On Wednesday, September 17, 2025, two major developments in Washington, D.C. threw the Democratic Party’s internal divisions and the nation’s climate policy debate into sharp relief. As the Searchlight Institute—a new Democratic think tank—launched with a mission to reshape the party’s priorities, the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) issued a report affirming, in no uncertain terms, that climate change’s harm to public health is “beyond scientific dispute.” The timing of these events, and the fierce arguments they sparked, offer a revealing snapshot of the crossroads at which American politics and policy now stand.
The Searchlight Institute, founded by veteran Democratic strategist Adam Jentleson, opened its doors on Capitol Hill with a $10 million annual budget and a staff of seven, thanks to backing from billionaire donors like hedge fund manager Stephen Mandel and real estate investor Eric Laufer. Jentleson, a former senior aide to the late Senator Harry Reid, says the think tank’s name is a nod to Reid’s Nevada hometown—and, perhaps, to its mission of shining a light on what he sees as the party’s missteps.
Jentleson’s diagnosis is blunt: Democrats have, in his view, lost their way by focusing too heavily on issues like climate change and LGBTQ rights, at the urging of powerful liberal organizations. “The folks who are most to blame about Trump are the ones who pushed Democrats to take indefensible positions,” Jentleson told The New York Times in an interview. He pointed to Kamala Harris’s 2019 campaign stances—many of which she later reversed after becoming the Democratic nominee in 2024—as examples of positions that alienated key voters in battleground states.
“Right now we’re pursuing every tactic imaginable except for the obvious one, which is taking positions that are more in line with the people we are trying to win over,” Jentleson added. His critique is not just theoretical: since Harris’s loss in the 2024 election, many leading Democrats have pivoted toward an economic message, steering clear of contentious social issues. California Governor Gavin Newsom, for example, has softened his previous support for transgender rights and open immigration, reflecting this new approach.
Jentleson’s criticisms have not gone unnoticed—or unchallenged—by the progressive groups he targets. He singled out the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Center for American Progress (CAP), blaming them for pushing candidates too far left and contributing to electoral defeats. “The A.C.L.U. did more to contribute to Trump’s victory than many conservative groups,” Jentleson asserted. He also dismissed CAP as “100 percent pure uncut resistance drivel.”
Defenders of these organizations pushed back hard. Neera Tanden, president and CEO of the Center for American Progress, responded, “While some are focused on tearing others down, C.A.P. has been doing the actual hard work of proposing ideas that build a resilient majority, like an immigration plan that secures the border, reforms asylum and expands legal immigration.” Mike Zamore, the ACLU’s policy director, added, “Trying to blame the A.C.L.U. for this presidency is laughable, especially with our over 160 legal actions filed already. The fight for civil liberties and civil rights is not always popular, but it’s always essential and we will always fight for the values that underpin our Constitution without apology.”
The debate over the party’s direction is not just academic. In New York, Zohran Mamdani’s decisive win in the Democratic primary for mayor—on a platform focused on housing, groceries, and child care affordability—suggests that a bread-and-butter economic message can still energize voters, even in a city known for its progressive activism.
Jentleson’s vision for Searchlight is ambitious. The institute will conduct its own polling and create a “Shark Tank-style policy generation process,” inviting proposals from outside the Beltway in hopes of shaking up what he calls the “influence industry” that shapes Democratic orthodoxy. “We are going to produce products that call into question a lot of these assumptions we have been operating on for a long time,” Jentleson said.
Yet, even as Jentleson and his allies urge Democrats to de-emphasize issues like climate change, the NAS report released the very same day underscored the urgency—and scientific consensus—around the climate crisis. The NAS, an independent nonprofit chartered to advise the government, issued a direct rebuttal to the Trump administration’s July proposal to revoke the 2009 EPA “endangerment” finding, which declared climate change a threat to public health and underpins many federal regulations limiting pollution from cars, power plants, and other sources.
“EPA’s 2009 finding that the human-caused emissions of greenhouse gases threaten human health and welfare was accurate, has stood the test of time, and is now reinforced by even stronger evidence,” the NAS stated. Committee chair Shirley Tilghman, former president of Princeton University, emphasized, “The importance of getting the science right weighed heavily on the committee’s deliberations, given the potential significant implications of a changing climate and of the actions proposed to address it.”
The NAS report was unequivocal: evidence that climate change harms public health is “beyond scientific dispute.” It cited increased extreme temperatures, changing oceans, and more frequent extreme weather events as clear and present dangers. “The United States faces a future in which climate-induced harm continues to worsen and today’s extremes become tomorrow’s norms,” the report warned.
The Trump administration, however, has pushed back against this consensus. The Department of Energy has argued that climate models overreach, that long-term disaster trends don’t show much change, and that there may even be benefits to higher carbon levels, such as increased plant growth. The EPA, for its part, has said the endangerment finding was used by the Obama and Biden administrations to justify “trillions of dollars of greenhouse gas regulations,” and that many of the “extremely pessimistic predictions and assumptions EPA relied upon have not materialized as expected.”
Despite these claims, the scientific community has largely sided with the NAS. A group of 85 climate experts described the Trump administration’s work as “full of errors, and not fit to inform policy making.” The American Meteorological Society and other mainstream organizations have also criticized the administration’s approach. Environmental groups are already challenging the administration’s efforts in court, arguing that the science is settled and the stakes are too high for political gamesmanship.
The collision between the political debate within the Democratic Party and the scientific consensus on climate change leaves the party—and the country—at a crossroads. Should Democrats heed Jentleson’s call to focus on economic issues and sideline climate and social justice concerns? Or does the mounting evidence of climate-induced harm demand that these issues remain front and center, regardless of the political risks?
As the Searchlight Institute sets out to challenge old assumptions and the NAS doubles down on the urgency of climate action, one thing is clear: the fight over the soul and strategy of the Democratic Party, and the nation’s response to climate change, is far from settled. The outcome will shape not just elections, but the future Americans inherit.
