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      in US Politics

      ‘It happened so fast’: the shocking reality of indoor heat deaths in Arizona

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      It was the hottest day of the year so far when the central air conditioning started blowing hot air in the mobile home where Richard Chamblee lived in Bullhead City, Arizona, with his wife, children, and half a dozen cats and dogs.It was only mid-June but the heat was insufferable, particularly for Chamblee, who was clinically obese and bed-bound in the living room as the temperature hit 115F (46C) in the desert city – situated 100 miles (160km) south of Las Vegas on the banks of the Colorado River.The family could not afford to immediately replace or repair the AC system, so instead they bought a window unit and installed it next to Chamblee’s bed. They positioned fans, ice packs and cold drinks close by in an effort to keep Chamblee cool and hydrated, checking in on him every couple of hours.But the mobile home is old, open-plan and poorly insulated. Despite their efforts, the temperature hovered close to 100F in the house, according to Chamblee’s son John.Chamblee overheated and struggled to breathe. His core temperature measured 108F when he was rushed to the emergency room, but doctors were unable to cool him down, according to the death report obtained by the Guardian using the Freedom of Information Act (Foia). Chamblee’s heart stopped working.View image in fullscreenHe had died just two days after the AC went out.“It was the end of the day and it was cooling off slightly, so we thought he’d be OK. He thought he would be OK,” said his wife, Sherry Chamblee, who works three jobs including as assistant manager at a local grocery store. “We had no idea the heat could be so dangerous so quickly inside. It just happened so fast.”Chamblee was just 52 years old. He was a devout Baptist, smart and happy-go-lucky, and he loved playing video games.“We did our best to cool him down, but we live a couple of hours from Death Valley, the hottest place on Earth, and my dad couldn’t move,” said John, 21. “My mom lives paycheck to paycheck and if the AC breaks down in the summer and you can’t afford to fix it, you will die here. My dad proves that.”Nationwide, one in five of the lowest-income households have no access to air conditioning, while 30% rely solely on window units, according to exclusive analysis by the National Energy Assistance Directors Association (Neada) for the Guardian.As many as 60% of American households live paycheck to paycheck, while one in three report forgoing basic necessities such as food or medicine to pay energy bills and avoid disconnection.Heat is the deadliest weather phenomenon in the US and globally, killing almost half a million people worldwide each year, according to the World Health Organization. The death toll is rising as human-caused climate crisis drives more frequent, more brutal and longer heatwaves.Last month marked 30 years since what was then an unprecedented five-day heatwave in Chicago that killed more than 730 people and sent thousands to hospital. The majority were elderly, Black, isolated, low-income residents either lacking air conditioning or the money to run it.Since then, deadly heat domes have hit every corner of the country, including northern states unaccustomed to extreme heat, such as Oregon and Massachusetts. Yet the US has failed to implement a robust methodology to count and understand the scale of the heat-related illnesses and deaths.View image in fullscreenAs the planet heats up, experts warn that indoor heat deaths among elderly, sick and low-income people could surge amid deepening financial hardship driven by Donald Trump’s energy policies, trade wars and his administration’s dismantling of the social safety net.“The United States is being governed by a regime that depends on denying scientific findings from climate science to economics and medical science to sociology,” said Eric Klinenberg, the author of Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago and director of the Institute for Public Knowledge at New York University.“We’re not just failing to protect vulnerable people, we’re actively making life here more precarious. And while some will be able to buy their way out of the problem, most people can’t. This is an existential crisis,” said Klinenberg.Energy poverty in the world’s richest countryOne in three American households experiences energy poverty – the inability to access sufficient amounts of energy due to financial hardship, according to one recent study.And it’s getting worse. The average household electric bill during the summer months, when cooling drives up usage, will reach $784 in 2025 – a 6.2% rise from $737 last year, according to analysis by Neada for the Guardian. This will be the highest recorded in more than a decade, and will place a disproportionate burden on low-income Americans. Families in the south and south-west are disproportionately affected.The Chamblee family experienced severe energy poverty until 2023, when they saved $1,000 to install residential solar panels that qualified for tax credits, and cut the family’s summer electricity bills from around $400 to $60 a month. The federal solar tax credit included in Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act ends in December, however, thanks to Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act – a decade earlier than planned.Trump’s budget will lead to residential electricity bills in Arizona increasing by $220 on average by 2035, by truncating the development of new, cost-effective solar energy capacity in the sunny state, according to analysis by Energy Innovation. Trump’s signature legislation will also slash access to food stamps and healthcare, relied upon by millions of low-income households, in order to fund tax cuts for the wealthy.View image in fullscreenNationwide, meanwhile, his unprecedented and chaotic rollback of federal incentives and permits led to the cancellation of $22bn of clean energy projects in the first six months of 2025, more than half in Republican states.Earlier this month, Arizona’s Republican-controlled regulator also voted to begin the process of repealing the state’s renewable standard, which required that at least 15% of utility energy supplies should come from renewable sources by 2025. Consumer and environmental advocates – and the state’s attorney general – warn the move will further drive up energy bills.And in Arizona and across the country, private utilities have submitted proposals for multibillion-dollar rate increases, in order to cover infrastructure upgrades, inflation and new fossil fuel projects – driven, at least partially, by the unchecked expansion of massive datacentres promoted by the Trump administration.“Families are already struggling with high energy bills, and forcing them to cross-subsidize some of the world’s wealthiest corporations violates both fairness and common sense,” said Mark Wolfe, an energy economist and director of Neada.“It will worsen energy poverty, erode public trust, and turn utilities into vehicles for corporate welfare.”Taylor Rogers, a White House spokesperson, dismissed criticism of Trump’s energy policy as “fearmongering”.“The best source of energy in a heat wave is baseload energy from coal and natural gas, which the president has unleashed and made more affordable, not intermittent energy sources like solar,” Rogers said. “By increasing energy production, eliminating burdensome regulations, and streamlining permitting, President Trump is ensuring that US energy meets the energy demands for heat waves, data centers, and grid stability.”Energy … on the credit cardHousehold utility debt is reaching crisis levels, jumping from $17.5bn in January 2023 to $21bn in June 2025 and forecast to climb as high as $25bn by the end of this year. Currently, only 26 states and the District of Columbia have rules restricting some utility shutoffs over the summer, and disconnections could hit 4m by the end of 2025, according to Neada.Amid soaring energy costs, shrinking federal aid, hotter summers and a zip code lottery when it comes to utility disconnection rules, health experts warn that households on fixed incomes and those with medical issues such as diabetes, heart disease, obesity and addictions will be most vulnerable.“These are preventable deaths, and the situation is going to get worse as bills go up and hardship increases,” said Vjollca Berisha, a former senior epidemiologist at the Maricopa county department of public health who tracked energy insecurity and indoor deaths. “It only takes a little push to knock down people with underlying conditions if they don’t have options.”View image in fullscreenIn Maricopa county, which includes Phoenix, last year, almost a quarter of the 608 confirmed heat-related fatalities happened inside, with people over 50 accounting for the vast majority of those who died at home.A quarter of the county’s indoor deaths took place in RVs or mobile homes, a popular source of affordable housing, especially for retirees, but which are often poorly insulated and too rundown to qualify for weatherization programs.The vast majority of those indoor heat victims had AC at home, but the unit was broken in 70% of cases – while one in 10 had no electricity to run even a fan, according to Maricopa county’s 2024 report.Patricia Miletich, a 70-year-old woman with memory issues, died in June 2024 at a 55+ RV resort with pickleball courts, a golf course and bistro in the hot and dusty city of El Mirage north-west of Phoenix. According to her autopsy report obtained by the Guardian, a neighbor told death investigators that Miletich had forgotten to pay her bills on multiple occasions, resulting in her electricity being turned off in the past.The power was on when she died, but the AC was not functioning. Like Chamblee’s, it blew hot air from the vents, between 109F and 117F. The resort’s manager confirmed to the Guardian that Miletich’s power had been disconnected several times, but declined to answer further questions about what support the retiree received.“It’s a sad situation that should never have happened, but she wanted to be left alone and the family didn’t know” about her memory decline and electricity shutoffs, said her brother Michael Miletich.In nearby Mohave county, a Guardian analysis of death reports obtained under Foia found that 70% of the 67 confirmed heat-related deaths in 2024 occurred indoors – of which the vast majority lived in RVs or mobile homes.This includes Stephen Patterson in Lake Havasu City, a 69-year-old with multiple health challenges tied to a childhood road traffic accident, chronic pain and alcohol addiction. Patterson relied on his $1,000 monthly social security check – the sole source of income for around 40% of seniors, according to one 2020 study.According to Regina, his sister and main carer, Patterson rationed his AC use because he believed he could cope with the heat but not without alcohol. He also incorrectly blamed the AC for a mold issue.When he died, the temperature inside Stephen’s house was 102F, according to the medical examiner’s report. The daily high in Lake Havasu City was 116F.View image in fullscreen“I begged him to turn on the AC,” said Regina, who is 75 and, like her brother, is also on a fixed social security income. “I would have paid his bill on my credit card, but my brother was a stubborn man. It was like a furnace when I found him.”Regina uses credit cards to pay her electric bill, currently $211 a month, as well as her water, trash, car insurance and cable. The cards charge as much as 35% interest. Around 60% of her monthly income covers the house payment, and the rest goes to service the credit card debt, which currently stands at more than $12,000 – in addition to almost $1,000 owed to the energy company.She diligently documents each month’s payments and remaining credit in an A4 notebook that sits on the coffee table next to the TV remote.View image in fullscreenRegina has been disconnected multiple times over the years, but has received some financial help from the Salvation Army and Goodwill to avoid a shutoff. Yet she was unaware of the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (Liheap), the chronically underfunded federal program to help families pay their energy bills, which the Trump administration proposed cutting after firing the entire workforce in April.In Arizona, 24,000 households received Liheap assistance in the 2025 fiscal year. A third of recipients included a household member with a disability or children under six, while 16% included an older adult. Liheap was saved amid bipartisan protests, but its future remains uncertain. Arizona, where heat deaths are known to occur from April to November, currently only has enough funds to help struggling families through the end of September.On his first day back in the White House, Trump declared a national energy emergency, promising to lower prices by boosting fossil fuels and rolling back Joe Biden’s renewable energy ambitions. To Regina Patterson, it all now rings hollow.“The price of everything keeps going up and I get into more debt every month. Trump is evil and only cares about the rich,” she said.“If I were to lose my electric in this heat, I would lose my head.” More

