Trump Admin. Under Fire: A Secret Report Aims to Rewrite Climate Science
A confidential dossier, five authors aligned with the most climate-skeptical positions, and a serious accusation: rewriting science for political purposes. This is what the Trump administration is being challenged on, in a federal lawsuit filed by environmental groups against the Department of Energy (DOE) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
The document, commissioned in March by Secretary of Energy Chris Wright and published under the title “A Critical Review of the Impacts of Greenhouse Gas Emission on U.S. Climate”claims that global warming may be less harmful than previously expected and that part of the phenomenon should be attributed to natural cycles rather than fossil fuels. The authors also suggest that increased carbon dioxide could even benefit plant growth.
This reading has provoked strong reactions from the scientific community. The Union of Concerned Scientists and the Environmental Defense Fund, nonprofit organizations composed of scientists, engineers, and policy experts, have identified over a hundred claims they consider false or misleading, accusing the government of cherry-picking data to support the rollback of greenhouse gas regulations. Rachel Cleetus, director of climate policy at UCS, stated that the report appears designed to provide the EPA with a legal pretext to avoid addressing the risks of the climate crisis.
Phil Duffy, former science advisor under the Biden and Obama administrations, also called the report incomplete and misleading, noting that it misrepresents peer-reviewed research and ignores the international consensus on the human contribution to global warming. Veteran researcher Ben Santer added that many publications, including his own, were distorted to reach conclusions that serve political objectives.
Critics also point out that the five authors selected by Wright, a former oil and gas executive, are known for positions contrary to scientific consensus, with some having ties to the fossil fuel industry. Wright himself, in an editorial published months ago, described climate changes as a “byproduct of progress,” arguing that they do not represent the primary threat compared to the need to ensure reliable, low-cost energy.
Environmental organizations have therefore brought the case before a federal judge, accusing the defendants of creating the Climate Working Group 2025 in violation of the Federal Advisory Committee Act, which requires transparency and balanced representation on advisory committees. The lawsuit seeks to prevent the government from using the report, already cited 22 times by the EPA, to justify the repeal of the Endangerment Finding, the 2009 scientific determination recognizing greenhouse gases as a risk to public health.
Federal offices have not issued responses. The EPA stated that it does not comment on ongoing litigation, while the DOE has made no statements. Meanwhile, the scientific community remains concerned that the administration may even be attempting to intervene in the National Climate Assessment, the reference report on U.S. climate. A former author of the report summarized the concern with a telling comparison: Wright would have no authority to rewrite it “just as an ordinary citizen could not revisit a classic literary work without fundamentally altering its original meaning.”