President Trump’s annual budget request to Congress continues the administration’s defunding of climate change programs, environmental protection, and renewable energy, and cuts the budgets of the Environmental Protection Agency, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and Federal Emergency Management Agency.
The fiscal year 2027 spending plan “builds on the president’s vision by keeping non-defense spending in check,” Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought said in a preface to the 92-page document, which includes a historic $1.5 trillion defense budget increase of 44%.
Under President Trump’s proposal announced Friday, EPA spending would be cut in half and grants from the agency would be cut by $1 billion. Congress rejected a similar budget request from the president last year.
The EPA lost more than 4,000 employees in the first year of President Trump’s second term, bringing the workforce to 12,849, its lowest level since the 1980s, according to an Inside Climate News analysis of federal workforce data released by the Office of Personnel Management. This 24% reduction was more than double the federal government’s overall loss rate.
“Rather than making families safer, this EPA budget proposal will make them sicker,” said Michelle Ruth, a former EPA project manager and now executive director of the Environmental Protection Network, an organization of former EPA employees. “This is part of the Trump administration’s dangerous and far-reaching plan to let polluters decide which toxic chemicals we put into our drinking water, which harmful pollutants into the air we breathe, and which pesticides we put on the food we eat.”
President Trump’s budget proposal would cut $449 million from renewable energy funding and rescind $15 billion in renewable energy infrastructure funding under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act of 2021, which the president calls part of the “Green New Scam.”
President Trump’s budget proposal states that “the U.S. government will no longer subsidize intermittent forms of energy or Green New fraud projects that destabilize the electrical grid.” “Instead, this budget advances aggressive America-first policies that combat foreign influence and revitalize the nation’s strategic petroleum reserves by strengthening the nation’s critical materials supply chain.”
The Trump administration has previously moved to eliminate tax credits and other incentives offered for renewable energy and electric vehicles under President Biden’s Inflation Control Act, and has taken aggressive action to halt three offshore wind projects under construction on the U.S. coast of the Atlantic Ocean.
Most recently, the Trump administration offered France’s Total Energy $928 million to forfeit leases on wind farms off the East Coast if the company reinvested the money in U.S. oil and gas projects.
Meanwhile, since President Trump began bombing Iran on February 28 and Iran retaliated by closing the Strait of Hormuz, where 20% of the world’s oil and gas is transported, U.S. gasoline prices have risen by more than $1 at the pumps across the country, rising 35% in just over a month.
In addition to the EPA cuts, President Trump’s budget proposal includes $1.6 billion in cuts to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which it says has “consistently funded efforts to radicalize students into markets.” The budget also cut $1.3 billion from Federal Emergency Management Agency grants, $1 billion from Environmental Protection Agency grants and $1 billion from the National Institute of Standards and Technology, which “has long funded awards for curriculum development that advance radical climate change issues,” the document said. It also proposes eliminating the $4 billion Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program.
The National Energy Assistance Directors Association said eliminating the low-income household energy assistance program would “deepen the nation’s energy availability crisis and leave millions of vulnerable households without the assistance they need.”
The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities said in a statement Friday that President Trump’s proposal to cut about $100 billion from non-defense discretionary spending is “not a serious plan” and “doesn’t deserve the American people.” The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget said the president’s proposal “lacks a significant plan for how to address the key drivers of rising spending and budget deficits.” “President Trump’s budget falls short of spending plans that would increase the federal debt,” the conservative Cato Institute said.
The American Public Health Association said President Trump’s proposal “threatens every aspect of public health” and said it “should be dead on arrival.” The Sierra Club said President Trump’s budget “fails to adequately fund the agencies and programs tasked with protecting clean air and drinking water.”
“Cutting NOAA’s budget would weaken weather forecasts, disrupt fisheries management, and stall ocean research, putting American lives, livelihoods, and global scientific leadership at risk,” a spokesperson for the Ocean Conservancy told the website Seafood Source.
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dylan badour
austin reporter
Dylan Badour covers the energy sector and environmental justice in Texas. The Houston native worked on the business desk for the Houston Chronicle, covered the U.S.-Mexico border for international news outlets, and spent several years reporting from Colombia for outlets including The Washington Post, BBC News and The Atlantic. He also spent two years investigating armed groups in Latin America for Facebook’s Global Security division before returning to Texas journalism. Baddour holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism and Latin American studies from the University of Texas at Austin. He has lived in Argentina, Kazakhstan, and Colombia and speaks fluent Spanish.
