The chaos is the point, the outrage is the point, the cruelty is the point. Whatever the point is, there is a confusing blizzard of activity coming out of the White House at the moment and it’s hard to keep track of it all. And yes, much of it does match precisely what was recommended in the Project 2025 blueprint. Obviously we’ll be trying to keep tabs on how the second Trump administration is impacting climate policy. Which is not to say that climate policy doesn’t intersect with immigration policy or civil rights; we have always maintained at Drilled that it absolutely does, not least because the very same people attacking trans rights, abortion, and birthright citizenship are the ones working to entrench the fossil fuel industry’s dominance. So we are not advocating for climate voters to ignore everything else, if anything this moment should be evidence that we either fight together or fall alone, one at a time.
That said, there are certain things that jump out to us as uniquely bad for climate policy and as places where we can provide unique analysis and context. Here’s what we’ve spotted so far, from the executive orders to the scrubbed websites. If we’ve missed something, as we no doubt have, please shoot a note to amy at drilled dot media with the details, or give me a shout on BlueSky.
Updated at 10:00am ET, Thurs, February 6, 2025.
Executive Orders
By our count, President Trump signed nearly 70 executive orders in his first two weeks in office. To put that in context, Biden signed what the press described as “a flurry” of executive orders when he took office in 2020 — totaling just over 60 in his first 100 days, and 162 over the course of his presidency. In the entire four years of Trump’s first administration he signed 220 executive orders, at the high end of the spectrum for a first term.
Many of these orders are quite vaguely written and that is not an accident. Several are little more than marketing exercises designed to throw fuel into the outrage machine. Still others will be (or already have been) legally contested, some successfully. But even those that will be stalled or overturned can cause plenty of damage in the meantime; the confusion around budgets and hiring freezes alone is making it difficult for environmental advocates and even oil executives to know what to do. With that, here are the EOs with direct impacts on climate policy that have been signed so far.:
Jan 20, 2025 Rescission of previous executive orders. This was the first EO Trump signed and it rolls back dozens of Biden’s executive orders and memoranda, including several related to climate:
The order also notes that “Within 45 days of the date of this order [by March 6, 2025], the Director of the DPC and the Director of the NEC shall submit to the President an additional list of orders, memoranda, and proclamations issued by the prior administration that should be rescinded, as well as a list of replacement orders, memoranda, or proclamations, to increase American prosperity.”
Jan 20, 2025 “Restoring Freedom of Speech and Ending Federal Censorship” This EO alleges that “under the guise of combatting “misinformation,” “disinformation,” and “malinformation,” the Federal Government infringed on the constitutionally protected speech rights of American citizens across the United States in a manner that advanced the Government’s preferred narrative about significant matters of public debate. Government censorship of speech is intolerable in a free society.” Many of the efforts aimed at curbing mis/dis/mal information have been targeted at dealing with climate disinformation in particular; this EO marks such efforts as censorship and suppression of information.
Jan 20, 2025 “Putting America First in International Environmental Agreements,” - This is the order that directs the U.S. ambassador to the UN to withdraw the country from the Paris Climate Agreement. It also requires government agencies to “immediately cease or revoke any purported financial commitment made by the United States under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change,” an agreement the U.S. signed onto in 1992.
Jan 20, 2025 “Delivering Emergency Price Relief for American Families and Defeating the Cost-of-Living Crisis,” - This vaguely worded order dictates that government agencies should provide “emergency price relief” for Americans on everything from food to housing to automobiles with no specific directives around policy except for a requirement to "eliminate harmful, coercive “climate” policies that increase the costs of food and fuel.” Should be interesting to see whether and how this is implemented, given that a recent Department of Energy study found that in fact increased gas production, not “climate policies” has increased both the cost of goods and the cost of energy for Americans.
Jan 20, 2025 “Hiring Freeze” - Trump’s imposed government hiring freeze leaves loads of positions vacant and new hires in limbo, which will affect every agency including those working on emissions and energy transition.
Jan 20, 2025 “Putting people over fish: Stopping radical environmentalism to provide water to Southern California” - Trump’s ramblings to fire-ravaged Angelenos about “enjoying the water” might make more sense in the context of this order, which does something industrial agriculture proponents in California have been asking for for a long time: getting rid of any environmental concerns around the California aqueduct, which moves water around the state and pits farmers against environmentalists, city dwellers, tribal and industrial ag. Ironically, by promising the water to Southern California, Trump may have only caused more problems for some of his donors in the industrial agriculture industry.
