When Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear on Saturday vetoed a bill seeking to overturn his Executive Order banning conversion therapy—a practice that attempts to alter a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity—the act was effectively futile. By Thursday evening, Kentucky Republicans overwhelmingly voted to overrule the governor’s veto, legalizing the practice and adding to the mounting score of attacks against LGBTQ+ people— especially youth—that has intensified over the past few years. More than 500 anti-LGBTQ+ bills have been introduced in state legislatures for the 2025 legislative session, according to the ACLU’s legislative tracker. “What we're seeing now is the result of a re-energized coalition of groups—all of which are conservative—particularly enhanced at this moment by threads of Christian nationalism,” says Michael Bronski, a Harvard professor who specializes in gender studies. As legislative sessions across several states come to a close, experts do not expect a domino effect of state legislation seeking to overturn conversion therapy bans in the 23 states that have them. “States are more likely to go about the question in a slightly different way,” says Cathryn Oakley, senior director of legal policy at the Human Rights Campaign. Oakley expects to see states “conflating the critical distinction between the effort to ban conversion therapy—which prohibits fraudulent, abusive practices that fly in the face of medical recommendations—and the effort to prevent transgender adolescents from receiving best-practice, medically-supported, evidence-based transition-related care.” The Supreme Court this year will deliver a decision on U.S. v. Skrmetti, which challenges Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming-care for youth and could also restrict care for adults. Conversion therapy has been discredited by medical organizations such as the American Psychological Association and the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, who have called the practice both ineffective at changing a person’s identity, and harmful. Youth who were exposed to conversion therapy are more than twice as likely to report attempting suicide, according a peer-reviewed study by the Trevor Project, published in the American Journal of Public Health. Of the LGBTQ+ youth who attempted suicide in 2023, nearly 30% of them were subjected to conversion therapy, according to the Trevor Project’s 2024 national survey on the mental health of LGBTQ+ youth aged 13 to 24. Conversion therapy is also linked to greater symptoms of depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, according to a 2024 study by Stanford Medicine researchers. There is no nationwide ban on conversion therapy. But even though nearly half of the U.S. has laws banning the practice, it is still happening across the U.S., with registered therapists in every state except Hawaii and Vermont, as of 2023. Some conversion therapists have been able to skirt bans by advertising their services as “reparative therapy,” or promising to help patients deal with “unwanted same-sex attraction.” Experts say the ideology behind conversion therapy is also part of the rhetoric behind anti-trans legislation. “You can only ban access to health care that doctors and parents want for their transgender kids if you believe that their gender identity can be changed,” says Casey Pick, director of law and policy at the Trevor Project, a suicide prevention organization for LGBTQ+ youth. “The anti-trans belief structure of conversion therapy has been the unspoken participant in all of this anti-trans legislation.” Earlier this March, the Supreme Court announced it will hear Chiles v. Salazar, a case challenging Colorado’s conversion therapy ban. The Alliance Defending Freedom, which has been designated as an anti-LGBTQ hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, is representing plaintiff Kathy Chiles, a licensed counselor who argues that the ban censors her free speech. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit ruled in favor of the state, upholding the ban due to the harms of conversion therapy and alleging the law advises over therapists’ conduct. But the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled differently. In 2020, the court said that the free speech rights of conversion therapists were being infringed upon by a ban, enjoining bans on conversion therapy in three states—Alabama, Georgia, and Florida. The Alliance Defending Freedom did not respond to TIME’s request for an interview. Some experts optimistically view the upcoming Supreme Court case, in which a ruling is expected in June 2026, as a chance for the nation’s top judicial body to stand against conversion therapy bans, especially given the circuit split. “There's some disagreement within the many courts that have upheld the bans as to what the legal rationale is. So it may well be that the court can take a look at this and find that prohibiting these dangerous practices is entirely consistent with hundreds of years of tradition and practice in this country of regulating medical conduct,” says Pick. And she maintains that conversion therapy bans have been largely bipartisan, passing in states with Republican governors. The Trump Administration, however, has acted swiftly against the transgender community, passing Executive Orders limiting their ability to change gender markers and access gender-affirming-care. Democrats last re-introduced a federal conversion therapy ban in 2023, before Republicans took control over both chambers of Congress, though the bill did not move forward. The goal of both the Administration, and Republicans, Bronski says, is clear. “The attack on transgender people, which is devastating, is actually the beginning of the attack on other groups,” he says. The “larger project,” particularly with acts like conversion therapy that seek to make someone cisgender or straight, is the “simple eradication of queer visibility.” If you or someone you know may be experiencing a mental-health crisis or contemplating suicide, call or text 988. In emergencies, call 911, or seek care from a local hospital or mental health provider.

