US Politics: Democrats at COP31 as Trump Skips Summit

The latest us politics story from Antalya, Turkey, is a tale of two Americas at the same climate summit. Nineteen Democratic members of the United States House of Representatives are arriving at COP31, the United Nations climate conference, determined to show the world that the United States has not walked away from the fight against climate change. The Trump administration, meanwhile, has sent nobody at all. For the second year in a row there is no official American government delegation at the annual talks, and the Democratic lawmakers making the trip have had to do it without the State Department travel support that congressional delegations normally receive, relying instead on funding from a philanthropic green group.

The split captures the strange position the United States now occupies in global climate diplomacy. The summit, formally the 31st Conference of the Parties, opened on Monday, November 9, in the Turkish resort city of Antalya, bringing together negotiators from close to 200 countries for two weeks of talks that run through Friday, November 20. Turkey is hosting the conference while Australia leads the formal negotiations, and the gathering also marks the tenth anniversary of the Paris Agreement entering into force. Yet the world’s largest economy is present only through opposition lawmakers, state governors, business leaders and city officials — not through its own government.

Democratic party news: a delegation without a government

The Democratic delegation is due in Antalya from November 14 to 16, according to a media advisory from the Sustainable Energy and Environment Coalition Institute, known as the SEEC Institute, which is helping to cover the cost of the trip. The institute, set up in 2024 to connect congressional leaders with the private sector, civil society, advocates, academics and other experts on climate and energy policy, complements a House caucus with more than 100 members. Politico reported in October that the institute was giving the lawmakers financial help to make the journey, and The Guardian reported that the lawmakers, all Democrats, had been denied the State Department help that congressional travellers normally get and were relying on philanthropic funding to attend.

The man at the centre of the congressional delegation is Representative Sean Casten, a Democrat from Illinois and a vice chair of the House Sustainable Energy and Environment Coalition. Casten, a former environmental entrepreneur, is currently a candidate to become chair of the House Financial Services Committee, challenging the panel’s top Democrat, California Representative Maxine Waters. He did not hide his frustration at the arrangements the delegation had been forced to make. “I’m glad we found a way to get there, but it is insane,” he told The Guardian. “We have a lot of rebuilding to do. It hinges on Congress to maintain diplomatic continuities at COP and minimize the damage until adults are back in the White House.”

Casten also acknowledged that other countries have watched American climate commitments swing back and forth with each change of administration. “We go in with a fair amount of humility — as important as we are, the U.S. has been an extremely unreliable partner on climate,” he said. “But going to COP on the heels of these results feels a lot better. It can be a much more positive process now.” The results he meant were the midterm elections of November 3, in which Democrats won control of both the House of Representatives and the Senate, a victory that has changed the mood around the American presence in Antalya even though the new Congress does not take its seats until January.

The institute has yet to name all nineteen members of the delegation, saying the names and public events would be announced by press release once the delegation arrived in Antalya. What is known is the shape of their public schedule. On November 14, the delegation is listed as holding a conversation “with Amazon leadership and congressional participants” on clean energy policy, and on November 16 the schedule lists a session titled “Accelerating Decarbonization to Drive Down Global Demand for Oil and Gas.” The delegation will hold a press conference on November 16, and the institute said its members “will return with new relationships and firsthand insights they can turn into congressional priorities.” Its executive director, Max Frankel, said the delegation would focus on climate security, resilience, electrification and affordability.

The funding arrangement is not new for the institute. In June, it paid for five House Democrats, Casten included, to travel to France and Belgium, according to a post-travel disclosure that Democratic North Carolina Representative Deborah Ross filed with the House clerk. Their transportation cost anywhere from $2,491 to $4,764 apiece, and they flew commercial. Lawmakers need written approval from the House Ethics Committee before they go on a privately sponsored trip, and after the trip they have fifteen days to report the costs to the clerk.

Trump administration: why Washington stayed home

The absence of an official American delegation is a deliberate decision, not an oversight. A White House official confirmed to The Guardian that the Trump administration would not be sending anyone to Antalya. “This summit rejects reality by failing to acknowledge that extremist climate policies are destroying countries around the world,” the official said. The State Department said in an email to NPR that the United States was not sending a delegation. It skipped last year’s summit in Brazil, too, making COP31 the second consecutive year without an official American presence.

