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    Trump drops Nasa nominee Jared Isaacman, scrapping Elon Musk’s pick

    The White House has withdrawn Jared Isaacman as its nominee for Nasa administrator, abruptly yanking a close ally of Elon Musk from consideration to lead the space agency.Donald Trump said he would announce a new candidate soon. “After a thorough review of prior associations, I am hereby withdrawing the nomination of Jared Isaacman to head Nasa,” the US president posted online. “I will soon announce a new Nominee who will be mission aligned, and put America first in space.”Isaacman, a billionaire private astronaut who had been Musk’s pick to lead Nasa, was due next week for a much-delayed confirmation vote before the US Senate. His removal from consideration caught many in the space industry by surprise.Trump and the White House did not explain what led to the decision.Isaacman, whose removal was earlier reported by Semafor, said he was “incredibly grateful” to Trump “and all those who supported me throughout this journey”.“I have gained a much deeper appreciation for the complexities of government and the weight our political leaders carry,” he posted. “It may not always be obvious through the discourse and turbulence, but there are many competent, dedicated people who love this country and care deeply about the mission.”Isaacman’s removal comes just days after Musk’s official departure from the White House, where the SpaceX CEO’s role as a “special government employee” leading the so-called department of government efficiency (Doge) created turbulence for the administration and frustrated some of Trump’s aides.View image in fullscreenMusk, according to a person familiar with his reaction, was disappointed by Isaacman’s removal.“It is rare to find someone so competent and good-hearted,” Musk wrote of Isaacman on X, responding to the news of the White House’s decision.Musk did not immediately respond to a request for comment.It was unclear whom the administration might tap to replace Isaacman.One name being floated is the retired US air force Lt Gen Steven Kwast, an early advocate for the creation of the US space force and a Trump supporter, according to three people familiar with the discussions.Isaacman, the former CEO of the payment processor company Shift4, had broad space industry support but drew concerns from lawmakers over his ties to Musk and SpaceX, where he spent hundreds of millions of dollars as an early private spaceflight customer.The former nominee had donated to Democrats in prior elections. In his confirmation hearing in April, he sought to balance Nasa’s existing moon-aligned space exploration strategy with pressure to shift the agency’s focus on Mars, saying the US can plan for travel to both destinations.As a potential leader of Nasa’s 18,000 employees, Isaacman faced a daunting task of implementing that decision to prioritize Mars, given that Nasa has spent years and billions of dollars trying to return its astronauts to the moon.On Friday, the space agency released new details of the Trump administration’s 2026 budget plan that proposed killing dozens of space science programs and laying off thousands of employees, a controversial overhaul that space advocates and lawmakers described as devastating for the agency.The Montana Republican Tim Sheehy, a member of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation committee, posted that Isaacman had been “a strong choice by President Trump to lead Nasa”.“I was proud to introduce Jared at his hearing and strongly oppose efforts to derail his nomination,” Sheehy said.Some scientists saw the nominee change as further destabilizing to Nasa as it faces dramatic budget cuts without a confirmed leader in place to navigate political turbulence between Congress, the White House and the space agency’s workforce.“So not having [Isaacman] as boss of Nasa is bad news for the agency,” Harvard-Smithsonian astronomer Jonathan McDowell posted.“Maybe a good thing for Jared himself though, since being Nasa head right now is a bit of a Kobayashi Maru scenario,” McDowell added, referring to an exercise in the science fiction franchise Star Trek where cadets are placed in a no-win scenario.With Reuters More

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    ‘A ruthless agenda’: charting 100 days of Trump’s onslaught on the environment

    Donald Trump has never been mistaken for an environmentalist, having long called the climate crisis a “giant hoax” and repeatedly lauding the supposed virtues of fossil fuels.But the US president’s onslaught upon the natural world in this administration’s first 100 days has surprised even those who closely charted his first term, in which he rolled back environmental rules and tore the US from the Paris climate agreement.This time, the mantra “drill, baby, drill” has been used to justify a hyperactive series of actions to reverse rules designed to protect clean air and water, open up vast tracts of land, ocean and even the seabed to mining, fire federal scientists en masse and downgrade the federal response to the disasters that stem from a warming world.Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is attempting to roll back toxic regulations that were calculated to save an estimated 200,000 Americans’ lives in the years ahead, his Department of the Interior is looking to shrink national monuments and his scientific agencies are degrading the basic data collection required for climate assessments and even weather forecasts.This burst of activity faces a barrage of legal action, with the courts already taking a dim view of the administration’s attempts to skirt usual practice in its haste to deregulate. Even with a rightwing-dominated supreme court, many of these executive orders are expected to founder.However, the US must accelerate efforts to cut emissions if climate goals are to be met, half of Americans still have to endure unsafe air and endangered species and public lands face pressure from a changing climate. The next few years will see little remedy to these growing problems from the White House.“The pace of announcements may slow at some point but the pressure on our regulatory system and our democracy will not only continue, but ramp up,” said Michael Burger, a climate law expert at Columbia University.“The result will be fewer environmental protections and more people suffering the public health consequences of more pollution. It’s that straightforward.” Oliver MilmanHistoric rollbacks of environmental regulations What has the administration done:

    Taken more than 140 actions to roll back environmental rules and push for greater use of fossil fuels.

    Set about rewriting regulations that limit pollution from cars, trucks and power plants.

    Officially reconsidering whether greenhouse gases actually cause harm to public health.

