This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman.
In Colorado, hundreds of protesters gathered in Boulder Saturday to condemn the Trump administration’s plan to dismantle the National Center for Atmospheric Research, NCAR, a federally funded climate and weather research institute based in Boulder. Last week, White House budget director Russell Vought called NCAR “one of the largest sources of climate alarmism in the country,” unquote.
Democratic lawmakers have suggested Trump targeted the climate facility in retaliation for Colorado’s refusal to release Tina Peters, a former county clerk convicted of tampering with voting machines during the 2020 presidential election. She was sentenced to nine years. Trump recently pardoned her, but he doesn’t have the legal authority to overturn a state court conviction.
We’re joined now by climate scientist Michael Mann, professor at the University of Pennsylvania. His new book with Dr. Peter Hotez is titled Science Under Siege. He has a new piece out today in The Guardian on Trump’s shuttering of the National Center for Atmospheric Research.
Can you talk about the significance, Michael, Professor Mann, of the closing? Are they closing this facility? What it means, I mean, even right now, as Colorado is under a wildfire alert because there has been so little rain and the winds are so intense?
MICHAEL MANN: Yeah. It’s good to be with you, Amy.
Unfortunately, this does sort of underscore just how absurd this latest action by the Trump administration is. We’re literally seeing the devastating consequences of climate change play out in this state. You’re not supposed to get wildfires in the middle of the winter in Colorado, but that’s the world we live in now because of the warming of the planet and the more extreme weather that we’re seeing as a result.
And, you know, I think there are a lot of things that Donald Trump could have tried to do to hurt the state of Colorado. I think the reason that he chose NCAR is that it is the crown jewel of climate science. For more than a half-century, it has been a leader when it comes to American advancement in the science of climate modeling. And he is executing the playbook of Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation, of course, playing a major part in this dismantling of climate infrastructure, the infrastructure for doing climate science, the infrastructure for doing something about the climate crisis. So, it isn’t a coincidence that he’s going after this, you know, iconic climate institution.
AMY GOODMAN: So, talk about, overall, the Trump administration now when it comes to climate change. And what does it mean to take NCAR basically offline? And what happens to this facility in Boulder right now?
MICHAEL MANN: Yeah, it’s unclear at this point. And this will play out in the courts,