President Donald Trump has been consistent in his position. He has repeatedly dismissed climate change as a hoax, and in September 2025 he told world leaders at the United Nations that climate change was “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world.” His administration has withdrawn the United States from the Paris Agreement and moved to withdraw the country from the broader United Nations climate framework entirely. Because of that withdrawal, COP31 will be the last of these summits with the United States as an official party, The Guardian reported. The administration has also rolled back environmental regulations at home and expanded support for traditional fossil fuel industries, arguing that the costs of climate policies fall hardest on working families and American industry.

The decision places the United States in a small and shrinking group. Around 197 countries are represented at the talks, and the absence of the American government has been noted by delegates and campaigners alike. A recent United Nations report found that the United States stood out among the world’s twenty largest economies as a major exception for increasing carbon emissions rather than reducing them, adding 133 million tons of greenhouse gases from fossil fuel combustion.

Midterm elections 2026: the result that changed the mood

The trip comes days after Democrats won control of the House and the Senate in the November 3 midterm elections, and that timing is central to why the delegation’s presence matters. International delegates and climate advocates at COP31 have greeted the Democratic sweep with optimism, seeing it as a possible opening for a revival of American climate leadership after the Trump presidency. Democratic lawmakers attending the summit acknowledge that the United States has been an unreliable climate partner historically, and say they are committed to rebuilding international confidence. But they also recognise the limits of what they can achieve while Trump holds the White House. The president’s veto power will block comprehensive climate legislation during the remainder of his term, which runs until January 2029.

What the new majorities can do, the delegation argues, is preserve diplomatic continuity and exercise oversight. Congressional Democrats say their electoral gains could strengthen oversight of the administration’s environmental decisions, and the lawmakers in Antalya say they intend to turn the relationships and firsthand insights from the summit into congressional priorities once the new Congress convenes. One figure to watch is Representative Zoe Lofgren, a Democrat from California, who is likely to become chair of the House committee on science, space and technology, a post that would put her at the centre of climate and energy oversight.

The Democratic presence in Antalya is not limited to Congress. Democratic California Governor Gavin Newsom is leading a delegation of his own, his office announced on Tuesday. His wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, is part of the delegation, along with Natural Resources Secretary Wade Crowfoot, Public Utilities Commission President John Reynolds and Air Resources Board Chair Lauren Sanchez, among others. The governor’s announcement did not say how the delegation would travel or who was paying, and Newsom’s office did not respond to questions about the trip. Former Secretary of State John Kerry, who served as the Biden administration’s climate envoy, was also at the summit. Kerry spoke at a plenary session in Antalya, saying that moving the world off fossil fuels “is the prime discussion that we need to engage in” during a 2028 review of global climate policy.

COP31: what the summit is deciding

The negotiations themselves are the reason the summit exists, and the Democratic delegation’s visit is only one thread in a much larger gathering. The talks bring together negotiators from close to 200 countries, and the agenda includes the future of fossil fuels, the financing of climate adaptation in poorer countries, and the mechanisms for tracking national commitments under the Paris Agreement. The 2028 review of global climate policy, which Kerry referred to in his plenary address, is shaping up as a key moment, and the decisions taken in Antalya will help determine what that review can achieve. The United Nations has concluded that limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius is no longer attainable, projecting a rise of 2.6 degrees under current commitments — a finding that has added urgency to the negotiations and to the argument, made by the Democrats in Antalya, that the world cannot afford to wait for a change of government in Washington.

For the Democrats in Antalya, the summit is both a diplomatic mission and a political statement. Their presence says that the United States, as a country, has not abandoned the climate fight, even though its government has. Their message to the other delegations is that the midterm results changed the direction of American politics, and that the next two years will be spent keeping the door open for a return to international climate cooperation.

What happens next will be decided in two places at once. In Antalya, the negotiations continue through November 20, with the Democratic delegation holding its press conference on November 16 and its members returning to Washington with the relationships and insights they say will become congressional priorities. In Washington, the new Congress convenes on January 3, and the Democrats who travelled to Turkey will take their seats with subpoena power and committee gavels.

Source: France 24