    Legally targeted states that have their own laws on tackling the climate crisis.

    Speeded up environmental reviews of drilling projects, from years to just a few weeks.

    Winding back water efficiency standards for showers and toilets and halting a phase-out of plastic straws
    View image in fullscreenAnalysis and reaction: When campaigning for president, Donald Trump promised to torch environmental regulations if fossil fuel companies were able to donate enough money to propel him to the White House. He has set about fulfilling this pledge in dizzying fashion.By the Guardian’s count, Trump’s administration has taken more than 140 actions to weaken or rescind environmental rules and to escalate the use of fossil fuels in his first 100 days – more than all of the rollbacks of his entire first term.The drumbeat of this effort, largely via a blizzard of executive orders and agency memos, to eviscerate rules designed to protect Americans’ air, water and a livable climate, has been relentless. “What we’ve seen in this first 100 days is unprecedented – the deregulatory ambition of this administration is mind-blowing,” said Burger of Columbia University.In a single day in March, Trump’s EPA launched 31 different actions to refashion pollution laws for cars, trucks and power plants and even re-evaluate whether greenhouse gases harm public health – a key finding that underpins US climate laws. It was a “dagger to the heart of the climate religion”, according to Lee Zeldin, the EPA administrator.Zeldin has repeatedly touted the EPA’s record during the first 100 days, with the agency publishing a list of 100 environmental actions, including the cleanup of toxic waste and the testing of chemicals.But the administration has also sought to ease restrictions upon coal plants dumping their toxic ash and mercury and to scale back a plan to prevent states from wafting their pollution to their neighbors. Consideration of the climate crisis has been removed from federal spending decisions and disaster recovery, pipeline safety standards are to be relaxed and environmental permit approvals speeded up from years to just weeks.Places of refuge for nature and carbon storage, such as oceans and national forests, will be opened up for the extraction of fish and timber while endangered species laws are set to be upended and, if the administration gets its way, essentially neutered.Not content with the reorientation of the federal government’s response to the climate crisis, Trump has ordered his Department of Justice to target states that have their own climate laws. He has also ordered the expiration of environment and energy regulations across 25 different laws, usually a responsibility of Congress.Trump has even used the power of his office to attend to his own fixations around shower water pressure, which he considers too weak, and paper straws, which he dislikes compared with the plastic alternative. “There doesn’t seem to be any strategy to this but I feel like I have policy whiplash,” said Gina McCarthy, who was Joe Biden’s top climate adviser.“We see an administration that doesn’t care about these things and is all about the whims of President Trump. Executive orders are not laws, though, and we spend a great deal of time focusing on them when most of them are highly illegal and won’t go anywhere.” Oliver MilmanTrump’s ‘drill, baby, drill’ agendaWhat the administration has done:

    Trump signed executive orders to ease restrictions on fossil fuel extraction and exports, pledging to “unleash American energy”.

    He tapped fossil fuel-supporting appointees to head up crucial federal agencies, including Chris Wright, a former fracking CEO, for energy secretary; Doug Burgum, former Republican governor of North Dakota – the third largest oil and natural gas producer in the country – to lead the interior department (DOI); and Lee Zeldin, a former Republican congressperson to head the EPA.

    Trump offered the fossil fuel industry – which lavished record levels of donations on him and Congress – an exemption from the tariffs he presented in April (and which he placed on pause shortly thereafter).
    Analysis and reaction: Aru Shiney-Ajay, executive director of the youth-led environmental justice group Sunrise Movement said: “Donald Trump’s actions on climate are part of a ruthless agenda to prop up big oil and reward the billionaires bankrolling his campaigns. Big oil’s bribe paid off.”Trump’s loyalty to the fossil fuel industry has not, however, shielded fossil fuel companies from the fallout of his erratic policymaking. The domestic oil industry is currently facing the some of the lowest prices for crude it has seen in years. The Dow Jones’s US Oil and Gas Index, which tracks 42 fossil fuel companies, plummeted by more than 15% since Trump announced the tariffs on 2 April, sinking to its lowest level since 2022, before a slow, partial rebound.View image in fullscreenMeanwhile, Trump’s tariffs have already begun driving up the costs of oil production, with new taxes on steel and aluminum inflating the costs of building fossil fuel infrastructure. And his calls to “drill, baby, drill” have raised concerns about oil demand, since an increase in supply could push down prices, thereby limiting profit.Though the oil industry has publicly praised Trump, they have quietly showed they are anxious about the economic implications of his policies. In a recent anonymized survey by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, for instance, fossil fuel executives brazenly criticized Trump. “The administration’s chaos is a disaster for the commodity markets,” one oil boss said. “‘Drill, baby, drill’ is nothing short of a myth and populist rallying cry. Tariff policy is impossible for us to predict and doesn’t have a clear goal. We want more stability.”At a major Texas oil and gas conference in May, fossil fuel top brass echoed these criticisms.Though the Trump administration has not ended the chaos created by its policies, it has given big oil other gifts. In recent weeks, for instance, Trump signed an executive order instructing the Department of Justice to “stop the enforcement” of state climate laws forcing polluting companies to pay for climate damages, and also targeting dozens of lawsuits that accuse big oil of intentionally covering up the climate risks of their products. Dharna NoorHollowing out agencies including Noaa, Fema and DOIWhat has the administration done

    Sweeping cuts to federal agencies on the forefront of the climate crisis, including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa), the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema), the DOI and the Department of Agriculture (USDA), and widespread firings of climate scientists and regulation experts.