The U.S. intelligence community published its 2025 annual threat assessment on March 25. Missing from the document was any mention of climate change—marking the first time in over a decade that the topic has not appeared on the list. "What I focused this annual threat assessment on, and the [Intelligence Committee] focused this threat assessment on, are the most extreme and critical direct threats to our national security," Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said in response to questioning on the removal during a Senate Intelligence Committee. Gabbard said she “didn’t recall” instructing the intelligence community to avoid mentioning climate change in the report. But the change comes amid the Trump Administration’s continued push for a deprioritization of climate change in the federal agenda. The U.S. government has considered climate change a global security threat for at least three decades. Academic reports at the Naval War College included environmental stressors and climate change in the 1980s, says Mark Nevitt, associate professor of law at Emory University. On the federal level, climate change was first acknowledged as a national security threat by President George W. Bush in August 1991, and the U.S. national security community first listed the issue as a threat in 2008. The issue has typically been included on the annual threat assessment list because of its destabilizing impact—both domestically and abroad. “The annual threat assessment is projecting forward about where the areas of concern and the areas of competition [are], and where the U.S. national security sector should be focusing its attention,” says Nevitt. “Because climate change is just destabilizing different parts of the world, through extreme weather, through droughts, through sea level rise…the intelligence community wants to be ready for future conflicts and future areas of competition.” Climate change is often referred to as a “threat multiplier” by the intelligence community, because it aggravates already existing problems, while also creating new ones. “It takes things that we were already worried about, like extremism or terrorism, and exacerbates the scale or nature of those threats,” says Scott Moore, practice professor of political science, with a focus on climate and security, at the University of Pennsylvania. “If you have these intensified climate change impacts, they place stress on things like food systems, and worsen already existing tensions within countries.” Climate migration, for example, is on the rise around the world—more than half of new internal displacements within countries registered in 2023 were caused by weather related disasters, according to the Migration Data Portal. “Mass migration leads to a lot of political and social tensions as well as border issues,” says Karen Seto, professor of geography and urbanization science at the Yale School of the Environment. “That … could affect national security, because it could destabilize an entire region.” One study from the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that extreme weather is contributing to migration into the United States through the southern border—with more migrants from agricultural regions in Mexico settling in the United States following extreme drought. Advertisement Such displacement can have major impacts on people's lives and livelihoods, experts say—especially in already fragile regions. “If you have, for example, a really extreme and intensified drought in a country in which extremist ideologies are percolating, these climate change impacts may make it more likely that people are going to stop farming, or might migrate to cities where they may face difficult employment prospects, be socially dislocated and may be more vulnerable to extremism or engaging in some type of violence,” says Moore. On a domestic level, considering climate change helps the U.S. military ensure that infrastructure is built to withstand extreme weather events—and respond to national disasters both domestically and abroad. “You need the National Guard, the Coast Guard, the U.S. military, to basically help out their community when there's an extreme weather event,” says Nevitt. As extreme weather events intensify with climate change this could strain military resources and put more lives at risk if the military does not prepare to address the threat. Advertisement Infrastructure within the U.S., like energy and internet grids, also need to be fortified. If regions were to lose power in the case of an extreme weather event, the networks could be vulnerable to attack. “Our energy grid is highly at risk, and we've seen wildfires happening across the country, and so these could again be threat multipliers," says Seto. “I think the national security risk is that we are not ready to respond to any threats from foreign agents that may take advantage of the weaknesses that we might have.” Showing that the climate crisis is a priority is also necessary to maintain the United States’s diplomatic strength—especially in regions that see climate change as a top concern. “Other countries, in particular countries that are very significant for the U.S. defense posture, like the Pacific Island countries, really care about climate change a lot. They want to hear what the United States is willing to do to help them deal with climate change,” says Moore. “And so when you have the instructions to essentially ignore climate change, or in an extreme version almost censor mention of climate change, that's going to have a harmful effect on diplomatic engagement with some pretty important countries.” Advertisement And experts say that removing climate change from the list—and deprioritizing the issue writ large—is only going to leave the U.S. more vulnerable. “This is going to make the administration and national security sector less nimble, because they might not have the people, the plans, the policy, [and] capacity in place when disaster inevitably strikes,” warns Nevitt. “You can't just wish climate change away.”

Each year TIME honors individuals whose actions have had an indelible impact on global efforts to address one of the most pressing crises facing our planet: climate change. This year marks TIME’s third annual Earth Awards, and the stakes couldn’t be higher. In 2024, the planet breached 1.5°C of warming above pre-industrial temperatures, an ominous milestone—and a reminder of the urgency with which the world must tackle this challenge. And although climate action faces headwinds from the rising tide of populist politics around the world, this year’s group of honorees remain steadfast in championing sustainability and shaping a greener future. There is the Environmental justice leader Catherine Coleman Flowers, who has a legacy of advocating for marginalized communities, particularly Black and rural families affected by untreated sewage. She has gone on to work with Democrats and Republicans alike in an effort to bring about lasting change. Alongside, we honor Jay Inslee, the Governor of Washington from 2013 to 2025, and a leader in local climate action. As co-founder of the U.S. Climate Alliance he has brought together two dozen states to drive progress towards a clean economy. There is former New York Mayor and U.N. Special Envoy Michael Bloomberg, who is steadfastly dedicated to supporting innovative solutions. In January, when President Donald Trump announced the U.S. would withdraw from the Paris Agreement, Bloomberg Philanthropies stepped up to coordinate an effort to continue funding the nation’s climate goals. In Ghana, chef Selassie Atadika, the founder of Midunu—an experiential restaurant that highlights the region’s culinary heritage—and Midunu Chocolates, uses her food to advocate for sustainable agriculture and showcase the power of the African kitchen. In 2024 she was announced as Yale's inaugural Global Table Fellow in an effort to highlight the connection between sustainability, health, and culture. Back in the U.S., Former Tennessee Republican Senator Bill Frist is calling for climate change to be recognized as a public health crisis. He serves as the global chair of The Nature Conservancy which last year launched the Senator Bill and Tracy Frist Initiative for Planetary Health. And actor Rainn Wilson is on a mission to better communicate the urgency of the climate crisis. With that goal in mind, in 2022 he co-founded Climate Basecamp, an organization that brings scientists and trendsetters together to make talking about the reality of climate change more accessible.