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      in US Politics

      ‘You had to fend for yourself’: Hurricane Katrina haunts New Orleans as Trump guts disaster aid

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      View image in fullscreenDarren McKinney grew up in New Orleans’s Lower Ninth Ward. When Hurricane Katrina struck 20 years ago this week, he watched his neighborhood wash away. From his second-floor apartment, he saw flood waters rise up to his window.“I had no food at all, no water, no electricity,” he recounted one rainy day this month, while taking a break from his job leading home restoration in the neighborhood as field operations director of the non-profit lowernine.org.After being trapped inside for four days, city officials rescued McKinney in a boat and dropped him off on a nearby bridge. He was told a military truck would bring him to an emergency shelter in the city’s Superdome, but a vehicle never arrived because the shelter reached capacity. He was forced to walk to an evacuation point downtown.“You had to fend for yourself,” he said. “There just wasn’t enough shelter, wasn’t enough support.”Friends helped McKinney evacuate to Houston, Texas. Months later, when he returned to the city, he found his home in “real bad condition”. He eventually settled into a trailer provided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema).During his stay in the temporary home, he began to hear news reports that some Fema trailers were found to have high levels of the harmful chemical formaldehyde. With nowhere else to stay, he tried to ignore those reports.“What could you do?” he asked.The federal response to Katrina, particularly by Fema, came under intense scrutiny after the hurricane, which killed at least 1,833 people. In New Orleans, residents spray-painted curses at Fema on their boarded-up homes and wore T-shirts around the city that bore the slogan: “FEMA – Federal Employees Missing in Action.”Some on the right have called to shrink the agency or even abolish it. In recent months, the Trump administration has picked up on those calls, defunding key Fema programs, laying off hundreds of staffers, and threatening to dismantle the agency completely. But McKinney believes the administration’s policies will leave New Orleans worse prepared for future hurricanes.“You don’t know when you’re gonna have another disaster like that,” he said. “For people that don’t have money, without Fema, how you going to help them out?”In recent weeks, Donald Trump has walked back promises to abolish Fema. But disaster management experts fear the changes he has made will still leave the US just as underprepared to take on a hurricane like Katrina as it was in 2005.“It has been so demoralizing to realize how closely aligned we have become again to what Fema looked like pre-Katrina, and how quickly we’ve backslid on the progress of the last 20 years,” said Samantha Montano, a disaster response expert at Massachusetts Maritime Academy and author of the book Disasterology.‘State-led, federally supported’Since re-entering the White House in January, Trump has repeatedly called for states to bear more responsibility for disasters, signing a March executive order saying municipalities should “play a more active and significant role” in national resilience and preparedness.“If they can’t handle it, they shouldn’t be governor,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office in June, as he spoke about a plan to “wean” states off Fema assistance.But states have always led disaster response, said Craig Fugate, who directed Fema between 2009 and 2017.“The current administration says states should lead, we should support, [but] that’s what it’s always been,” he said. “The federal government, at the direction of the president, through Fema, supports the governor.”Cuts at Fema could have particularly negative implications for poor, climate-vulnerable states like Louisiana, which received the most direct assistance from Fema between January 2015 and April 2024, according to data collected for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s Disaster Dollar Database.“For states that are oftentimes underresourced, Fema gives the support that is needed to navigate disasters, both in the form of financial assistance and providing technical expertise,” said Reggie Ferreira, who directs the disaster resilience leadership academy at Tulane University in New Orleans.But even wealthier states will probably struggle to weather disasters without the agency’s support, said Montano.“The importance of Fema really just can’t be overstated. They’re the last line of defense that we really have in moments of crisis,” she said. “We know that our state and local capacity to respond to disasters in most parts of the country is relatively limited. And we know that our needs related to disasters are increasing in the context of climate change.”‘Brain drain’After Katrina struck New Orleans in August 2005, the support Fema was able to provide had dwindled due to policies enacted by former president George W Bush.“When Katrina happened, it’s really important to remember that Fema had just gone through a shock of their own,” said Montano. “Going into Katrina, Fema was deeply unprepared as an agency, which is a huge reason for the failure in the response.”In the wake of the 2001 9/11 attacks, the Bush administration launched a government-wide reorganization to focus on the threat of terrorism, cutting disaster programs and, in 2003, stripping Fema of its independent, cabinet-level status. The agency was then absorbed into the newly created Department of Homeland Security.“The attention was only on terrorism at the expense of anything else,” said Fugate.The shifts at Fema led to a mass exodus of staff. Some – including senior leadership – were relieved of their duties and reassigned to terrorism-related posts, while others who were reportedly frustrated with the restructure resigned.That “brain drain” was a key reason that Fema was not able to provide an adequate response to Katrina, said Montano.Fugate said what is happening at the agency today was “very similar” to that moment. Under Trump, an estimated one-third of Fema’s workforce has been eliminated due to layoffs, firings and voluntary buyouts.In recent weeks, the Trump administration has also reportedly sent some remaining Fema staff to help speed the hiring of immigration enforcement agents. Lt Gen Russel Honoré, who led the military response to Hurricane Katrina, had choice words about the decision. “That adds insult to injury,” he said. “I really think these fucking people are stuck on stupid.”The staffing cuts threaten the relationships between state and federal officials, said Stephen Murphy, former planning section chief for New Orleans’s homeland security and emergency preparedness office. That could make disaster response less efficient.