On Monday, January 20, Donald Trump will be sworn in as President of the United States—for a second time.
We have been tracking attacks on science for a long time, including more than 200 that occurred during the previous Trump administration. Nothing about President-elect Trump’s campaign promises, post-election rhetoric, or proposed nominees and policies suggests things will be any different this time around. Indeed, we’re bracing for this administration’s actions to be much worse: a second term that promises to turn the executive branch plutocratic and personalist, ruled by the wealthy and toeing the whims of the leader.
The good news is we’re prepared. We’re on guard for a range of abuses of power:
- executive orders to reverse gains made in the Biden administration on scientific integrity, climate, and investments in historically marginalized communities
- executive orders to expand fossil fuel development or to weaken and gut the federal scientific infrastructure through Schedule F
- rollbacks of science-based rules—including vehicle emission standards and power plant carbon standards—that would undermine public health and disproportionately impact marginalized communities
- handouts and special treatment for fossil fuel companies to expedite energy projects and boost their profits at the expense of people and the environment
- pay-to-play corruption, allowing politically-favored corporate interests to get government contracts and friendly policies
- nominees who will undermine the mission of the agencies they’re appointed to lead
At the same time, we have launched our Save Science, Save Lives campaign to organize the scientific community and supporters of science-based policymaking to speak out against and challenge efforts to destroy data, bury evidence, and keep scientists from doing their jobs. Just this week, we mobilized more than 50,000 scientists and science supporters to urge the 119th Congress to protect science and federal scientists from the incoming administration in order to continue delivering public benefits.
We know the anti-science playbook, and we know which issues and policies are likely to come under attack. Here are the tactics we expect to see.
Attack or silence the messenger
The first Trump administration demonstrated a chilling pattern of punishing individual scientists for their work or disregarding it entirely.
The administration targeted federal scientific advisory committees—disbanding them or dismissing members and often failing to convene meetings of these advisors or listen to their recommendations. The Department of the Interior refused to let scientists present at conferences, the EPA likewise prevented scientists from presenting on climate change, and the Department of Agriculture required its scientists to hedge their peer-reviewed research. Two scientists at the Fish and Wildlife Service left the agency over pressure to alter their research. The administration even put layers of political oversight over CDC scientists’ ability to speak to the public about COVID-19. The Secretary of Commerce, Wilbur Ross, even threatened to fire meteorologists who disagreed with false statements President Trump made about the path of Hurricane Dorian.
In the waning days of the administration, Trump officials attempted to go after civil servants en masse by instituting “Schedule F.” What is Schedule F? It is a new designation that would have removed civil service protections from thousands of federal experts and shifted the workforce from career employees to unqualified political appointees. The Biden administration quickly reversed the November 2020 executive order that created Schedule F and put new protections in place in 2024. Trump transition officials have pledged to put Schedule F back in force, an attempt to make nonpartisan, career civil service positions an arm of the President’s political agenda.
Hide the truth
Over the course of the first Trump administration, there were more than 1,400 changes tracked to federal websites that removed vital scientific context for regulations around clean water, endangered species, and the climate. And repeatedly, the administration’s political appointees altered, edited, suppressed or ignored the scientific research carried out by their own staff. These incidents happened across agencies and on a wide range of policies.
Take vehicle emissions standards. EPA’s own scientists documented how the administration’s proposed vehicle rules fell short of what was technologically feasible and necessary to protect people’s health, but the Trump EPA simply ignored those documents and issued a rule based on error-filled and cherry-picked data, ignoring the toll their rule would take on drivers’ wallets and people’s respiratory health and sparking an internal investigation.
Chemical safety issues under the first Trump administration also stand out for willful disregard of science. The administration suppressed a report on PFAS chemicals, calling it a potential “public relations nightmare” that would put pressure on them to institute stronger regulations. Pesticides like Dicamba, Telone, Aldicarb, and Atrazine were approved for use at levels high above what EPA’s own science said was safe. Multiple scientists reported efforts to edit or block chemical safety assessments.
Political appointees repeatedly manipulated the CDC’s models to justify their efforts to loosen COVID restrictions and edited or delayed CDC reports the public deserved to see. And they tried to cover their tracks—telling CDC officials to delete an email showing this interference.
Wide-ranging agencies from the Department of the Interior to the Treasury to the Department of Labor experienced these kinds of efforts to hide the facts. It’s no wonder our 2018 federal scientist survey showed low morale and fears of inappropriate political influence or censorship. We’ll be watching for disappearing data in the months ahead.
Let polluting industries—especially fossil fuel interests—dictate the rules
The first Trump administration opened the doors wide for corporations to interfere with government oversight and maximize profits over public and worker safety. Industry called the shots on policy after policy.