The 54-mile stretch of U.S. Route 80 connecting Montgomery to Selma appears unremarkable at first—just another highway cutting through Alabama’s Black Belt, where pine forests occasionally give way to scattered homes and rural crossroads. But this highway is paved with history. Here, civil rights icons Martin Luther King Jr. and John Lewis marched for voting rights in 1965. In Selma, where the highway transforms into broad city streets, state troopers violently assaulted peaceful demonstrators in the watershed moment known as “Bloody Sunday.” Today, a new champion has emerged from the hallowed ground of Lowndes County: Catherine Coleman Flowers. At 66, Flowers presents a gentle demeanor that belies her formidable influence as an advocate for the forgotten communities of the Black Belt and rural America more broadly. While she began to gain recognition a decade ago for exposing the sewage crisis in the region—where untreated waste even today regularly bubbles up into yards and homes—her mission transcends basic sanitation. Flowers has led the charge in connecting environmental justice and climate change with deep-rooted social inequities. In doing so, she has elevated local struggles into a national conversation about whose communities deserve protection and dignity. “What Catherine is trying to do is to open up a new conversation about what it means to look at these problems,” Bryan Stevenson, the acclaimed public-interest lawyer who runs the Equal Justice Initiative and who has worked with Flowers, told me. But her strength comes from more than just her message. Flowers has an eye for pragmatism. Her work crosses political and ideological boundaries that can hold back other advocates, and she is willing to work with anyone sincere about helping those struggling in her neck of rural America. It’s a skill fit for these polarized times. Flowers is a daughter of Lowndes County. Born in Birmingham, she moved with her family to Lowndes—her father’s hometown—during childhood. Flowers recalls civil rights leaders gathering in the house she grew up in, a stopping point in their activism. Flowers says this exposure “fed my hunger” in fighting for change. “People have asked me, ‘Why have you done this for so long?’” she says. “Because I’m from Lowndes County.” As an adult, Flowers followed a winding path to where she is today. In her words, she’s lived many lives. She attended university in Alabama, then Oklahoma, served a stint in the Air Force, and took on teaching jobs in Washington, D.C., before returning to Lowndes in 2000 on a mission to improve the community that raised her. Early on, she focused on economic development working as a consultant for Lowndes County. In her view, attracting companies to the area would bring investment that would in turn aid local residents. So, in 2002 she set up the Alabama Center for Rural Enterprise with that goal in mind. But she quickly ran into a problem: businesses didn’t want to set up shop in a place with infrastructure problems—namely, the lack of adequate sanitation throughout much of the region. The problem sounds simple, but it’s a thorny and persistent one. The majority of homes in the area lack a connection to the sewer system. Septic tanks can provide a solution, but in a county where the median income is $35,000, many simply can’t afford the price tag, which regularly exceeds $10,000. And stories abound of those who have paid but have been left with septic tanks that still fail. All you need to do to understand the problem is walk around a neighborhood. Sewage is in yards and common areas. It’s worse in heavy rain—increasingly a problem with climate change as warmer air holds more moisture. A 2017 survey of Lowndes found that 42% of residents had raw sewage on site. So, for more than two decades, Flowers has pushed for change. In 2004, she brought banking executives to town who helped facilitate new mobile homes and septic systems for some families most in need. In 2010, after working with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and then Senator Jeff Sessions, a conservative Republican from Alabama, she helped the county get funds to study the scale of the problem. She brought in public-health researchers to study ailments that affected residents, learning that exposure to raw sewage led to the spread of hookworm, a parasite that causes a wide range of ailments and was once thought to be eradicated in the U.S. More than a third of those tested in the county were found to be infected. And, separately, surveyors uncovered that a wastewater-treatment system recommended by local officials was failing residents at high rates. “For policymakers, if the data is not there, it doesn’t exist, even though it’s a problem,” she told me. Flowers’ work on sanitation issues that affect local water infrastructure is definitionally environmental. And it’s getting worse because of the changing climate. Higher rainfall and more flooding means more stress to sewage systems. In a testament to this intersection, in 2019 she changed the name of her organization to the Center for Rural Enterprise and Environmental Justice to highlight the link between the environmental and economic angles. But she has also mastered the art of meeting people where they are, speaking about climate in some contexts while leaning into the implications for livelihoods and health in others. Over the past several years, her efforts have found growing success. She brought reporters to Lowndes to draw attention to the problem, and in 2017 she invited a top U.N. official tasked with addressing extreme poverty. She soon began to fieldcalls from communities around the country facing similar problems. More than 2 million people in the U.S. lack access to clean and safe running water—and so she turned around and elevated those stories with policymakers and in the national media too. With increased public attention, she was able to get the Biden Administration on board. In 2022, federal officials announced a program to provide assistance for Americans without reliable waste-water management. The announcement came as part of a broader $11.7 billion commitment to addressing wastewater issues through loans and grants for water infrastructure, and Lowndes would serve as a pilot. “Lowndes County has never gotten credit for its role in