    Withdrawal from contracts and canceled grant funding; datasets pulled from public-facing websites; funding for regional climate centers suspended.

    National Climate Assessment contract canceled; hundreds of experts dismissed.

    Executive order to expedite deep-sea mining for minerals.

    Plans to dismantle a key Fema disaster preparedness program.

    Weather balloon launches stopped due to staff shortages.

    Censorship of climate-related words, flagged in studies, contracts and agency documents/websites.

    Plans to drain funding for climate, weather and ocean laboratories.
    Analysis and reaction: Trump wasted no time before he unleashed an all-out assault on environmental science, gutting the federal agencies positioned on the frontlines of the climate crisis, firing hundreds of researchers, staffers and forecasters and pulling public access to critical resources and data.Vital work to understand, prepare and respond to changes caused by global heating has slowed or stopped as teams try to navigate the chaos, while the threat of more severe budget cuts and political crackdowns lingers. The moves largely bypassed input or oversight from Congress as Trump used executive orders and actions undertaken by the billionaire Elon Musk-led “department of government efficiency”, even on budget issues typically governed by the legislative branch.View image in fullscreenThousands of federal workers were culled from the ranks across the country’s premier scientific agencies – including at Noaa and Nasa – and in roles across the government that typically facilitate regulatory process or research. Many of those fired were probationary employees, a classification applied to the first year, or sometimes two, in a position.The widespread firings were challenged in court, forcing the administration to rehire workers and put them on administrative leave, only to fire them again when legally in the clear. In the end, at least 121,000 federal workers were fired, leaving significant holes in their wake.Thousands more workers have opted to take offers of early retirement or voluntary separations. At Noaa alone, roughly 27,000 years of collective experience was lost, according to Craig McLean, the former director of Noaa research.“We lost our promising new talent in the probationary firings and now we’ve lost our institutional knowledge,” a Noaa employee said of the resignations, asking for anonymity out of fear of retribution.While the losses are expected to have a profound effect on the American public, the impact will be felt globally too.Among the hundreds of positions lost were workers who track El Niño-La Niña weather patterns around the world, people who model severe storm risks, and scientists contributing to global understanding of what could happen as the world warms.“I want to emphasize that this blunt smashing of federal agencies is limiting the ability of our nation to respond not only now, but in the future,” said Dr Gretchen Goldman, president of the Union of Concerned Scientists. “It’s dismantling the very infrastructure by which we collect data, foster expertise and collaboration, and have the people and processes in place to take action.”Already, the staff shortages have hampered data collection and field offices have had to stop deploying tools that gather essential intel.“The effects may not be obvious until there is a major tornado outbreak, or a hurricane landfall downwind, that doesn’t go so well,” said climate scientist Daniel Swain, who spoke about the gravity of this issue during a recent broadcast on YouTube. But, he said, the actions taken in the first 100 days were just the beginning.“What we have seen so far is just the tip of the iceberg,” he said, noting recently leaked budget documents that outline the president’s plans to continue gutting climate science-focused federal work. If the administration has its way, he said, “it would probably spell the end of most publicly funded climate research in the United States”. Gabrielle CanonPublic lands targetedWhat has the administration done

    Rescinded protections for hundreds of millions of acres of federal waters.

    Initiated major changes to National Environmental Policy Act (Nepa) regulations that require federal projects consider environmental impacts and enable public oversight/comment, severely reducing the often years-long environmental impact process to 28 days.

    Ordered the end of American Climate Corps jobs that create climate and public lands-supporting positions.

    Plans to fast-track controversial deep-sea mining and accelerating approvals for mining, drilling, and fossil fuels extraction on public lands..

    Proposed rolling back protections in the Endangered Species Act.

    Plans to rescind Bureau of Land Management rules that protect millions of acres in Alaska and across the US west; planned repeal of BLM Public Lands Rule.

    Emergency situation determination issued by the USDA to open logging on more than 100m acres of national forests and an executive orders to increase and accelerate logging on federal lands. And revoked a Biden order that protected old-growth forests.

    Joint taskforce between DOI and the Department of Housing and Urban Development to examine federal lands for housing development as the administration pushes for the sell-off of public lands.
    Analysis and reaction: Trump may be one of the very few Americans who doesn’t cherish the country’s public lands. Voter support for these roughly 640m acres – forests and deserts, parks and monuments among them – is stalwart and one of the few issues bridged by an otherwise vast political divide.But even with broad popularity and a rapidly escalating interest in outdoor recreation that’s fueled both local economies and international tourism, the administration has made it a priority to shrink land management agencies, reduce protections once governed by them and possibly even diminish the holdings of lands under federal jurisdiction.View image in fullscreenThousands of employees were fired or took deals to leave, and agencies are struggling to hire seasonal employees who typically run operations during the busiest seasons. Still, more cuts are being planned as Trump seeks to reshape the federal government. Reports found the Department of Interior has plans to cull roughly 25% of its workforce, and employees at the US Forest Service are bracing for a broad reduction in force that has yet to be detailed. The National Park Service alone has suffered a 13% reduction in staff already.Sweeping firings left behind gaping holes in an already short-staffed workforce at parks and forests, leaving some departments with workforce levels typically seen during government shutdowns according to some experts.Toilets, trash and overgrown trails may become a common feature in highly trafficked areas, along with increasing risks of trampled conservation areas, a lack of capacity for the study of threatened plants and animals, and lost support that ensures safety measures are followed. Visitation has surged in recent years, adding new strains on ageing infrastructure and more opportunities for injuries and wildlife conflicts, as dangers from extreme conditions fueled by the climate crisis continue to mount.“Scientists who should be doing their job tracking the wildlife and the ecosystems in these parks, are being told they have to take restroom cleaning shifts,” said Aaron Weiss, the deputy director for the Center for Western Priorities. “That’s incredibly important in parks,” he added, “but we shouldn’t be assigning those jobs to scientists because Doge has fired all the custodial staff.”It’s not just about recreation, though. The administration has also made moves to open the country’s holdings of conservation areas, protected habitats and wilderness to extraction and development. There have been a series of orders from the administration that call for increased logging, fossil fuels leases, and mining as Trump pushes for expanding industry access.Ben Vizzachero, a federal worker who initially lost his job during the federal firing spree but who was later brought into his position said the outlook still remained bleak for US public lands. “The Trump administration is waging a campaign of bullying and harassment, trying to shrink the federal workforce by any means,” he said, noting that removing regulators and regulations will “open lands for mining, logging, drilling, and other destruction”.These sweeping changes and the threats to public lands come as they continue to be widely supported and cherished by the American people. “The fight to protect our public lands is embedded within the fight for our democracy itself.” Gabrielle CanonCancelling environmental justice schemes, and hitting US farmers What has the administration done

