Credit: Wojtek Radawanski/AFP via Getty Images.The midterm elections are less than a week away, and there’s a lot riding on the results, including how much more damage Donald Trump can do to the climate.But for how important this election will be for Planet Earth and the humans who live on it, the issue itself isn’t getting much airtime. Earlier this month, The Guardian examined the campaign websites of Democratic and Republican Senate candidates in eight battleground states. Of all the candidates surveyed, only two explicitly mentioned climate change.This retreat hasn’t happened by accident. Over the last two years, some of the Democratic Party’s most influential strategists, donors, and think tanks have been explicitly telling candidates to shut up about climate change and focus on the economy instead—as if those were two separate issues.It’s a strategy known as climate hushing. And with the midterms fast-approaching, it’s worth asking: Who convinced Democrats that ignoring climate change was a winning strategy? Does the evidence actually support that argument? And what is that silence costing the rest of us?These are the questions I explored in the today’s episode of the HEATED podcast, alongside my producer Tracy Wholf and Aaron Regunberg, who directs the Climate Accountability Project at Public Citizen.We also took a closer look at some of the country’s most consequential Senate races to see who’s avoiding climate change, who’s still talking about it, and what those differences reveal.You can listen to our full conversation above, find HEATED on your favorite podcast app, watch on YouTube, or read an edited and condensed transcript of our conversation below.HEATED is a 100 percent reader- and listener-funded publication. We don’t take ads, sponsorships, or put our journalism behind paywalls. The reporting, editing, and production that go into these episodes are possible because of generous readers and listeners. If you appreciate truly independent climate journalism and have the means, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. Your support keeps this work free for everyone.Subscribe nowShould Democrats stop talking about climate change?TRACY WHOLF: Emily, we’ve seen some extraordinary climate extremes this year, from deadly heat waves around the globe to devastating floods. And yet climate change seems to be getting very little attention in this election. Why?EMILY ATKIN: I think there are several reasons, but one of the biggest is that Democrats have been explicitly told by some of their most influential funders, advisers, and think tanks to keep quiet about it.TRACY: That’s crazy to me, because climate is an issue where Democrats have a pretty clear advantage over Republicans. So who’s saying this and why?EMILY: To understand that, I spoke with Aaron Regunberg, who earlier this year wrote an excellent article for Boston Review called ‘Why Climate Politics Can’t Wait,’examining the growing push for climate hushing.He said you really have to go back to the aftermath of Kamala Harris’s loss in 2024.AARON REGUNBERG: We just started hearing a lot of people saying that we’re losing because Democrats are talking too much about climate change.There was this big narrative struggle happening within the Democratic Party apparatus in that moment to explain what happened and who’s to blame. I do think the climate hushing angle was a very convenient scapegoat for a lot of people who didn’t want to talk about maybe some of the other reasons that we lost.TRACY: So who were the groups pushing that argument?EMILY: One was Third Way, a powerful centrist Washington think tank that’s been advising Democrats for decades. Even before Harris lost, Third Way was arguing that Democrats should focus less on climate and more on people’s bills.Another was Welcome PAC, which supports moderate Democrats. After the election, it released a report arguing that Democrats needed to focus less on progressive issues like climate change and more on the economy, crime, and immigration.And both organizations are awash in wealthy, corporate backers. Third Way has received support from major corporate interests, including the Business Roundtable. Welcome PAC’s donors have included LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, members of the Walton family, and major Wall Street investors.But perhaps the most influential argument came from the Searchlight Institute, a Democratic think tank that launched in 2025 with a reported $10 million annual budget backed by billionaires.One of its first major publications was a September 2025 memo titled The First Rule About Solving Climate Change: Don’t Say Climate Change.TRACY: That’s pretty explicit. So what was the argument?ShareDoes climate change actually swing votes?EMILY: The biggest argument, and the one you hear repeated across these reports, is that climate change doesn’t swing votes.Searchlight’s memo found that 61 percent of battleground swing voters considered climate change at least a very serious problem. But only 6 