“When you have a strong team, a network, everybody has built trust in one another because they’ve been out there together, they’ve bled for one another,” said Murphy, who now leads Tulane University’s disaster management program. “When you disrupt that, you’re playing with fire.”View image in fullscreenThe federal changes are difficult to witness, said Murphy, who said Katrina inspired his career in disaster response. When it struck, he had moved to New Orleans only six weeks earlier to pursue a graduate degree in bioterrorism. Classes had not even started when, as Katrina was gaining strength over the Gulf of Mexico, he decided to evacuate his new home.“As I was pulling out of my neighborhood, some new friends that I’d met in town said: ‘Hey, where are you going? We’re going to have a party,’” he remembered from his New Orleans office. “I had my kayak in my truck, and I asked: ‘OK, you want me to leave this for you?’ I didn’t realize how terrible a joke that would be.”In its aftermath, Murphy decided to devote his life to better managing disasters like Katrina, as did many others in the field.“There’s been tremendous improvements and growth since then,” said Murphy. “To dismantle a lot of what has been done does feel like a little bit of a gut punch.”Cutting funding, undercutting progressAfter Katrina, Fema also increased funding for disaster relief and mitigation. But under Trump, billions of those dollars have dried up.“A lot of the federal grants and money that helped fortify some of the most vulnerable areas, including New Orleans, are getting clawed back,” said Murphy. “You can’t just turn the spigot off and expect the system to still work.”View image in fullscreenSome of the Trump administration’s actions at Fema directly violate policies enacted by lawmakers to prevent future botched disaster responses, said Honoré. That includes the president’s January appointment of a new administrator for the agency.The Post-Katrina Emergency Management Reform Act, which Congress passed in 2006, requires all Fema administrators to have experience in disaster management. The provision was inspired by Bush’s Fema administrator, Michael Brown, who was critiqued for his limited background in the field.In the 19 years since the bill’s passage, only “seasoned emergency managers” have succeeded Brown, said Honoré. But that all changed when Trump picked David Richardson – who appears to have no disaster management experience – for the post, he said.Before leading Fema, Richardson oversaw a Department of Homeland Security program focused on weapons of mass destruction. In a June briefing, Richardson told personnel he was unaware that the US had a hurricane season, which the White House later said was a “joke”.The 2006 policy also empowered Fema to act with greater flexibility and clearer authority in emergency management, and designated its administrator as a principal presidential adviser. Trump does not appear to be following those provisions, Honoré said.As deadly floods overwhelmed Texas last month, Fema officials told CNN they were not able to pre-position search and rescue crews in the region because Trump’s homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, insisted upon personally approving all agency contracts and grants over $100,000 before funds were disbursed.“Genius,” Honoré said sarcastically.This week, Fema employees wrote to Congress warning that the Trump administration’s changes at the agency could lead to another “catastrophe” on the scale of Hurricane Katrina. “The agency’s current trajectory reflects a clear departure from the intent” of the 2006 legislation, they wrote.View image in fullscreenDaniel Llargués, Fema’s acting press secretary, dismissed the criticisms voiced in the letter telling the New York Times the Trump administration “is committed to ensuring Fema delivers for the American people” and to cutting “red tape, inefficiency and outdated processes” in the agency. Fema did not respond to questions from the Guardian for this article.Equity threatenedIn the absence of federal support after Katrina, many advocacy groups worked to fill the gaps, particularly in the low-income communities of color that found it disproportionately difficult to rebuild.Even those non-governmental efforts have been undermined by Trump’s policies, said McKinney, the field operations director of lowernine.org.The organization has for years hosted international volunteers, but fewer want to travel to the US amid Trump’s immigration crackdown, he said.In May, the president also gutted AmeriCorps, leaving lowernine.org with fewer hands to help with their home construction efforts.“They cut the AmeriCorps funding [one] afternoon in the middle of a workday,” said Laura Paul, executive director of lowernine.org. “Our team had just taken a wall down on someone’s house that they were living in, and they just put their tools down and walked off site.”View image in fullscreenTrump has also ended grants to some environmental justice groups, including in New Orleans, further threatening efforts to promote equitable disaster recovery, while gutting Biden-era equity-focused government initiatives, including within Fema.“Fema, obviously, was not perfect in any way after Katrina,” said Montano. “But a lot of the progress on equity is just gone.”‘More support, more help’The scrutiny federal disaster response has received since Katrina is warranted, but Trump has moved in the wrong direction, said Betina James, a resident of New Orleans’s Hollygrove neighborhood.View image in fullscreen“We want more support, more help, not for them to take all that help away,” she said.From a senior citizens community meeting at the Hollygrove-Dixon Neighborhood Association’s Life Transformation Community Center this month, James recounted her experience after Katrina destroyed her house: Fema denied her request for a temporary shelter for two months, and when they finally approved it, the agency provided her with a trailer that had “no floor in the bedroom”.“It was just covered with carpet with nothing under it, so if you stepped on it, you’d go straight through to the ground,” she said.Officials provided a replacement, but living in it made her feel nauseated with burning eyes and itchy skin. She believes it was contaminated.At the senior citizens meeting, a dozen other residents chimed in with their harrowing Katrina experiences: stepping over human corpses in the streets and being left without shelter and financial aid. Some said they had even failed to receive adequate assistance during more recent disasters such as 2021’s Hurricane Ida.View image in fullscreenBut those experiences should push officials to improve Fema, not gut it, said Terry Caesar, another senior attending the meeting.“It used to be when things broke, we took it to the shop to fix it,” he said. “You’re not supposed to throw it out.” More