    Trump immediately rescinded a slew of executive orders that directed federal agencies to prioritize tackling environmental racism and other injustices – including one dating back more than 30 years.

    A separate executive order focused on ending government-sponsored diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives and so-called “illegal DEI” efforts in the private sector also targeted environmental justice by wrongly conflating the two. This called for the closures of all environmental justice offices and positions in the federal government – including the office of environmental justice and external civil rights which was created to support EPA efforts to help improve access to clean water, air and land in communities disproportionately affected by environmental pollution, as well as enforce federal civil rights laws.

    Mass layoffs in the EPA, USDA and health and human services department which will disproportionately hit access to adequate, clean and affordable food, water, air and energy for low-income and rural communities.

    Freezing the Biden-era Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund – more than $20bn of competitive grants available to states, cities, tribes and other eligible groups to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution, particularly in areas most affected by climate crisis and excluded from mainstream finance.

    Terminating climate and conservation grants to US farmers including the Biden-era five-year $3.2bn real-life study into the effectiveness of conservation practices such as cover cropping for commodity farms.
    View image in fullscreenAnalysis and reaction: From day one of Trump 2.0, the president has revealed his intention to willfully conflate environmental justice – efforts to acknowledge and correct decades of harm caused by placing polluting factories, landfills, fossil fuel infrastructure and highways in low-income and Indigenous people and communities of color – with what he and his allies believe to be woke, anti-white DEI policies that proliferated in response to the BLM movement.Citing Trump’s crusade against DEI, the justice department terminated a two-year investigation into a petrochemical plant in LePlace, Louisiana, accused of emitting extraordinarily high levels of the cancer-causing chemical chloroprene into the majority Black community. Then, in an unprecedented move, his justice department terminated a 2023 landmark settlement with the state of Alabama requiring health authorities to provide the majority-Black Lowndes county with basic sewage and sanitation services – which an earlier investigation found had been denied for decades due to environmental racism. Several other consent decrees involving egregious polluters are feared to be under threat.Not to be outdone, Robert F Kennedy Jr, secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), dismantled the office and fired the entire staff at the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (Liheap). States were still waiting for about $380m to be disbursed this year, when the bipartisan program that helps low-income Americans struggling to pay energy bills so they don’t die from the extreme heat or cold was disbanded. In a leaked HHS budget for 2026 seen by the Guardian, Liheap was terminated – which unless revived will increase heat and cold deaths in the richest country in the world.The $20bn Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, and the portal, has been frozen on and off since February, causing chaos and uncertainty for recipients as this makes its way through the courts. The money was appropriated by Congress through the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act and finalized before the election, and it is widely agreed (outside Trump world) that the fund cannot legally be cancelled without legislation. The fear is that the Republican-majority Congress will succeed in pushing this through in the continuing resolution for the 2025 budget, which should be passed in May.“The administration is trying to make it so difficult that people will give up, but our quest for environmental justice [has been waged] for 40 years and we will not stop now,” said one veteran environmental justice leader who asked not to be named in fear that his organization, a recipient of the fund, would be targeted. “The climate crisis is real; environmental racism is real. Those are the facts.” Nina LakhaniTearing up US global climate pledgesWhat has the administration done

    Pulled out of the 2015 Paris accords, which the Biden administration rejoined in 2021 – four years after Trump first withdrew the US from the global climate mitigation pact.

    Withdrew the US from the loss and damage fund – a global agreement under which the developed countries most responsible for the climate crisis pledged to partly compensate developing countries for irreversible harms caused by global heating.

