Experts predict this summer might be hotter than average—and the U.S. is not prepared to meet the challenge. Much of the Midwest and Northeast are forecasted to see temperatures “persistently above average” according to a Weather Channel prediction, while the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Climate Prediction Center estimates that the entire country will see above normal temperatures—with the only difference being in severity.
This comes as the Trump Administration has conducted layoffs on climate and heat related initiatives and cut funding for research grants on extreme heat. Experts warn that this will risk the country’s ability to protect communities from extreme heat.
Heat experts at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) and the National Integrated Heat Health Information System (NIHHIS) were told in early April that their positions would be eliminated as part of the cuts made by the Trump Administration’s Department of Governmental Efficiency. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) entire environmental health unit was cut, though some jobs were restored last week.
“What was lost there is just a giant value to communities,” says V. Kelly Turner, associate professor of urban planning at University of California, Los Angeles.
Extreme heat is not recognized as a disaster in the U.S.—despite being the largest weather-related killer in the country. Heat deaths have doubled in the past 24 years, and the number has been steadily rising since 2016, according to a study published in JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association, last August.
Despite this, the issue has long lacked the same federal resources given to other natural disasters. “Heat actually doesn’t have a home in the federal government,” says Turner. “Other disasters, like fires or hurricanes have programs and institutions and policies and funding streams associated with them—heat didn’t have any of that.”
Read more: How to Know When High Temperatures Are Getting Dangerous
Previous administrations were only beginning to address the issue. The Obama Administration founded NIHHIS, an interagency network aimed at providing actionable solutions to protect people from extreme heat, which remained operational throughout the first Trump Administration. Last July, a working group convened by the Biden Administration published the first ever “National Heat Strategy”—which has now been removed from government websites by the current Trump Administration. The bipartisan Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) dedicated funds towards climate resilience projects—many of which addressed extreme heat on a community level—but the future of the law’s many provisions remains unclear.
”The government was catching up,” says Turner. “We only kind of got halfway up the hill, and now we’re rolling the ball back down.”
Communities in the U.S. are already woefully underprepared to address extreme heat management—and experts say cuts will only worsen our response.
“We’re not prepared for the heat we’re experiencing today, let alone the heat we will experience due to climate change. We are a nation unprepared for extreme temperatures,” says Ladd Keith, director of the Heat Resilience Initiative. “Really we need a whole government approach to address extreme heat, and it needs to be especially [aimed at] supporting small local communities that don’t have the resources to address it on their own.”
Read more: Extreme Heat Is Endangering America’s Workers—and Its Economy
Today, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) began a public hearing on the creation of a first-of-its-kind proposal for federal heat health standards for workers. But experts say it could be on the chopping block after the Trump Administration fired federal heat experts from NIOSH in the spring.
“The general consensus is, among labor advocates and those who’ve been working on the OSHA rule, that it will probably not survive the rulemaking process,” says Keith.
Both Keith and Turner were working on the Center for Heat Resilient Communities, an IRA funded program that aimed at helping local communities come up with their own heat action plans. The day before they were expected to announce the first cohort of cities taking part, their funding was cut by the Administration.
The funding cut, Turner says, highlights a dichotomy between the Trump Administration’s aim to leave disaster response to communities—without providing them with the tools to respond.
“There’s a general trend right now of saying the federal government shouldn’t have a hand in addressing disasters at all and that that should be a state by state issue, or even a community by community issue,” she says. “The problem is that would be an unfunded mandate, and I don’t know that there is the knowledge store, and there definitely is not the financial wherewithal, to actually address heat in that way.”