Donald Trump’s administration has introduced a “sprawling, government-wide spending freeze”, sparking “widespread confusion and frustration”, Politico reports. On Monday evening, the White House budget office ordered a pause to all grants and loans disbursed by the federal government, leaving “tens of thousands of programmes potentially in jeopardy and no clarity on what is coming under the knife”, Politico says. It reports: “Democrats warn that potential targets include the country’s most expensive transportation initiative – the $16bn Gateway rail and tunnel project connecting New York and New Jersey – as well as myriad programmes to prevent fire, combat drought and research the causes of disease.” It adds that a federal judge temporarily blocked the freeze late on Tuesday, but this has done little to assuage concerns. The Financial Times says the judge freeze means funding will continue until a hearing takes place on 3 February. Reporting on the memo outlining the pause, the Washington Post says it dictates that programmes affected are “including, but not limited to, financial assistance for foreign aid, nongovernmental organisations, DEI, woke gender ideology and the Green New Deal”. The Guardian reports that the move is “rooted in the conservative manifesto Project 2025”. The Atlantic says that the funding pause is accompanied by another executive order that is aimed at “terminating the Green New Deal”. It adds: “Democrats and government watchdogs see the directives as an opening salvo in a fight over the separation of powers, launched by a president bent on defying Congress’s will.” A top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee tells the Atlantic that the order is “illegal” and amounts to “stealing”.

Elsewhere, National Public Radio (NPR) reports that the National Science Foundation, which funds a host of scientific research through university and institute funding, cancelled all of its grant review panels this week, following Trump’s day-one executive orders. NPR says “it is unclear which executive orders are responsible for the freeze, though researchers suspect it may be related to Trump’s targeting of diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives”. The New York Times reports on Trump’s efforts to undo the “endangerment finding”, a rule that instructs the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate greenhouse gas emissions because they pose a danger to human life. A second New York Times story says Trump wants to deploy a rarely used “god squad” panel to carve out exemptions in the Endangered Species Act. The Canary notes that Trump’s restrictions on offshore wind disproportionately threaten jobs in Republican districts. Drilled reports that Joe Biden’s review of liquified “natural” gas (LNG) terminal expansion, released before he left office, could provide environmental advocates with information to “aid their efforts to fight LNG export permits in court”. Vox reports that environmentalists have a potential unlikely ally in the Trump-supporting Robert F Kennedy Jr.

A “triple whammy” of hot, dry wind, low rainfall and rising temperatures boosted the destructive fires affecting Los Angeles this month, according to a fast analysis by the World Weather Attribution (WWA) group of scientists covered by the Guardian. Climate change made Southern California’s dangerous wildfire conditions in early January 35% more likely than they would have been before the industrial era, according to the attribution study, Bloomberg says. Axios reports that the study also concluded that the LA fire season is becoming longer, with “highly flammable drought conditions” lasting about 23 more days now than before the industrial era. According to Agence France-Presse, study lead author Clair Barnes, from Imperial College London, told a press briefing: “Drought conditions are increasingly pushing into winter, raising the likelihood of fires breaking out during strong Santa Ana winds that can transform small ignitions into deadly infernos. Without a faster transition away from planet-heating fossil fuels, California will continue to get hotter, drier, and more flammable.”

A Labour party donor has said chancellor Rachel Reeves would be “foolish” to approve expansion of Britain’s major airports in the name of growth, the Daily Telegraph reports. Clean energy businessman, Dale Vince, tells the Daily Telegraph: “It’s clearly wrong to say we’ll put growth before carbon emissions, because – my word – it will impair our drive to net-zero so considerably. We won’t get there by anything like the target date that we have, because we’ll have decarbonised the grid but absolutely wiped that out with new runways to allow for more planes to fly in and out of Britain. And we just don’t need that. There’s no major economic growth to come from doing that.” BBC News factchecks whether it is possible to make Heathrow “green” with “electric planes and sustainable fuel”.