fighting for democracy and voting rights,” she told me. “But hopefully we’ll also get the proper credit for fighting for equity and sanitation rights.” It’s fair to say that Flowers maintained a good relationship with the Biden Administration. One week when I visited Flowers in Alabama in 2022, she was showing around President Biden’s infrastructure czar and two Cabinet officials. Indeed, she held hands with Biden himself in 2023 as they walked from the Oval Office to the White House Rose Garden for him to sign an Executive Order promoting environmental justice. “You’re a great leader, Catherine, I really mean it,” Biden said. Nonetheless, Flowers is not an aggressive partisan. Early in her career, she worked with conservatives on economic development. And in her latest book published this year, Holy Ground, she praises Sessions, an adamant conservative and former Trump Attorney General, alongside Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders. She portrays GOP Senator Tommy Tuberville, who represents Alabama and aligns closely with Trump, as a potential ally. “What I try to do is find some commonality, and hopefully in the process we can develop a rapport and eventually some respect for each other,” she says. Nor is she a deep ideologue. While many in the environmental community take firm, unyielding positions, Flowers comes with an open mind. In 2023, I attended as she brought together environmental-justice leaders for a thoughtful discussion about carbon dioxide removal—a technology that many other environmental justice leaders rejected flat out as a cop-out that would allow companies to continue polluting. And, while many advocates went out of their way to dismiss Sultan Al Jaber, the oil executive charged with leading the 2023 U.N. climate conference in Dubai, Flowers took the time to meet him—and even posted about it on social media. “The more people that are into doing the work, the less I have to do,” she told me of her willingness to collaborate. “And the closer we get to where we need to be, which is to put us out of business.” It’s no secret that the environmental justice cause faces steep challenges in the coming months. The U.S. federal government has done a complete 180-degree turn, undoing Biden’s environmental-justice executive orders and leaving some afraid to speak out on those issues. The chilling effect shouldn’t be underestimated. And yet Flowers’s story offers a way forward. Drawing on her graduate studies in history, her work exposes the dark underbelly of America’s environmental injustices. In her writing and her public speaking, she doesn’t shy away from the grim realities of history, explaining how people of color have been harmed by discriminatory policy. But she also isn’t sharing that history to win partisan political points. “Throughout rural America people are living without working sanitation,” she told me after Trump took office. “And that is an issue that should remain a priority no matter who’s in the White House.”

There are two immutable forces that we ought to know President Donald Trump cannot stop. The first is the incoming tide of the ocean. The second is the growth of the clean-energy economy. He cannot hold back the rising tide because no steady stream of bluster, prevarication, or snake-oil salesmanship can have any effect on gravitational forces that rule the tides. Likewise, he cannot stop our creation of a clean-energy economy, because he cannot thwart the tremendously successful local efforts by leaders in states and towns who, by pushing for concrete, bold action on climate, are now growing green jobs like gangbusters. He may be able to slow climate progress down, but he cannot stop it entirely. Local leaders have the freedom to decide what their state prioritizes. We have the ability to pass our own laws, our own investments, our own air-quality standards. And we know we can achieve big things locally because we already met this challenge eight years ago. In the years since Trump pulled our nation out of the Paris Agreement in 2017, we in Washington State were advancing major climate policy—unrestrained by the federal government. This includes passing the country’s most aggressive cap-and-invest law, limiting carbon emissions by setting a clean-fuel standard and requiring a 100% clean electrical grid by 2045, and investing billions to help Washingtonians acquire everything from electric school buses to solar power. None of these achievements can be taken away by the stroke of a President’s pen. Emboldened by the power of local action, during Trump’s first term I co-founded the U.S. Climate Alliance—a group of 24 states, representing nearly 60% of the U.S. economy, that recognize their obligation to carry the ball with a climate denier in the White House, and the inarguable ability of states to act of their own accord. This approach maximizes the ideals of federalism: states acting in concert using their own mechanisms toward a common goal. And it has led to record clean-energy jobs, entrepreneurship, and robust economic growth. In Michigan, for example, Governor Gretchen Whitmer passed a 100% clean-electricity law in 2023 that will lower energy prices. In Maine, Governor Janet Mills’ incredible work over the past year financing heat pumps has resulted in the electrification of homes across her state. Thanks to the America Is All In coalition, cities and counties across the U.S. are undertaking similar efforts in their communities. This is not to say that Trump is not a threat to climate progress. His current attempt to cut funding for clean-energy deployment—from EV-charger installations to solar—is depriving us of our clean-energy future. But rather than waiting for the judicial system to right these wrongs, or cursing our TV screens, we must act ourselves. At this dark moment, we see peril in coping with the effects of climate change, but we also face much promise of building a new, better, higher-paying green economy. This promise, however, won’t happen without millions of Americans standing up for action. You have the power to help shape the destiny of every place you touch. You have the power to demand action from your representatives, to be on the streets, to make contributions to groups in the political trenches. The only thing that would be wrong is to do nothing.