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      Fema staff warn Trump’s cuts risk exposing US to another Hurricane Katrina

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      Donald Trump’s attacks on the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) risk exposing the US to another Hurricane Katrina, staff at the agency have warned Congress in a withering critique that also takes aim at its current leadership.Writing in the run up to this week’s 20th anniversary of the devastating 2005 storm that killed 1,833 people and caused widespread destruction in New Orleans and the Gulf coast, more than 180 current and former Fema employees say the Trump administration’s policies are ignoring the mistakes that led to it.The letter, sent to members of Congress and a council formed to examine the agency’s future, follows months of criticism of Fema from Trump and senior administration officials, who have threatened to close it, prompting more than 2,000 staff – about one-third of its permanent workforce – to depart, leaving it short of institutional expertise in key positions.It comes after last month’s deadly flooding in Texas that left at least 135 – including 37 school children – dead. Experts said the death toll may have been inflated by the upheaval at Fema, claiming it diminished its capacity to respond quickly.The letter, entitled The Katrina Declaration, accused the Trump administration of disregarding the Post-Katrina Emergency Reform Act (PKERMA), passed in 2006 with the intention of absorbing the lessons of the disaster.“Hurricane Katrina was not just a natural disaster, but a man-made one,” the signatories wrote.“The inexperience of senior leaders and the profound failure by the federal government to deliver timely, unified, and effective aid to those in need left survivors to fend for themselves.“Two decades later, Fema is enacting processes and leadership structures that echo the conditions PKERMA was designed to prevent.”It is also scathing about Kristi Noem, who as homeland security secretary, has overall responsibility for Fema, and about two administrators who have been placed in charge of the agency since Trump’s inauguration.“Since January 2025, Fema has been under the leadership of individuals lacking legal qualifications, Senate approval, and the demonstrated background required of a Fema administrator,” the signatories said.The letter identifies the current Fema acting administrator, David Richardson, who has no previous experience in disaster management, and his predecessor, Cameron Hamilton, who was appointed by Trump only to be fired after publicly saying he opposed plans to abolish the agency.“Decisions made [by Noem, Richardson and Hamiltion] … hinder the swift execution of our mission, and dismiss experienced staff whose institutional knowledge and relationships are vital to ensure effective emergency management,” it said.Noem has angered seasoned officials by demanding that contracts worth more more than $100,000 be personally approved by her – a stipulation specialists say significantly slowed the response to the Texas floods.Richardson’s suitability was questioned after he told staff that he did not know the US had a hurricane season – which lasts from the start of May till 30 November. His office later insisted he was joking.The letter states: “Our shared commitment to our country, our oaths of office, and our mission of helping people before, during, and after disasters compel us to warn Congress and the American people of the cascading effects of decisions made by the current administration.”Six statements of opposition in the letter include condemnation of “the ongoing failure to appoint a qualified FEMA administrator, as required by law”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIt also includes criticism of the administration’s “censorship of climate science”.“This administration’s decision to ignore and disregard the facts pertaining to climate science in disasters shows a blatant disregard for the safety and security of our nation’s people and all American communities regardless of their geographic, economic or ethnic diversity,” the signatories write.A petition at the end of the letter demands that Fema be given full cabinet level agency status and defended from interference from the Department of Homeland Security. The department recently ordered Fema agents to assist Immigration, Customs and Enforcement (Ice) agents in immigration raids, threatening to fire those who refused.Trump, who has set up a review council headed by Noem to consider Fema’s future, has repeatedly said he favors its abolition, though he softened his rhetoric following the Texas floods, amid suggestions that it could be “rebranded” with more of its functions being devolved to the states.Thirty-six of the signatories – including some currently working at the agency – attached their names, leaving them open to possible retribution. Another 144 withheld their identities.One signatory, Michael Coen, a former Fema chief of staff under Joe Biden and Barack Obama, told the Guardian in a statement: “I am proud of the current and former FEMA employees for having the courage to speak up. Lessons were learned from Katrina and Congress took action. Those lessons and actions are being disregarded by the Trump administration.”Daniel Llargués, Fema’s acting press secretary, dismissed the criticisms voiced in the letter.“It is not surprising that some of the same bureaucrats who presided over decades of inefficiency are now objecting to reform,” he told the New York Times. He said the Trump administration “is committed to ensuring Fema delivers for the American people” and to cutting “red tape, inefficiency and outdated processes” in the agency. More

