President Donald Trump’s ongoing campaign to eradicate climate information (and action) has hit the health sector. The Trump administration shuttered the climate office of the Department of Health and Human Services, placing its staff on administrative leave, writes Ariel Wittenberg. The Office of Climate Change and Health Equity was established in 2021 to help the health sector drive down its climate warming pollution, in part by accessing clean energy tax credits passed under former President Joe Biden. It also provided public information about the health dangers of extreme heat (which are profound). The move comes as billionaire Elon Musk, Trump’s government-downsizing right-hand man, sweeps through federal agencies, cutting funding, programming and personnel. Programs and resources designed to aid low-income and otherwise disenfranchised communities have absorbed many of the blows. While Democrats, and at least one Republican lawmaker, have raised alarms, Trump’s challenges to Congress’ constitutional power of the purse has mostly met GOP silence. The administration has also been slow to comply with multiple court orders halting Trump’s wide-ranging freeze of federal aid. HHS climate staff were placed on leave Jan. 22, the day after Trump ordered the dismantlement of all diversity, equity and inclusion programming. Webpages about the climate office remained active for a few days, but nearly all are now dark. Agriculture Department employees have also been instructed to delete landing pages related to climate change. References to climate change were removed from federal websites (and otherwise buried) during the first Trump administration as well. Climate was not the only target at HHS. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention removed online materials about preventing sexually transmitted diseases and providing gender-affirming care. The CDC also blocked access to its Social Vulnerability Index, which uses Census Bureau data to rank communities’ vulnerability to natural disasters, Ariel writes. Websites about the Office of Research on Women’s Health at the National Institutes of Health and the Office of Minority Health at HHS have also disappeared. The changes to HHS come as the Senate is expected to confirm Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as Health secretary. As recently as five years ago, Kennedy blamed Republican lawmakers for a “climate in crisis,” but he has changed his tune since then. In August, he told far-right media personality Tucker Carlson he had been “expelled” from the environmental movement because he does not believe in “this carbon orthodoxy that the only issue is carbon.” While other greenhouse gases help drive atmospheric warming, carbon dioxide is a major contributor whose emissions scientists agree must be curbed to stave off the worst of climate change.
| 
