“This present moment used to be the unimaginable future.”
A neon pink sign flashes these words—part of an installation by artist Alicia Eggert—at a DC museum just steps from the White House. Until a year ago, I often used an image of this art installation in my work presentations, to illustrate a particular point.
Among my responsibilities at the White House and then at the US Department of Transportation was working on the implementation of the Inflation Reduction Act, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, and the CHIPS and Science Act, as a means of tackling the climate crisis. This trifecta of legislative victories represented more climate progress than I could have imagined in ten years of prior advocacy at UCS. I used that presentation slide to help the public, universities, and state and local decision makers see that a brighter future was possible because of the ambitious investments being made by the federal government towards climate and clean energy goals.
Unfortunately, there is also a flip side to those words. In the year since I’ve returned to UCS, we’ve seen a different unimaginable future unfold, in which the Trump administration has worked to destroy all of that climate and clean energy progress; disrupt longstanding government programs and processes; and disregard the rule of law. The administration has clawed back funding that was agreed on by Congress and promised to scientific institutions, illegally fired federal employees, and gutted congressionally mandated programs. President Trump and his administration have rolled back policies protecting our health, safety, and environment; set new policies with no regard for data and evidence; silenced people’s voices on issues that affect them; given polluting industries free rein; denied climate science; and taken step after step towards authoritarianism. There is no recent precedent for all of this; even for those of us who read each page of the Heritage Foundation’s “Project 2025,” this present moment was unimaginable.
The scope, severity, and speed of attacks on science have been dizzying. But if the past year has taught us anything, it’s that we are not powerless to stop them. Across the country, scientists and science supporters have organized and fought back in response to the Trump administration’s actions, and UCS has embraced our role in leading the charge.
Early in the new term, UCS led an effort to unify the scientific community with a sign-on letter boasting signatories from 56 scientific societies representing more than 100,000 scientists. We took our defense of science to the courts, filing lawsuits focused on the administration’s illegal actions: against the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) for acting beyond their power to cut funding and fire federal employees; against administration officials for trying to base policy off of an unlawfully created report from a secretly convened group of climate contrarians; and challenging the Trump administration’s removal of public information from climate and environmental justice federal agency websites. After the first 100 days of the administration, UCS launched the “You Need Science. Science Needs You” campaign, connecting supporters to their elected officials to demand that funding for US science be preserved.
As the administration disbanded and weakened scientific advisory committees that provide analyses for important decisions about our health, UCS provided guidance for experts to launch their own independent committees, and supported many such efforts—which represent a huge contribution of time and expertise in the name of ensuring science reaches those who need it.
Throughout the year, we helped organize and turned out for mass mobilizations across the country, including the Stand up for Science rally, and sponsoring the most recent No Kings protest last October. I co-authored an editorial in Science magazine that provides a roadmap to resistance specifically for scientists—because I truly believe we were made for this moment. We armed our supporters, including our growing Science Network of experts, with a toolkit for engaging their elected officials during the August Congressional recess.
We’ve sent our experts to testify against dangerous policy proposals, brought widespread media attention to the communities facing the greatest risks to their health and safety because of the administration’s actions, and rallied the scientific community to fight together. And all year long, the scientific community published op-eds, attended Congressional meetings, and organized across the country: making it loud and clear that the anti-science actions of the Trump administration are unacceptable.
I’m heartened by the moral clarity and persistence of those around me who remain committed to science and its role in informing decisions that affect us all. Let’s be real: the consequences of standing up to this administration can be scary. Plenty of people have lost their jobs, their funding, their life’s work (and even their homes, loved ones, and lives) to its capricious cruelty. Because of that, we might not have anticipated such a strong response. It’s not easy to resist an authoritarian regime—or even a wannabe authoritarian regime.
But. We. Showed. Up. And we’re not going anywhere.
As we enter 2026, we’re going to build on our achievements and doggedly continue doing the work we know is right, and necessary. This includes making more progress on climate and clean energy at the state level, carrying on momentum from last year’s huge wins in California, Maine, and Illinois. We’ll keep shining a light on the administration’s attacks on science, for accountability and to publicize the human toll these policy decisions exact. We’ll be releasing more groundbreaking scientific research into quantifying the climate harms caused by massive tech companies and industrial agriculture, tracking the implications of two major international court decisions last year, and supporting existing cases against Big Oil with our expertise and advocacy. We’ll be calling out bad actors from Big Ag to the federal government. And most importantly, we’ll be doing this in partnership with the scientific community at large, offering many opportunities for scientists and science supporters to get involved and speak up for what matters.
We must set our eyes on a different kind of unimaginable future—one where our hard work in the trenches defending our progress and advancing our goals pays off. A future in which we fully realize a safer, healthier, and more equitable world because of our steadfast commitment to science for the people. Let’s build it together.