To Republican Senator William Frist, who began his career not in politics but medicine, taking on the climate crisis was a natural next step after stepping down as Tennessee Senator in 2007. “It comes back to the same thing: improving the well-being of people by focusing on their health,” says Frist, who joined the Senate in 1995 before serving as Senate Majority Leader from 2003 to 2007. To this end, last year he partnered with the Nature Conservatory to establish the Senator Bill and Tracy Frist Initiative for Planetary and Human Health, which aims to bridge public health solutions and the climate crisis. Focusing on communicating the health impacts of climate change—which range from an increase in mental health crises to heightened risk of respiratory and cardiovascular disease—says Frist, is all about showing people that climate is not a partisan issue. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. TIME: You began your career as a physician before turning to politics. What inspired you to turn your attention to the climate crisis? Frist: I spent twenty years in medicine as a physician, and then as a heart and lung transplant surgeon, focusing on individuals and their health and their well being. And then for the next twelve years, I went to the policy arena in the United States Senate, where I did essentially the same thing, focusing on the health and well being of millions of people. In the last 15 years or so I have done the same thing in the climate arena, but now the audience is the planet. You have called for climate change to be recognized as a public health crisis. Why is it important to reframe the way we look at climate change? The human impact has been left out of the equation for too long. The best way to appeal to [people] is to start with how the changing climate will impact you and your children and generations to come. It's important now. It'll get increasingly important every day that goes by. I find that’s not disarming, but realistic, because that is why people are concerned. You have written about the mental health impacts of climate change, especially following extreme weather events. How do we address these effects, especially as extreme weather events are increasing in frequency? We have to look at mitigation in a way that we just haven’t in the past. The science is so clear now that hotter days affect mental health, whether it's diagnosable mental health, or it's the way we feel today. But until we bring together the mental health specialists who can talk to the policy makers, we're not going to see much change. What are some of the ways we can use policy to address the public health impacts of climate change? Individuals [need to] understand that by doing things locally, it can have an impact that affects policy at the state level and the global level. Having been a Senator, I've seen these successes and I recognize that it starts with the individual. Climate change knows no state borders, pollution knows no state borders, unstable weather patterns knows no state borders. It's a planetary issue but our policy structures are set up through local, regional, state, federal and global. [If] you pay attention and you learn and you communicate, and you elect, and you vote, you can affect that policy at the state level and the federal level, and then at the global level as well. And that's why I'm optimistic. By coming together, by framing both from a health perspective, starting with the individual, we can be successful here. We are speaking after the Trump Administration has made major rollbacks on climate initiatives. How do we convince policymakers on the state and federal level to prioritize climate-forward policies? I'm optimistic here as well, and it comes from experience addressing issues, like anti-smoking, which had a huge industry against any sort of progress, and HIV AIDS, which faced a lot of stigma. People say, “How can you be optimistic when you look at the last six weeks in executive order after executive order?” And there are basically two reasons. Number one is the people. If you talk to people today, I would say 70% say, “of course there is climate change, and there is climate change that is accelerating over my lifetime compared to it at any time.” The people are with us. Number two is the science. [We know] there are more frequent and higher intensity of extreme weather events now than at any time in recorded history. When you put those two together, ultimately, it's a matter of just bringing people to the table and communication. We have to make that connection. There's no question that we can address the changing climate and biodiversity laws, those two crises in a way that we've never been able to in the past. What are some of the ways people can work together on climate action while the country feels so polarized? I speak to individuals as I would a patient, and so I try to put myself in their situation. If I am talking to parents with children, I talk very directly about the impact that that [extreme] heat has on the ability of their child to learn in school, and that immediately establishes this relationship, because people want the best for their children. If I'm talking to people in communities where safety is an issue, I point out to them things that they don't normally jump to if they're talking about climate change: on those hotter days, there is a higher incidence of crime, there's a higher incidence of firearm injury. What I find is that by framing in terms of the impact [of climate change] on mental health or on physical health that people listen, they open up, and their next question is, ‘Why is that?’. What has it been like to work on climate action as a Republican these days? Why is it important for both parties to prioritize the environment? When I was in the Senate, the science wasn't as strong as it is today. But it hadn't really become the partisan issue that it became in the 2010s. People were working across the aisle on these big health issues that related to the environment. [When] I left in about 2006 … it became much more of a partisan issue. Once it became a partisan issue, it locked down the discussions we've had. It was a huge backward movement in many ways.

