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For months, my colleagues and I have been planning for the results of the U.S. presidential election, knowing that even a small shift in votes could have big policy consequences. We prepared for multiple election scenarios, including a second Trump administration. We knew that this outcome would pose real threats, even more escalated this time around, to our hard-fought wins on policies that have a real and positive impact on people’s lives, from clean energy to pollution control to scientific and public participation process improvements.
But no matter who holds power in Washington, D.C., independent, trustworthy science is essential for guiding government decisions. President-elect Trump’s threats to fire scientists, attack science-based policies, and dismantle scientific agencies put all of us at risk. At the Union of Concerned Scientists, we are committed to defending the scientific process, scientific integrity, and the thousands of federal scientists who work in the public interest, in the next four years and for the long term.
What’s The Plan?
We’re proud of the ways we helped expose and contain the threats to science and the public interest in the first Trump administration. We’ll need to bring the same energy and focus to the new threats that are already apparent, and those that we can’t see coming. But we’re prepared—and we don’t have the option of complacency. When science is sidelined, people get hurt.
UCS is launching a campaign—Save Science, Save Lives—to mobilize our network of over 17,000 scientists to support and champion the thousands of people doing science in federal government that the Trump administration has promised to push out or fire. We also will work with our Science Network members to oppose anti-science nominees who prioritize the interests of polluters and special interests over the health and safety of people. We and our supporters around the country are ready to fight back against disappearing data, suppressed and censored scientific studies, and other assaults on science by calling public attention to the administration’s actions.
We will work with our Science Network members to use the public comment process, the media, our online channels, and their own platforms to expose and explain the attacks we’re sure to see, as well as to signal their support for federal scientists. We also will support scientists who testify before Congress, organize scientist visits to congressional offices, and provide congressional champions with the resources they need to scrutinize and challenge administration actions.
Our Science Network members are also involved in our Science Hub for Climate Litigation, which provides expertise to inform legal cases seeking to hold oil companies and their allied organizations accountable for fraud and climate damages.
UCS has helped pushed federal agencies in the current Biden administration to create scientific integrity policies that protect scientists’ ability to follow their research wherever it leads and speak openly and honestly with the public about their findings. Based on their campaign rhetoric, the Project 2025 anti-government agenda, and the initial announcements of nominees, we know that the Trump administration will be coming into its second term with an emboldened and damaging anti-science and anti-regulatory agenda wanting to strip away public protections in favor of corporate profits. To protect scientific freedom and integrity of the scientific process that informs government decisions, we will also advocate for the passage of the bipartisan Scientific Integrity Act, which would make these policies a legal requirement regardless of who holds the presidency.
We’ve Been Here Before
As we head into this new political reality, we have both the benefit of our foresight and our previous experience. We learned a lot from 2017 to 2021 that we’ve taken with us into our planning. Here are just a few of the ways we were able to challenge the Trump administration:
Tracking Attacks on Science
Our experts scrutinized the Trump administration and how it treated science and scientists. During the administration’s four years in office, we tracked over 200 attacks on science and showed how this unprecedented pattern of abuse posed real harm, especially to underserved communities. We offered federal scientists secure channels to communicate with us, and gave support and a platform to scientists and experts ousted from the administration and its advisory boards, including Joel Clement and Betsy Southerland. We worked extensively with a broad coalition of partners, including supporting the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative’s effort to host data and web content that the administration removed. We surveyed thousands of scientists across federal agencies and found concerns about morale, understaffing, and political interference, and we documented the exodus of federal scientists from key agencies. Our reports Sidelining Science Since Day One and Science Under Siege at the Department of the Interior helped tell the story of how the administration’s failings and disregard for science put people, communities, and ecosystems at risk.
Preventing a Cover-Up on PFAS Chemicals
In the spring of 2018, UCS researchers obtained emails between Trump administration officials, including EPA and OMB staff, about an upcoming report on PFAS chemicals from the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry. Calling it a potential “public relations nightmare,” Trump administration political appointees tried to suppress the study. But their plans backfired when UCS shared those emails with journalists, exposing the political interference and shining a spotlight on the danger of PFAS to human health. Partly as a result of these efforts, the dangers of PFAS became a national issue, with wide coverage in national and local outlets, and strong calls for action from UCS and other advocates for better protections. Under the following Biden administration, EPA identified these chemicals as a hazardous substance and issued the first ever drinking water standard for PFAS chemicals, thanks to the heightened public pressure.
Setting the Record Straight on Particulate Matter Pollution
In the fall of 2018, the Trump administration upended the process for setting National Ambient Air Quality Standards—limits on certain types of health-harming air pollution. They replaced qualified members of EPA’s Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee with more industry-friendly members and completely dismissed an advisory body of experts on particulate matter, a common and dangerous form of air pollution. This was a clear attempt to allow the administration to keep the status quo, rather than strengthen rules protecting people from this pollution. UCS re-convened the ousted scientists as a parallel panel to independently review the scientific evidence. The panel issued a report concluding that the standards the Trump administration kept in place didn’t adequately protect human health.
Based in part on the work of the independent panel, the Biden administration re-opened the process and eventually put in place a stronger standard.
Fighting Restrictions on EPA Science
A long-standing priority of polluting industries and their political allies has been to constrain federal agencies’ ability to rely on certain public health data—like personal medical records—which are kept private by law. This would devastate efforts to protect the public from pollution, pesticides, and hazardous chemicals by forcing agencies to ignore the science that actually helps us understand these problems. It’s a cynical tactic that repeatedly failed in Congress, but Trump’s EPA tried to implement it anyway. UCS led the effort to block these restrictions.
UCS experts and our partners laid the groundwork to explain why these science restrictions were a bad policy. When the rules were first introduced in 2018, more than 1,000 scientists joined an open letter in opposition to the rules, and more than 600,000 public comments were filed during the rulemaking process, making this one of the most-commented-on rule proposals in EPA history. UCS uncovered internal emails showing that this proposal was driven purely by politics, not science, and we noted that EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt skirted his own scientific advisory board in the process. UCS also convened a public hearing on the proposal after the EPA refused to. Despite the agency’s public messaging, the move was met with a wave of headlines accurately describing the new policy as “controversial limits” on science that scientists and public health professionals widely opposed. Thanks to public pressure, EPA didn’t finalize the science restriction rule until the lame-duck period of 2021—in such a rushed and sloppy fashion that the incoming administration was able to quickly withdraw it.
Calling All Science Advocates
We learned valuable lessons from the first Trump administration: rallying supporters, collecting evidence and preserving scientific records, documenting abuses, and pushing back on—and in some cases preventing—the administration’s efforts to undermine science and public protections. The biggest lesson we learned is that we’ll need to be attentive, nimble, creative, collaborative with others in the fight, and position our resources strategically for a long fight.
And we’ll need your help to signal our support for federal science and scientists that help secure protections for our air, water, soil and food. Our best asset is our network of thousands of committed scientists and science advocates ready to act nationally and in their communities. Join us! Sign up for our e-newsletter, join the Science Network, share our reports and analysis with your decisionmakers, or become a member to stay involved and support these efforts.
