Trump Tried to Derail Our Work. We Banded Together, and Moved Forward.

Phillip Levin, PhD · NY Times · April 22, 2025

Levin is a member of the Center’s Research Collaborative

It started with a text in late January: “Call me.”

I was in the Sonoran Desert, fleeing the Pacific Northwest’s winter gloom, and I pulled into a gas station to make the call.

“All work on the National Nature Assessment is to stop,” a Trump White House representative on the other end said. “Immediately.”

For over two years, nearly 200 other scientists and I had been working on the first full accounting of nature in America: an extensive report on its role in our health, economy and well-being. Now, with the revoking of a Biden executive order that called for the assessment, it was seemingly over.

Like thousands of scientists who have landed in the cross hairs of politics since President Trump took office again, my colleagues and I felt the deep pain of this sudden cancellation. I don’t believe we were singled out. We were just collateral damage in a broader political battle that reversed a dozen Biden executive orders.