Jan 20, 2025 “Unleashing American Energy” - This is similar to the executive order by the same name that Trump signed during his first administration. It’s important to note that while Biden signed executive orders promoting climate action, his policies did in fact “unleash American energy.” Under Biden, the U.S. produced more oil and gas than it ever has, and that any country ever has. In this order, Trump makes it U.S. policy to, amongst other things:
(a) to encourage energy exploration and production on Federal lands and waters, including on the Outer Continental Shelf, in order to meet the needs of our citizens and solidify the United States as a global energy leader long into the future;
(b) to establish our position as the leading producer and processor of non-fuel minerals, including rare earth minerals, which will create jobs and prosperity at home, strengthen supply chains for the United States and its allies, and reduce the global influence of malign and adversarial states; [a fascinating addition, given that his approach to energy in every other way could be described as “anti-renewables.”]
Jan 20, 2025 “Protecting the United States from Foreign Terrorists and Other National Security and Public Safety Threats” - While this order might not seem on the face of it like it has anything to do with climate, our coverage of the ongoing crackdown on climate activists shows that it very much does. Pipeline protests have been categorized as being both national security and public safety threats in the past, as have all manner of civil rights protests (remember the Cop City protests?). Any time a government gains new powers to deal with “terrorists,” it’s only a matter of time before the definition of “terrorist” is expanded to include activists of various kinds.
Jan 20, 2025 “Unleashing Alaska’s Extraordinary Resource Potential” - Just in case anyone was going to exclude Alaska from the “Unleashing American Energy” plan, this order, which seems explicitly written to help speed approvals for the Alaska LNG project—which despite considerable efforts on behalf of both the Biden administration and now the Trump administration cannot seem to get the investment it needs (perhaps because financial institutions are acknowledging what the U.S. government will not: that the project is unnecessary)—ensures they won’t.
Jan 20, 2025 “Reevaluating and Realigning United States Foreign Aid” - Again, this might not seem like a climate-related order on the face of it, but much of the U.S. government’s work abroad has helped to support efforts for a clean energy transition, and to bolster human rights, two things the Trump administration does not support.
Jan 20, 2025 “Declaring a National Energy Emergency” - According to this order, “the energy and critical minerals (“energy”) identification, leasing, development, production, transportation, refining, and generation capacity of the United States are all far too inadequate to meet our Nation’s needs.” Further, it states that the previous administration’s policies resulted in “inadequate energy supply and infrastructure” which “causes and makes worse the high energy prices that devastate Americans, particularly those living on low- and fixed-incomes. This active threat to the American people from high energy prices is exacerbated by our Nation’s diminished capacity to insulate itself from hostile foreign actors.” This is unequivocally false. The U.S. is more energy independent than it has ever been. The U.S. is the world's top producer of oil and gas, and the top exporter of gas, and U.S. oil and gas producers are making record profits. Last year the U.S. surpassed all oil production records ever. Increasing exports will increase short term profits for some companies, and increase costs for everyone else.
Jan 20, 2025 “Regulatory Freeze Pending Review,” and “Hiring Freeze” - These are two separate orders, but together they bring to a screeching halt various government programs, including those focused on climate and environmental programs (including, for some reason, National Park rangers).
January 21, 2025 “Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity,” - Included in this order rolling back all government attempts to address historic discrimination is the recision of an order signed in 1994 to tackle environmental justice (EO 12898)
Jan 24, 2025 “Council to Assess the Federal Emergency Management Agency” - At a time when extreme weather events are increasing in frequency and intensity, FEMA has never been more crucial. Rather than support their efforts, the administration wants to investigate whether or not the agency exhibits “political bias.”
