‘Brazen Violation’: Trump Administration’s Disdain for Advisory Committees Has Now Gotten Them Sued

By Dave Levitan | August 18, 2025 | 11:47am

Photo via The White House/Wikimedia Commons

Climate Chris Wright

‘Brazen Violation’: Trump Administration’s Disdain for Advisory Committees Has Now Gotten Them Sued

The report itself is already subject to widespread disdain, for what it’s worth. One can find any number of articles out there featuring actual scientists taking aim at the Department of Energy’s absurdist climate denial screed, spewed forth in a few short months while actual climate science reports were purged from their websites; that won’t stop the rest of the government — like the EPA, say — from using its bullshit conclusions, but it is nice at least to see the pushback. And on Friday, the outcry turned legal: the Union of Concerned Scientists and Environmental Defense Fund sued the Department of Energy, as well as EPA and both agencies’ leadership, for actual violation of laws surrounding how reports like that are actually supposed to come about.

“This report is a brazen violation of federal law that undermines our government’s role in addressing climate change, putting millions of Americans in harm’s way,” said EDF Senior Attorney Erin Murphy, in a statement. The issue here stems from the Federal Advisory Committee Act, passed in 1972: according to the lawsuit, that law mandates “transparency in the establishment and operation of any federal advisory committee, including by requiring that the group’s formation be promptly disclosed and that its meetings, emails, and other records be open to the public.”

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In the case of the DOE report, hilariously titled “A Critical Review of Impacts of Greenhouse Gas Emissions on the U.S. Climate,” none of that seems to have happened. Per the EDF and UCS, Energy Secretary Chris Wright collected a group of “hand-picked skeptics” way back in March to form the “Climate Working Group,” and not a single meeting or other document was produced until the report itself was made public in late July. Almost simultaneously, the EPA released its proudly ignorant plan to rescind the 2009 endangerment finding, potentially undercutting the country’s efforts to lower emissions entirely; it specifically cited the DOE report from the Secret Dumbass Quintet as justification.

The plaintiffs, who are asking for a court to essentially disband the Working Group immediately and release all records related to it, also pointed out that Wright violated FACA’s prohibition on stacking an advisory body with a single point of view. “The Climate Working Group’s members were all chosen for their skepticism of climate science, and the group does not have a single member that agrees with the consensus of the overwhelming majority of the scientific community on the effects of climate change,” the lawsuit states.

Elsewhere in the Trump administration, the misuse of advisory committees and boards has gone in the opposite direction, with HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., in particular acting to disband or eliminate entities like the National Cancer Institute’s Board of Scientific Advisors or even, potentially, the US Preventive Services Task Force. Kennedy also did reconstitute the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices with friendly — to him and his weirdo views, that is; not to, you know, literally anyone else — faces, but he at least appeared to do so relatively publicly. Wright’s innovation here was, as an EDF memorandum filed in support of the lawsuit says, to “violate all of FACA’s requirements.”

In one sense at least, the damage here is already done. The report is out, and the EPA has gleefully used it to push the biggest rollback of scientific policy progress it can think of; though a public comment period on that move remains, the zealots in charge of it aren’t likely to retreat. It does seem, though, that at least the letter of the law is clear in this case.

“Secretary Wright unlawfully formed, in secret, a group of climate skeptics to write a report filled with inaccuracies and misrepresentations about climate change—and EPA Administrator Zeldin is trying to use it to undermine pollution limits,” the EDF’s Murphy said. “That would make life less safe and less affordable for millions of people all across the country.”