    The EPA missed the annual 15 April deadline to submit data on US greenhouse gas emissions to the United Nations – the first time in 30 years.
    Analysis and reaction: The US is currently the second biggest greenhouse gas emitter, so withdrawing from the Paris agreement and its legally binding commitment to reduce emissions will further weaken global efforts to slow global heating – with catastrophic consequences for communities vulnerable to climate shocks in the US and globally. It takes a year for the withdrawal to go into effect, but missing the 15 April emissions reporting deadline, which never happened even during Trump’s first term, has raised suspicion that this administration is willing to violate international rules and could be preparing to exit from the entire UNFCCC.View image in fullscreenAnother major concern is climate finance. As the world’s biggest economy (and worst historical polluter), the US has been a major, albeit inadequate, contributor to global climate funds to help developing countries that are not responsible for global heating in their climate mitigation and adaptation efforts. It has already pulled out of the loss and damage fund, adopted at the Cop28 UN summit in 2023 after years of diplomatic and grassroots advocacy – and despite US efforts to block it. The US has long obstructed progress on global climate action and had pledged a measly $17.5m (£13.5m) to the fund; the cynical move to withdraw from loss and damage efforts – while bolstering fossil fuel production – was widely condemned by the global south.Harjeet Singh, a climate activist and founding director of the India-based Satat Sampada Climate Foundation, said: “As the largest historical emitter, the United States bears a significant share of the blame for the climate adversities affecting vulnerable populations worldwide. The decision by the Trump administration exemplifies a longstanding pattern of obstruction by the US government in securing necessary finance for addressing climate impacts, [and] undermines global efforts to deliver climate justice.” Nina Lakhani More

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    Documents reveal Trump’s plan to gut funding for Nasa and climate science

    Donald Trump shows no signs of easing his assault on climate science as plans of more sweeping cuts to key US research centers surfaced on Friday.The administration is planning to slash budgets at both the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency (Noaa) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa), according to internal budget documents, taking aim specifically at programs used to study impacts from the climate crisis.Craig McLean, a longtime director of the office of oceanic and atmospheric research (OAR) who retired in 2022, told the Guardian that the cuts were draconian and would “compromise the safety, economic competitiveness, and security of the American people”.If the plan is approved by Congress, funding for OAR would be eviscerated – cut from $485m to $171m – dismantling an important part of the agency’s mission.All budgets for climate, weather and ocean laboratories would be drained, according to the document reviewed by the Guardian, which states: “At this funding level, OAR is eliminated as a line office.”“The elimination of Noaa’s research line office and all of its research capabilities is a crushing blow to the ability of our country to protect our citizens and also to lead the world,” said the former Noaa administrator Rick Spinrad, adding that the document included “an extraordinarily devastating set of recommendations”.The proposal would also cut more than $324m from the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), instructing the agency to align its work with administration priorities to “unleash American energy”. Species-recovery grants, habitat conservation and restoration, and the interjurisdictional fisheries grant program, which supports coordinated management and research with the states, would all lose funding. The document also outlines a plan to move the NMFS under the US Fish and Wildlife Service.Noaa is facing a $1.3bn cut to overall operations and research, with various programs on the chopping block, and the National Ocean Service would be cut in half.Science done outside the agency would also be undermined with cuts to Noaa’s climate research grants program, which provides roughly $70m a year.“It’s a really disturbing and concerning development – but I would say it is not all that surprising,” Spinrad said of the plans outlined in the document, noting that there have been many indications the administration would take steps such as these. “But it also has an element of randomness associated with it,” he added. “There are specific programs called out, the reasons for which are absolutely not clear.”The fallout from cuts this deep, should Congress adopt the president’s plan, would be felt in communities around the world, and in far-ranging sectors, from agriculture to emergency management.“By making a complete divestiture in science and in our research enterprise, we are basically saying we are not interested in improving our quality of life or our economy,” Spinrad said.The administration also outlined plans to severely defund research at Nasa, the country’s space agency. The agency is slated for a 20% overall budget loss, but deeper cuts would be directed at programs overseeing planetary science, earth science and astrophysics research, according to Ars Technica, which first on Trump’s plans when agency officials were briefed last month.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionNow documents have been issued to back up those plans, halving funding for science at Nasa.The plan for Nasa would also scrap a series of missions, including some that the federal government has already poured billions of taxpayer dollars into. The Nancy Grace Roman space telescope, which could offer glimpses into distant galaxies after its scheduled launch next year, is among them, along with the Mars Sample Return and the Davinci mission to Venus. The Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, which employs roughly 10,000 people, would also be closed.“This is an extinction-level event for Nasa science,” Casey Dreier, chief of space policy for the Planetary Society, told the Washington Post. “It needlessly terminates functional, productive science missions and cancels new missions currently being built, wasting billions of taxpayer dollars in the process. This is neither efficient nor smart budgeting.”Still not set in stone, these “passback” documents are a part of how the government goes about budgeting. They are issued by the White House to federal agencies before the discretionary budget is released and are seen as a guidance on presidential priorities. The numbers aren’t final and could be changed, and Congress will also have to act on the plans to finalize them.Spinrad is confident that many legislators won’t support the cuts. “Many of the actions put forward by [the White House’s office of management and budget] are in direct contradiction to congressional intent,” he said. “Zeroing out programs that Congress has worked hard to authorize over the years – that’s a clarion call to specific members and sponsors.”There’s also likely to be strong pushback from the public and from industries that rely on the tools and services made possible by the country’s scientists.But the drastic degree of these cuts also shows the administration’s position on climate science and its determination to hamper US research, experts say. That alone is enough to cause concern.“This proposal will cost lives,” McLean said of the document if it is enacted. “When a room full of doctors tell you that it’s cancer, firing the doctors does not cure you.” More

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    White House ends funding for key US climate body: ‘No coming back from this’

