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The first Trump administration had a combative relationship with government scientists, but this time, some scientists have contracts to protect their work. 

Last week, the Trump administration purged data from several health agencies. It also dismissed all members of two important science advisory panels at the Environmental Protection Agency, so the administration can appoint its own members, as reported by Inside Climate News. The panels are in charge of science, and clean air. This echoed a move during the first Trump administration to have more industry consultants and Trump-friendly scientists, rather than university researchers. 

During the first Trump administration, some government scientists say politically appointed administrators interfered with their research. Because of that, the unions for agencies like the Department of Agriculture and the Environmental Protection Agency signed contracts during the Biden Administration to include scientific integrity policies that would protect their work from undue political interference. 

Climate change scientist Patrick Gonzalez, who had been working for the National Park Service for decades, had to defend a scientific journal article from his supervisor in 2018. He had co-authored research about the impact of climate change on national parks. His supervisor called and asked him to remove or change the phrase “anthropogenic climate change,” because, according to his supervisor, “political appointees in the Department of the Interior would not like it.”

“She was afraid about funding cuts,”  Gonzalez said. “So she tried for approximately an hour and a half to get me to delete text. And I told her I would not change a single word of scientific content for non-science reasons.” 

They went back and forth for months, but Gonzalez insisted, and eventually, the journal published the article as he and the co-authors had written it. 

Later, he got a cease and desist letter for testifying to Congress about this work. 

Gonzalez left the National Park Service in 2021, and is now at the University of California Berkeley. The National Park Service did not respond to a request for comment. 

There were many other instances of political interference into science during the first Trump administration, said Marie Owens Powell, president of the union that represents thousands of employees at the Environmental Protection Agency. She has worked at the EPA for more than 30 years, under several different presidents. 

As an example, she pointed to an incident in 2017, when the EPA administrator removed several agency websites with climate data and information about climate change, saying they needed to “eliminate confusion by removing outdated language.”

Powell said the first Trump administration actually made these changes because it did not agree with research on climate change, or environmental regulations. 

“The hostility that I observed and the direct animosity toward our workers that I observed under the (first Trump) administration was unprecedented,” she said, adding that the confusion took a toll on morale. 

“It was debilitating. You had no control over anything you were working on. There were conferences that people had planned on attending or presenting at for a long time. They were withdrawn from those things.” 

Powell said many scientists left rather than work under Trump during his first term. But this time, the EPA union has a contract which says, among other things, that employees can go to conferences, talk to the press, and “generally participate in the free flow of “scientific information” as long as they do not inappropriately imply that they speak for the agency. 

“It is my sincere hope that having scientific integrity intertwined in our contract as an article will be enough to hopefully prevent those that would try to interfere from interfering.” 

Earlier this month, the union joined a lawsuit against the Trump administration for creating a new class of federal employee that can be easily hired or fired. 

“That is not a science choice.” 

Daren Bakst, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, said presidents have always directed scientific agencies based on political beliefs. The Competitive Enterprise Institute is a think tank that does policy research and advocates for “limited government, free enterprise, and individual liberty.”

Bakst cited an example from the Carter administration, which fired the director of the U.S. Geological Survey “allegedly because of statements made about: he was more confident that we were not going to run out of oil and gas.” 

Bakst said another problem with guidelines on scientific integrity is that government agencies sometimes make policy decisions that are irrelevant to their specific discipline. As an example, he pointed to the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, which works on dietary guidelines for Americans every five years. In the 2015 report, the committee said that part of their discussion included climate change, and how sustainable diets would be. Bakst said the committee should not have discussed those issues. 

“That is not what the purpose of the dietary guidelines is supposed to be about,” he said. “That is veering off mission. That is not a science choice. That is a policy, ideological choice.” 

After the first Trump administration, more government agencies have committed to scientific integrity policies, including the Department of Agriculture and the National Institutes of Health. In 2022, the Government Accountability Office recommended that the government health agencies, like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, train their staff on how to report political interference in their work. 

Powell, from the EPA union, said this means government scientists and agency leaders from previous administrations agreed to find ways to protect the work of scientists from political whims as administrations change.

“It is very telling when you can have across the board agencies not only agreeing to, but seeking to have scientific integrity articles built into their collective bargaining agreements.”