Climate Change Is Here—and America’s Most Marginalized Communities Are on the Front Lines

Typhoon Sinlaku made landfall across the remote U.S. island territories of Saipan and Tinian as a Category 4 storm on Tuesday, devastating homes, infrastructure, and a way of life. Ravaged during the storm by sustained winds of 150 mph and by as much as 25 inches of rain, entire neighborhoods are flooded, and power and communications lines have collapsed. For Saipan, the largest of the Northern Mariana Islands and a community already stretched thin, the destruction is overwhelming. Recovery will be difficult as the region’s infrastructure is fragile and supply chains stretch across thousands of miles of ocean. Yet Typhoon Sinlaku is not an isolated catastrophe. It is the third major typhoon to batter Saipan in barely a decade and the strongest one to strike the Northern Mariana Islands since Super Typhoon Yutu destroyed 3,000 homes and caused more than 130 injuries—clear evidence that climate change is no longer a future threat. Climate change is here, and America’s most marginalized communities are living on the front lines of more destructive, more costly, and more destabilizing storms in the places with the fewest resources to prepare and recover.

Saipan has endured this before. In 2015, Typhoon Soudelor tore across the island, cutting power for months and causing widespread destruction to homes and businesses. Just three years later, Super Typhoon Yutu—one of the strongest recorded storms to strike U.S. soil—left the island in ruins, destroying or severely damaging homes and collapsing much of the local economy. Recovery from Typhoon Yutu—made more difficult by the COVID-19 pandemic—was still incomplete when Typhoon Sinlaku hit.

This disaster was predictable

This accelerating pace of more frequent and intense storms mirrors the findings of a recent Center for American Progress climate disasters report: Warming ocean temperatures and rising seas are intensifying tropical storms, increasing rainfall, magnifying storm surge, and driving up both human and economic costs. What were once considered rare, extreme events are becoming more frequent and far more destructive, with costs measured not only in damaged buildings and broken infrastructure, but also in health risks, displacement, and longer, more inequitable recoveries.

Typhoon Sinlaku illustrates this trend with brutal clarity. Fueled by warm waters from the Pacific Ocean, the storm intensified rapidly before slamming into Saipan and Tinian with catastrophic force, driven by climate‑fueled amplification. Torrential rain triggered coastal erosion, smothering nearshore coral reef ecosystems. Ports are closed, flights are canceled, roads are submerged, and water systems are down.

The compounded harm is especially severe because Saipan is structurally vulnerable. As a U.S. territory owned by but not part of the United States, the Northern Mariana Islands lack voting representation in Congress, have no seat in international bodies or decision-making bodies, and often struggle to secure timely and sufficient federal disaster assistance. In what can be deemed a form of climate colonialism, U.S. territories such as the Northern Mariana Islands have to abide by federal programs and rules that they have little agency to influence and suffer disproportionately from the consequences of the U.S. government’s climate inaction.

Climate disasters hit hardest where resources are scarce and political power is limited. That description applies as much to Saipan as it does to low‑income communities along the East Coast or to flood‑prone neighborhoods in Louisiana. From Hurricane Katrina to Hurricane Maria, the same inequities surface again and again. Wealthier communities rebuild faster. Marginalized ones fall further behind.

In Saipan, those disparities are magnified by isolation. The typhoons are partially responsible for a 12.2 percent reduction in the Northern Mariana Islands’ population from 2010 to 2020 as citizens chose to relocate rather than rebuild. For many residents, this latest storm is not a just new disaster, but the continuation of a long and exhausting recovery cycle. Each storm undermines recovery from the previous one. Families already grappling with housing shortages and the slow pace of recovery from previous typhoons are displaced yet again. Workers in tourism and service industries—the backbone of a local economy already in the grips of an economic turndown fueled by COVID-19, tariffs, immigration policy, and President Donald Trump’s war of choice in Iran—lost what little stability they had regained.

The tragedy is not just the scale of the destruction, but its predictability. Scientists have long warned that climate change would intensify tropical cyclones, particularly for isolated island communities. Yet investment in resilient infrastructure, modernized building standards, and equitable disaster preparedness has not kept pace with the risk—especially for places such as the Northern Mariana Islands that sit at the margins of national attention.

That failure is not just costly, it is dangerous. Preparedness and hazard mitigation are central to reducing future storm threats and communities cannot rebuild by simply replicating what was lost. CAP’s report underscores that every $1 invested in disaster resilience saves $13 in cleanup, economic losses, and recovery. In this climate-changed world, rebuilding stronger and supporting the communities most at risk is not optional; it’s the only path toward keeping residents safer and lowering future costs in communities where such help is needed the most.

Conclusion

Typhoon Sinlaku should end any remaining pretense that climate change is distant or abstract. It is reshaping American lives right now, often in communities with the least political power and the fewest resources to use for recovery. Saipan has now been hit hard three times in barely a decade. The question is no longer whether the storms will return. It is whether the United States will finally act as though these communities matter before the next one arrives.

The authors would like to thank Cody Hankerson, Cindy Murphy-Tofig, and Mike Williams from the Center for American Progress and Adi Martínez-Román from Right to Democracy for their contributions to this article.