Trump's Trials - Former staffers of Climate.gov are attempting to launch a new site: Climate.us

Episode Date: September 5, 2025

Climate.gov went dark after cuts from the Trump administration. Now, a group of former employees are trying to revive it under a new domain.Support NPR and hear every episode of Trump's Terms sponsor-free with NPR+. Sign up at plus.npr.org.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

You're listening to Trump's Terms from NPR. I'm Scott Detrow. We're going to be doing all sorts of things. Nobody ever thought was even possible. President Trump has brought back string to the White House. We can't just ignore the president's desires. This will be an entirely different country in a short period of time. Every episode of Trump's terms, we bring you NPR's latest coverage of the 47th president.

With a focus on actions and policies he is pursuing on his own terms and in the process, taking the presidency into uncharted territory. Today's story starts right after this. I'm Mary Louise Kelly. For more than a decade, the website, climate.gov, explained climate science to the public, serving up timely information about hurricanes, wildfires, droughts. The site was run by NOAA, that's the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and it drew nearly a million visitors a month. Well, earlier this year, the Trump administration began to displace.

mantle climate.gov. It stopped updating the site. It laid off the staff now. Some of those staffers are regrouping. They are attempting to launch a new site called climate.us. And Rebecca Lindsay is leading the chart. She's the former editor of climate.gov. And she's here now. Rebecca Lindsay, welcome. Thank you. So why this new site? Tell me what you're hoping to achieve. We were just hoping to protect and preserve the information that existed on climate.gov. We want to essentially create a nonprofit successor to climate.gov in a place outside the federal domain where people can trust that the information is not going to be politicized or tampered with. So nonprofit outside the U.S. government volunteer run at this point? Is that right?

It is. Right now, we are strictly doing this as a labor of love. There's a team of about four of us that have been working on it over the summer. We're not sure. how long we will be able to go around unemployed, but we are trying to get nonprofit and foundation funding to transition the whole operation from the federal domain to the nonprofit sector. So I will note right before we called you, I typed climate.gov into my browser. I was redirected to a climate site run by NOAA. I'm looking at it right now. It does include recent news like the fact that July 2025 was the Earth's third warmest July on record. There's also drought.gov. There's heat.gov. Can't people still get the climate information

they are looking for at an official U.S. government website? For right now, yes, there's some information that can still be found on other government websites. Climate.gov, though, was unique. We were the only website that actively worked to combat misinformation on social media. And we provided a direct link from the science community and the world of scientists to the public. I am thinking, I'm sitting here talking to you from the NPR newsroom. We have a climate desk. Many news organizations have a climate desk. There are plenty of climate scientists who are able to post directly on social media.

media, plenty of non-governmental places where people can learn about climate change, in other words. What do you see your site adding to that mix that's not currently out there? Well, many of those sites that you mentioned, the many of those news desks actually depend on climate.gov for story ideas. We even routinely see our data visualizations and maps used by the mainstream media. The other thing is climate.gov had a complete collection of classroom resources for teachers. So it was really a full-service platform for climate information from multiple audiences. Does being outside the government have any advantages? Does that open any new opportunities for you? Yes, and that's really one of the things that's most exciting about this

initiative. We do have the potential to partner with other organizations in ways that we didn't when we were affiliated with the federal government. It's also possible that we will be able to expand our communications into things like what people can do about climate change. It was something that we were asked for constantly. People would say, can you please add information to your site that is about what we can do about climate change? And we will, of course, now have the freedom to do that.

Rebecca Lindsay, former editor of climate, Climate.gov. Now spearheading the new site, climate.us. Rebecca Lindsay, thank you. Thank you. Before we wrap up a reminder, you can find more coverage of the Trump administration on the NPR politics podcast, where you can hear NPR's political reporters break down the day's biggest political news with new episodes every weekday afternoon. And thanks, as always, to our NPR Plus supporters who hear every episode of the show without sponsor messages. You can learn more at plus.npr.org.

I'm Scott Detrow. Thanks for listening to Trump's terms from NPR.