Elsewhere, the Daily Telegraph also reports that Reeves’ National Wealth Fund has invested £28.6m into reviving a historic Cornish tin mine “as ministers race to hit net-zero targets”. The Daily Telegraph further reports on a letter from steel, glass and chemical manufacturers criticising the rising costs from “climate levies designed to cut factory emissions”. The Times reports that the developers of the Sizewell C nuclear plant have claimed the station will be up and running by 2035 if given the go-ahead this summer.

Four independent oil refineries in eastern China have “halted operations, or plan to do so” as “new Chinese tariff and tax policies plunge them deeper into losses”, Reuters reports. The newswire adds that it comes amid “an earlier-than-expected peak in Chinese fuel demand” and that Beijing’s drive to “wring out inefficiency” starts to “squeeze out the weakest of the small independent plants”. Meanwhile, oil prices fell about 2% to a two-week low as “surging interest” in Chinese AI startup DeepSeek “prompted concerns over energy demand to power data centres”, Reuters reports. Separately, global sales of electric vehicles (EVs), including fully electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles, are expected to “rise by at least 17%” in 2025 to over 20m vehicles, bolstered by “an extension of China’s auto trade-in subsidies”, according to research firm Rho Motion, Reuters reports. In 2024, China saw a “significant surge” in electric vehicle (EV) charging facilities, with the total number of charging poles nationwide surging 49% to 12.8m, state news agency Xinhua says. Reuters also reports on satellite images that appear to show that China is building a large fusion research facility. Environmental news outlet Eco-Business publishes an article discussing whether China’s new energy law will “pave the way” for China to realise its emissions goals.

Elsewhere, Nikkei Asia publishes a comment article by Brahma Chellaney, professor of strategic studies at the Centre for Policy Research, arguing that by “embarking on building a super-dam” in Tibet, China is “creating a ticking water bomb for millions of people living downstream”. Current affairs newspaper the Diplomat interviews Y Nithiyanandam, “one of India’s foremost experts on geospatial intelligence”, on the potential risks of building the dam. Reuters reports that China appears to be “building a large laser-ignited fusion research centre”, which could “aid nuclear weapons design and work exploring [clean] power generation”. 

Finally, the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post reports that European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen will “try to forge common ground” with the US on its China policy, such as aligning on overcapacity. State broadcaster China Global Television Network (CGTN) says China’s role as a leader in “climate action” has been “enhanced”, contributing to efforts to “make sure the step back on climate from the US doesn’t turn into a step back for humanity”. The Kenya-based news outlet People Daily (with no apparent relationship to the Chinese outlet of a similar name) reports that the withdrawal of the US from the Paris agreement means Africa “must now turn to new alliances” on climate with China and other partners.

Alistair Osborne, chief business commentator for the Times, writes that the plan to approve Heathrow expansion has been “undeliverable since 1968”. He questions a remark by Rachel Reeves that a third runway could cut emissions because “instead of circling London, flights can land at Heathrow”, by saying: “Really? Since when does that offset the carbon from an extra 60m passengers a year?” Guardian columnist Rafael Behr says that Labour’s split over approving a third runway at Heathrow, despite its ambitious climate goals, illustrates the discrepancy between “Labour’s self-image as a party with radical purpose and the constant fear of alienating voters with the wrong kind of radicalism”. David Smith, the Sunday Times economics editor, writes in the Times that “sky-high energy costs could not come at a worse time” for the UK. Jermey Warner argues in the Daily Telegraph that “net-zero risks leaving Britain’s AI strategy dead on arrival”. An editorial in the Daily Telegraph attacks the government’s policies to phase-out fossil fuels. Finally, a Daily Mail column by climate-sceptic broadcaster Andrew Neil is critical of Reeves’ plans for growing the economy.

The rate of ocean surface warming has quadrupled over the past four decades, according to new research. The paper finds that ocean temperatures are currently increasing at 0.27C per decade, up from about 0.06C per decade in the 1980s. Accelerating ocean warming is linked to an “upward trend” in the Earth’s energy imbalance, according to the study, which analyses satellite observations since 1985 and uses a statistical model to account for interannual variability. The researchers predict that the ocean temperature increase seen over the past 40 years will likely be exceeded within two decades.