Samuel Beckett would have been as delighted as a toddler with a bubble blower at the dark absurdity of my situation. On Nov. 6, 2024, hundreds of people braved Los Angeles traffic and sat for the first preview performance of Beckett’s Waiting for Godot at the Geffen Playhouse. An eerie, discordant sound cue droned as I waited for the lights to bloom and thereby begin the 2½-hour odyssey of despair and postmodern hijinks. But as the lights came up, I had only one thought: “I wonder what the hell is left of my goddamn house?” Earlier that very day, the day after the 2024 election, that afternoon, my house caught on fire. As I was rehearsing in L.A., my wife Holiday was evacuating our pigs, dogs, and peahen into her truck as embers flew through the air, embedding themselves into nearby hedges and shingles and gutters. You see, there was a small fire about 10 miles away. But as we all now know, when you add the Santa Ana winds to a distant fire at 60 m.p.h., all hell breaks loose. Luckily, our handyman Scott was installing some doorknobs that morning. He quickly inflated the tires on our pig trailer, while Holiday used a giant bass net to capture Alma the peahen. Holiday later told me embers were whistling down like fiery shrapnel as the sky filled with smoke. As of curtain time, because we had not been allowed back onto the property, I had zero idea how much of our house was left. Two of our neighbors’ homes caught fire like Roman candles and evaporated. But thanks to the moxie of our fire department (and our cinder-block walls) we lost only a few rooms. Plus a couple dozen trees, a shed, parts of our roof, our fences, and most of our sprinkler system. What’s also strange—and poignant—is that for the past several years I had been working on climate communications with the organization Climate Basecamp, which I co-founded in 2022 to raise awareness about the crisis. And here I was, a victim of that self-same issue. You see, the weather in Southern California, like everywhere else, is changing dramatically. When I first moved to L.A. 25 years ago, I was struck by how much precipitation there was every winter. Weeks of pounding rain would fill the canyons and concrete rivers. But then that stopped. It was followed by an off-and-on stretch of one of the worst droughts in California history—in fact, the past 25 years were the driest the region has experienced in more than 1,200 years. This set the stage for what was to come. Some factors for this particular November fire? The previous winter had been a wet one and the underbrush grew like, well, wildfire. But there hadn’t been a drop of rain in months, and the Santa Ana winds were at twice their normal speed. Kindling was everywhere, just waiting for a spark. Last year was the warmest year in recorded history. And January 2025—when yet another devastating fire broke out in L.A.—was the warmest January ever recorded; 100-year out-of-the-box climate events are now happening every decade. All this adds up to some deadly extreme weather. And I’m far from the only one who has felt the wrath of climate change. Could the population and L.A. government have done more to prepare for and mitigate the fires? Of course. But there are larger forces at work. There’s so much we can do, we have to do. Besides reducing our carbon footprint, moving to EVs and cheaper renewable energy sources, and limiting the amount of meat we eat, we can get deeply acquainted with the science of the reality of our climate. This is not a partisan issue, it’s simply the truth about how oil and coal and deforestation have affected our planet. L.A. is the cultural capital of the world, and speaking science truth in the stories we artists produce would go a long way toward addressing the crisis. But back to our story. After the curtain closed and I could at last survey the damage, I found the charred land around my house, in a bit of cosmic irony, directly evoked the barren, post-apocalyptic landscape of the tragicomedy. That vision, I doubt Mr. Beckett would be delighted with.

Chef Selassie Atadika is the founder of Midunu—an experiential restaurant in Accra that highlights the region’s culinary heritage. She uses her food to advocate for sustainable agriculture and showcase the power of the African kitchen. This is her recipe: The fire is lit. The pot simmers, whispering stories passed down through generations. This is a vision, a remembering, a way forward. The African kitchen has always known the secret: food goes beyond sustenance; it is a system, a cycle, a story. If we listen closely, it will tell us how to heal the world. Prep Time: Generations. This recipe begins with the wisdom of those who came before us. Cook Time: Lifetimes. The simmering is slow but transformative, and each step reveals something new. Total Time: Ongoing. This dish evolves as we learn, grow, and adapt. There is no final version—only progress. Difficulty: Both Simple and Complex. The steps are intuitive, but they require patience, attention, and love. Servings: Servings: Infinite. Enough for a community, with plenty to share with future generations. Ingredients 1 cup of biodiversity A generous handful of circular economy thinking 3 heaping spoonfuls of communal dining A bouquet of plant-forward proteins 2 sprigs of Indigenous knowledge 1 teaspoon of preservation and seasonality A dash of regenerative agriculture A pinch of wild harvesting Nutrition Rich in resilience: Strengthens communities and ecosystems. High in connection: Builds bonds across generations, cultures, and landscapes. Source of hope and imagination: Encourages a reimagining of what food can be. Full of cultural fiber: Preserves traditions while adapting to the future. Contains sustainable energy: Powered by regenerative practices that nourish both land and people. 100% waste-free: Every part has value. Serving suggestions This dish is best shared in good company, served with gratitude, and paired with deep conversation. It is meant to be savored slowly, a reminder that the future of food is rooted in the past, and that every meal can be an act of healing—for our bodies, our communities, and the earth. Directions 1. Begin with Biodiversity. This is your foundation—a symphony of life, each drought-resistant grain slipping through fingers like fine desert sand, the richness of savanna soil after the rains, the lush abundance of forest harvests, and the salty breeze of coastal waters, all carrying the promise of nourishment and survival. Let these elements flourish as they weave together wild and cultivated, forgotten and found. The African kitchen has long embraced a rich variety of ancient grains, legumes, and greens, ensuring resilience in the face of uncertainty. 2. Fold in Circular Economy Thinking. Nothing must be cast aside. The wisdom of generations reminds us that every peel, every stem, every husk has a purpose waiting to be revealed. Oil pressed from golden groundnuts, broths thickened with yam skins—leftovers become tomorrow’s feast, every piece finding its place in the cycle of nourishment. 3. Add Communal Dining. Stir slowly. Let the pot thicken with conversation, the steam rising like laughter, bowls passed from hand to hand. In the tradition of breaking the kola nut, a gesture of unity and connection, in the touch of fingers to food, we are reminded—we are never meant to eat alone. 4. Infuse with Plant-Forward Proteins. Humble, powerful, life-giving. Millet, cowpeas, moringa, and other indigenous plant proteins nourish deeply, just as they have done for centuries. Bambara groundnuts and egusi seeds swell in the pot, their richness deepened by the slow heat. Ancient grains ground into flour, transformed into soft, warm sustenance, filling the air with the scent of hearth and home. They regenerate the soil as they feed us, proving that sustainability starts from the ground up. 5. Sprinkle in Indigenous Knowledge. Let it guide your hands, your heart. Ferment, preserve, braise slowly, remembering that the past is always present in the pot. The asanka and tapoli grind spices into fragrant pastes, while the ijabe whisks okra into silky perfection. Aged flavors develop in clay pots, the steady beat of pounding sticks echoing the wisdom of those who came before us. The smoke of slow-burning wood and the richness of sun-dried abundance—each technique preserving history in every bite. 6. Gently mix in Preservation and Seasonality. Generations before us left clues—smoking, drying, fermenting—to ensure food nourishes not just today but all the tomorrows to come. Follow the rhythm of the seasons. The sweetness of fruit caught at its peak, preserved at its peak. African locust beans, waiting patiently for the seasons to shift to be fermented into the fragrant umami bomb, dawadawa. Ancient methods of storage and fermentation allowed communities to thrive even in the leanest seasons, proving that patience and planning are essential ingredients. 7. Finish with Regenerative Agriculture and a touch of Wild Harvesting. Taste the wildness, honor the land, and offer it your gratitude. The most sustainable foods are often those that grow freely—leafy greens, nuts, fruits—requiring no additional strain on the land but offering abundant nourishment in return. The traditional form of agriculture known as proka, with its quiet resilience, helps restore the land, leaving the soil richer for seasons to come. The most sustainable foods ask for little, yet offer everything. Notes The fire is still lit. The pot still simmers. The future is being written at the table. And in the quiet between each bite, we remember: the past is not behind us—it is carried forward in our hands, in our kitchens, in the wisdom we reclaim. Sankofa—go back and get it.

