On August 5, 2025, Department of Energy (DOE) Secretary Chris Wright said in an interview that the Trump administration is “updating” previously published National Climate Assessments (NCA), which were recently removed from government websites.
Wright said the reports were not “fair in broad-based assessments of climate change” and that “[w]e’re reviewing them, and we will come out with updated reports on those and with comments on those reports.” A DOE spokesperson clarified that Wright “was not suggesting he personally would be altering past reports,” which are published by the US Global Change Research Program, not the Department of Energy.
Climate scientists have condemned the comments, including Dr. Rachel Cleetus, policy director at the Union of Concerned Scientists and one of the authors of the sixth NCA, due in 2028, all of whom the administration dismissed in April. Dr. Cleetus said, “Secretary Wright just confirmed our worst fears – that this administration plans to not just bury the scientific evidence but replace it with outright lies to downplay the worsening climate crisis and evade responsibility for addressing it.”