In some ways, Donald Trump never left the White House. His influence on US climate policy began in 2017, and now, it’s not just continuing, it’s deepening.
While Trump’s first term was marked by high-profile rollbacks—withdrawing from the Paris Agreement, gutting environmental protections, and slashing scientific agency funding—his longer-term impact lies in structural changes to climate governance. This includes appointing over 230 federal judges, including three Supreme Court justices, many of whom are still relatively young and hold lifetime positions. Their decisions, often skeptical of regulatory authority, have already begun constraining federal agencies’ ability to act on climate, and they’re positioned to do so for decades.
During his second term, Trump has made renewed pushes to downsize agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Department of Energy, expand fossil fuel development, and limit executive actions on climate through legal interpretations that narrow regulatory power. The conservative Supreme Court’s ruling in West Virginia v. EPA (2022) set a precedent limiting the EPA’s ability to broadly regulate carbon emissions; similar rulings are expected to continue under Trump’s judiciary.
Legal scholars, state governments, and climate advocates are rethinking how to create climate resilience, battling in court, and drafting state-level policies. But the challenge isn’t just policy. Trump’s impact is built into the legal, institutional, and bureaucratic bones of US climate governance. Understanding this long game is essential because, even though policies shift every four years, the rules—and the judges who interpret them—can last for generations.
Climate Policy by Lifetime Appointment
Trump’s judicial picks, including Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett, hold pivotal roles in key courts. With lifespans of 30 to 40 years on the bench, their ideological outlook on regulatory authority plays a decisive role in major climate-related cases.
These are generational setbacks in environmental governance.
On June 30, 2022, the Supreme Court knocked down the EPA’s ability to push the Clean Power Plan, ruling the agency needed explicit congressional approval for broad “generation shifting” tactics. Chief Justice Roberts, backed by a solid conservative majority, applied the “major questions doctrine” that says agencies can’t make transformative regulatory moves without clear legislative backing. In practice, this means that agencies like the EPA can’t rely on broad interpretations of existing laws to address emerging challenges like climate change. Instead, they need more direct and specific authorization from Congress to take significant regulatory action, something that is increasingly difficult in a gridlocked legislature.
The EPA can still regulate plant-by-plant emissions, but big-picture mandates, like nationwide energy shifts, are in danger. The “major questions doctrine” now lurks over future climate and environmental rules—even those with strong scientific or economic justification.
This is what legal professionals call regulatory inertia: when structural, legal changes slow or freeze the return of climate protections, and lifetime judges skeptical of agency power make it hard to reverse course, even under new administrations. Courts then become long‑term roadblocks to federal climate action.
Cuts and Closures
Across both terms, Trump has slashed scientific capacity and dismantled agency infrastructure essential to climate governance. The EPA faced some of the most aggressive reductions: Trump’s proposed budget in 2019 included a 30 to 31 percent cut—equating to billions of dollars and thousands of positions—particularly targeting climate research, emissions tracking, the Clean Power Plan, and environmental justice programs.
NASA faced a sharp challenge to its Earth science work under Trump’s 2019 budget, which proposed over $100 million in cuts and targeted key missions for termination—like ocean ecosystem monitoring (PACE), the Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO-3), the space weather station DSCOVR, and CLARREO Pathfinder for more accurate climate records. Separately, the Carbon Monitoring System (CMS) was also targeted for elimination that year.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), a key climate and weather agency, was earmarked for about a 40 percent budget cut, with the elimination of its Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research, the closure of numerous research labs and satellite programs, and the cancellation of key climate monitoring missions.
With Democratic control of the House of Representatives, some of these proposed cuts did not occur.
The removal of dedicated structures—scientific offices, monitoring instruments, expert personnel—weakens federal capacity for climate research and policy design. Replacing satellite missions, reconstituting shut-down units, and rehiring technical expertise cannot be achieved overnight; these are generational setbacks in environmental governance.
In Trump’s second term, the resistance has become more public and coordinated.
But rebuilding physical infrastructure is only half the challenge. The legal environment in which these agencies operate has also shifted, often in ways constraining their ability to act decisively. Weakened agencies need more, not less, interpretive room to function. When they’ve lost staff, tools, and political backing, flexible legal authority is often their last line of defense. But Trump’s judiciary is effectively stripping them of that, too. When future administrations try to rebuild and act boldly on climate, they will be up against a court system designed to be skeptical of such moves.
Fossil Fuel Revival and Property Over Planet
In his first term, Trump aggressively dismantled climate-related regulations while championing oil, gas, and coal.
He revived the Keystone XL pipeline just days after taking office, fast-tracking it and limiting environmental reviews. His administration also moved to expand offshore oil and gas drilling, proposing in 2018 to open nearly all US coastal waters, including the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, to leasing. Trump lifted the Barack Obama-era coal leasing moratorium, which had paused new federal coal leases pending a review of climate and health impacts. These actions marked a full embrace of fossil energy, positioning it as a matter of economic security and deregulation.
A new round of Trump’s executive orders in early 2025 prioritized fossil fuel development. Industry allies have returned to key federal agencies, and regulatory oversight continues to shrink.
