Introduction and summary
Since the January 2025 start of the 119th Congress and President Donald Trump’s second term, fossil fuel-induced climate disasters have hit nearly every state in the country.1 From the devastating fires in Los Angeles, to the flash floods in Texas, to extreme heat events across the United States, it is no surprise that 74 percent of Americans report having experienced an extreme weather event in the past year, making it more critical than ever to address the impacts of climate change.2 Since 1980, the United States has experienced 417 weather and climate disasters for which overall damages reached at least $1 billion, for total costs of more than $3.1 trillion.3 Yet 119 members of the 119th Congress continue to deny the scientific consensus of human-caused climate change. These elected officials have also received a total of $51,449,854 in lifetime contributions from the fossil fuel industry.4 This same Congress passed the Big Beautiful Bill (BBB), which dismantled the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act’s (IRA) critical climate investments in clean energy and pollution reduction and gives $18 billion in new and expanded tax breaks to the oil industry.5
However, climate denial is not limited to elected representatives in Congress. The two highest offices in the U.S. government are held by climate deniers: President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance.6 At the U.N. General Assembly this past September, President Trump called climate change the “greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world.”7 Under their leadership, the Trump administration has appointed and the Senate has confirmed climate deniers and skeptics to the presidential Cabinet—easing the path toward establishing policies to dismantle climate science.8 Leaders of the agencies most directly responsible for environmental and climate-related policies at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI), and U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) have also used deceptive language and spread misinformation.9 New Center for American Progress analysis finds that in the current 119th Congress, climate deniers hold 69 percent of leadership positions in Congress, the executive branch, and the Cabinet.
President Trump and his administration have made no secret of their friendliness with the fossil fuel industry.10 The combustion of fossil fuels is changing the climate, as the fossil fuel industry has long known and sought to cover up.11 During the 2023-24 election cycle, the industry spent nearly $250 million lobbying Congress, with 88 percent of funds going to Republicans and 12 percent to Democrats, and donated upwards of $75 million to support Trump’s presidential campaign, the Republican National Committee, and affiliated committees.12
Since the election, the Trump administration has responded in kind by appealing to corporate insiders and enacting policies that are making it easier for polluters to evade health and safety regulations.13 Meanwhile, the fossil fuel industry continues to profit off Americans, who are left to bear the brunt of the negative economic, health, and safety impacts caused by their products.14
Defining a climate denier
This analysis considers a person a climate denier if they have:
- Stated that they believe that climate change is not real or is a hoax
- Stated that the climate has always been changing as a result of natural factors and that today’s warming is merely a continuation of natural cycles
- Claimed that the science around climate change is not settled, including attempting to dismiss the science around carbon dioxide, or that they cannot speak to the issue because they are not scientists
- Claimed that while humans are contributing to a changing climate, they are not the main contributors
- Stated that increasingly frequent and intense extreme weather events, such as wildfires and hurricanes, are not related to climate change
- Claimed that climate change impacts are beneficial to humans or positive for planetary health
If a member previously made statements that qualified as climate denial in past CAP analyses but has since consistently acknowledged the validity of climate science, this analysis no longer classifies them as a climate denier.
The science is clear: CO2 is the primary driver of climate change
Climate deniers often claim that the science around climate change is not settled, despite overwhelming scientific evidence proving the opposite.15 This includes cherry-picking data that are unrepresentative of the overall scientific findings, such as arguing that increased carbon dioxide, the primary greenhouse gas responsible for climate change, is actually beneficial to humans and the planet or attempting to discredit scientists who have demonstrated the impacts of carbon dioxide.16 Proponents of this line of reasoning attempt to dismiss the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere as insignificant. Rep. Doug LaMalfa (R-CA) and EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, among others, have recently used this tactic.17
Trusted scientific institutions and rigorous peer review processes have repeatedly proved these claims false.18 Although CO2 and other greenhouse gases do make up a small overall percentage of the Earth’s atmosphere, the current concentration of CO2 at 430 parts per million represents a 45 percent increase since the start of the Industrial Age in the late 1700s.19 This increase, coupled with the outsize impact CO2 has in trapping radiant heat, is a proven driver of climate change.20
Climate deniers in the 119th Congress
There are currently 119 members of the 119th Congress—24 senators and 95 representatives—who publicly deny the scientific consensus of human-caused climate change.21 The overall number of climate deniers has declined slightly since the 118th Congress, which had 123 deniers,22 as 11 lost or did not run for reelection in 2024, two have been appointed to Cabinet positions, and JD Vance was elected vice president of the United States.23 24 Of the 75 new members of Congress, 13 are climate deniers.25
Climate deniers in the 119th Congress by the numbers
119
Total number of climate deniers
24
Number of climate deniers in the Senate
95
Number of climate deniers in the House of Representatives
Even as the total number of members of Congress who overtly deny climate science has declined slightly, CAP analysis finds that climate deniers have occupied at least half of leadership positions during the second half of the first Trump administration (116th Congress) and the first half of the current Trump administration (119th Congress). This represents a sharp contrast to the Biden administration (117th and 118th Congresses), in both the appointment and the election of climate deniers to leadership positions. Furthermore, this analysis finds that there are more climate deniers in leadership positions now, during Trump’s second administration, at 69 percent, than there were in the 116th Congress, at 50 percent.
