Earlier this week, I mentioned the Environmental Protection Agency’s social justice “panda” projects being gutted.
It’s a term Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) leader Elon Musk came up with to describe programs that sound great to Americans, but the money is actually used in ways that harm the country and its citizens.
Well, even more pandas are about to be butchered if President Donald Trump succeeds in getting his proposed budget through Congress.
The Trump administration’s proposed budget for fiscal year 2026 seeks to eliminate over $15 billion in funding associated with Biden’s expensive and inane “Green New Deal” initiatives, specifically targeting “clean energy”, the “climate crisis”, and environmental programs.
The White House said the energy budget proposal cancels more than $15 billion in carbon capture and renewable energy funding from the bipartisan infrastructure law that former President Joe Biden, a Democrat, signed in 2021. It also proposes to cancel $6 billion from that law for EV chargers.”The Biden Administration spent more than three years implementing these programs, but built only a small number of chargers because it prioritized over-regulating and ‘climate justice’ goals,” the White House said. “EV chargers should be built just like gas stations: with private sector resources disciplined by market forces.”The plan reorients Energy Department funding toward research and development of technologies that could produce an abundance of oil, gas, coal and critical minerals, nuclear reactors and advanced nuclear fuels, the White House said without further details.The budget is meant to lay out an administration’s policies, and what lawmakers ultimately adopt often differs from the White House request. It was not immediately clear how Congress would agree to cut funding approved in bipartisan law that is popular in many Republican districts. Congress would likely have to pass legislation such as rescissions or amendments.The plan would cut $80 million in Interior Department renewable energy programs including offshore wind energy projects.
As a reminder, Biden came into office promising the construction of 500,000 electric vehicle charging stations by 2030. With 5 years to go, only 7 have been built. I think it is pretty safe to cut this from the federal budget.
But, I digress.
But it gets even better. President Donald Trump’s proposed federal budget includes a dramatic cut of nearly 55% (about $5 billion) to the eco-activists in the EPA compared to its 2025 enacted budget.
A state revolving loan fund to help states set up their own water infrastructure loan program would be reduced by $2.5 billion, categorical grants would be cut by $1 billion, while spending for its environmental justice program, office of research and development and atmospheric protection program would also be reduced.
Removing the emphasis on the climate crisis pseudoscience while supporting industries that are essential to American security and prosperity in other agencies is clearly part of the Trump budget priorities.
A 30.5% cut, or $5.1 billion, to the Interior Department, including $198 billion from the Bureau of Land Management, $900 million from the National Park Service, and $564 million from the U.S. Geological Survey:From the proposal: “Eliminates programs that provide grants to universities, duplicate other Federal research programs and focus on social agendas (e.g. climate change) to instead focus on achieving dominance in energy and critical minerals.”A 55.8% cut, or $4.9 billion, to the National Science Foundation:From the proposal: “The Budget cuts funding for: climate; clean energy; woke social, behavioral, and economic sciences; and programs in low priority areas of science. NSF has fueled research with dubious public value, like speculative impacts from extreme climate scenarios and niche social studies.”An approximately 25% cut, or $1.5 billion, to NOAA [National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration:From the proposal: “The Budget terminates a variety of climate-dominated research, data, and grant programs, which are not aligned with Administration policy-ending “Green New Deal” initiatives.”
While it would be nice to think special-interest “pandas” will go extinct, I certainly hope there are a lot fewer of them funded the next time a budget is actually passed.
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