percent named it as their top issue, and only 22 percent ranked it among their top three priorities.So the recommendation was that Democrats should focus on what swing voters say matters most to them: affordability, jobs, and health care.TRACY: But just because climate change isn’t someone’s number-one priority doesn’t mean it won’t influence their vote. I’m not a single-issue voter. I don’t think most people are.EMILY: Exactly. Just because someone ranks health care first and climate change fourth doesn’t mean their candidate’s position on climate is irrelevant.And Aaron pointed out something really interesting about Searchlight’s research: Its own polling seems to contradict its conclusions.AARON: That actual data found that 76 percent of these battleground swing-state voters think that the Democratic Party is either somewhat or completely in step with them on issues related to climate change, compared to only 16 percent who say Democrats are out of step.And then when you look at the folks who say it is out of step, and you ask why, the number-one reason that voters give is they say that Democrats are not fighting hard enough or need to do more on climate change.EMILY: So basically, most of these swing voters disagree with Republicans about climate change. And among those who don’t align with Democrats, the biggest complaint is that Democrats aren’t doing enough.That seems like an enormous missed opportunity to distinguish themselves from Republicans.TRACY: And there’s other evidence supporting that. In its 2026 battleground-state polling, the Environmental Voter Project found that 59 percent of likely midterm voters wanted politicians to spend more time talking about climate change and pollution, while only 17 percent wanted less.Which raises the question: If so many people want to hear more about climate change, why are political strategists so convinced it shouldn’t be discussed?Support independent climate journalismThe strange idea that climate change and affordability are separate issuesEMILY: Well, another argument in Searchlight’s memo is that climate change feels distant from voters’ everyday lives.According to its polling, only 17 percent of battleground swing voters believed climate change was affecting their families a great deal right now.So the argument is that talking about climate can seem out of touch when voters have more immediate concerns.TRACY: I understand that people are concerned about rising energy prices, groceries, housing, and health care. I feel those pressures too.But I also understand that all these things are connected to climate change.A study published by MIT researchers in February found that climate change is already costing American households an estimated $400 to $900 annually on average, through a range of impacts including insurance costs, extreme-weather damage, and higher utility bills.EMILY: Right. And I don’t think those connections are necessarily obvious to everyone.But that’s what campaigning is for! It’s an opportunity to explain to voters why their lives are becoming more expensive, and what you’re going to do about it.And there’s evidence that when you make those connections, voters respond.AARON: The Yale Program on Climate Change Communication recently put out its 2026 report, and they found large majorities of voters think climate change is causing the cost of living to increase.It found 66 percent of voters think that climate change is increasing their home utility bills. Over 60 percent think it’s increasing their groceries.And the support for climate action is similarly very high. The Yale surveys found 58 percent of voters saying that climate action should be a high priority for the president or Congress. Same percentage saying they prefer to vote for a candidate who supports action on climate, compared to only 14 percent who say they’d prefer a candidate who opposes climate action.ShareSpoiler alert: Kamala Harris did not lose because of climateTRACY: All right, Emily. I’m going to regret asking you this, but take me back to 2024 and Kamala Harris. How well did she tie climate change to affordability?EMILY: She really didn’t. She hardly talked about climate change at all during her campaign.Which makes the argument that Democrats lost in 2024 because Harris talked too much about climate change a pretty strange one.And we’ve seen plenty of candidates talk openly about climate change and have electoral success.Barack Obama made clean energy a major part of his economic message in 2008. Bernie Sanders made climate change one of the defining issues of his campaigns, and while he didn’t win the nomination, he built an enormous grassroots movement and won several Democratic primaries.And Joe Biden ran on an ambitious climate platform in 2020. He won, and climate policy became a cornerstone of his administration.TRACY: None of that proves climate change was the reason these candidates succeeded. But it certainly complicates the argument that talking about climate change is inherently bad politics.EMILY: Exactly. And I think Democrats are missing an enormous opportunity to call out the corruption of the Trump administration.We’ve got a cabinet packed with fossil fuel industry allies and former executives. The energy secretary, Chris Wright, is literally a former fracking executive. And they’re handing out favors to oil and gas companies while ordinary Americans struggle to pay their bills.There’s such an obvious argument to make about who this government actually works for, and how corporate interests are making people’s lives more expensive.AARON: We have a corrupt administration run by and for the fossil fuel industry that’s taking us to war, that’s raising prices, and that’s causing catastrophes.And on the other hand, we can lay out a vision of standing up for regular people to lower energy costs, to make polluters pay rather than our working families.The idea that we shouldn’t be making those connections seems very silly.Subscribe nowWhich Senate candidates are climate hushing, and which aren’t?EMILY: So Tracy, when we started producing this episode, I asked you to look at some of the biggest Senate races in the country and see whether Democratic candidates were actually taking the advice of these centrist think tanks. What did you find?TRACY: A mixed bag. But there are definitely some patterns.Let’s start in Georgia, where incumbent Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff is seeking reelection. Ossoff has a 96 percent lifetime score from the League of Conservation Voters. But when I searched his campaign website, the words ‘climate,’ ‘environment,’ and ‘energy’ didn’t appear anywhere.Instead, he’s focused on the Iran war and inflation. And he’s not alone. In Ohio, former Sen. Sherrod Brown, who’s trying to win back his seat, has also left climate change off his campaign website.EMILY: That one really surprised me because I remember Brown’s 2018 reelection campaign. He stood on a debate stage and called climate change the defining moral issue of our time. And then he won!The next year, he wrote an essay explicitly rejecting the idea that Democrats needed to abandon their progressive values to win elections.An excerpt of Sherrod Brown’s 2019 essay. Source: DLCC.orgNow, at least based on his campaign platform, he appears to have changed his approach.TRACY: And then there’s North Carolina, where former Gov. Roy Cooper is running for Senate. His website discusses energy and data centers, but doesn’t really connect those things to climate change. Which is especially notable in a state that’s been devastated by climate disasters.These are all relatively moderate Democrats, and they do seem to be avoiding explicit discussion of climate change.EMILY: Which I find so frustrating because North Carolina and Georgia are seeing the consequences of climate change firsthand, particularly through extreme weather and rising insurance costs.But were there any exceptions?TRACY: Yes! In Michigan, Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed has a dedicated environmental section on his campaign website.And he gets pretty specific. He promises to codify the EPA’s endangerment finding into law so that future administrations can’t strip the agency of its authority to regulate greenhouse gases by executive order.That’s a direct response to the Trump administration’s efforts to dismantle federal climate regulations.Interestingly, he also went on Fox News and said he wasn’t going to defend the Green New Deal, before pivoting to the benefits of renewable energy, lower costs, and job creation.So he’s clearly thinking about how to frame climate policy for different audiences. But he’s not abandoning the issue.EMILY: Right. There’s a difference between talking about climate change in a way that’s relevant to voters and refusing to talk about it at all.TRACY: Then there’s Alaska, where Mary Peltola is challenging Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan.She’s emphasizing expanded oil and gas production, along with some support for geothermal and other energy sources, but not really talking about climate change explicitly.Which is striking considering Alaska is warming faster than any other state.In Iowa, Democratic candidate Josh Turek has discussed the state’s water pollution crisis, extreme weather, and rising insurance costs. But climate change isn’t a central part of his platform either.And Iowa is particularly interesting because wind energy is such an important economic force there. Farmers receive income from leasing land to wind developers, and federal clean-energy policies have had significant consequences for the state.EMILY: So there are real economic arguments these candidates could be making about climate change and renewable energy, even if they’re primarily focused on affordability.What about Texas?TRACY: Texas is fascinating because James Talarico is doing something quite different.On one hand, he’s been very supportive of the oil and gas industry, even praising ExxonMobil for its carbon capture efforts.But on his campaign website, he explicitly talks about climate change. He says that if any state can figure out how to grow its economy, lower costs, and combat climate change, it’s Texas.He also talks about the extreme weather Texans have experienced, including deadly floods, wildfires, droughts, and winter storms.So whatever you think about his broader energy positions, he’s certainly not avoiding the issue.EMILY: Exactly. Praising ExxonMobil for climate leadership is something I could spend an entire episode criticizing. But you can’t call his campaign climate hushing.And that’s what makes this so interesting. Some Democrats are going out of their way to avoid even saying the words ‘climate change.’ Others are talking about it, but framing it through jobs, energy, and affordability.We’ll find out how these different approaches fare after the election.Climate hushing is happening in journalism, too. Across media, newsrooms are dismantling their climate teams and axing climate coverage. You can help stop the bleeding: Support independent climate media today.The bigger danger of staying silentEMILY: But beyond the horse race, I think there’s a much bigger problem with climate hushing.Climate change is a massive scientific, economic, and moral challenge. And I don’t understand how we’re supposed to solve it without talking about it.AARON: I think it is silly to say that we’re going to be able to do what we need to do to have a livable world without ever talking about climate change.And even some of the top climate hushers have admitted this. Searchlight’s senior fellow Jane Flegal said, in her own words, ‘It is hard for me to imagine solving climate change as a problem without somebody caring about climate change.’TRACY: So why are these think tanks arguing for climate hushing if even they acknowledge that people have to care about the issue to solve it?EMILY: One argument is that voters aren’t persuaded by moral appeals.In an October 2025 memo, Third Way argued that persuadable voters aren’t influenced by moral arguments about the need to combat climate change. The organization advised Democrats to focus on lower costs rather than environmentalism and judgment.I find that an incredibly cynical view of the American voter. And I don’t know if it’s even accurate.But there’s another danger here that I find even more alarming: By refusing to talk about climate change, Democrats are leaving the entire conversation to Republicans.Because Republicans certainly aren’t ignoring climate change. They’re talking about it all the time.AARON: There’s a study that found in 2024, Fox News ran more segments on climate change than CBS, ABC, NBC, PBS, and MSNBC combined.And so it’s never a decision of, okay, do we talk about climate change or not? It’s how do we talk about climate change? Because that side—Fox News, Leonard Leo, Donald Trump—all of them are going to be talking about it.TRACY: That statistic really got me, especially as someone who spent years trying to get more climate coverage on CBS News before our climate unit was dismantled.But with only a few days left before the midterms, it’s probably too late for candidates to reverse their messaging strategies.What I’m curious about is what happens afterward. If Democrats win big, will they decide that climate hushing worked and continue doing it? Or will they go back to talking openly about what’s happening to the planet?EMILY: That’s exactly what worries me. If Democrats win, I can imagine the strategists saying, ‘Look, we didn’t talk about climate change and we did great. Let’s never talk about it again.’And then it becomes a vicious cycle. Politicians stop talking about climate change, people become less informed about it, and then politicians point to that lack of public awareness as a reason to keep ignoring it.Meanwhile, the fossil fuel industry and its political allies are continuing to shape the conversation.And I think there’s a good reason to question the whole premise that climate change doesn’t swing votes. Economist Matt Burgess studied the 2020 presidential election and estimated that if climate change hadn’t been an issue, Republicans might have gained a roughly three-point swing in the popular vote. That could have handed the election to Trump.Obviously, affordability and the economy are among the biggest issues of this election. And they should be.But fossil fuels, climate change, and Big Oil corruption are undeniably part of that story. Our dependence on fossil fuels means a war thousands of miles away can make it more expensive for Americans to fill their cars and heat their homes.How do you talk honestly about affordability while leaving that out?I think people deserve to know how climate change and fossil fuels are affecting their lives. They deserve to know who’s making money at their expense. And they deserve to know what their elected leaders can—and are going to—do about it.Especially when they’re deciding who to vote for.Subscribe nowThank you for reading/listening! As a prize, here’s Margo in a banana sweater.