Summer is just getting started, and people are already dying. Western Europe is sweltering through a climate-fueled “heat dome” that has trapped hot air from London to Spain, where temperatures have broken new records and surpassed 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Seven people are reported to have died in France of heat-related causes. Weeks of oppressive temperatures in the southern India state of Telangana have killed at least 19 people—and likely many more—as highs neared 115 degrees in many cities across the region. Heat warnings have now been issued across Canada’s western Prairies. The United States broke its own heat records back in March, and a “super” strong El Niño is expected to push temperatures up around the world.
Extreme heat is the deadliest weather hazard in the United States. It’s not exactly breaking news at this point to say that the Trump administration denies the climate crisis that’s now helping the U.S. smash long-held temperature records year after year. It’s worth emphasizing, however, that such denial isn’t a matter of abstract doctrinal dispute—or even just a means to allow fossil fuel companies to drill and pollute whatever and wherever they’d like. As the coming summer will likely illustrate, climate denial often takes fairly invisible, quotidian forms, like weakening little-known regulatory programs as a way of helping out employers who’d rather not cool down their overheated workers. This sort of ordinary, everyday climate denial doesn’t always make headlines. But as temperatures continue to rise, it will almost certainly rack up a body count.
In the case of the United States, at least, that kind of denial can mean just not changing much about the status quo. There are still relatively few federal protections in this country against extreme heat. That’s long been the case with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which is charged with keeping workers safe on the job. The Biden administration proposed a rule in 2024 that would have established the country’s first nationwide workplace heat safety standard. It aimed to mandate that employers offer specific protections—like water and shade breaks—once temperatures cross dangerous thresholds. It also meant to require employers to make certain upgrades at job sites and conduct regular audits and trainings related to heat risks. Unsurprisingly, that rule has faced harsh pushback from business groups. While the Trump administration so far hasn’t opted for a full withdrawal, favored by groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, it also hasn’t moved that regulatory process forward since last summer. If it does, OSHA has signaled that it could significantly water down the proposed rule.
Last month, in the meantime, OSHA issued a new and notably vaguer National Emphasis Program on heat-related hazards. When that program was first launched in 2022, OSHA set out a goal of increasing heat-related workplace inspections in every region by 100 percent over previous baselines, making sure that bosses offer water and shade in warmer temperatures. Before the program was implemented, OSHA performed just 200 heat-related inspections. Between April 2022 and December 2024—while the National Emphasis Program was in place—it conducted more than 7,000. Those inspections resulted in 60 heat citations for violations of the general duty clause—OSHA’s omnibus safe-workplace requirements—and 1,392 “hazard alert” letters to employers, laying out steps to keep workers safe when it’s hot.
That program’s latest, Trump-era iteration, which eliminates and replaces the Biden-era version, makes no reference to specific numerical inspection goals, leaving it an open question as to just how many proactive inspections OSHA will perform. Data released by Senator Elizabeth Warren earlier this year—which isn’t regularly published—showed that overall inspections had declined by about 20 percent in the first six months of 2025; Trump’s fiscal year 2027 budget requested a steep 7.5 percent cut for OSHA. Several elements of the 2022 National Emphasis Program remain in place—including randomized inspections on heat advisory days—but the new version has removed 46 designated “high-risk” industries while adding 23. Among the industries no longer considered to involve heat-related hazards are support activities for mining, waste treatment and disposal, motor vehicle manufacturing, and basic chemical manufacturing. The new program is slated to remain in place for the next five years.
The administration’s slow erosion of modest heat protections like the National Emphasis Program won’t get the same kind of attention as Trump Cabinet members’ bombastic sound bites about being in a “golden era” of fossil energy, or Trump himself posting nonsense about climate science on social media. Arguably, letting such programs lapse—and scrapping the proposed OSHA rule outright—would be newsier. Whether there’s some grand communications plan at work or not, the White House’s quieter forms of climate denial could end up being some of its most dangerous.