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      New England states vow to fight Trump administration order to halt work on offshore wind farm that’s nearly complete

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      The Democratic governors of Rhode Island and Connecticut promised on Saturday to fight a Trump administration order halting work on a nearly complete wind farm off their coasts that was expected to be operational next year.The Revolution Wind project was about 80% complete, with 45 of its 65 turbines already installed, according to the Danish wind farm developer Ørsted, when the US Bureau of Ocean Energy Management sent the firm a letter on Friday ordering it to “halt all ongoing activities”.“In particular, BOEM is seeking to address concerns related to the protection of national security interests in the United States,” wrote Matt Giacona, the agency’s acting director, adding that Ørsted “may not resume activities” until the agency has completed a review of the project.Giacona said that the project, which had already cleared years of federal and state reviews, now needs to be re-examined in light of Donald Trump’s order, on the first day of his second term, to consider “terminating or amending any existing wind energy leases”.Giacona, whose prior work as a lobbyist for the offshore oil industry alarmed consumer advocates, also said that the review was necessary to “address concerns related to the protection of national security interests of the United States”. He did not specify what those national security concerns are.Rhode Island’s governor, Dan McKee, criticized the stop-work order and said he and Connecticut’s governor, Ned Lamont, “will pursue every avenue to reverse the decision to halt work on Revolution Wind”, which was “just steps away from powering more than 350,000 homes”.Senator Chris Murphy, a Connecticut Democrat, connected the decision to Trump’s reported pitch last year to oil industry executives to trade $1bn in campaign donations for regulatory favors. “When the oil industry showed up at Mar-a-Lago with a set of demands in exchange for a $1 billion of campaign support for Trump, this is what they were asking for: the destruction of clean energy in America,” Murpy said in a statement.“This is a story of corruption, plain and simple. President Trump has sold our country out to big corporations with the oil and gas industry at the top of the list,” the senator added. “I will work with my colleagues and Governor Lamont to pursue all legal paths to get this project back on track.”Since returning to office, Trump has taken sweeping actions to prioritize fossil fuels and hinder renewable energy projects. Throughout his time in public office, Trump has repeatedly brought up his visceral hatred for wind power, apparently prompted by his belief that offshore turbines spoil the views at his golf courses, and his embrace of the bizarre theory that “the noise causes cancer”.Trump recently called wind and solar power “THE SCAM OF THE CENTURY!” in a social media post and vowed not to approve wind or “farmer destroying Solar” projects.Rhode Island’s attorney general, Peter Neronha, said in a statement on Saturday that, without the Revolution Wind project, the state’s Act on Climate law, which aims to use renewable energy to battle global warming, “is dead in the water”.Scientists agree that nations need to rapidly embrace renewable energy to stave off the worst effects of climate change, including extreme heat and drought; larger, more intense wildfires and supercharged hurricanes, typhoons and rainstorms that lead to catastrophic flooding.Construction on Revolution Wind began in 2023, and the project was expected to be fully operational next year. Ørsted says it is evaluating the financial impact of stopping construction and considering legal proceedings.Revolution Wind is located more than 15 miles (24km) south of the Rhode Island coast, 32 miles (51km) south-east of the Connecticut coast and 12 miles (19km) south-west of Martha’s Vineyard. Rhode Island is already home to one offshore wind farm, the five-turbine Block Island Wind Farm.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionRevolution Wind was expected to be Rhode Island and Connecticut’s first commercial-scale offshore wind farm, capable of powering more than 350,000 homes. The densely populated states have minimal space available for land-based energy projects, which is why the offshore wind project is considered crucial for the states to meet their climate goals.Wind power is the largest source of renewable energy in the US and provides about 10% of the electricity generated in the nation.Green Oceans, a non-profit that opposes the offshore wind industry, and sued in federal court last year to stop the 83,798-acre (33,912-hectare) Revolution Wind project on environmental grounds, applauded the decision. “We are grateful that the Trump Administration and the federal government are taking meaningful action to preserve the fragile ocean environment off the coasts of Rhode Island and Massachusetts,” the non-profit said in a statement.This is the second major offshore wind project the Trump White House has halted. Work was previously stopped on Empire Wind, a New York offshore wind project, but construction was allowed to resume after New York’s governor, Kathy Hochul, and senator Chuck Schumer intervened.“This administration has it exactly backwards. It’s trying to prop up clunky, polluting coal plants while doing all it can to halt the fastest growing energy sources of the future – solar and wind power,” Kit Kennedy, managing director for the power division at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said in a statement. “Unfortunately, every American is paying the price for these misguided decisions.”The Associated Press contributed reporting More

