Trump’s proposed budget dares Congress to axe wasteful ‘climate scam’ programs

If you were pleased to read in my article last week that “The Trump Administration is ‘driving a dagger through the heart of climate change religion,’ then you will be thrilled to hear what else President Donald Trump has done this spring to bring common sense and fiscal responsibility to the climate and energy file. In his full FY 2026 budget proposal sent to Congress on May 30, Trump takes a hatchet to the funding of many climate and “green energy” budget items that have wasted taxpayer funds for decades.

Russell T. Vought, Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), laid out the rationale for these cuts well in his May 2, 2025, cover letter to US Senator Susan Collins (R-ME), Chair of the Senate Committee on Appropriations, about the skinny budget:

“The recommended funding levels result from a rigorous, line-by-line review of FY 2025 spending, which was found to be laden with spending contrary to the needs of ordinary working Americans and tilted toward funding niche non-governmental organizations and institutions of higher education committed to radical gender and climate ideologies antithetical to the American way of life.”

Vought is not talking about small potatoes here. He elaborates:

“Cutting such spending from the discretionary budget leads to significant savings: the President is proposing base non-defense discretionary budget authority $163 billion-22.6 percent-below current-year spending, while still protecting funding for homeland security, veterans, seniors, law enforcement, and infrastructure. Over 10 years, this restraint would generate trillions in savings, necessary for balancing the budget.”

Wow! If only Conservative leaders in other countries had the courage to be so forthright!

Here are excerpts from the skinny budget tables that made it to the final budget proposal that will make climate realists jump for joy:

The list of budget cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) includes:

• Saving $235 million from 2025’s funding of the Office of Research and Development: “The Budget puts an end to unrestrained research grants, radical environmental justice work, woke climate research, and skewed, overly-precautionary modeling that influences regulations — none of which are authorized by law.”
• Saving $100 million: “EPA’s environmental justice program is eliminated in line with the vision the President set forth in Executive Order 14151, “Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing,” and Executive Order 14173, “Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit Based Opportunity,” terminating radical preferencing and restoring and protecting civil rights for all Americans.”
• Saving $100 million by ending The Atmospheric Protection Program: The Trump administration explains, “The Atmospheric Protection Program is an overreach of Government authority that imposes unnecessary and radical climate change regulations on businesses and stifles economic growth. By prioritizing climate change over job creation and energy independence, the program has burdened American industries with costly mandates, ultimately hurting consumers and taxpayers. This program is eliminated in the 2026 Budget.”
• Saving $90 million by ending “Diesel Emissions Reduction Act (DERA) Grants.” The administration writes, “DERA grants distort the market by subsidizing select technologies, picking winners and subverting consumer choice. This program is a waste for taxpayers and should be eliminated.”

Budget cuts to the Department of Energy (DOE) include:

• $15.247 billion cut from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) funding: “The Budget cancels over $15 billion in Green New Scam funds committed to build unreliable renewable energy, removing carbon dioxide from the air, and other costly technologies burdensome to ratepayers and consumers. The Budget also ends taxpayer handouts to electric vehicle and battery makers and cancels the Carbon Dioxide Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act.”
• Saving $2.572 billion by “re-orienting” Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE): “The Budget reorients EERE programs to early-stage research and development programming, eliminating funding for Green New Scam interests and climate change-related activities like the Biden Administration’s Justice40. EERE has also been responsible for a slew of unpopular regulations, harmful to Americans in their day-to-day lives, such as banning gas stoves and incandescent light bulbs. This proposal would support technologies that promote firm baseload power and other priorities established in relevant Executive Orders, such as bioenergy.”
• Saving $1.148 billion by cutting the budget of the Office of Science: “The Budget reduces funding for climate change and Green New Scam research.”

Budget cuts to the Department of Commerce include:

• A saving of $624 million will occur by eliminating the Economic Development Administration (EDA) and Minority Business Development Agency (MBDA): “EDA programs are not simply wasteful, they have been hijacked and operate as spending earmarks for politicians’ favored projects as well as subsidies for idealogues who prioritize “racial equity” and the radicalized climate agenda… last year, a U.S. District Court found MBDA’s “social disadvantage based on race or ethnicity” in its funding decisions to be unconstitutional. Discriminatory DEI practices are the core mission of MBDA, and the agency is fully eliminated.”
• $1.311 billion saved by ending various climate-related operations, research, and grants of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA): “The Budget terminates a variety of climate-dominated research, data, and grant programs, which are not aligned with Administration policy-ending ‘Green New Deal’ initiatives. For example, NOAA’s educational grant programs have consistently funded efforts to radicalize students against markets and spread environmental alarm. NOAA has funded organizations such as the Ocean Conservancy and One Cool Earth that have pushed agendas harmful to America’s fishing industries. These NOAA grants were funding things such as: George Mason University’s ‘Policy Experience in Equity Climate and Health’ fellowship, a workshop for “transgender women, and those who identify as non-binary,’ and NOAA Climate Adaptation Partnerships, which funded webinars that promoted a children’s book ‘designed to foster conversations about climate anxiety’ as therapy.”
• $209 million will be saved by changing the focus of NOAA’s “Procurement of Weather” programs: “The Budget rescopes NOAA’s Geostationary and Extended Observations satellite program to achieve nearly $8 billion in lifecycle cost savings, and cancels contracts for instruments designed primarily for unnecessary climate measurements rather than weather observations.”
• $325 million saved by ending National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) “awards for the development of curricula that advance a radical climate agenda. NIST’s Circular Economy Program pushed environmental alarmism with its university grants.”

Department of the Interior cuts include:

• $564 million saved by eliminating programs in U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Surveys, Investigations, and Research “programs that provide grants to universities, duplicate other Federal research programs, and focus on social agendas (e.g., climate change) to instead focus on achieving dominance in energy and critical minerals.”

Department of Agriculture cuts include:

• $602 million saved by eliminating wasteful, woke programming in the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, such as “activities related to climate change, renewable energy, and promoting DEI in education that were prioritized under the Biden Administration.”

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) cuts include:

• $1.161 billion saved in Earth Science by eliminating “funding for low-priority climate monitoring satellites and restructuring the gold-plated, two-billion-dollar Landsat Next mission while NASA studies more affordable ways to maintain the continuity of Landsat imagery, which is used by natural resource managers, States, and industry.”
• $346 million will be saved in Aeronautics by eliminating climate-focused “green aviation.”

National Science Foundation (NSF) budget reductions include:

• $3.479 billion saved in General Research and Education by eliminating “funding for: climate; clean energy; woke social, behavioral, and economic sciences; and programs in low-priority areas of science. NSF has fueled research with dubious public value, like speculative impacts from extreme climate scenarios and niche social studies, such as a grant to the University of Nebraska to create ‘affinity groups’ for bird watchers and a $15.2 million grant to the University of Delaware to develop and evaluate policy interventions to ‘achieve sustainable equity, economic prosperity, and coastal resilience in the context of climate change.’ Similarly, Columbia University received $13.8 million to ‘advance livable, safe, and inclusive communities.’”

There are many other savings recommended by Trump in his budget, such as his recommendation that the Department of Defense “end wasteful spending of taxpayer dollars on woke climate and DEI programs and redirects resources to support the warfighter,” which readers can check out at Fiscal-Year-2026-Discretionary-Budget-Request.pdf. Let’s hope the president is able to follow up on all this in the fall and also enforce his sensible climate and energy-related Executive Orders and other initiatives that I referenced in part 1 of this series!

Image: AP