Jan 24, 2025 “Emergency Measures to Provide Water Resources in California and Improve Disaster Response in Certain Areas,” - Rather than empower FEMA to do its job in California, or send emergency funds to those left homeless by the fire, President Trump issued two executive orders side by side: one to spend federal money investigating bias at FEMA and the other to “provide water resources” to Los Angeles, which meant moving water away from the industrial farmers who voted for him, thinking he would secure California’s water for them. The order effectively leverages LA’s fires to rewrite state water policies and authorize a reversal of environmental regulations where necessary as well. Water managers in California’s Central Valley said U.S. Army Corps of Engineers were being directed to unleash water from the reservoirs at a rate that officials feared could overtop levees or cause destructive flooding, according to SJV Water, a nonprofit news outlet based in the Central Valley. Ultimately, the water couldn’t—and didn’t—reach Southern California in time, and had engineers not slowed the flow at a certain point, it would also have flooded various parts of the Central Valley. “As I’m sure the administration is aware, the rivers into which this water was released do not actually flow into Los Angeles,” Sen. Alex Padilla (D-California) wrote in a letter to Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. “Unscheduled water releases require close coordination with local officials and safety personnel, as well as downstream agricultural water users, in order to reduce flood risks to communities and farms,” he continued. “Based on the urgent concerns I have heard from my constituents, as well as recent reporting, it appears that gravely insufficient notification was given, recklessly endangering residents downstream.”
Jan 29, 2025 “Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling” - Although this EO is clearly directed at making it difficult to teach American children about the history of systemic racism, or about even the existence of the LBGTQ community, it could easily be weaponized against climate curricula as well, particularly if it could be painted as “anti-American” to be critical of oil and gas (which has long been an industry talking point).
Memoranda
Jan 20, 2025 “Temporary Withdrawal of All Areas on the Outer Continental Shelf from Offshore Wind Leasing and Review of the Federal Government’s Leasing and Permitting Practices for Wind Projects” - Though he declared a U.S. “energy emergency” on the same day, Trump apparently does not want that emergency being dealt with via the country’s abundant wind resources, due to “the need to foster an energy economy capable of meeting the country’s growing demand for reliable energy, the importance of marine life, impacts on ocean currents and wind patterns, effects on energy costs for Americans –- especially those who can least afford it –- and to ensure that the United States is able to maintain a robust fishing industry for future generations and provide low cost energy to its citizens.” Jael Holzman at Heatmap has done excellent reporting on the impacts of this memorandum, not least the fact that it could “hit more than half” of new wind projects.
Jan 25, 2025 OMB Budget Freeze - This memo has probably caused more chaos than any of the rest, not least because it was announced, then rescinded, then soft-launched again all within a span of a few days. The White House has said that Medicare and Social Security payments won’t be affected and that it is only pausing “discretionary spending,” but it remains very unclear what exactly that means. At some point, the White House even scrubbed its own fact sheet regarding the freeze. For now, there are stop-work orders at multiple agencies, leading to layoffs of potentially thousands of employees at both government agencies and government-funded entities like universities. Democracy Docket has been doing a great job keeping tabs on this unfolding story, with all relevant documents linked, and independent journalist Marisa Kabas broke the initial news of the funding freeze.
Cabinet Appointments
Director of Homeland Security: Kristi Noem (confirmed) DHS is a major part of the crackdown on climate activists and Noem has been deeply involved with these efforts during her time as South Dakota’s governor, particularly with the Standing Rock protest and ongoing legal battles.
EPA Administrator: Lee Zeldin (confirmed). The former New York congressman has said he will use his time at EPA to “work toward American energy dominance.” He was confirmed in a 56-42 vote.
Secretary of the Interior: Doug Burgum (confirmed). The governor of North Dakota was both Trump’s pick and North Dakota oilman Harold Hamm’s pick for secretary of the Interior. He plans to make it even easier for fossil fuel companies to drill in the U.S., including on public lands. Burgum was confirmed in a 79-18 vote with more than half of Senate Democrats joining Republicans.
Secretary of Transportation: Sean Duffy (confirmed) Duffy, a former Republican congressman and co-host on Fox Business, has promised both less regulation, particularly around self-driving cars, and increased safety. On the climate front, not only does Duffy now have influence over public transport and electric vehicle directives, he also oversees the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Administration (PHMSA). Upon his confirmation, the American Public Gas Association, a trade group representing gas utilities, said it looked forward to working with Duffy on “ensuring that federal pipeline safety regulations are focused on safety;” and on “continued investment in the replacement and maintenance of the nation’s pipeline infrastructure by supporting Federal programs to replace aging infrastructure and implement sensible permitting policies, so as to ensure sustained safe operations and reliable delivery of natural gas to customers.”
Agency Orders
Army Corps of Engineers halts processing on 168 pending wind and solar actions (Feb 5, 2025) - Heatmap confirmed Feb 5 that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had paused all permitting for wind and solar projects, but, as Jael Holzman reported, there doesn’t seem to be any directive to do so. The executive order the Corps pointed to in its exchange with Holzman doesn’t even mention renewable energy.