This is especially true of the fossil fuel industry, which saw its longtime operatives like Andrew Wheeler, David Bernhardt and William Pendley taking on high-level jobs that oversee their former clients. Many of the more than 100 rollbacks of environmental policy during the first Trump administration were favors handed directly to the industry –making it cheaper and easier for fossil fuel companies to extract, refine, and burn their products without accountability for the pollution and harm that they cause. The Trump administration also made moves to increase extraction on public lands and bail out coal companies. In 2018, Department of Transportation experts put together a report on how “side guard” safety devices on heavy-duty trucks could help save lives, ultimately recommending a regulation that would require trucks to have side guards. But after meeting with the trucking industry, Trump political appointees removed the scientific data showing how truck side guards would save lives. The final document discarded the scientific language and included no recommendation at all.
Examples of inappropriate industry influence abound. The US Department of the Interior gave offshore oil drilling operators 1,679 waivers to exempt them from safety rules. The US Forest Service let a mining company write its own environmental assessment. And the US Department of Agriculture let poultry-processing plants increase their line speeds despite the risks it would pose to workers.
In some cases, the Trump administration nominated people straight from the regulated industries into roles overseeing those industries. Just a few examples: chemical industry lawyer Peter Wright was tapped to oversee Superfund cleanup efforts, drug company executive Alex Azar was nominated to head the Department of Health and Human Services, and the administration’s choice to head the Consumer Product Safety Commission, Nancy Beck, has a long record of trying to reduce health and safety protections while representing a chemical industry lobby group. Contrast, too, the Trump administration’s enthusiasm to take industry’s advice on its decisions with their efforts to suppress participation from impacted communities.
Stop collecting inconvenient data
One of the most basic and critical functions of many government scientists is to monitor and collect data—information without which we can’t effectively draw trends and conclusions to solve problems or make policy.
Then-President Trump vividly illustrated his cavalier attitude toward data in June of 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, saying that he told federal agencies to “slow the testing down, please,” because extensive testing was finding too many cases of COVID-19.
The strategy wasn’t often put that bluntly, but we spotted it again and again across agencies. Then-EPA administrator Andrew Wheeler put a stop to data collection of ammonia and hydrogen sulfide emissions from large farms. He also oversaw a new rule that let industrial facilities use less-effective methods to monitor their emissions of nitrogen oxides, and withdrew grants that funded research on how chemical exposures affect young children. Trump officials also withdrew an EPA request for oil companies to share information on their methane emissions. All this data could have helped shape policies to protect people—but the Trump administration chose otherwise.
We saw similar efforts to end policy-relevant data collection from other agencies, including the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission, the Consumer Financial Protection Board, the Treasury Department, and the Department of the Interior.
Unravel climate research
One of the most central areas of scientific work targeted by the first Trump administration, of course, was climate science. The fossil-fuel–allied and science-denying appointees of President Trump targeted climate science and scientists to prevent the federal government from taking any steps to keep it in check.
Climate change touches every aspect of our lives so understandably climate science research is woven into the work of many federal agencies. The Trump administration tried to stamp it out in a wide sweep, from the Army Corps of Engineers and U.S. Navy to the Department of Agriculture and the US Geological Service. The administration canceled 46 clean-energy studies and tried to block publication of EPA’s climate change indicators. In 2019, Trump infamously withdrew US from the Paris Climate Agreement.
What’s next?
We keenly understand the previous Trump administration’s playbook for undermining and censoring the scientific enterprise. The policy agenda outlined in Project 2025 for the second term and Trump’s early actions since the elections are already confirming his intent to charge ahead on all angles of that anti-science playbook. Just this time, the abuses and sidelining of science are sure to be more overt and wide-ranging. It’s also clearer whose input President-elect Trump and his allies respect—the most powerful, well-connected industry voices—and whose they want to ignore. The oil industry’s lobbyists and trade groups supported the President-elect’s campaign and are already giving their wish lists to the new administration. Many of Trump’s nominees for federal science agencies have a history of disregarding science or come from industry regulated by those agencies. Russell Vought, the nominee to head the Office of Management and Budget, has promised a “whole-of-government unwinding” of climate research and an assault on nonpartisan government workers, including scientists, intended to “put them in trauma” and drive them from their jobs.
But, at the Union of Concerned Scientists, we too are ready to defend science, the federal scientific workforce who do the solid independent research that critical decisions depend on, and the public’s right to know and participate in decisions that affect us all.
Building on the momentum of support we’ve received on the petition to the new Congress, we’ll organize scientists throughout the country to extend support to their peers in federal agencies while keeping the issue of science urgent for their elected representatives. We will ensure that Senate confirmation hearings scrutinize key Cabinet nominees for their qualifications to lead the agency, their conflicts of interests, their ability to recognize scientific consensus relevant to their agency, and their willingness to uphold scientific integrity and science-informed decision making in their agencies. In close collaboration with our long-term partners, peers and allies, we’ll expose and elevate abuses of science; mobilize the scientific community and its supporters to fight back; work with partners on the frontlines, in Congress, state governments, and civil society to preserve scientific process, protect data, and keep the federal government’s scientific work independent and intact.
There are opportunities for scientists and UCS members alike to play essential roles in all these efforts through our Save Science, Save Lives Campaign. Sign up today to take action and help us support scientists, pressure Congress, and build pro-science power.
There’s no diminishing the challenge ahead, but with your help, we can hold the line.