Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard appears during a Senate Committee on Intelligence Hearing on March 25, 2025 in Washington, DC. Credit – Photo by Andrew Harnik—Getty Images 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. Advertisement 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. Read more: Here Are All of Trump’s Major Moves to Dismantle Climate Action 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 […]