DOE Memo shutting down DEI and environmental justice - first reported by Hannah Northey at E&E/Politico, the Energy Department’s acting secretary Ingrid Kolb told staff that the department is “moving aggressively” to implement President Donald Trump’s executive order and stopping “diversity, equity and inclusion,” or DEI, policies as well as funding tied to those objectives. Kolb told staff DOE is stopping any work ”requiring, using, or enforcing Community Benefits Plans, and requiring, using, or enforcing Justice40 requirements, conditions, or principles in any loans, loan guarantees, grants, cost sharing agreements, funding opportunity announcements, contracts, contract awards, or any other source of financial assistance.” Subsequently, companies, states, cities, and other entities with DOE contracts that had community benefit plans embedded in them were ordered to stop all work, according to multiple letters to contract recipients reviewed by Heatmap News.
DOE Secretarial Order “Unleashing the Golden Era of American Energy Dominance” (Feb 5, 2025)- In his first order as Energy Secretary, fracking CEO Chris Wright nixed anything related to “net zero,” ordered the department to “prioritize affordable, reliable, and secure energy technologies, including fossil fuels, advanced nuclear, geothermal, and hydropower.”
“The Department must also prioritize true technological breakthroughs – such as nuclear fusion, high-performance computing, quantum computing, and AI – to maintain America’s global competitiveness,” the order continued. It also underscored the need to lift all obstacles to LNG export authorizations, prioritize cost and consumer choice with appliances (as opposed to, say, energy efficiency), mandated refilling the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, “unleash” commercial nuclear on the U.S. market (interesting choice of words), streamline permitting, strengthen the grid, and directed the department to “modernize America’s nuclear stockpile,” which…feels like it’s outside the purview of the energy secretary.
DOI Secretarial Order No. 3415 - first reported by Jael Holzman at Heatmap, this Department of Interior order put a 60-day freeze on permitting for renewables. Holzman later reported on a leaked memo from the American Clean Power Association that indicated that “despite years of the Republican Party inching slowly toward “all of the above” energy and climate rhetoric that seemed to leave room for renewables, solar and wind developers have so far found themselves at times shut out of the second Trump administration.”
DOI Secretarial Order No. 3417, “Addressing the National Energy Emergency,” orders the agency to investigate ways to boost domestic energy and critical minerals production, and to identify and use any emergency authorities or tools available to them to speed approvals or builds.
DOI Secretarial Order No. 3418, from former North Dakota governor-turned-Department of Interior head Doug Burgum, implements President Donald Trump’s Executive Order 14154, titled "Unleashing American Energy." Among many other things, it directs Interior department staff “to review and, as appropriate, revise all withdrawn public lands, consistent with existing law, including 54 U.S.C. 320301 and 43 U.S.C. 1714.” 54 U.S.C. 320301 is the section of federal law that gives sitting U.S. presidents the power to designate federal lands as national monuments, thereby withdrawing them from future oil and gas leasing and mining claims. This law was established by the Antiquities Act of 1906. President Biden used the Antiquities Act to establish nine new national monuments. 43 U.S.C. 1714 is the section of federal law that gives sitting U.S. presidents the power to order mineral withdrawals that ban new mining and drilling, like those ordered by President Joe Biden for the Thompson Divide and Chaco Canyon regions.
DOI Secretarial Order No. 3422 “Unleashing Alaska's Extraordinary Resource Potential” - In keeping with his penchant for issuing orders that mirror Trump’s executive orders in both title and substance, in this one Burgum piggybacks off of Trump’s EO and revokes a 2021 order from previous Secretary of the Interior, Deb Haaland, that banned drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Drilling in ANWR has long been a fever dream of Republican politicians, but last time Trump opened the area up for drilling, no company bid on the leases. We’ll see if that changes amidst the “energy emergency.”
DOT Order “Ensuring reliance upon sound economic analysis” tasks the agency with rethinking anything related to greenhouse gas emissions. It also mandates that the reassess the "inadequacies" of the "social costs of carbon" (SCC or SC-CO2). The latest (now removed) EPA website to cover this topic stated that then (2017) current "estimates omit various impacts that would likely increase damages". Alex Levin, the strategic planner at CalTrans who told us about the memo, wrote on LinkedIn that actually this memo could in fact force the government to look at greenhouse gas emissions. “Choosing to put this conversation under the spotlight forces the new administration to address climate change, GHGs, EVs, and VMT,” he wrote. “I am not naive to think there is no playbook to accomplish this administration's policy priorities, but any time you shine light facts and science tend to look better than any gunk.”