Michael Bloomberg tends to avoid the press. The New York City mayor turned climate advocate is not a regular guest on cable news. But having helped close more than 300 coal-fired power plants in the U.S., cut New York City’s emissions by nearly 20%, and contributed more than $1 billion to climate action, he has a story to tell. In 1981, Bloomberg launched what would become a media empire by providing data that informs financial decision­-making. During his three terms as New York City mayor, from 2002 to 2013, he applied that same data-driven approach to advance pragmatic solutions on a wide range of issues, from crime to public health—even if, at times, that approach put him out of step with politics. Since leaving office, he has brought the same thinking—and that billion-plus dollars—to climate change, with unmatched results that have accelerated action in the U.S. and around the world—supporting everything from stopping air pollution in the Deep South to protecting ocean ecosystems. In the U.S., one of his most successful efforts was also one of his earliest. Beginning in 2011, he funded the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign, which called for the country to accelerate its move away from coal-fired power. His contributions, which totaled in the hundreds of millions of dollars over the following decade, helped pay lawyers and campaigners to advocate in city halls and courtrooms across the country for the closure of coal-fired power plants. Those efforts—combined with cheap natural gas and renewable energy—have helped push coal to just 15% of electricity produced in 2024, down from over 40% in 2011. “It really has been one of the most rewarding projects I’ve ever been involved in, and it would be hard to find a better return on investment,” he said in 2017. The campaign was so successful, he expanded it with Beyond Carbon, to advance the clean-­energy transition, and Beyond Petrochemicals, to prevent the construction of new U.S. petrochemical facilities. He’s also worked to empower local climate action—no matter the position of national governments. Through global initiatives like C40, a network of major cities committed to addressing climate change, Bloomberg has created platforms for mayors to share best practices and implement solutions tailored to urban environments. In his view, cities can serve as laboratories to test climate policies, which can later be scaled. “Cities have played a more important role in shaping the world than empires,” he wrote in a 2015 article in the magazine Foreign Affairs. Since November, as many philanthropists have pulled back their funding of climate initiatives in the face of political pushback, Bloomberg has doubled down. Through his foundation, Bloomberg Philanthropies, he funded America Is All In, an initiative that supports state and local governments in their efforts to cut emissions. And Bloomberg Philanthropies is leading an effort with other funders to cover the hole left in the U.N. climate body’s budget when President Donald Trump announced that the U.S. would leave the Paris Agreement and cease any financial commitments made under it. Last year, the U.S. contributed $10 million to the body. Ever mindful of the data, Bloomberg Philanthropies has also targeted several key areas of focus that the numbers show can make a big dent in the next stage of climate action: working with countries to help cut methane emissions and supporting cities to make their building stock less carbon intensive. While less present to the general public, Bloomberg is keen to spread his message about market-based, financially rooted climate progress to other corporate and public-­sector leaders. He serves as a special U.N. climate envoy, charged with engaging the private sector on the issue. He chaired the Task Force on Climate-­Related Financial Disclosures, working to harmonize how companies disclose their climate-­related financial risks. And he chairs the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero, which helps financial institutions advance the energy transition. Meanwhile, he drops well-timed op-eds in his namesake media outlet explaining the opportunities for acting on climate change. “Economic growth and fighting climate change go hand in hand,” he has said repeatedly. To his credit, he’s spending the time and money to make sure the rest of the world understands that too. Correction, March 27 The original version of this story misstated the status of Michael Bloomberg's role at the Task Force on Climate-­Related Financial Disclosure. He is the former chairman, not the current one.