The average makeup of climate deniers in federal leadership positions was calculated by giving a 25 percent weight to four categories of appointed and elected federal officials during the 119th, 118th, 117th, and 116th Congresses. The categories are: 1) executive office, including the president and vice president; 2) majority congressional leadership, including the Senate majority leader, speaker of the House, and House majority leader; 3) environmental cabinet members, including the heads of the DOI, EPA, and DOE; and 4) majority members of Congress per congressional session.
Leaders in Congress are responsible for executing their party’s policy priorities and ensuring its members are aligned. In July 2025, the BBB was signed into law, rolling back federal incentives and grants in the 2022 IRA that were aimed at reducing emissions and building climate resilience.26 Instead of creating good-paying jobs, investing in renewable energy, and cutting pollution, the BBB raises the costs of energy, rolls back crucial environmental protections, and risks the reliability of U.S. energy to give tax breaks to billionaires and more than $80 billion in subsidies to the fossil fuel industry over the next decade.27 The bill rolls back federal investments to protect clean air and water and reduce harmful emissions, such as pollution monitoring and emissions-free school buses, while increasing fossil fuel production. Increases in local air pollution are expected to cause 430 avoidable deaths per year by 2030 and 930 by 2035.28 The BBB also cancels clean energy tax incentives that spurred the growth of the clean energy sector, resulting in less available energy and passing the costs onto consumers.29 A recent Rhodium Group analysis projects that the Trump administration’s actions to roll back climate and public health regulations will increase overall greenhouse gas emissions by as much as 26 percent by 2040 compared with what the level of emissions would be if Biden-era regulations were kept in place.30
A government led by climate denial
The real-life impacts of climate change are accumulating quickly, with scientific evidence showing that the planet continues to warm due to human activities, such as burning fossil fuels, that release harmful greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.31 Climate change is causing more frequent and intense extreme weather events around the globe, from increasingly longer wildfire seasons to more destructive hurricanes.32 Since 2011, 99 percent of U.S. congressional districts have had at least one federally declared major disaster due to extreme weather.33 Despite this, the Trump administration has created a government built on denying climate science.34
Besides the 119 climate deniers in Congress, the two highest offices in the U.S. government are held by climate deniers. President Trump has consistently denied the existence of human-caused climate change, calling it a hoax and a scam and claiming that it is part of a natural cycle.35 Vice President JD Vance has similarly claimed that he does not know to what extent human actions have influenced climate change.36 Therefore, it is unsurprising that the Trump administration is defunding federal climate science efforts and research, stopping the tracking of extreme weather events and billion-dollar disasters, dismantling the weather service, erasing climate data, and attacking critical scientific efforts.37
The Trump administration has made no secret of attacking efforts to transition the United States to a clean energy economy. According to an analysis from the Rhodium Group, Trump’s executive orders directing the federal government to increase fossil fuel production and creating roadblocks to clean energy such as wind and solar, coupled with the passage of the BBB, will increase climate change-causing emissions in 2040 by 15 percent to 26 percent, compared with emission levels if Biden-era regulations were kept in place.38 More than 80,000 clean energy jobs have already been lost or stalled since November 2024,39 while electricity and gas prices have increased nearly 10 percent on average in 2025 compared with 2024, despite Trump’s campaign promise to lower utility costs.40
Further, the Trump administration has nominated and the Senate has confirmed climate deniers and skeptics to head the departments most directly involved with creating federal climate and environmental policy.41 For example, former Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer (R-OR), now the secretary of labor, and former Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), now the secretary of state, were both included in CAP’s climate denier report of the 118th Congress42 (though not in the current analysis). A recent report from Public Citizen analyzed the backgrounds of 111 appointees and nominees and found that Trump has installed fossil fuel insiders and renewable energy opponents across nine agencies that handle energy and environmental policy.43 Unsurprisingly, 72 percent of these appointees are housed in the DOI, DOE, and EPA.44
Here is a closer look at the EPA, DOE, and DOI.