    The White House is ending funding for the body that produces the federal government’s pre-eminent climate report, which summarizes the impacts of rising global temperatures on the United States.Every four years, the US Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) is required by Congress to release a new national climate assessment to ensure leaders understand the drivers of – and threats posed by – global warming. It is the most comprehensive, far-reaching and up-to-date analysis of the climate crisis, playing a key role in local and national decision making about agriculture, energy production, and land and water use.The next assessment is due by 2027. But now, Nasa has ended its contract with the consulting firm ICF International, which convened the USGCRP and coordinated the federal agencies that contribute to the quadrennial report.“There’s really no coming back from this, and it means we are all less informed about climate impacts, and won’t have the most up-to-date information on risks and threats,” said one federal staffer who was engaged in USGCRP activities, and who requested anonymity to avoid retribution. “USGCRP helped me to leverage resources from other agencies for use in my own work. But without these networks, I’m left without a support system and the latest science on climate change.”The end of the contract, first reported by Politico and confirmed by multiple sources to the Guardian, imperils the federal government’s climate research, say experts.“The firing of USGCRP staff guts the entire climate research and services ecosystem leaving teetering silos of climate teams, already reeling from federal cuts due to Doge,” the anonymous staffer said.Another federal worker with knowledge of the program, who was also granted anonymity, said the contract’s cancellation will mean “the Sixth National Climate Assessment is effectively destroyed.”USGCRP staff who hailed from the 15 federal agencies had all been told to abandon the body; its only remaining staff were from ICF and have now been fired, the second worker said. “Climate research as a whole will be hobbled because USGCRP’s interagency working groups are essential coordinating bodies across the entire government, including and beyond the 15 USGCRP member agencies.”The move came one day after the rightwing outlet the Daily Wire published an article attacking ICF International saying the firm was “raking in millions to spread climate doom”. Since its publication, the second worker said they had had a “pit in their stomach”.The attack on the USGCRP and national climate assessment did not come as a surprise. In the Heritage Foundation’s far-right policy blueprint Project 2025, Russ Vought – now Trump’s head of the office and management and budget – called to end the USGCRP or fill it with pro-oil industry members.Since Trump’s second term began in January, the monthly meetings of delegates to the body from federal agencies have been cancelled, the anonymous worker said. “We were waiting for new principles to be sent from each agency, which never happened, so that could have been a sign in retrospect,” they added.Andrew Rosenberg, a former Noaa official who is now a fellow at the University of New Hampshire, called the end of the contract “very foolish” and “thoughtless”. National climate assessments provide an important synthesis of “science across fields” – and are not particularly expensive to produce because the authors are all volunteers, he said.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn February, Trump officials also denied US scientists permission to attend a meeting of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the world’s leading climate science entity. The federal government also cancelled its contract with ICF International to maintain US support for and involvement in the body.“Extreme weather disasters displaced millions of people and caused billions of dollars in damage in 2024 alone,” said Katharine Hayhoe, a Texas Tech University climate scientist who has served as lead author on three national climate assessments. “Given the accelerating pace and scale of climate impacts today, a sustained and more comprehensive national climate assessment process is so essential,” Hayhoe said. “We need it today, to build a better future tomorrow.”The move is a sign of the Trump administration’s fealty to the fossil fuel industry, said Michael Mann, an eminent US climate scientist. The sector donated in record levels to Trump’s re-election campaign.“It is pure villainy,” said Mann. “A crime against the planet – arguably, the most profound of all crimes.” More

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    ‘We weren’t stuck’: Nasa astronauts tell of space odyssey and reject claims of neglect