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      Farmers in US midwest squeezed by Trump tariffs and climate crisis

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      Seventh-generation farmer Brian Harbage grows corn, soybeans and grass, and runs a cattle operation across five counties in western Ohio. In the world of agriculture, his work makes up a large business.And still, the past two years have been immensely challenging amid the twin threats of the climate crisis and the Trump administration.Last year, regions of the eastern corn belt saw just 20% of crops harvested due to a drought that brought little precipitation between June and October. It was part of a climatic cycle that involved drought, heat and wildfires that cost crop producers $11bn nationally.“Last year, we got a good crop started, and then it just quit raining. Our yields were definitely reduced by at least 25-30%,” says Harbage.This year, it’s been almost the complete opposite.Excess rainfall has fueled severe disease and pest pressure on the several thousand acres of soybeans and corn he planted in the spring.“There were three-day windows, it seemed like. It would just start to get dried out and it would rain,” he says.“We finished up [planting] at the beginning of June. We like to be finished by 15 May. Anything that’s planted later means that it was probably planted in marginal conditions since we were rushing to get it in, and secondly, it doesn’t have near enough time to mature before harvest.”With the 2025 harvest of corn and soybeans approaching – America’s biggest two crops and the linchpins of agriculture – crop growers are facing down the gauntlet. Climatic swings, rocketing operating costs and low international demand, caused, in large part, by government policy in the shape of tariffs, has created the perfect storm.“Farming is not for the worrisome,” says Harbage. “We always kid that we are crisis managers.”Suicide rates among farmers are 3.5 times the national level.In 2023-24, China bought 24.9m metric tons of soybeans worth $13.2bn, largely used to feed its 427-million-strong pig herd. At under 6m metric tons, US farmers’ second biggest international soybean market, Mexico, lags far behind.Since 2017, when tariffs were first introduced by President Trump, crop farmers have been struggling with the decline of China as the leading market for soybeans and an important market for corn exports.Last month, reports emerged that exports of soybeans – America’s largest grain export by value – had hit a 20-year low.“Tariffs are probably something that will help in the long run, for the whole country; in the short run it’s terrible for farmers,” says Harbage.“We’re really taking it on the chin now because if we can’t export, our prices are low. And if we can’t export and we have a terrible crop then it’s a one-two punch. I see what the government wants to do, but it’s hurting me in the near term.”Farmers and rural Americans are keen to highlight that their political and voting preferences are rarely fueled by a single issue or event such as tariffs. Many continue to back Trump, despite the obvious financial challenges the president’s policies are fomenting.Trump has been largely silent on addressing the pain his tariffs have caused farmers and ranchers, despite rural voters being a cornerstone of his political base. On 10 August, he posted to Truth Social a demand that China quadruple its purchases of American soybeans. The president claimed that China was “worried” about having a soybean shortage, although China has vowed to increase its domestic soybean production yield by 38% by 2034.What’s more, some market analysts say that Trump’s post didn’t make the rounds on Chinese social media, suggesting his demand may not have been heard by the country’s political leaders.With the soybean harvest in the midwest set to start about a month from now, and corn following weeks later, the fear that China may not buy a single shipload of grain this season is growing for many.“With [tariffs] in place, we are not competitive with soybeans from Brazil. Our marketing year starts 1 October and usually by now we’d see China making commitments to pre-purchases for soybeans. China has not made a single purchase for US soybeans,” says Virginia Houston, director of government affairs at the American Soybean Association, a lobbying organization.“No market can match China’s demand for soybeans. Right now, there is a 20% retaliatory duty from China.”To appease his farming base, the Trump administration announced $60bn in subsidies for farmers over the next decade in the recent tax bill, but that has drawn criticism from those who say that farmers shouldn’t be subsidized on taxpayers’ dime.Others have reported that funding is going to select producers in specific regions of the US, benefiting bigger producers rather than family farms. Adding to the export challenges, the price of commodity crops in the US has been in steady decline for the past three years due to a smaller cattle herd and falling ethanol production.Houston says that when she speaks with the White House and Congress to share the struggles farmers are facing due to tariffs, the response is that “they support farmers [but] we are one cog in the wheel of this complex relationship.“The farm economy is in a much tougher place than where we were in 2018 [during Trump’s previous China trade war]. Prices have gone down while inputs – seed, fertilizer, chemicals, land and equipment – continue to go up.”All the while, unpredictable weather conditions continue to make planning more difficult.For much of this summer, afternoon storms had been a near-daily occurrence in Indiana, Ohio and elsewhere in the eastern corn belt, causing ponding that kills early plant growth. Diseases such as northern corn leaf blight, gray leaf spot and tar spot soon followed.“When it’s being attacked by disease, it’s not growing to its full potential because it’s trying to fight off the disease,” says Harbage.Although he treated his crops for disease, the heat and humidity that have been an uncommon feature of life this summer can overcome the effects of fungicides.On top of that, Harbage says he’ll have to spend additional money on propane to dry his corn before sending it to consumers, again due to the high moisture content.If Trump walked into his farm today, Harbage says he’d have one message.“The exports is number one. That’s the number one fix. We have to get rid of what we’re growing, or we have to be able to use it,” he says.“China, Mexico and Canada – we export $83bn worth of commodities to them a year. So if they’re not buying, we’re stuck with our crop.”

