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Trump Allies Near ‘Total Victory’ in Wiping Out U.S. Climate Regulation

NYT, February 10, 2026

Read this disturbing news, then ponder where we go from here. Our uphill battle has gotten a lot steeper. We'll discuss this at our chapter meeting on February 14:

Marin/Sonoma CCL chapters invite you to their monthly meeting on Saturday, February 14 at

9 AM here on zoom

We'll present the newly formed Climate and Democracy Discussion Group focusing on the nexus of climate action and our endangered democracy. As the headline above shows, there is much to discuss. Below is the invitation to their first speaker event on February 18 with Dr. Ben Santer, who has devoted his life to unravelling the mysteries of Earth's climate system and pushing for facts to inform policy. Obviously, that continues to be a struggle, and he's right in the middle of it. Please join us on February 14, at our chapter meeting, and on February 18 for Dr. Santer's talk. You don't have to be a CCL member to attend.

Then, at 10 AM on Saturday, join the National call, with guest William J. Doherty, Ph.D., Co-founder of Braver Angels.

Bill Doherty is a Professor Emeritus in the Department of Family Social Science at the University of Minnesota. As a therapist, he focuses on couples on the brink of divorce and on political stress in relationships. He has authored 14 books for professionals and the public. Following the 2016 U.S. Presidential election, he co- founded Braver Angels, a citizen initiative bringing conservatives and liberals together to counteract political polarization and restore the fraying social fabric in American society. Bill is the chief designer of the Braver Angels workshops and has conducted sessions all over the country, including for corporations, state legislatures, and the Problem Solvers Caucus in Congress.

Join here.

The new Climate and Democracy Discussion Group

invites you to its first guest lecture, Wednesday, February 18, 2026 at 5 PM PT,

8 ET, with

Dr. Benjamin D. Santer, Ph.D.

Former researcher at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, IPCC author, now Professor at East Anglia University in the U.K.

"Year One of Trump Two: What Climate Science has Lost, is Losing and How Climate Advocacy Moves Forward"

CCL volunteers, staff and the public are invited.

Join on Zoom

CDDG's first speaker will be acclaimed climatologist Dr. Ben Santer discussing the urgent need to protect democracy in order to address the climate crisis. For over four decades, Dr. Santer has been at the forefront of cutting edge climate science and an outspoken critic of the war on science in general and climate science in particular. You can prepare by reading here:

Letter to Donald J. Trump

Interview with Carbon Brief

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

“After Republican complaints, judicial body pulls climate advice”

“Meant to help judges handle scientific issues, document is now climate-free.”

“On February 6, a body that advises US judges revised the document it created to help judges grapple with scientific issues. The move came after a group of Republican state attorneys general wrote a letter to complain about the document’s chapter on climate change, with one of the letter’s criticisms being that it treated human influence on climate as a fact. In response to the letter, the Federal Judicial Center has now deleted the entire chapter.”

“The Federal Judicial Center has been established by statute as the “research and education agency of the judicial branch of the United States Government.” As part of that role, it prepares documents that can serve as reference material for judges unfamiliar with topics that find their way into the courtroom. Among those projects is the “Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence,” now in its fourth edition. Prepared in collaboration with the National Academies of Science, the document covers the process of science and specific topics that regularly appear before the courts, like statistical techniques, DNA-based identification, and chemical exposures.

When initially released in December, the fourth edition included material on climate change prepared by two authors at Columbia University. But a group of attorneys general from Republican-leaning states objected to this content. At the end of January, they sent a letter to the leadership of the Federal Judicial Center outlining their issues. Many of them focus on the text that accepts the reality of human-driven climate change as a fact.”

Well, yeah, facts are pesky things. Wouldn't want judges making decisions based on them, would we? Read more here.

Washington Post gutting its climate team

Sammy Roth

February 4, 2026

"The Washington Post produced some of America’s finest climate journalism over the last decade, aggressively covering President Trump’s regulatory rollbacks and winning a Pulitzer Prize for a series about Earth’s fastest-warming places. Alongside the New York Times and the Associated Press, I don’t think any U.S. news outlet published a greater volume of urgent, high-quality climate and clean energy coverage.

Everything changed on Wednesday morning, February 4.

The Post sent layoff notices to at least 14 climate journalists, newsroom sources told me, part of a massive round of cost-cutting that will see more than 300 journalists lose their jobs — about 30% of all employees at the Jeff Bezos-owned company."

Read this alarming story here.