These actions are reinforced by a judiciary that, case after case, elevates property rights and corporate interests over environmental protections. A landmark example is the Juliana v. United States, originally filed in 2015 by youth plaintiffs arguing that the federal government’s failure to address climate change violated their constitutional rights. Despite strong scientific evidence, it was repeatedly challenged under the Trump administration. And in 2020, a panel of the Ninth Circuit ruled that the courts lacked authority to order the federal government to enact a climate plan. In May 2024, the case was dismissed again. In 2025, the Supreme Court denied hearing an appeal.
Attacks on Communities
During both Trump terms, federal commitments to scientific integrity and environmental justice were or are being systematically dismantled, which strips vulnerable communities of legal avenues for environmental protection.
An example is Trump v. Casa, where the Supreme Court restricted nationwide injunctions, making it harder for large groups or communities to win broad protections unless they pursue more complex class actions or satisfy strict relief rules. Another ruling, which came after Trump-appointed Justice Gorsuch recused himself due to pressure over his ties to a major oil company involved in the case, undercut the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), letting agencies avoid accounting for cumulative or indirect environmental impacts—effectively dampening legal redress for many.
The consequences of these rulings also fall really hard on BIPOC and low-income communities. In Louisiana’s “Cancer Alley,” Trump-appointed Judge James Cain refused in August 2024 to uphold EPA civil rights claims—even as majority-Black neighborhoods remain overexposed to the devastating effects of toxic emissions. An advocate said the ruling now gives polluters a “permanent free pass.”
Elsewhere, Trump’s EPA has shut down Justice40-aligned initiatives and removed environmental justice mapping tools used to track local exposure. In Houston, Air Alliance Houston is suing to restore $3 million in community justice grants cut under Trump 2.0—funding that had been essential for communities facing chronic air pollution.
Isolation and Legal Demands for “Proof”
When Trump withdrew the United States from the Paris Agreement for a second time in 2025, the move was officially framed as a rejection of burdensome international commitments. But this withdrawal parallels a deeper ideological throughline: suspicion of collective obligation and future-oriented planning.
The response from climate advocates, lawyers, and policymakers must be to play an even longer, more sophisticated game.
In foreign policy, that means abandoning global pacts that require shared, long-term commitments. In domestic courts, it has translated into rulings that restrict federal agencies from acting unless they can show narrow, short-term, and quantifiable benefits.
Take Sackett v. EPA, for example. In a 5-4 ruling, Justice Samuel Alito, redefined the Clean Water Act to apply only to wetlands with a “continuous surface connection” to navigable waters. The result is sweeping: up to 80 percent of US streams and at least 50 percent of wetlands will lose federal protection. The Supreme Court outright dismissed ecological evidence, insisting on a narrow legal test instead. Broader ecosystem benefits? Irrelevant, unless explicitly codified.
Rulings such as this one don’t just narrow environmental law, they create a proof burden. Preventive policies—methane caps, wetland preservation, disaster planning—are sidelined as “unprovable.”
Meanwhile, the United States’ withdrawal from the Paris Agreement broadcast a clear message abroad: don’t count on America in global coordination. At home, the message is even bleaker: prove your climate action in hard cash today or get dismissed in court.
The Intergenerational Impact
Structural shifts introduced during Trump’s first term are being resurrected, reinforced, and expanded during his second term.
Young people may encounter a system where key policy tools like federal regulations, legal protections, and institutional capacity have already been weakened or restricted. Even when future leaders campaign on environmental agendas, the legal and bureaucratic systems may slow or shrink what is actually achievable.
But despite the formidable nature of these challenges, it’s a mistake to fall into despair. Institutions, by their very nature, are designed to evolve. Laws, while difficult to change, can be rewritten through persistent legislative effort and shifts in political will. Government agencies, even those hollowed out or redirected, can be rebuilt and repopulated with individuals committed to their original mandates.
In a 2018 survey, nearly 400 EPA employees experienced but did not report political interference in their work. In Trump’s second term, the resistance has become more public and coordinated. Over 170 current EPA staff, along with 100 anonymous employees and 20 Nobel laureates, signed a formal declaration condemning the dismantling of the Office of Research & Development and other tools essential to science-based decision-making.
And while Trump’s judicial appointments have undeniably pushed the judiciary in a conservative direction, courts are not immune to external pressures. Public opinion, legislative correctives, and sustained legal challenges can all influence judicial interpretations over time. History shows us that even the most entrenched legal doctrines can shift in response to societal evolution and persistent advocacy. This isn’t a quick fix, but an attestation to the long-term power of strategic engagement.
The current moment calls for strategy over despair. Trump didn’t just oppose climate action, he worked to embed his agenda within the structures of government. The response from climate advocates, lawyers, and policymakers must be to play an even longer, more sophisticated game. This means understanding the mechanisms Trump used and developing counterstrategies to dismantle them.
The next generation isn’t entering a fair fight, but they are far from empty-handed. The same tools used to obstruct—strategic messaging, litigation, regulatory maneuvering—are also available to climate advocates and policymakers. The task isn’t just to invent new tactics, but to use existing ones with persistence and precision—to reopen what has been closed off, and to outlast the sabotage.