    In the end, whatever Elon Musk and Donald Trump liked to insist, astronauts Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Sunita Williams were never stuck, nor stranded in space, and definitely not abandoned or marooned.The world heard on Monday, for the first time since their return to Earth two weeks ago, from the two Nasa astronauts whose 10-day flight to the international space station (ISS) last summer turned into a nine-month odyssey. And their story was markedly at odds with the narrative painted from the White House.Wilmore and Williams were speaking to reporters at a press conference in Houston, hours after a joint appearance on Fox News, and reaffirmed that they never felt neglected or in need of the rescue the president insisted was necessary.Instead, they said, they calmly assumed duties as members of the space station crew – “planning for one thing, preparing for another”, Wilmore said – while a political firestorm over their status raged back on the ground.If anything, the pair of veteran space flyers appeared slightly bemused by, or largely ignorant of the furore that followed their enforced and protracted stay on the orbiting outpost 250 miles above Earth, caused by technical failures on board their pioneering Boeing Starliner spacecraft that returned in September without them.At the press conference Nasa had called to discuss the science activities the astronauts performed during their time in space, Williams and Wilmore gave diplomatic answers to questions designed to elicit their thoughts.“The stuck and marooned narrative … yes, we heard about that,” Wilmore said, before reverting to a carefully worded explanation of how their training and preparations allowed them to pivot seamlessly from the roles of new spacecraft test pilots to routine ISS crew members who splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico on 18 March on a routine crew rotation flight.“The plan went way off for what we had planned. But because we’re in human spaceflight, we prepare for any number of contingencies. This is a curvy road. You never know where it’s going to go,” he continued.Earlier, in the Fox interview, he pushed back on Musk’s false claim, amplified by Trump, that the astronauts were “abandoned in space by the Biden administration”. Had they felt stuck, stranded or marooned, the interviewer, Bill Hemmer, wondered.“Any of those adjectives, they’re very broad in their definition,” Wilmore said.“So in certain respects we were stuck, in certain respects, maybe we were stranded, but based on how they were couching this, that we were left and forgotten in orbit, we were nowhere near any of that at all.“Stuck? OK, we didn’t get to come home the way we planned. But in the big scheme of things, we weren’t stuck. We planned and trained. Let me comment back on this other [claim], you know, ‘They failed you’. Who? Who’s they?”Williams, too, was reluctant to kick the political football. In orbit, she said, her focus was solely on the work she needed to do.“You sort of get maybe a little bit tunnel-visioned … you do your job type of thing, right, and so you’re not really aware of what else is going on down there,” she said.“I hate to say that maybe the world doesn’t revolve around us, but we revolve around the world, something like that. But I think we were just really focused on what we were doing and trying to be part of the team. Of course, we heard some things … ”The third US astronaut at the press conference, Crew 9 commander Nick Hague, who returned to Earth with Williams and Wilmore, backed up his crewmate.“The politics, kind of, they don’t make it up there when we’re trying to make operational decisions,” he said. “As the commander [I’m] responsible for the safety of this crew and getting them back safely.”Musk, the founder of SpaceX, a key Nasa contractor, has continued to push the story, with no evidence, that the astronauts were effectively held hostage in space by Biden for political advantage. It was a SpaceX Dragon capsule that eventually brought them back to Earth, but it was a spacecraft that had been attached to the ISS for months, not one Trump said he directed Musk to “go get the two brave astronauts”.The billionaire became embroiled in a heated online dispute with Danish astronaut Andreas Mogensen over the claims, and later attacked Mark and Scott Kelly, both retired astronauts and the former now Democratic senator for Arizona, for calling him out.As for the troubled Starliner, whose future is questionable as Boeing and Nasa engineers continue to evaluate the helium leaks and thruster control issues that brought its maiden crewed mission to a premature end, both Williams and Wilmore said they would be happy to fly on it again.Wilmore, as the Starliner mission commander, said there were questions he wished he’d asked during the flight that he believed might have brought a different outcome, and “some shortcomings in tests, shortcomings in preparation, that we did not foresee”. The astronauts will meet Boeing leadership on Wednesday to give first-hand testimony.The whole experience, he said, was a learning curve familiar to those in “the difficult job we all take part in”.“Could you point fingers? I don’t want to point fingers. I hope nobody wants to point fingers. We don’t want to look back and say, ‘shame, shame, shame’. We want to look forward and say, ‘Let’s make the future even more productive and better’.“That’s the way that I look at it. And what I think the way the nation should look at.” More

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    Trump taps billionaire and private astronaut Jared Isaacman to lead Nasa

    A billionaire entrepreneur who led the first flight of an all-private crew of astronauts, and became the first civilian to walk in space earlier this year, has been nominated by Donald Trump to be the next leader of Nasa.If confirmed by the Senate, Jared Isaacman, also an experienced jet pilot with his own display team, will guide the space agency at a pivotal moment in its 76-year history as it moves closer to returning humans to the moon for the first time since 1972 and sending the first crews to Mars.The 41-year-old founder of the commercial aerospace defense company Draken International said in a tweet he was “honored” to receive Trump’s nomination, and would be “grateful” to serve.“Having been fortunate to see our amazing planet from space, I am passionate about America leading the most incredible adventure in human history,” he wrote.“On my last mission to space, my crew and I traveled farther from Earth than anyone in over half a century. I can confidently say this second space age has only just begun.“Space holds unparalleled potential for breakthroughs in manufacturing, biotechnology, mining, and perhaps even pathways to new sources of energy. There will inevitably be a thriving space economy … that will create opportunities for countless people to live and work in space. At Nasa we will passionately pursue these possibilities and usher in an era where humanity becomes a true spacefaring civilization.”Isaacman was the commander of September’s five-day orbital Polaris Dawn mission that saw him make the first spacewalk by a civilian, nearly 460 miles (740km) above Earth. He would succeed outgoing Nasa administrator Bill Nelson, a former space shuttle astronaut and Democratic senator for Florida who was appointed by Joe Biden in 2021.Nelson oversaw crucial advances in the Artemis program, including the pioneering November 2022 flight of the Artemis 1 moon rocket, which is scheduled to land the first woman and person of color on the lunar surface by the end of 2026.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBut the nomination of Isaacman, who is a close friend of the SpaceX founder and Trump acolyte Elon Musk, will raise questions over the future of a key government-funded component of the Artemis program, namely the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket.Musk’s company has been progressing its own Starship heavy lift rocket in recent months, also designed for long-duration human spaceflight to the moon and Mars, and the commercial space industry is expected to become much more prominent during the second Trump administration.In a statement announcing his pick on Wednesday, Trump praised Isaacman as “an accomplished business leader, philanthropist, pilot, and astronaut”.“Jared’s passion for space, astronaut experience, and dedication to pushing the boundaries of exploration, unlocking the mysteries of the universe, and advancing the new space economy, make him ideally suited to lead Nasa into a bold new era,” Trump said.Lori Garver, who was deputy administrator of Nasa from 2009 to 2013 during the Obama administration, said in a post to X that Isaacman’s nomination was “terrific news”.“[He] has the opportunity to build on Nasa’s amazing accomplishments to pave our way to an even brighter future,” she said. More

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    Scientists slam ‘indefensible’ axing of Nasa’s $450m Viper moon rover