      In the US, you can call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 988, chat on 988lifeline.org, or text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis counselor. In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org More

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      Scientists rush to bolster climate finding Trump administration aims to undo

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      Veteran climate scientists are organizing a coordinated public comment to a US Department of Energy (DOE) report that cast doubt on the scientific consensus on the climate crisis.The report, published late last month, claimed concerns about planet-warming fossil fuels are overblown, sparking widespread concern from scientists who said it was full of climate misinformation; it was an attempt to support a proposal from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to undo the “endangerment finding”, which forms the legal basis of virtually all US climate regulations.“A public comment from experts can be useful because it injects expert analysis into a decision-making process that might otherwise be dominated by political, economic, or ideological considerations,” said Andrew Dessler, a climate researcher at Texas A&M University who is organizing the response to the report. “Experts can identify technical errors, highlight overlooked data, and clarify uncertainties in ways that improve the accuracy and robustness of the final policy or report.”The response comes as part of a broader wave of experts’ attempts to uphold established climate science as the Trump administration promotes contrarian and unproven viewpoints.The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (Nasem), the country’s top group of scientific advisers, has launched a “fast-track” review of the latest evidence on how greenhouse gases threaten human health and wellbeing – a move announced following the proposed endangerment-finding rollback.Nasem, which advises the EPA and other federal agencies, plans to release their findings in September, in time to inform the EPA’s decision on the endangerment finding. The initiative will be self-funded by the organization – a highly unusual practice from the congressionally chartered group, which usually responds to federal bodies’ calls for advice.“It is critical that federal policymaking is informed by the best available scientific evidence,” said Marcia McNutt, president of the National Academy of Sciences, in a statement.Trump administration efforts to block access to data have also inspired pushback. This month, the president ousted the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics after baselessly saying the data it publishes is “rigged”.In earlier weeks, federal officials have also deleted key climate data and reports such as the national climate assessments and the US Global Change Research Program from government websites. The administration has changed 70% more of the information on official environmental websites during its first 100 days than the first Trump administration did, according to a report the research group Environmental Data and Governance Initiative published last week.In light of these actions, research organizations such as the Public Environmental Data Project and Cornerstone Sustainability Data Initiative have worked to safeguard and publicize data that the federal government is hiding from the public.“Attacks on science are dangerous because they erode one of society’s most effective tools for understanding the world and making decisions in the public interest,” said Dessler. “When political or ideological forces undermine scientific institutions or discredit experts, they weaken our ability to harness this powerful tool.”Asked for comment about the Nasem review, an EPA spokesperson repeated a comment offered earlier this month: “Congress never explicitly gave EPA authority to impose greenhouse gas regulations for cars and trucks.”The Clean Air Act authorizes the EPA to set emission standards for cars if the EPA administrator determines that their emissions endanger public health or welfare. That includes greenhouse gas emissions, due to the endangerment finding.Asked for comment on the DOE report supporting the EPA’s position, Department of Energy spokesperson Ben Dietderich also repeated an earlier comment. “This report critically assesses many areas of ongoing scientific inquiry that are frequently assigned high levels of confidence – not by the scientists themselves but by the political bodies involved, such as the United Nations or previous presidential administrations,” he said.The UN and the US have regularly convened top scientists to produce scientific climate reports, which warn that urgent action to curb emissions is needed.Dietderich also said officials “look forward to engaging with substantive comments” on the report.However, “the real question is whether they’ll listen to us”, said Dessler. More

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      ‘Erasure of years of work’: outcry as White House moves to open Arctic reserve to oil and gas drilling

