President Donald Trump’s address to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday evening highlighted spending cuts—especially those recommended by the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE. The address largely resembled his campaign speeches and did not lay out specific energy or climate policy goals beyond reducing spending on climate initiatives and streamlining fossil fuel projects.
Trump listed actions taken by his administration to dismantle the environmental policies of former President Joe Biden. An executive order titled “Unleashing American Energy” did direct the federal government to immediately pause the disbursement of funds appropriated via the Inflation Reduction Act, a 2022 law that included support for a wide range of climate resiliency and mitigation projects.
The Inflation Reduction Act, a signature Biden policy, provided a boost to business and manufacturing in both red and blue states, said Rachel Cleetus, policy director of the Union of Concerned Scientists’ Climate and Energy program. “Cutting those federal investments is going to hurt small businesses; it’s going to hurt workers,” she said.
“The reason for this is simply to boost the fossil fuel industry and its profits.”
Trump also said he had ended Biden’s “electric vehicle mandate,” referring to production targets set by the Biden administration that encouraged automakers to sell more electric vehicles. The targets were never legally binding.
Trump frequently invokes the need for the United States to produce more domestic oil and natural gas to lower energy prices and fight inflation. His address to Congress was no different and included familiar rhetoric, with the president calling for oil and natural gas producers to “drill, baby, drill.” He said his administration was working to speed up the permitting process for new oil and gas projects and mentioned a plan to build a new natural gas pipeline in Alaska, which Trump said would be “among the largest in the world.” Japan and South Korea, he said, were among the nations interested in investing “trillions of dollars” in the pipeline project.
The president has used this argument—that domestic energy production fights inflation—since the beginning of his campaign. But the thinking is flawed, according to economists and political scientists: Energy prices are determined by a complex interplay between domestic energy policy and global factors, including geopolitical conflicts, over which the president has little control. And the oil market is already saturated, with some oil companies choosing to leave leases untouched to keep prices from dropping.
“The idea that some of these policies that [the Trump administration has] implemented in this pro-fossil fuel agenda are going to do anything to help address consumer energy costs or address [energy] reliability concerns is absolutely not true,” Cleetus said. “The reason for this is simply to boost the fossil fuel industry and its profits.”
Spending Cuts
At one point, Trump delivered a list of “waste” that DOGE, an advisory organization that Trump said is headed by tech billionaire Elon Musk, had identified, including various research grants and foreign aid efforts. Money saved by the federal government via sweeping cuts to the federal workforce, including within such scientific agencies as the National Science Foundation and NOAA, was conspicuously absent from the list.
“There was no hint of any recognition of the harm to the nation and to people from these this extraordinary overreach of presidential authority, a lot of it illegal,” Cleetus said.
“Change doesn’t need to be chaotic or make us less safe.”
Sen. Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, who delivered the Democrats’ response to the speech, did touch on the federal layoffs and rehirings. “Change doesn’t need to be chaotic or make us less safe,” she said. “The mindless firing of people who work to protect our nuclear weapons, keep our planes from crashing, and conduct the research that finds the cure for cancer—only to rehire them 2 days later—no CEO in America could do that without being summarily fired.”
Near the end of his speech, Trump told House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) to “get rid” of the CHIPS and Science Act, a law passed with bipartisan support that set spending goals for federal research agencies. The CHIPS Act, which initially stood for “Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors” for America, focuses on increasing the STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) workforce, improving rural STEM education, and providing support for research regarding national security, artificial intelligence, manufacturing, climate change, and critical minerals.
—Grace van Deelen (@GVD__), Staff Writer
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