{"id":25159,"date":"2025-04-30T12:53:49","date_gmt":"2025-04-30T17:53:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/climatechange\/?p=25159"},"modified":"2025-04-30T12:53:49","modified_gmt":"2025-04-30T17:53:49","slug":"100-days-of-trump-2-0-silencing-science-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/climatechange\/2025\/04\/30\/100-days-of-trump-2-0-silencing-science-again\/","title":{"rendered":"100 Days of Trump 2.0: Silencing Science [Again]"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post is part of a new Climate Law Blog series,\u00a0<\/em>100 Days of Trump 2.0, in which the Sabin Center offers reflections on the first hundred days of President Trump\u2019s second term across a variety of climate-related topics. To read other posts from the series, which will roll out over the course of the next week, click\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

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One hundred days into Donald Trump\u2019s second term, there are many similarities between his administration\u2019s assault on science in the present and the assault on science we witnessed during his first term. At the very top of the list: his rejection of science and his willingness to break things. But his actions just three months into his return have been substantially more damaging than the first time around.<\/span><\/p>\n

In his first term, Donald Trump\u2019s attacks on science were so numerous and so extreme that we began documenting them in the <\/span>Silencing Science Tracker<\/span><\/a>, a collaboration between the Sabin Center and the <\/span>Climate Science Legal Defense Fund<\/span><\/a> (CSLDF). We later added anti-science actions by the Biden administration and state and local governments, and the Tracker now serves as a comprehensive record of the increasing number of ways governments are attempting to undermine science.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the first 100 days of Trump\u2019s first term, his administration\u2014among other things\u2014removed <\/span>all references to climate change<\/span><\/a> from the White House website; subjected Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) research to <\/span>review by the Trump transition team<\/span><\/a> before publication; <\/span>removed the word \u201cscience\u201d<\/span><\/a> from the EPA Office of Science and Technology Policy website; and restricted public communications by staff at the departments of <\/span>Health and Human Services<\/span><\/a> (HHS), <\/span>Agriculture<\/span><\/a>, <\/span>Interior<\/span><\/a>, <\/span>EPA<\/span><\/a>, and the <\/span>National Parks Service<\/span><\/a> (NPS).<\/span><\/p>\n

This was just the tip of the iceberg. The first Trump administration racked up a total of 338 Tracker entries over his first four years in office. These included removing climate change terminology from federal <\/span>websites<\/span><\/a> and <\/span>documents<\/span><\/a>, censoring <\/span>words and phrases<\/span><\/a> such as \u201cdiversity\u201d and \u201cscience-based,\u201d <\/span>preventing federal scientists<\/span><\/a> from attending conferences, and slashing or terminating funding for scientific research, including <\/span>research on children\u2019s health<\/span><\/a>. And let\u2019s not forget Trump\u2019s disastrous handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, including his suggestion regarding the use of <\/span>hydroxychloroquine<\/span><\/a> to \u201ccure\u201d the disease and his attempts to muzzle <\/span>Dr. Anthony Fauci<\/span><\/a> and other <\/span>HHS staff<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

This time around, we have already logged 61 entries, up from 39 in the same time frame in 2017, with more entries coming in almost daily. The nature of the attacks has mirrored previous patterns: censorship, budgetary reductions, misrepresentation of scientific data, and personnel changes. However, they have been much more aggressive\u2014the <\/span>Trump administration is going after entire agencies and <\/span>shuttering whole offices<\/span><\/a> dedicated to addressing climate change, rather than individual people or policie<\/span>s<\/span>\u2014and ultimately more destructive.<\/span><\/p>\n

In just the past three months, Trump has:<\/span><\/p>\n