Trump administration policies pose threats to Maryland’s ambitious climate efforts

By SAM GAUNTT

The low-lying coastal community of Crisfield, on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, lost a federal grant aimed at preventing flooding and managing sea-level rise, while universities and research institutions across the state face extensive funding cuts.

Disappearing, too, are federal incentives to move to clean energy sources — replaced by President Donald Trump’s effort to repeal state laws aimed at addressing climate change.

Meanwhile, scores of employees at federal environmental agencies, including many from Maryland, have already lost or could soon lose their jobs.

All of that is happening for one simple reason that U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins spelled out May 8 on Fox Business.

Under the Trump administration, “We’re not doing that climate change, you know, crud anymore,” Rollins said.

Trump has long called climate change “a hoax,” and since returning to office in January, his administration has treated it as that. This about-face in federal climate policy is impacting almost every aspect of Maryland’s efforts to address environmental and climate issues, as well as those of states across the country, environmental leaders said. 

Climate change experts and state government officials warn that these funding cuts and other federal actions could potentially set Maryland’s climate efforts back years. 

The changes come at a delicate time for the state’s environment, regardless of the federal government. 

Maryland entered its annual legislative session at the beginning of the year facing a $3 billion budget deficit, leading Gov. Wes Moore to direct the state to cut more than $250 million from its four environmental agencies.

On top of that, the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science recently downgraded the Chesapeake Bay’s health from a “C+” to a “C” in its annual report card due to worsening weather patterns.

In an interview, Adam Ortiz, deputy secretary of the Maryland Department of the Environment, said the Trump administration has put the state’s climate, environmental and clean energy projects “on the chopping block.”

“The biggest exposure and liability is to everyday people,” he said.

The money 

Crisfield, a city of about 2,500 in Somerset County, lost out on $36 million in flood-prevention funding when the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) canceled its Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities program in April. That was just one small part of the Trump administration’s government-wide effort to slash climate-related funding.

Canceling that one FEMA program cost the entire Chesapeake Bay watershed nearly $1 billion in federal funding, the Chesapeake Bay Journal reported.

FEMA, in a since-deleted news release, called the grant program “wasteful and ineffective.” But Rep. Sarah Elfreth, whose 3rd District includes flood-prone communities in Anne Arundel County, begged to differ.

“Now, towns like Crisfield in Maryland and Baltimore and dozens of communities across this nation rely on this funding to ward off the very real and very devastating effects of flooding,” she said on the House floor in April. “Flooding will continue to devastate communities, even if the president does not believe in climate change.”

Elfreth has already been proven to be correct. Through July 15, the National Weather Service issued 3,045 flood warnings this year – more than any year in modern history. This summer’s floods range from those that led to a state of emergency in Western Maryland in May and the flash floods that hit the northern D.C. area on July 19 to the July 4 torrent in Texas that has claimed more than 130 lives.

FEMA’s decision to cut the disaster mitigation program hasn’t gone unchallenged. On July 16, a coalition of 20 states, including Maryland, filed a lawsuit in federal court in Massachusetts disputing the agency’s authority to cut the program without prior approval from Congress and seeking a permanent injunction to restore its funding.

In a statement on July 16, Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown said that it is “the worst possible time to cut life-saving disaster preparedness funding.”

“Any community in Maryland can be struck by a devastating natural disaster that forever changes the lives of those who live there,” Brown said.

The Trump administration isn’t just cutting flood-control funding. Over the last six months, Trump has sought to cancel more than $23.3 billion in clean energy grants nationwide, according to the Climate Program Portal.

Trump is also seeking to cut billions in funding for federal environmental agencies, including a roughly $2 billion proposed cut to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and a proposed almost $5 billion cut to the Environmental Protection Agency. 

Because federal agencies are picking up less of the bill, the state has been forced to find new ways to generate revenue to cover spending on climate, environmental and energy projects, said Ortiz, the EPA’s former top administrator for the mid-Atlantic region. One way has been by increasing the cost of inspection and enforcement fees that haven’t been raised in decades.

“The state is trying to pick up a lot of the slack, since the federal government has abandoned its support role,” Ortiz said.

The UMD Center for Environmental Science hasn’t yet lost any grants of which it was the primary recipient, but it has lost some grants of which it was a co-lead or secondary recipient, said Dave Nemazie, the center’s interim vice president for administration and finance.

More than anything, Nemazie said, the center has seen an “overall slowdown” in receiving awards and in communication with federal partners.

He said the center, which typically receives about 60% of its external funding from the federal government, is facing a 25% reduction in grants and awards for the 2026 fiscal year.

“The spigot is not flowing as fast,” he said. “Communication has been much more complicated than it has in the past.”

Kristin Reilly, director of the Maryland-based Choose Clean Water Coalition, said funding cuts could have a “major impact” on Maryland’s climate restoration efforts.

