During the first Trump administration, Virginia Burkett, the government’s top scientist, felt like she had a target on her back.
He has fought efforts by Trump officials to end climate research programs while rejecting their requests to change the country’s first report on how global warming is affecting every region of the country.
But Dr. Burkett says he paid the price. In his complaint, he said the Trump administration retaliated by demoting him and removing him as chairman of the committee responsible for the report.
His experience was part of a broader attack on science in the federal government during the Trump administration. Other scientists were also demoted or reassigned, projects were disrupted and scientists were pressured to withdraw their research or prevented from publishing it. Eventually, hundreds of scientists and environmental policy experts left the government.
But Dr. Burkett was reinstated by the Biden administration and remains in the government service, along with thousands of others. And as Mr. With Trump about to return to the White House, they have pushed for new policies and procedures to monitor political interference.
“I’m very concerned about protecting future scientists from the harm I suffered,” he said, echoing the views of current and former government scientists and policy officials interviewed for the article.
“Most people in the scientific community are shocked,” said Mark Sogge, a research geologist with the US Geological Survey who is retiring in 2021 and is in touch with former colleagues. “But I have never heard that people want to retire in large numbers. Many of them said, ‘I have the experience to help deal with this.'”
Another government official, who works in science and spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation by the Trump administration, said the administration started building the firewall four years ago. “We’ve been preparing since Day 1” of the Biden administration to better protect science and scientists, the official said.
Actions taken include the creation and expansion of scientific integrity policies at many federal agencies that detail how government scientists must conduct and publish research, what to do if political appointees try to block that work, and outline penalties for violations. Scientific integrity officers have recently been installed in several agencies to enforce the policies. And new union contracts have implications for political appointees who retaliate against scientists for pursuing policies.
The goal is to shine a bright public light on the work of government scientists and to guard against any attempts to suppress or manipulate it.
The Trump transition team characterized the efforts as preemptively blocking the incoming president’s ability to shape his policies.
“Biden is going against the will of the American people by doing everything in his power to make it difficult for President Trump to implement his popular agenda,” said Caroline Leavitt, spokeswoman for the change. “Despite these obstacles, President Trump will quickly fulfill the promises he made when he returns to the White House next week.”
“It may be that the purpose of these scientific integrity efforts is less to ensure that the best science is considered when making policy decisions and more to bolster support and entrench left-wing progressive policies in the administration,” wrote Representative James Comer, the Kentucky Republican who chairs the committee, in a document request.
Mr. Trump, who has called the established science of human-caused global warming a hoax, has promised to remove restrictions on greenhouse gas and smog pollution. His supporters say that soon after he is sworn in, he will remove the words “climate change” and “clean energy” from all of the agency’s websites. His reformers have prepared a series of directives to reorient the government away from climate change, including withdrawing the United States from the 2015 Paris climate accord, signed by nearly all countries.
The supporters of Mr. Trump also discussed moving the EPA headquarters and the agency’s seven thousand employees to Washington. During his first term, the administration moved the Bureau of Land Management to Colorado and moved two of the Department of Agriculture’s scientific research arms to Kansas, leading to a staff exodus.
During the Obama administration, the White House directed federal agencies to develop “scientific integrity policies,” setting out standard procedures and practices to be followed by government scientists. President Biden built on that, ordering agencies to expand and strengthen policies to “prevent undue political interference” and “prevent the suppression or distortion of scientific or technological findings, data, information, conclusions, or technical results.”
The Biden White House also ordered every cabinet agency to appoint a chief science officer and science integrity officers to implement the policies. There were less than a dozen science integrity officials at the end of the first Trump administration. Today, there are more than 30. The White House order requires these officials to be civil servants, not political appointees.
A 2023 memorandum from the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy defined scientific integrity as meaning that research is peer-reviewed, that scientists should be able to publicly voice objections without fear of retaliation, and that violations of scientific integrity policies should be treated as such. seriously as a violation of the government’s code of conduct, and it comes with consequences.
“It was like, okay guys, let’s strengthen these guardrails,” said Marijke van Heeswijk, a former senior scientist at the US Geological Survey, who retired in 2020 but has kept in touch with her former colleagues. “Until recently, we didn’t know anything. These laws were put in place to clarify what was understood before, and now it is laid down in black and white.”
White House officials admit there is nothing to stop future administrations from repealing or ignoring those policies.
“Any president can reverse any memorandum of the previous president,” said Kei Koizumi, deputy senior policy director at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. “But we see this as a public meeting between the federal government and the American people.”
Other agencies have reformed the system for reporting political interference in scientific work. At the US Geological Survey, scientists must report suspected misconduct to the agency’s inspector general, an independent watchdog, rather than to the agency’s top officials, who are often appointed by the president.
“Investigators provide the best opportunity to ask serious questions about violations of scientific integrity because they actually have the power to investigate and are not afraid to take on political leaders,” said Tim Whitehouse, executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility. a non-profit group that protects the rights of public employees.
The Union of Concerned Scientists, an advocacy group, sent a letter signed by 2,405 scientists to Congress asking members to “oppose efforts to politicize or eliminate the roles of scientists, organizations, and corporate research that protect our health, the environment, and our communities.”
Representative Paul Tonko, Democrat of New York and a member of the House Science Committee, plans to introduce legislation that would require government agencies to maintain and enforce scientific integrity policies. “Scientific integrity policies help, but now that we have a Trump reelection coming, we need the teeth of the law,” said Mr. Tonko in the conversation.
But the prospects for passage appear dim in the current Republican Congress.
Workers at other facilities are using labor contracts to cover the new protections. The new labor union contract at the Agriculture Department’s Economic Research Service, which was moved to Kansas from Washington during Trump’s first term, states that scientific findings cannot be changed by managers, who are not scientists or public relations staff, and cannot be freely discussed outside. an institution with no political influence.
At the National Institutes of Health, where many employees were frustrated by the way the Trump administration downplayed the risk of Covid at the start of the pandemic, the union contract finalized this month says any changes to the scientific integrity policy must be approved by union negotiators.
At the EPA, a union contract finalized in June 2024 allows employees to file a grievance if they experience retaliation for reporting scientific misconduct. It says that any employee who faces retaliation for pursuing the policy can seek a legally binding decision from an independent arbitrator.
“Under the previous Trump administration, we were very vulnerable,” said Marie Owens Powell, president of the EPA’s union. “This is one of the lessons we have learned. This article of scientific integrity creates new protections for scientists.”
Another resource is a non-profit organization, the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund, which provides free legal advice to climate scientists.
In December, the group held a packed workshop at the annual conference of the American Geophysical Union, a gathering in Washington of about 25,000 earth and space scientists from around the world.
“Compared to the Trump administration, government scientists are now free to come to us and use our legal aid, take legal action,” said Lauren Kurtz, the group’s executive director. “They’re not that afraid to rock the boat.”
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Around the corner from the EPA headquarters on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington is the National Environmental Museum, which opened last year. Joanne Amorosi, project manager, pointed to the top of the display celebrating Mr.
At the bottom of that exhibit, in small letters, it notes that Mr. Biden, who has done more than any president to fight climate change, has appointed a task force to promote climate change in federal agencies.
Ms. Amorosi noticed this conflict but added, “If he sees his name there, maybe he will be more inclined to keep it as it is.”
Hiroko Tabuchi reporting contributed.
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