I know why Jalen Hurts is mad at Trump

Or at the very least, I know why he should be.

Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts takes questions from students at Edward Gideon Elementary School in April 2024. Hurts donated $200,000 to the Philadelphia School District to install new air conditioners in 10 schools. (Heather Khalifa/The Philadelphia Inquirer via AP)

Everyone who reads this newsletter knows I’m a journalist who covers climate change. But I also have a separate identity: I’m a Philadelphia Eagles fan. (Go birds).

Rarely do these areas of my life cross paths. But this week, they did, in the form of a viral story about Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts. See, I have a theory about why Hurts skipped Monday’s team meeting with President Donald Trump to celebrate the Eagles’ 2025 Super Bowl victory. The White House said it was because of “scheduling conflicts.”

But I think it has to do with Trump’s anti-climate change policies.

time

A post shared by @time

Hear me out. Yes, it’s true that Jalen Hurts has literally never talked about climate change before. In fact, Hurts has rarely talked about any politically sensitive issue.

Hurts is, however, fiercely dedicated to protecting Philadelphia kids—specifically, protecting them from extreme heat. In April of last year, Hurts announced that he would donate $200,000 to install 314 air conditioning units in several Philadelphia schools. He said he was inspired to do so after learning that more than 60 percent of Philadelphia schools lack central air conditioning—and dangerous heat is increasingly forcing Philadelphia schools to send kids home early.

In 2023, 74 Philadelphia schools had to close early because of inadequate cooling systems. In 2022, 118 schools were forced to close early, sending tens of thousands of kids home. "These conditions are unacceptable for our students," Hurts said. "We need to do more to ensure that every child has a safe place to learn."

After extreme heat once again forced 63 Philadelphia schools to close early in August 2024, Hurts stepped up his effort. Through his philanthropic group, the Jalen Hurts Foundation, he launched the Keep It Cool Initiative, and pledged another $200,000 to improve conditions in 10 more schools. The initiative also launched a sub-campaign called TDs for ACs, in which Hurts would donate $5,000 every time he scored a touchdown during the 2024-2025 season. Louisiana Hot Sauce partnered with the effort as well, donating another $100,000.

jalenhurtsfoundation

A post shared by @jalenhurtsfoundation

But even with all this philanthropy, Hurts has not been able to singularly solve the issue of too-hot Philadelphia classrooms—classrooms that just keep getting hotter due to heat-trapping pollution from fossil fuels. At the end of 2024, 57 Philly schools still lacked adequate cooling systems, according to reporting from Climate Central.

That’s because many of the city’s very-old school buildings don’t simply need more air conditioning units. According to Axios, “Many buildings lack the electrical capacity to upgrade the cooling systems, which costs between $1 million to $1.5 million to modernize.” In other words, Philadelphia schools need help installing more power—and it makes the most sense for these power systems to be renewable, because they don’t cost much money to maintain after they’ve been installed, and they don’t emit any pollutants or planet-warming gases into the atmosphere, thereby worsening the problem they’re trying to solve.

Because of this, Philadelphia school officials called on the federal government to step in. And perhaps surprisingly, they did. In 2022, Congress passed the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which among many other things, made it easier for schools to install renewable energy systems like solar arrays and geothermal heat pumps by offering cash reimbursements of up to 30 percent of project costs.

Then, in August 2024, to encourage more Philadelphia schools to take advantage of the IRA’s 30 percent reimbursement, Pennsylvania established the Solar for Schools grant program, which offered to cover up to half the costs of buying and installing solar systems. This was a huge game-changer for cash-strapped Philadelphia schools, because now—combined with other federal programs like the Investment Tax Credit and the Low Income Communities Bonus Program—they could potentially get up to 90 percent of the costs of a solar project covered.

But Philadelphia schools barely had any time to take advantage of these programs before Trump took office on January 20. That same day, Trump issued an executive order titled “Terminating the Green New Deal,” which suspended all Inflation Reduction Act funding disbursements. A federal judge later ordered Trump to restore the payments, but they were later found to have continued to freeze funds anyway.

This chaos and confusion has had a direct impact on schools, both in Philadelphia and across the country. According to the local news outlet Philly Green, the IRA was “starting to help area schools meet steep costs of installing renewable energy systems and other building improvements to address health concerns exacerbated by climate change. [But] The Trump administration has put those funds in jeopardy after just a few schools were able to move quickly enough to access their benefits.”

Overall, the Trump administration has created such a tumultuous and unpredictable environment around federal funding for clean energy that most schools and developers are simply waiting to see what happens before moving forward. The result is more delay in adapting Philly schools to dangerous rising temperatures.

This situation is a perfect encapsulation of Trump’s climate change policy. In the eyes of his administration, literally anything that promotes renewable energy or helps adapt to extreme weather is part of the so-called “Green New Scam,” and therefore falls into the realm of “waste, fraud, and abuse.” There is no room for anything that competes with fossil fuels, or acknowledges the reality that kids are suffering because of the consequences of burning them.

This is why I think Jalen Hurts did not go to the White House. Because after dedicating over a year of his philanthropic life to protecting Philadelphia kids from extreme heat, he didn’t want to hang out with the guy responsible for halting the city’s progress.

Of course, it is possible that Hurts actually knows nothing about Trump’s policies, and bowed out simply because he’s laser-focused on bringing home another Vince Lombardi trophy. Perhaps that’s even the most probable reason.

But if Hurts and his fans did just so happen to learn about the wrench Trump is throwing in Philly’s plans to keep kids cool through this newsletter, then perhaps this whole viral story wouldn’t be for nothing. Sure, I may be turning this into a game of political football. But that doesn’t mean it’s not worth playing.

Further reading:

• Extreme heat deprives millions of children of education. From Deutsche Welle:

  At least 242 million students globally had their education disrupted by extreme weather in 2024, according to UNICEF. That includes heat waves, tropical cyclones, storms, floods and droughts — all of which are intensifying with climate change. Almost three quarters of the affected students live in low- and lower-middle-income countries.

• How Trump is disrupting efforts by schools and colleges to combat climate change. From The Hechinger Report:

  Since January, the Trump administration has launched a broadside against efforts to reduce gases that cause climate change, including by freezing clean energy spending, slashing environmental staff and research, scrubbing the words “climate change” from websites, and rethinking decades of science showing the harms of global warming to human health and the planet. Experts and education leaders say those actions — some of which have been challenged in court — are disrupting, but not extinguishing, efforts by schools and colleges to curtail their emissions and reduce their toll on the planet.

• RFK Jr. pauses program to help low-income families get air conditioning. From the Guardian:

  The Department of Health and Human Services is holding about $378 million of what’s left from the $4.1 billon authorized by Congress to help low-income families cool their homes as part of the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program.

---

Catch of the Day: Here’s lovely little Luna who lives on Salt Spring Island. She may not have that big a brain, but she's definitely thinking it over.

Thanks to reader Murray for the submission.

Want to see your furry (or non-furry!) friend in HEATED? Just send a picture and some words to catchoftheday@heated.world.