A post from Elon Musk last month trumpeted a supposedly startling discovery by his team of government cost-cutters: The Federal Emergency Management Agency had provided $59 million to house undocumented immigrants in New York City. The money, he declared, was “meant for American disaster relief and instead is being spent on high end hotels for illegals!” But if Mr. Musk’s goal was to funnel more FEMA money to disaster aid, the fallout from his declaration had the opposite effect. A pair of Trump administration orders, issued soon after the Feb. 10 social media post, aimed to block any agency money from helping undocumented immigrants and “sanctuary” jurisdictions protecting them left FEMA staff without sufficient guidance about how to proceed, effectively freezing payments on billions of dollars in disaster grants, according to two people briefed on the process and an internal document viewed by The New York Times. While the freeze did not stop aid going directly to disaster survivors, it has disrupted payments to states, local governments and nonprofits, with ramifications being felt across the country. In Florida, a nonprofit that helps hurricane survivors find housing and other services noticed its promised FEMA payments stopped coming, raising fears that it will have to trim operations. In southeastern Michigan, communities hit by devastating floods two years ago are waiting for federal money to cover the cost of rebuilding. And in Helene-ravaged western North Carolina, tiny Warren Wilson College, a liberal arts school that specializes in environmental and climate science, has been hoping to hear in recent weeks about an application for aid to repair damaged roofs and clear debris from research fields, but has heard nothing. “There’s a deep sadness when walking through all that debris, knowing all that was lost,” said Rosemary Thurber, a 22-year-old student at the college whose studies have been disrupted. She said that she and her fellow students were “losing faith in our federal government.” The funding freeze illustrates the extraordinary power of Mr. Musk, the world’s wealthiest man, who has increasingly pointed his Department of Government Efficiency at exposing funding that benefits undocumented immigrants and whose demands regularly prompt responses from senior government officials. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT In this case, Mr. Musk’s 5:03 a.m. post on X, the social media platform he owns, was followed hours later by a memo from Cameron Hamilton, the acting head of FEMA, saying the agency had stopped payments under a variety of grant programs, and given DOGE “full system access to our financial management system.” Nine days later, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, whose agency includes FEMA, signed the first of two agency orders that took aim at migrant funding and effectively spread the freeze across almost all of the agency’s grants. After The New York Times submitted a list of detailed questions about the freeze on Monday, Ms. Noem on Tuesday signed a memo authorizing agency staff to exempt certain grants from the immigration-related orders, according to a person briefed on the change. It is not clear when or how quickly FEMA will go about releasing the money, and the Department of Homeland Security did not respond to The Times’s questions. A representative for the White House and DOGE did not respond to questions this week. The FEMA press office said in a separate statement last week that it attributed to an unnamed homeland security official: “FEMA is taking swift action to ensure the alignment of its grant programs with President Trump and Secretary Noem’s direction that U.S. taxpayer dollars are being used wisely and for mission-critical efforts.” The freeze has played out against the backdrop of widespread upheaval at the disaster relief agency, highlighted by Ms. Noem’s assertion during a Monday cabinet meeting that “We’re going to eliminate FEMA.” Ms. Noem’s office has directed staff to develop a plan to disband the agency, according to a person familiar with internal deliberations who was not authorized to discuss the matter in public. It is not clear what government agencies, if any, would take over FEMA’s role delivering aid to communities hit by disasters. Mr. Trump has mused about returning those duties to the states, or perhaps having the Defense Department carry more responsibility for responding to disasters. In the short term, however, many communities that see FEMA grants as a lifeline are still waiting. “There are projects beyond our ability to address on our own,” Damián J. Fernández, the president of Warren Wilson College, said earlier this month on a campus still covered in debris from the September storm, his voice breaking. “We have followed the rules. But the system is not working.” One storm leads to another FEMA’s existential crisis arguably began last fall, when Hurricane Helene killed more than 100 people in North Carolina and damaged more than 73,000 homes. The destruction was shocking, especially in a region not accustomed to hurricanes, and quickly became part of the presidential campaign. Within a week of the hurricane reaching North Carolina, FEMA had provided more than $45 million in disaster relief and sent more than 1,500 personnel, according to the agency. But as survivors struggled to regain access to basic services, many concluded that FEMA was failing to do enough. That message was amplified by Mr. Trump and Mr. Musk, who began criticizing FEMA for spending its money to house illegal immigrants rather than help hurricane survivors. “Kamala spent all her FEMA money, billions of dollars, on housing for illegal migrants,” Mr. Trump claimed at a rally soon after the storm, referring to Kamala Harris, then the vice president and his rival in the presidential race. Mr. Trump appeared to be referring to the Shelter and Services Program. Congress approved it under the Biden administration, directing FEMA to run a program for housing migrants who entered the United States and were released by federal officials. Congress gave the program $650 million last year for cities, states and nonprofits, but Mr. Trump’s comments were inaccurate. FEMA’s spending on migrants does not mean FEMA has less money to spend on disaster survivors. The money for migrants comes from the budget of Customs and Border Protection, not out of FEMA’s budget. Money for disaster survivors comes directly from Congress. There is no overlap between those two funds. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Soon after his return to the White House, Mr. Trump made Mr. Hamilton acting FEMA director. A former Navy SEAL and congressional candidate who campaigned on an anti-illegal immigration message, Mr. Hamilton did not have experience running a state or local emergency management agency. DOGE members arrived at the agency’s downtown Washington headquarters in early February to begin going through contract and grant payments. Then came Mr. Musk’s post. “The @DOGE team just discovered that FEMA sent $59M LAST WEEK to luxury hotels in New York City to house illegal migrants,” Mr. Musk wrote, exaggerating the quality of hotel rooms that were used. He added that FEMA had in his view violated an executive order from Mr. Trump, which ordered the agency to pause money supporting undocumented migrants. “A clawback demand will be made today to recoup those funds,” he wrote.