“Pretty much anything that you’re doing at the state level, there is a need for some level of federal investment that’s been counted on, that’s been incorporated and calculated into the state budgets,” she said. “If that isn’t going to continue, we’re going to have to make some really tough choices and have some really serious conversations, especially here in Maryland.”

The policies

The recently passed “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” Trump’s signature policy effort, will have broad impacts on climate change and environmental justice funding and other programs. 

The budget reconciliation bill, signed into law by Trump in early July, removed incentives for clean energy, electric vehicles and efficient homes, which the bill describes as “Green New Deal subsidies.”

Marisa Olszewski, the Maryland League of Conservation Voters’ manager for environment and community, described the current landscape as an “assault” on clean energy.

The U.S. is throwing away its position as a global leader in clean energy, said Olszewski, who is married to Rep. Johnny Olszewski, D-Sparrows Point.

“Once you pull back on that, it’s not like the rest of the world is going to wait for us to come back around and develop the technology, or put out the research,” she said. “They’re going to go ahead and do it without us.”

Many of Trump’s executive actions have also taken aim at clean energy programs. 

In April, he signed an executive order titled “Protecting American Energy From State Overreach,” which ordered the attorney general to immediately identify and challenge the legality of state climate laws. 

“Many states have enacted, or are in the process of enacting, burdensome and ideologically motivated ‘climate change’ or energy policies that threaten American energy dominance and our economic and national security,” Trump said.

That executive order never mentioned Maryland, but it took issue with a carbon trading program in California that is similar to one formed by a group of states, including Maryland.

In addition, the executive order could lead to a federal attack on Maryland’s Climate Solutions Now Act of 2022, which sets statewide greenhouse gas emissions goals, energy efficiency standards for new buildings and other climate-related measures. County-level actions — such as a Montgomery County law banning gas appliances in new buildings — could also be challenged.

“Should the U.S. attorney general choose to target either the state of Maryland, Maryland’s counties, or both, the effect on Maryland’s energy landscape as well as local control could be dramatic,” Dominic J. Butchko, director of intergovernmental relations at the Maryland Association of Counties, wrote in a blog post shortly after Trump issued that executive order.

Trump signed a different executive order in January, which halted all federal approval of new wind farms, and has sought to roll back or cancel wind energy projects across the country.

While the Maryland Offshore Wind Project located off the coast of Ocean City, one of the state’s signature clean energy projects, had already been approved by the federal government, it too has been caught up in administrative hurdles. 

On July 7, the EPA informed Maryland regulators the state’s air quality permit for the project had an error, and ordered them to revise and reissue the permit. The state does not plan to reissue the permit, Maryland Environment Secretary Serena McIlwain wrote in a July 17 letter to the agency.

The people 

Federal and state agencies haven’t just lost money. They’ve lost people. 

Few states are more at risk from the federal government’s sweeping layoffs than Maryland, where more than 6% of residents are employed by the federal government.

Maryland is home to almost 230,000 federal workers, the third-largest number in the U.S. Among those workers are scores of scientists, researchers and environmental experts. 

NOAA and the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center call Maryland home. Other agencies, including the EPA, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Department of Energy have sizable presences in the state.

These agencies, including the EPA, play a key role in helping oversee and fund many of the state’s most extensive environmental and climate projects, such as its efforts to restore the Chesapeake Bay.

EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announced in May that the agency will cut staffing levels to those it had during the Ronald Reagan administration in the 1980s. On July 18, the agency announced it would shutter its research and development office and implement a large-scale “reduction in force,” which, combined with previous personnel changes, would decrease the agency’s workforce by about 23%. 

More than 500 Maryland residents worked for the EPA in 2024, according to data from the federal Office of Personnel Management.

Ortiz said changes in federal departments and agencies will impact Maryland’s ability to carry out environmental work, as many of its authorities are delegated to the state by the federal government.

“Often we do need a thumbs up, a nod or an approval to carry out various programs,” he said. “That responsiveness will be slower. Areas that we’ve been investing in to try to fix longstanding challenges are going to be weakened and slowed because we don’t have that partnership.”

Nemazie, of the UMD Center for Environmental Science, said the center has implemented a hiring freeze while it works to cut its costs. About 40% of its staff is supported solely by external grants and contracts, he said.

Some federal cuts targeting environment-focused positions, however, have been overturned in the courts. 

The administration halted funding to the federal AmeriCorps program in April, which impacted hundreds of Maryland workers, including dozens at the Maryland Conservation Corps. But in June, a federal judge in Maryland ordered the Trump administration to reinstate funding for AmeriCorps positions.

Ortiz said the state is working to make “smart and strategic decisions” on how to handle federal cuts and policy changes. As state officials make plans, new events are unfolding at “an almost hourly pace,” he said.

“We want to react, but we also don’t want to overreact,” he said. “These are uncharted waters. So there are no easy answers, and there’s certainly no playbook.”