As the Trump administration takes steps to dismantle climate research across NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency and other agencies, recent polling shows that this move is deeply unpopular.
In May 2025, registered voters were asked whether they supported or opposed government orders that would halt research on global warming. Voters were also asked if they supported directives that would stop federal agencies from sharing information about global warming with the public.
Overwhelmingly, voters said they oppose efforts to shut down climate science and communication.
This polling is part of ongoing research on Americans’ views of climate change conducted by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication (the publisher of this article) and the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication.
Americans want federal agencies to continue climate research
President Donald Trump is seeking to cut or eliminate numerous programs that conduct climate research across multiple federal agencies. Budget proposals for the coming year paint a dire future for NOAA’s climate research programs. NOAA’s Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research would be cut completely, along with scores of collaborative research efforts across the country.
The Global Monitoring Laboratory on Mauna Loa, Hawaii, is among many programs slated to end. This one is of particular significance because it carries out the world’s longest-running direct measurements of atmospheric carbon dioxide and provided early evidence that burning fossil fuels is altering the chemistry of our atmosphere.
The administration’s proposed budget would cancel multiple ongoing NASA missions that study Earth’s climate system, such as the Orbiting Climate Observatories that measure carbon dioxide from space. NASA’s Earth science program would lose more than half its funding. Meanwhile, the Trump administration canceled the lease for the offices that house the agency’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, which compiles the agency’s long-term temperature record that documents our warming climate. (Full disclosure: The author of this article is a contractor with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.)
The Department of Defense is abruptly halting access to the nation’s primary data source for monitoring global sea ice, citing cybersecurity concerns. The National Snow and Ice Data Center, which maintains a long-term record of sea ice at both poles, has announced that its sea ice index will cease at the end of July. This same data stream is also crucial for hurricane forecasts, particularly for rapidly intensifying storms. The data shut-off will occur during hurricane season, posing additional risks for coastal communities. That’s prompted dire warnings from meteorologists.
At the EPA, the administration has pushed out hundreds of staffers and is in the process of dissolving the agency’s primary office for scientific research. The few research positions that remain will be restructured to align with administration priorities, and the agency will reassign some scientists to work on approving new chemicals and pesticides.
These policies are widely unpopular. Nearly 80% of registered voters say they oppose government-imposed orders to halt climate research, including a majority of Republicans. Even conservative Republicans, who are most likely to approve of Trump’s policies, say they are largely against shutting down these research programs, according to the May survey.
Americans want climate information to be shared with the public
In addition to canceling climate research, the Trump administration is also shuttering the channels that communicate this critical information to the public.
These moves, too, are starkly out of step with public views, even among Republicans. A wide majority of Republican voters said that government agencies should continue to share information about global warming with the public; this view is also shared by most Democrats. This solid bipartisan agreement is striking.
NOAA’s Climate.gov website was the agency’s primary climate portal for the public. The site published climate updates, data, maps, explainers and educational products designed for teachers. In late May, the staff that produced this content was terminated, according to the Guardian, and the website was taken offline as of June 24, 2025.
In another example, the Trump administration halted work on the upcoming National Climate Assessment and dismissed the report’s authors, even though the report is required by Congress. As of July 1, 2025, the website that hosts National Climate Assessment reports was offline. (You can read an archived version of the most recent report via this NOAA site.)
The National Climate Assessment is written by scientists at more than a dozen federal agencies and provides a comprehensive yet user-friendly review of the impacts of climate change across the United States, as well as the risks faced in different parts of the country. The government is required to publish a new report every four years.
As impacts from climate change are becoming increasingly severe, frequent and widespread, most Americans have grown worried about climate change. Canceling climate research, weakening hurricane forecasts and cutting experts on heat stress are going in the opposite direction of what most Americans say they want – and need.
This article first appeared on Yale Climate Connections and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Banner photo: The March for Science in Washington, D.C., in 2017 (Becker1999, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons)
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