    Thousands of scientists have protested to the US Congress over the “unprecedented and indefensible” decision by Nasa to cancel its Viper lunar rover mission.In an open letter to Capitol Hill, they have denounced the move, which was revealed last month, and heavily criticised the space agency over a decision that has shocked astronomers and astrophysicists across the globe.The car-sized rover has already been constructed at a cost of $450m and was scheduled to be sent to the moon next year, when it would have used a one-metre drill to prospect for ice below the lunar surface in soil at the moon’s south pole.Ice is considered to be vital to plans to build a lunar colony, not just to supply astronauts with water but also to provide them with hydrogen and oxygen that could be used as fuels. As a result, prospecting for sources was rated a priority for lunar exploration, which is scheduled to be ramped up in the next few years with the aim of establishing a permanent human presence on the moon.Construction of Viper – volatiles investigating polar exploration rover – began several years ago, and the highly complex robot vehicle was virtually complete when Nasa announced on 17 July that it had decided to kill it off. The agency said the move was needed because of past cost increases, delays to launch dates and the risks of future cost growth.However, the claim has been dismissed by astonished and infuriated scientists who say the rover would have played a vital role in opening up the moon to human colonisation.“Quite frankly, the agency’s decision beggars belief,” said Prof Clive Neal, a lunar scientist at the University of Notre Dame, in Indiana.“Viper is a fundamental mission on so many fronts and its cancellation basically undermines Nasa’s entire lunar exploration programme for the next decade. It is as straightforward as that. Cancelling Viper makes no sense whatsoever.”This view was backed by Ben Fernando of Johns Hopkins University, who was one of the organisers of the open letter to Congress. “A team of 500 people dedicated years of their careers to construct Viper and now it has been cancelled for no good reason whatsoever,” he told the Observer last week.“Fortunately I think Congress is taking this issue very seriously and they have the power to tell Nasa that it has to go ahead with the project. Hopefully they will intervene.”View image in fullscreenSeveral other water-prospecting missions to the moon have been planned for the next few years. However, most will involve monitoring the lunar surface from space or by landing a single excavator that will dig for ice at a single, fixed location.“The crucial advantage of Viper was that it could move around and dig into the lunar soil at different promising locations,” said Ian Crawford, professor of planetary science and astrobiology at Birkbeck, University of London.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAstronomers have long suspected that ice – brought by comets and asteroids – exists in the permanently shadowed craters near the moon’s south poles, an idea that was strongly supported in 2009 when Nasa deliberately crashed a Centaur rocket into the crater Cabeus.By studying the resulting plumes of debris, scientists concluded that ice could account for up to 5% of soil there. “China, Japan, India and Europe have all got plans to prospect for water on the moon, but now the US seems to have just given up,” added Crawford. “It is very, very puzzling.”Scientists also point out that ice and other materials brought to the moon by comets or asteroids will have remained there in a pristine state and could provide scientists with a history of the inner solar system and the processes that shaped it for millions or even billions of years into the past. “There is an incredible scientific treasure trove there that is begging to be explored,” added Neal.When Nasa announced its decision to abandon Viper, the space agency said it planned to disassemble and reuse its components for other moon missions – unless other space companies or agencies offered to take over the project. More than a dozen groups have since expressed an interest in taking over Viper, a Nasa spokesperson told the Observer last week. Whether these organisations are interested in Viper as a complete craft or as a source of components is not yet clear, however.“We simply do not know how practical or serious these offers are,” said Fernando. “Nasa keeps saying it had to cancel projects because of budgetary problems, but why on earth did they pick such an important mission on which to start making those cuts?” More

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    ‘Artemis generation’: Nasa to launch first crew-rated rocket to moon since 1972

    ‘Artemis generation’: Nasa to launch first crew-rated rocket to moon since 1972Test flight that will have no human crew aboard aims to return humans to the moon and eventually land them on Mars For the first time in 50 years, Nasa on Monday is planning to launch the first rocket that can ferry humans to and from the moon.The giant Space Launch System (SLS) rocket is scheduled to take off from Nasa’s Cape Canaveral, Florida, complex at 8.33am ET (1.33pm UK time) atop an unmanned Orion spacecraft that is designed to carry up to six astronauts to the moon and beyond.The 1.3m mile Artemis I test mission – slated to last 42 days – is aiming to take the Orion vehicle 40,000 miles past the far side of the moon, departing from the same facility that staged the Apollo lunar missions half a century ago.Artemis 1 rocket: what will the Nasa moon mission be carrying into space?Read moreNasa’s Space Shuttle program in the intermediary launched manned missions orbiting the earth in relatively near outer space before its discontinuation in 2011. Private American space companies such as Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin and Elon Musk’s SpaceX have since flown missions similar to the shuttle program. But Artemis I’s job is to begin informing Nasa whether the moon can act as a springboard to eventually send astronauts to Mars, which would truly bring the stuff of science fiction to life.US taxpayers are expected to put up $93bn to finance the Artemis program. But in the days leading up to Monday’s launch, Nasa administrators insisted that Americans would find the cost to be justified.“This is now the Artemis generation,” the Nasa administrator and former space shuttle astronaut Bill Nelson said recently. “We were in the Apollo generation. This is a new generation. This is a new type of astronaut.”For Monday’s debut, the only “crew members” aboard Orion are mannequins meant to let Nasa evaluate its next-generation spacesuits and radiation levels – as well as a soft Snoopy toy meant to illustrate zero gravity by floating around the capsule.TopicsNasaSpaceThe moonMarsFloridaUS politicsnewsReuse this content More