Over a dozen Republican attorneys general demanded Wednesday that the Trump administration suspend or yank funding for a taxpayer-funded scientific organization over politically biased climate change activism, according to a letter obtained by The Daily Wire.
Led by Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen, the GOP officials said that a chapter included in the “Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence: Fourth Edition” produced by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine failed to disclose links to climate litigation advocacy. Knudsen demanded that the Departments of Energy, War, and Transportation cut funding to the National Academies over the chapter in question.
Knudsen wrote that the chapter “was designed to influence judges in multi-billion-dollar climate cases, was funded by climate litigation funders, was written by academics with little relevant scientific expertise and documented financial and institutional ties to climate litigation advocacy, and was shaped by a climate plaintiffs’ attorney.”
The letter was addressed to Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy, Secretary of Energy Chris Wright, and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth. The Pentagon declined to comment.
Knudsen said that the academies should be suspended or disbarred from “all federal contracts and grants across the executive branch.” The National Academies received tens of millions of dollars in grant money every year from the federal government.
“Taxpayer dollars should not be used to fund efforts that impartially influence judges. Given multiple opportunities, NASEM and NSF still refuse to take responsibility for publishing a biased climate science manual violating their public commitments and legal obligations,” Knudsen told The Daily Wire. “The organizations producing these manuals and pushing their climate agendas on judges must be investigated and all funding to them should stop. As Attorney General, I will continue to sound the alarm until we put an end to their deception.”
The manual was produced with the Federal Judicial Center to serve as a guide for federal judges. Last month, the judicial center removed the climate chapter from its version of the book after more than two dozen Republican attorneys general warned it could improperly influence their decisions. They urged the National Academy in February to do the same.
One issue raised by Knudsen regarding the flagged chapter was that the manual was funded in part by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation has reportedly donated to the Collective Action Fund, a group that has contributed money to climate litigation firm Sher Edling. The attorneys general argue that this creates a conflict of interest and violates the terms of an $875,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to the National Academy to develop the manual.
The attorneys general also pointed to the ties between the chapter’s authors and reviewers and climate change advocacy. Jessica Wentz, one of the authors, is a fellow at Columbia Law School’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law. She wrote in an amicus brief opposing the development of an oil drilling project in Alaska that “the world needs to phase out fossil fuels as rapidly as possible in order to avert potentially catastrophic levels of global warming and climate change.”
The Sabin Center has received support from the Rockefeller Family Fund, which has, in turn, reportedly funded “a wave of litigation” against the fossil fuel industry.
Radley Horton, another co-author of the chapter in question, is a professor at Columbia University’s Climate School. Horton, who has previously trained judges on climate litigation, has said that “it’s absolutely critical that there be a global effort to do everything we can to dramatically draw down emissions.”
Columbia University’s Climate School, which has a Center for Sustainable Development funded by the Rockefeller Brothers, a group that has also donated to the Collective Action Fund.
Those acknowledged in the chapter included Michael Burger, who is representing Honolulu in litigation against energy companies, and Michael Gerrard, who has advocated for “decarbonization” through climate-related lawsuits. Burger serves as counsel for Sher Edling, the climate activist firm.
In the initial stages of planning for the fourth edition of the manual, it was suggested by the National Academies that the new manual would be “accessible to judges who might be more skeptical of climate science’s methods and conclusions.” Scientists skeptical of climate change theories were listed off as “not credible.”
The attorneys general also say that no reviewers of the manual represented “materially different viewpoints on climate science,” which they said was a violation of the National Science Foundation grant.
In light of these issues, the Republican officials say that the Trump administration should cut funding for the National Academies, which in 2024 received $84 million in contracts or grants from the Department of Transportation, $7 million from the Department of Energy, and $33 million from the Department of War.
They also called for Congress to initiate an investigation into the development of the manual.
Other states that signed on include Alaska, Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, West Virginia, and Wyoming.
The National Science Foundation declined to comment.
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