Environmental Protection Agency
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, a former congressman representing New York, has reversed his stance on climate change since taking over the agency.45 Since his appointment, he has claimed that carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas that contributes to climate change, is beneficial to the planet—a form of climate denial.46 He said that President Trump’s comments at the U.N. General Assembly that climate change is a hoax or con were “absolutely right.”47 Zeldin received more than $410,000 from the oil and gas industry during his election campaigns for Congress and governor of New York.48
Under Zeldin, in July 2025, the EPA released a proposal to rescind the endangerment finding, the bedrock scientific basis for addressing climate change.49 The 2009 rule has been the foundation for the EPA to enforce pollution protections via the Clean Air Act.50 Harmful greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel production, power plants, and vehicles threaten public health, especially in vulnerable communities.51 Furthermore, the proposal rescinds cleaner vehicle emission standards that would have yielded an estimated $13 billion per year in health benefits. Rescinding the standards will raise gas prices and increase drivers’ costs.52 Repealing the endangerment finding by claiming climate change and the pollution that causes it pose no threat to public health or the environment is a giveaway to corporate polluters and will harm Americans.
Additionally, recent reporting has revealed that the EPA has deleted references to human-caused climate change from many of its websites.53 For example, in October 2025, a webpage titled “Causes of Climate Change” included a statement from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that said, “It is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean, and land.”54 That entire section has now been deleted and only refers to climate change caused by natural processes.55
Department of Energy
The DOE, the lead agency tasked with overseeing U.S. energy policy, is led by Secretary Chris Wright, a climate skeptic and former oil and gas company executive. 56 In a 2023 video, Wright said, “There is no climate crisis, and we’re not in the midst of an energy transition either.”57 He has since provided statements that further muddle his stance, saying that climate change is a “global physical phenomenon that is a side effect of building the modern world,” and has spread misinformation on wind and solar energy.58
The EPA’s proposal to rescind the 2009 endangerment finding was based on a report concurrently released by the DOE.59 The report was written by five established climate deniers and cherry-picks long-debunked arguments to attempt to discredit the scientific consensus that climate change is human-caused, is a result of increased CO2 emissions in the atmosphere, and is leading to increased frequency and intensity of extreme weather events across the globe.60 Many across the scientific community called for the report to be discredited, and a group of authors of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report have refuted the misinformation presented in the DOE report.61 The Environmental Defense Fund and Union of Concerned Scientists filed a lawsuit against the DOE and EPA alleging that the agencies violated the Federal Advisory Committee Act by creating a secret working group without accountability measures to write the report with the goal of rolling back the endangerment finding.62 In September 2025, the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts granted partial summary judgment on behalf of the plaintiffs. This case is ongoing. 63
Finally, the DOE’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy recently added “climate change,” “green,” and “decarbonization” to its list of words to avoid.64
Department of the Interior
The DOI manages U.S. public lands and is responsible for regulating energy development, including oil and gas activities, on those lands. Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum, a former governor of North Dakota with strong ties to the oil and gas industry, has claimed that coal is a clean source of energy and attempted to discredit the scientific consensus of climate change, questioning how climate scientists, “could take a spreadsheet and extrapolate [climate] data for 90 years, 80 years, now 75 years and say ‘this is absolutely what’s going to happen.’”65 When asked to respond to President Trump’s comments at the United Nations that climate change is “the greatest con job ever perpetuated on the world,” Secretary Burgum said, “President Trump does what he’s always done – he speaks openly and speaks truthfully, which is why the world loves him.”66
On day one, the second Trump administration declared that the United States is in an “energy emergency” but proceeded to ban the most affordable, reliable, and clean types of domestic energy available: wind and solar.67 Furthermore, the Trump administration’s executive and secretarial orders incentivize oil and gas development, sell public lands to corporate interests, open up public lands to drilling and mining, and prop up a dying coal industry.68 In line with this guidance, the DOI has enacted policies to effectively ban new wind and solar projects, including some that have already been approved.69 By disrupting the clean energy transition, the administration is tipping the scales in favor of corporate polluters while Americans are left to bear the environmental burdens and financial costs.
The fossil fuel industry has contributed its way into federal policymaking
The fossil fuel industry profits from its products that exacerbate the climate crisis while passing on the costs of worsening air pollution and other impacts to the public.70 The industry knew of its role in causing climate change, and it hid the true impacts for decades.71 The oil and gas industry has raked in an average of $1 trillion annually over the past 50 years, and the five largest oil and gas companies made more than $100 billion in profit in 2024 alone.72 As long as the industry can remain profitable, there is no incentive to move away from business as usual. The fossil fuel industry contributed $96 million in direct donations to support Trump’s second presidential campaign and spent $250 million on lobbying, advertising, and donations to members of Congress in both parties ahead of the 2024 election.73 The 119 climate deniers in Congress have received a total of $51,449,854 in lifetime contributions from the fossil fuel industry.