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      The Trump administration’s plan to expand oil and gas drilling in a 23m acre reserve on the Arctic Ocean is sparking an impassioned response, amid fears it threatens Arctic wildlife, undermines the subsistence rights of Alaska Natives and imperils one of the fastest-warming ecosystems on Earth.More than a quarter of a million people have responded to the 2 June proposal from the US Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to roll back protections on the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska (NPR-A), the largest tract of public land in the US.A man from Georgia described hearing from an oil company that an employee shot a mother polar bear after encountering her with two cubs in northern Alaska.“I beg you to reconsider … I’m just 18 years old and haven’t had a chance to see the real world yet,” said a teenager from Denmark. “This will make that impossible – if not in the whole world, then at least in the icy areas of our planet.”The staggering number of comments submitted during the two-month comment period showed the public was watching, said Andy Moderow, senior director of policy at the Alaska Wilderness League. “That’s a pretty large turnout of Americans saying this is not the direction we need in the Arctic.”The BLM rollback is part of a broad, rapid-fire regulatory push to industrialize the Alaskan Arctic, particularly the NPR-A. Weeks after proposing to strip protections from the reserve, the Department of Interior signaled it would adopt a management plan that would open 82% of the NPR-A to oil drilling. Two weeks ago, before the public comment period had ended, the BLM rescinded three other Biden-era documents protecting the reserve.The Alaska Wilderness League, an Alaska-focused conservation non-profit, said the administration’s decision to start dismantling protections for the NPR-A before the comment period concluded showed “a lack of interest in meaningfully reviewing any input before taking action to allow unfettered industrialization across this landscape”.Alaska Native groups, some of which have worked for years to secure protections for areas of the NPR-A, also expressed frustration.View image in fullscreenThe rollback is “a coordinated erasure of years of work by Alaska Native communities”, said Sovereign Iñupiat for a Living Arctic in a press statement.“To have all the work we’ve done for the last two decades, trying to create important special areas with their unique biological features demonstrated by science, disregarded to allow full-force development is crazy to consider,” said Rosemary Ahtuangaruak, an activist and former mayor of Nuiqsut, Alaska, a village in the NPR-A.The BLM said in a statement it was working through all comments received on the 2024 NPR-A rule rescission, and that it would respond to substantive comments in the final rule.The White House referred the Guardian to the BLM when asked for comment.‘Devastating’ changeUnder Trump, the Department of Interior has embarked on a push to promote resource extraction in the Arctic, vowing to expand oil and gas in the NPR-A, open oil leasing on the coastal plain of the Arctic national wildlife refuge, and advance a controversial mining road in the southern Brooks range.The total land in play from these proposals is nearly 25m acres (10m hectares) of Arctic ecosystem, an area larger than the state of Indiana. The NPR-A comprises the vast majority of this. The reserve supports home grounds for polar bears, calving areas for caribou, and habitat for millions of migratory birds from Africa and Europe, as well as the Americas.In 2023, the Biden administration began consultations with Alaska Native groups and other stakeholders to update existing rules on how the NPR-A should be managed.These consultations led to the 2024 rule which the BLM now aims to rescind. That rule protects key areas in the NPR-A for subsistence use and habitat, including Teshekpuk Lake, the Utukok Uplands and the Colville River.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAhtuangaruak, who participated in the 2023 consultations, said removing these protections could be “very devastating rapidly”. She described a worsening ecological situation across the reserve, partly driven by existing oil development.Caribou herds were declining, she said, and some had shifted their migration patterns away from her village because of oil and gas development to the west of her village. Permafrost was thawing, causing freshwater Arctic lakes to drain. Ice roads separated caribou calves from caribou cows; polar bears struggled to den in the melting snowpack.Tim Fullman, a senior ecologist at the Wilderness Society, a US conservation non-profit, said that already-existing roads in the Alaskan Arctic had been shown to hinder caribou movement, at times delaying migrating animals for up to a month.Then there’s the perennial health impacts on communities from gas flaring in the NPR-A, which Ahtuangaruak said she began to notice in the early 2000s when she was a healthcare worker.“The flares, when there’d be 20 or more, there would be nights where people would have trouble breathing,” she said. “Babies would start to have events. There was one point where we had 20 babies develop respiratory distress and 10 of them were put on ventilators.”Oil for decadesThirty miles east of Nuiqsut, Ahtuangaruak’s village, is the ConocoPhillips Willow project, a drilling operation approved in March 2023 under the Biden administration. Still under construction, it is projected to come online in 2029. Once it begins to produce, Willow will be operational for at least 30 years, according to its environmental impact statement.The project is an example of the timeframe involved in the Arctic oil and gas projects the Trump administration is currently encouraging, says Moderow – spanning decades.“We’re not talking about oil next year. We’re talking about oil in 2050 and 2060 and beyond, when we need to move past it,” he said. The projects “could easily be pumping oil when babies born today are retiring in a climate that’s not livable if that oil is not blocked”.“It’s investing in production that’s going to be going on for decades, well past when we need to be at essentially net zero greenhouse gas emissions if we’re going to have a livable climate,” said Jeremy Lieb, a senior attorney at Earthjustice. More

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      Trump moves to scrap climate rule tying greenhouse gases to public health harm

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      Donald Trump’s administration on Tuesday proposed revoking a scientific finding that has long been the central basis for US action to regulate greenhouse gas emissions and fight climate change.The proposed Environmental Protection Agency rule rescinds a 2009 declaration that determined that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare.The “endangerment finding” is the legal underpinning of a host of climate regulations under the Clean Air Act for motor vehicles, power plants and other pollution sources that are heating the planet.The EPA administrator, Lee Zeldin, announced the proposed rule change on a podcast ahead of an official announcement set for Tuesday in Indiana.Repealing the endangerment finding “will be the largest deregulatory action in the history of America”, Zeldin said on the Ruthless podcast.Zeldin called for a rewrite of the endangerment finding in March as part of a series of environmental rollbacks announced at the same time in what Zeldin said was “the greatest day of deregulation in American history”. A total of 31 key environmental rules on topics from clean air to clean water and climate change would be rolled back or repealed under Zeldin’s plan.He singled out the endangerment finding as “the holy grail of the climate change religion” and said he was thrilled to end it “as the EPA does its part to usher in the Golden Age of American success”.The EPA also called for rescinding limits on tailpipe emissions that were designed to encourage automakers to build and sell more electric vehicles. The transportation sector is the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the US.Three former EPA leaders have criticized Zeldin, saying his March proposal would endanger the lives of millions of Americans and abandon the agency’s dual mission to protect the environment and human health.“If there’s an endangerment finding to be found anywhere, it should be found on this administration because what they’re doing is so contrary to what the Environmental Protection Agency is about,” Christine Todd Whitman, who led EPA under the Republican president George W Bush, said after Zeldin’s plan was made public.The EPA proposal follows an executive order from Trump that directed the agency to submit a report “on the legality and continuing applicability” of the endangerment finding.Conservatives and some congressional Republicans hailed the initial plan, calling it a way to undo economically damaging rules to regulate greenhouse gases.But environmental groups, legal experts and Democrats said any attempt to repeal or roll back the endangerment finding would be an uphill task with slim chance of success. The finding came two years after a 2007 supreme court ruling holding that the EPA has authority to regulate greenhouse gases as air pollutants under the Clean Air Act.David Doniger, a climate expert at the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group, said it was virtually “impossible to think that the EPA could develop a contradictory finding [to the 2009 standard] that would stand up in court”.Doniger and other critics accused Trump’s Republican administration of using potential repeal of the endangerment finding as a “kill shot’’ that would allow him to make all climate regulations invalid. If finalized, repeal of the endangerment finding would erase current limits on greenhouse gas pollution from cars, factories, power plants and other sources and could prevent future administrations from proposing rules to tackle climate change.“The endangerment finding is the legal foundation that underpins vital protections for millions of people from the severe threats of climate change, and the Clean Car and Truck Standards are among the most important and effective protections to address the largest US source of climate-causing pollution,” said Peter Zalzal, associate vice-president of the Environmental Defense Fund.“Attacking these safeguards is manifestly inconsistent with EPA’s responsibility to protect Americans’ health and wellbeing,” he said. “It is callous, dangerous and a breach of our government’s responsibility to protect the American people from this devastating pollution.” More