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CLIMATEWIRE | The Trump administration is dismantling a 35-year-old effort to track global climate change that was used to shape regulations and policies across the government.

Federal employees at the U.S. Global Change Research Program were removed from their positions Tuesday, and a government contract with ICF International, which has supported the National Climate Assessment for years, was severed, according to two former officials who were granted anonymity to avoid reprisals.

The move marks a key step by the administration to undermine federal climate research as it rolls back environmental regulations and promotes additional fossil fuel production.

The program was established by Congress in 1990 and signed into law by President George H.W. Bush. In addition to climate science, it focused on land productivity, water resources, fisheries, ecosystems, and the atmosphere. Its most visible product was the National Climate Assessment, a Congress-mandated report that comes out every four years and is used to help shape environmental rules, legislation, and infrastructure projects.

Decades ago, the program identified how a depleted ozone layer was harming Americans, leading to regulations to address the issue.

The next version of the National Climate Assessment is due late next year or in early 2027.

The changes mirror the writings of Russ Vought, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, who wants to eliminate the program so its work can’t be used to bolster federal climate regulations in court battles.

Vought wrote a chapter in Project 2025, the conservative blueprint that has been closely followed by President Donald Trump, in which he outlined how to “reshape the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) and related climate change research programs.”

The chapter spells out how the program could make it harder to enact pro-industry policy and fight court battles that challenge environmental regulations. The USGCRP would “be confined to a more limited advisory role,” he wrote.

“USGCRP actions can frustrate successful litigation defense in ways that the career bureaucracy should not be permitted to control,” the chapter said.

Under Vought’s proposal, OMB would help select researchers to produce a National Climate Assessment that relies on a small pool of scientists who question humanity’s contributions to climate change and give equal weight to industry-produced studies.

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