The Sierra Club Embraced Social Justice. Then It Tore Itself Apart.
8th November 2025
The New York Times, paper of record of the Crust.
The Sierra Club calls itself the “largest and most influential grass roots environmental organization in the country.” But it is in the middle of an implosion — left weakened, distracted and divided just as environmental protections are under assault by the Trump administration.
The group has lost 60 percent of the four million members and supporters it counted in 2019. It has held three rounds of employee layoffs since 2022, trying to climb out of a $40 million projected budget deficit.
Its political giving has also dropped. Federal campaign-finance records show $3.6 million in donations from the Sierra Club during the push to defeat Donald J. Trump in 2020, but none as Mr. Trump stormed back to the presidency in 2024.
And this year, as the Trump administration returned better organized and better prepared than in its first term, the Sierra Club was the opposite. While Mr. Trump boosted coal power, canceled wind farms and rolled back pollution limits, the club was consumed by internal chaos, culminating when the board fired its executive director, Ben Jealous, a former president of the N.A.A.C.P.
This goes beyond shooting yourself in the foot, this is shooting yourself in the groin. Such is a perennial problem with the Wokerati—it isn’t enough to be in favor of just one or a few of the Woke agenda, you have to be equally in favor of every piece of the Woke agenda or you get caught by the circular firing squad.