Elected officials have the responsibility to act in the best interest of their constituents, not of the oil and gas industry. More Americans than ever believe that climate change or global warming is real and that its effects are already happening.74 But members of Congress—climate deniers and non-climate deniers alike—are monetarily incentivized by the fossil fuel industry to create policies that benefit oil and gas CEOs and ensure future campaign contributions.
President Trump and his administration were putting the fossil fuel industry and its billionaire donors ahead of the American people before he was even elected to a second term.75 In April 2024, then-candidate Trump held a private dinner at Mar-a-Lago where he asked oil and gas industry executives for $1 billion in campaign contributions, suggesting that if he was elected, they could expect his administration to enact industry wishlist policies such as tax breaks and the repeal of EPA tailpipe emission standards—both of which have now been enacted.76 The dinner was organized by oil and gas billionaire Harold Hamm and now-Secretary of the Interior Burgum.77
Besides tax giveaways and rollbacks on regulations, the fossil fuel industry has taken advantage of its favorable relationship with the administration, reaping the rewards of its investments in the 2024 election cycle.78 Some examples include:
- The CEOs of ExxonMobil, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, and Hess reportedly lobbied the Trump administration for immunity from climate lawsuits, capitalizing on Trump’s willingness to show favor to fossil fuel industry insiders.79 The Department of Justice is backing the oil and gas industry by suing Hawaii, Michigan, New York, and Vermont—the states that have brought cases against polluters.80
- An executive order instructs the Department of Justice to target state climate laws and lawsuits that hold fossil fuel companies accountable for climate damage.81
- The American Petroleum Institute (API), the leading oil and gas industry trade group, submitted a policy “wish list” to the Trump administration earlier this year82 that includes actions aimed at removing roadblocks to oil and gas production and selling out America’s public lands to the highest bidder.83 Since January 2025, the Trump administration has taken steps to deliver at least 20 of API’s top priorities.84
- The Trump administration continues to provide emissions exemptions for more than 100 facilities across the country that release harmful air pollutants into the atmosphere, coal-burning power plants, and chemical plants.85
- The EPA recently proposed ending the Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program, which requires coal-burning power plants and other industrial facilities to report their greenhouse gas emissions. This would effectively end the United States’ ability to reduce emissions from the sector.86
Conclusion
The effects of the fossil fuel industry’s influence and the climate denial it induces have infiltrated all levels of the federal government, from Congress to federal agencies to the highest elected offices. In fact, during the 116th and 119th Congresses, both during Trump administrations, more than half of these leadership positions were occupied by climate deniers—a composition that has increased over time. The Trump administration has created a government built on denying climate change, rejecting science, and putting special interests over the American people. At the directive of the president and vice president, the departments that directly oversee environmental and climate policy are implementing policies that align with these priorities.
Corporate polluters and Trump’s billionaire allies are getting richer as they perpetuate the climate crisis, while Americans are left to bear the impacts. Government officials continue to use climate denial and misinformation as tactics to thwart effective climate policy. Elected officials must be held accountable for their role in exacerbating the climate crisis and endangering Americans’ lives.
Methodology
Download the dataset for this analysis here.
- CAP reviewed quotes on climate change and its connection to human activity from every elected official in the 119th U.S. Congress—Democrats, independents, and Republicans—and applied the definition of “climate denier” to determine whether that official denied climate science.
- The analysis uses OpenSecrets data to report the total lifetime political contributions to all deniers from oil, gas, and coal-affiliated industries. The numbers only include money from the oil and gas and coal mining industries, under the “energy/natural resources sector” in the OpenSecrets data. The numbers included in this analysis are based on Federal Election Commission data that OpenSecrets released on February 6, 2025.
- The list of elected officials in the 119th Congress that this analysis used was finalized on June 6, 2025. Any changes to the U.S. Congress after this date are not reflected in the overall data.
Acknowledgments
The author would like to thank Jenny Rowland-Shea, Lucero Marquez, Courtney Federico, Jessica Ordóñez-Lancet, Cody Hankerson, Gianna Sala, Mariel Lutz, Bill Rapp, Will Beaudouin, Ming Gault, Frances Colon, Mike Williams, and the Digital Communications team at the Center for American Progress for their contributions and review.