EPA Demotes Career Scientists - In keeping with the strategy laid out in the Project 2025 blueprint, the EPA has moved to demote career scientists and put political appointees in charge of everything, the New York Times reported Feb 4.
Legislative Proposals
Improving Atmospheric River Forecasts Act - Co-sponsored by Senators Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), the act would require the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to establish a forecast improvement program within the National Weather Service. An interesting bipartisan move to watch! Introduced: Feb 04, 2025.
The Purge
When Trump took office for his second term, dozens of government agencies had climate-focused sections of their websites, climate research projects, or climate-focused programs underway. As the administration takes an axe to it all, government websites are being scrubbed of any evidence they ever existed. Below, we’ve got a list going of what’s been scrubbed so far and where you can still access it.
American Climate Corps - now says it’s a “historic site” no longer being updated.
CDC - New notice posted on climate & health page saying it's being modified to comply with Trump’s executive orders: (here's what it looked like before)
Department of Defense - Climate Resilience portal down. It used to live here https://www.climate.mil/ . It’s been archived here (last accessed Jan 21).
Department of Energy - Low-Income Energy Affordability Data (LEAD) tool taken offline. You can see what it looked like as recently as Jan 27, 2025 here.
Department of Homeland Security - Climate Action plan has been moved to the archived site here.
EPA - Following the EO making diversity, equity and inclusion “illegal,” the EPA shuttered its Office of Inclusive Excellence, and removed the program’s page from its website. The agency’s social cost of carbon page has also been taken off the live site. The agency also removed one of the longest running data projects in climate science, the Keeling Curve tracker, which has thankfully been preserved by University of California at San Diego. The EPA’s environmental justice tracker, one of the agency’s most useful tools, was taken offline as of Feb. 5th (you can access an archived version here, and as of Feb 6, 2025 the EPA’s FTP site is still accessible here). ProPublica reported on Feb 6th that around 300 EPA employees had resigned and the remaining 7,000 or so report feeling “terrorized” and demoralized, but many said they feel a “moral obligation” to continue to do their jobs as best they can to protect the public. In 2022, Steve Milloy, head of science for the EPA transition team during the first Trump admin, told me that the goal if Trump were reelected would be to get rid of the EPA, which he claimed was no longer necessary because the country’s air and water is now clean enough.
Global Change - Globalchange.gov, a collaboration between multiple agencies (Dept of Agriculture, Dept of Commerce, DoD, DoE, Dept of Health and Human Services, DHS, HUD, DoI, Dept of State, DoT, NASA, EPA, NSF, Smithsonian, USAID) does the national climate assessment. So far those are still live, but the First National Nature Assessment has now been removed. It was archived here.
National Science Foundation - E&E reported on Feb 4 that the National Science Foundation is looking at laying off possibly half its stuff due to cuts. “A large-scale reduction, in response to the President’s workforce executive orders, is already happening,” a spokesperson for the Office of Personnel Management said in an email to E&E. “The government is restructuring, and unfortunately, many employees will later realize they missed a valuable, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity in the deferred resignation offer.”
In addition to the impact this will have on countless research projects, scientists are worried about the ability to preserve work and ideas that have been funded in the past. “So many climate researchers, myself included, are wondering whether climate change focused grant proposals (to NSF, etc) will be scrubbed,” Benjamin Leffel, assistant professor at University of Nevada at Las Vegas told Drilled.
State Department - Carbon Capture Utilization and Storage handbook for policymakers, published in partnership with the Department of Commerce, has been removed. It’s still available here, and has been archived just in case here.
USAID - Climate page down as of Feb 1. It’s been archived here. Over the weekend following, the entire USAID was shut down by Elon Musk and DOGE, neither of which has been approved by Congress. As of Feb 5, 2025, the entire USAID website is gone, replaced with a memo:
U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) USDA Forest Service Climate Change Resource Center (CCRC) has disappeared. It’s archived here. Politico reports that the USDA has been instructed to scrub climate change from all of its websites, so we expect to see more examples.
