Much of what we hear tomorrow night during President Trump’s address to Congress is likely to contrast with what people living with the fallout around the country are saying. Amid sudden wildfires igniting in North and South Carolina, town halls packed with residents expressing anger at inexplicable and lawless holdups of congressionally approved spending, and prominent Republicans pleading directly with targeted agencies for special treatment, chaos now seems the rule, if not the point. No one voted for this chaos.

Energy and the Economy 

President Trump says he wants “energy dominance” and campaigned on a promise to cut energy costs in half, but he is surrendering to rival economies like Europe and China in the race for jobs and investments and preventing new sources of reliable, affordable energy from coming online. One report predicts his cuts will increase Americans’ bills by almost 7 percent next year. Already, electricity prices are trending toward peaks not seen since the ‘90s. 
 
The bad news: 

• President Trump attacked clean car standards and policies that support hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs and help make cleaner vehicles more affordable, held up millions of dollars of funds for electric school buses and killed hundreds of millions more for solar energy projects. But in 2023 alone, jobs in clean energy had already increased by 142,000, according to the Department of Energy. Overall, after the federal investments written into law three years ago, more than 400,000 new clean energy jobs have been created.
• Ford CEO Jim Farley said cancelling those investments would put many new jobs in the auto industry “at risk,” and that the Trump administration’s threatened tariffs in Mexico and Canada would “blow a hole in the U.S. industry that we have never seen.”

• “The United States economy is starting to show signs of strain.” Michael Strain, an economist at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, said, “All the uncertainty … I think will have a chilling effect on investment and expansion plans.”

• One early executive order led “to a surprise $100 energy bill hike for hundreds in Alabama.”

• Farmers, in particular, are facing “economic peril.” One in Massachusetts installed $30,000 worth of equipment in advance of a grant that is now held up indefinitely. The grant would have helped avoid a catastrophe like a flood or drought, the farmer said. “Instead, now, we have the federal government as a catastrophe.”

Climate and Environment 

President Trump says he wants clean air and clean water, but he’s firing the only people who how to clean them up when they’re not. He’s firing the people who watch out for hurricanes and warn us when they’re coming, the people who keep the polluters from breaking the law. Without them, there’ll be more kids with asthma, more lead-tainted pipes, more cancer, and more billion-dollar disasters. Late last week, a federal judge temporarily blocked layoffs, so it’s not clear who’s impacted this time around. Still, tens of thousands of federal workers have been laid off to date, including: 

• 3,000 Forest Service workers in the Agriculture Department; 

• 1,000 at the National Park Service; 

• 1,000 at the National Institutes of Health;  

• 900 at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration;  

• 800 at the Bureau of Land Management;  

• 750 at Centers for Disease Control and Protection;  

• 300 at the Environmental Protection Agency;
• 200 at the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

More bad news:

• As NOAA’s Storm Prediction Center forecasts severe storms with possible tornadoes forming in Arkansas, Mississippi, and Louisiana to arrive Tuesday, the Trump administration announced plans to dismantle NOAA, which could cause Americans to have to pay for such forecasts.

• Though President Trump disavowed any involvement with Project 2025, it explicitly targeted the Endangerment Finding. On his first day in office, President Trump directed the EPA to make recommendations on the “legality and continued applicability” of the 2009 finding — the foundational determination that climate-changing pollution poses a threat to people’s health and safety.  

• Last week, EPA Administrator Zeldin “privately urged” the White House to nix the Endangerment Finding, the Washington Post reported; EDF’s Vickie Patton said, “Americans are already suffering devastating impacts from the climate pollution that is fueling worsening disasters like heat waves and floods, more intense fires and hurricanes, and dangerous smog levels.”

• Administrator Zeldin is considering EPA budget cuts of more than 65 percent.

• After NPS layoffs, only one ranger trained to help fight wildfires is left to patrol 340,000 acres of the Cascade Mountains, which burned recently as August 2024. One firefighter told Stateline, “It’s just going to be a disaster for the wildfire response this season.” 

• The Trump administration also fired all the members of EPA’s two independent science advisory committees. EDF’s Peter Zalzal called it “a direct attack on the life-saving protections that keep our air clean, our water safe, and our communities free from harmful pollution.”