Dear NRDC Supporter,

As we head into 2026, I've been reflecting on a year of major challenges — and on the strength of this community. With over 3 million members and over 750 staff lawyers, scientists, and other experts, NRDC is working to stop the Trump administration's most harmful rollbacks to laws protecting endangered species, our climate, wildlands, our health, and the environment.

NRDC's legal team is at the vanguard of our strategy. In fact, we've taken the Trump administration to court 29 times since last January — roughly once every two weeks. Get a full rundown of our top litigation fights at NRDC.org.

Despite the odds, and with your support, we made real and meaningful progress in 2025, in and out of court. Here are a few examples:

• Our Make Polluters Pay campaign helped pass landmark legislation in New York and Vermont to hold fossil fuel companies financially responsible for the damages caused by their climate pollution — shifting the burden off local communities. And we're fighting for similar laws in a dozen other states.
• Clean drinking water was finally secured for residents of Flint, MI, where the final lead water pipe was replaced after a decade of legal battles and public pressure from NRDC and our allies.
• After nearly two decades of advocacy by NRDC and our allies, the U.N. High Seas Treaty was ratified — the first-ever international treaty safeguarding oceans that lie beyond national borders. This critical treaty will bring order and conservation to what has — up to now — been an ocean of mismanagement and neglect.
• We sued, and won, to stop the Trump administration's climate censorship — forcing the administration to resume providing critical climate data to farmers and researchers on the USDA website.
• Faced with overwhelming public opposition — including from more than 37,000 NRDC supporters who wrote letters of opposition — backers of a plan to bring the forest-destroying biomass industry to California abandoned the project.
• NRDC members like you submitted hundreds of thousands of official public comments opposing destructive Trump administration rollbacks to landmark environmental laws like the Endangered Species Act, Clean Water Act, and Clean Air Act. Your public comments are critical to NRDC's litigation strategy, often giving us legal standing to go to court.

Looking ahead, the Trump administration's attacks on our environment are accelerating. These attacks are having real consequences for us right now, but they also have devastating impacts on what is held in trust for future generations.

However, NRDC is responding with full force — through hard-hitting litigation, relentless advocacy at every level of government, and expanded international work. Key fights in 2026 include:

• Defending Climate Action In Court: The Trump administration is promising to repeal the Endangerment Finding, the scientific determination that climate-warming pollution threatens our health and our planet. If this repeal goes forward, the federal government would be stripped of its mandate to curb carbon pollution from cars, power plants, and major industries. NRDC is preparing to sue to protect the Endangerment Finding — bolstered by the official public comments of over 56,000 NRDC supporters united in opposition of this rollback.
• Defending the Arctic from New Oil and Gas Drilling: NRDC is girding for accelerated fights in and out of court to stop oil giant ConocoPhillips from expanding its disastrous Willow oil drilling project into more protected lands in the Western Arctic, and to block fresh efforts to auction off the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas companies.
• Taking on the Microplastics Crisis: NRDC is spearheading new initiatives to tackle the worsening health crisis caused by the microplastic pollution that is permeating our planet and our bodies. From awareness to action, NRDC is ready to raise the alarm on a disaster being made worse by the oil and gas industry's unfettered production of this toxic mess.
• Blocking New Offshore Drilling: We are committed to stopping the Trump administration's new 5-year offshore drilling plan which would give the fossil fuel industry another gift by opening up previously off-limits zones along California's coast and in the remote Arctic Sea, threatening coastal communities, marine life and our clean energy future.
• Protecting 58 million acres of Forests from Destruction: NRDC is gearing up to derail the Trump administration's attempts to open millions of acres of national forests to road building and logging, threatening old growth trees, endangered wildlife, clean water, and wildlands and open space. Legal action is likely and our lawyers stand ready.
• Defending Clean Energy's Advances : Clean energy is the economic play of our generation. The U.S. retreat is only creating a void that other nations are filling. Meanwhile, the Trump administration is doing everything it can to kill clean energy progress in the U.S. It's trying to scrap the expansion of EVs and the solar, battery, and wind power industries, pausing many projects which were fully-permitted — some nearly complete. Meanwhile, the administration is doling out cash to prop up the coal industry and force communities to keep old, dirty and obsolete "zombie" coal and gas plants despite local opposition and rising costs.
• Protecting the ‘Aquarium of the World': NRDC is escalating its campaign to protect Mexico's Gulf of California — a UNESCO World Heritage site — from plans by international oil and gas companies and major investment banks to build massive new gas export facilities. Not only would these facilities deepen our climate crisis and dependence on fossil fuels, but it would put rare blue and fin whales, whale sharks, leatherback sea turtles, and thousands of other marine species at risk, along with the Gulf's many coastal communities.

Fighting back against the Trump administration is critical, and we are fully in the fight. But the environmental movement also needs a new playbook — one that pivots and adjusts to more effectively defend what matters, build what's missing, bring in new supporters, grow our power for the long term, and have a greater, more durable impact. NRDC is already helping to shape that future.

A core part of that work is building new things that make life better, healthier, and more affordable for everyone, and building them equitably and fairly. We must build more solar, wind, energy storage, and transmission technologies. We must build more affordable and energy-efficient housing and buildings. We need more clean vehicles, public transit, and electric vehicle charging infrastructure. And we need cleaner industries, climate-smart agriculture, storm-hardened buildings, more room for rivers to flood, and more space for wildlife to thrive.

These changes require fundamental reforms to how we make and store energy, grow our food, design our cities, and manage our natural and built surroundings. They are one vital piece of a broader strategy for meeting this moment.

That work is happening here at NRDC — and it's accelerating to meet the urgency of this moment.

Thank you for your resilience, support, and partnership in 2025. We have quite a year ahead, and in 2026 we must do all this — and more — together.

Sincerely,

Manish Bapna
President, NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council)