increased at double the rate of the country as a whole in part due to the fact that they are located in extreme environments, including at high elevations and in especially arid places. Many parks are now drying out faster than they ever have, resulting in larger wildfires, while others are facing unprecedented flooding. In Sequoia National Park, for instance, the giant sequoia trees, which have evolved with fires, have been unable to withstand the wildfires of recent years and are dying at unprecedented rates. Meanwhile, parts of the park had to be closed in 2023 because severe flooding washed away roadways.
Grist spoke with five former and current park employees about the role staff play in protecting the parks and the climate implications of the Trump administration’s policies for the National Park Service. Aside from the interpreters and rangers who work directly with the public, the agency employs biologists, hydrologists, geologists, and conservation managers who track, study, and actively protect the ecosystems they work with. Crews also remove invasive species in an effort to preserve native species and make the landscape less flammable. Some employees are also working to move species at risk of extinction due to climate change, such as the Joshua trees in the Mojave Desert, to other parts of the park in a process called managed relocation. Many of the staff who study burn areas and the impacts of fire on native species also serve as a secondary fire-fighting force when needed. If the agency’s workforce is reduced dramatically, it’s unclear how much of this work can continue, they said.
“Most of those positions have the least protections to begin with, so they’re the first ones on the chopping block,” the Sequoia and Kings Canyon employee said.
In addition to potential staff losses, a portion of the funding from two landmark federal laws — the Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law — remains frozen, further jeopardizing the agency’s work. A spokesperson for the agency did not respond to questions about the firings or frozen funding.
The National Park Service has been working to prepare for a warming world. It has had an ecosystem inventory and monitoring program in place since 1998 and a climate change response program since 2010. In recent years, it invested in building out both programs to detect and respond to the rapid changes in ecosystems and the growing number of disasters taking place in the parks. It also trained thousands of rangers, educated the public about the impacts of climate change on the parks, and adopted a national framework to help park staff decide which ecosystems to prioritize saving. In 2023, the agency developed a plan to electrify park vehicle fleets and buildings to reduce the parks’ overall greenhouse gas emissions.
The Biden Administration provided funding for a number of these initiatives through the Inflation Reduction Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which Congress passed in 2022 and 2021, respectively. The agency used the funding for landscape restoration, invasive species removal, and integrating Indigenous knowledge with scientific research and restoration work. Funds from the Inflation Reduction Act alone directed $700 million toward hiring more staff and better preparing the parks’ natural, cultural, and historic resources to withstand a changing climate. Since the parks also serve as carbon sinks by storing planet-warming gases in soil, wetlands, and forests, thirty five parks received funding to restore grasslands and the seedbanks that support them. But as funding for such initiatives remains frozen and the potential for mass layoffs looms large, the future of these projects is now uncertain.
Terri Thomas, a retired natural resources manager who worked in Crater Lake, Yosemite, and Everglades National Parks, said she is particularly concerned about the potential impact of weakening the inventory and monitoring program, which collects scientific information about how a park’s native plants, animals, and birds are evolving.
“Parks are increasingly considering measures such as managed relocation to protect at-risk species by moving them beyond their historical range to locations with more favorable biotic or climatic conditions,” said Thomas. “Without the staff and their scientific and institutional knowledge, these actions may not occur, and species could be lost.”
The agency’s restoration work, some of which is dependent on federal funding, is also on the chopping block. In 2016, Yosemite National Park’s Ackerson Meadow, a 400-acre parcel of formerly privately-owned land, was gifted to the National Park Service. The park and several conservation nonprofits are working to restore the land, which is home to multiple endangered plants and animals, a large meadow, and a vast network of wetlands.
“It’s an ongoing process of improving the hydrology and function of a meadow system, and one of the benefits is carbon sequestration,” said Jesse Chakrin, executive director of The Fund for People in Parks and a former park ranger. “Not only does it provide clean water, but the peat and the soils there are incredible carbon sinks.”
The number of visitors to the national parks has been increasing steadily since the pandemic and reached a new record of nearly 34 million people last year. But a recent internal park memo forbade employees from publicizing the number, in part because public awareness of this growth might spur more concern about the cuts to staff and funding. In years past, Chakrin, said that kind of bump would have likely resulted in more resources for the agency. Now, he said, “we’re in a totally new arena of operations at this point, and [parks are] trying to meet this increased demand with potentially a lot less staff down the road.”
The agency will be allowed to hire 5,000 seasonal employees this summer, but Chakrin and others worry about the lack of institutional knowledge moving forward. “It’s a real problem when you don’t have continuity of leadership because these [climate resiliency] projects require effort and dedication over long periods of time. The damage being done under this administration will have an impact for decades.”

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FEMA moves to end one of its biggest disaster adaptation programs

April 4, 2025

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