Also the NYT coverage:

A Secret Panel to Question Climate Science Was Unlawful, Judge Rules

The researchers produced a report that was central in a Trump administration effort to stop regulating climate pollution.

Legal or not, they're going to do it:

The E.P.A. Is Barreling Toward a Supreme Court Climate Showdown

The agency is racing to repeal a scientific finding, the "Endangerment Finding," that requires it to fight global warming. Experts say the goal is to get the matter before the justices while President Trump is still in office.

NYT, February 10, 2026

Read the following about how illegal this is.

Newly Disclosed Records Show Trump Administration’s Unlawful Actions Related to Secretly Formed “Climate Working Group”

Group’s Illegal Work Fatally Taints EPA’s Proposal to Repeal Endangerment Finding; EDF, UCS Call for Withdrawal of That Fundamentally Flawed Proposal

"(Washington, D.C. – January 22, 2026) Newly disclosed records about the Trump administration’s “Climate Working Group” (CWG) reveal brazenly unlawful actions behind the creation of a report that underlies the administration’s attack on the Endangerment Finding – including evidence of at least 18 meetings held in secret. 

The records – which also show politicization, reckless haste, disregard for public health, and contempt for rigorous science – are part of more than 68,000 pages of records obtained by Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) and the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) as the result of a lawsuit alleging violations of the Federal Advisory Committee Act regarding the secret creation of the CWG and its production of a widely discredited report."

Here's the press release. The details are...fascinating and disturbing.

Judge rules Department of Energy's climate working group was illegal

Ars Technica

“On January 31, a judge ruled that the Trump administration violated the law in forming its Climate Working Group, which released a report that was intended to undercut the rationale behind greenhouse gas regulations. The judge overseeing the case determined that the government tried to treat the Climate Working Group as a formal advisory body, while not having it obey many of the statutory requirements that govern such bodies.”

“While the Department of Energy (DOE) later disbanded the Climate Working Group in the hopes of avoiding legal scrutiny, documents obtained during the proceedings have now revealed the group’s electronic communications. As such, the judge ruled that the trial itself had essentially overcome the government’s illegal attempts to hide those communications.”

Read more about this sad saga here.

Who Needs the Endangerment Finding?

"Government officials have long grappled with a question that seems like the purview of philosophers: What is the value of a human life?

Under both Democratic and Republican administrations, the answer has been in the millions of dollars. The higher the value, the more the government has required businesses to spend on their operations to prevent a single death.

But for the first time ever, at the Environmental Protection Agency the answer is effectively zero dollars.

Last week, the E.P.A. stopped estimating the monetary value of lives saved when setting limits on two of the most widespread deadly air pollutants, fine particulate matter and ozone. Instead, the agency is calculating only the costs to companies of complying with pollution regulations."

Interesting article you can read here. No mention of the costs to individuals of climate change, the biggest subsidy of all to the fossil fuel industry, estimated at around 6 trillion dollars per year worldwide.

Remember Sputnik?

We Are Watching a Scientific Superpower Destroy Itself

By Stephen Greenblatt, professor of the humanities at Harvard.

NYT

Read this entire piece and learn about the unintended benefits that accrued from competition with the Soviet Union after Sputnik, compared to the disastrous consequences of now giving up our advantages in science.

"What began as a project of national security blossomed into a generator for limitless curiosity, creativity and critique. A seemingly unending succession of inventions and discoveries emerged with the support of the laboratories and research institutes of American universities: the internet, the M.R.I., recombinant DNA, human embryonic stem cells, CRISPR genome editing, the contributions to mRNA technology that made a new generation of vaccines (including for Covid-19) possible, and on and on, along with epochal breakthroughs in our understanding of matter and the origin of the universe."

"We are currently governed by a leader indifferent to scientific consensus if it contradicts his political or economic interests, hostile to immigrants and intent on crippling the research universities that embody our collective hope for the future. The menace now is within. And with very few exceptions, the leaders of American universities have done little more than duck and cover."

Trump has cancelled wind farm permits. Could that be a good thing? Perhaps.

Find out here.

You're invited, but...

This is how one behaves inside The Capitol:

Make an appointment. Business attire recommended. Bring nothing that even looks like a weapon.

Long live democracy.

Prepared by Peter G. Joseph, M.D. 

Peter.Joseph@cclvolunteer.org

Apologies for cross postings.

If you know someone who would like to be added to this distribution list, please suggest they join Marin CCL or contact me.