PEER

-=-=

AN THOM 10 26

...Somebody seems to have misplaced fifty million dollars, and nobody in Trump’s orbit is in any hurry to find it. A decade ago, Congress set aside money for an America 250 celebration of our anniversary, but Trump ignored that (other than taking the money) and created his own, privatized “Freedom 250” celebration as a new grift to squeeze millions out of major donors like Chevron, United Airlines, and the defense giant RTX.

Now documents uncovered by the watchdog group PEER discovered that the events cost $128 million and at least $114 million of that came from our tax dollars, even though The Wall Street Journal says the “donors” kicked in at least $50 million and (my guess) probably much more. Trump passed out that money to his contractor friends with no competitive bidding whatsoever, and now refuses to say who gave him money, or how much, or even where the money went. Democrats suspect he just turned it into another slush fund for himself and his family; perhaps they should look for piles of cash in the bathrooms at Mar-a-Lago?

...

---

politico

Sitting duck’? Meet an EPA environmental justice staffer.

By Sean Reilly, Ellie Borst | 06/04/2025

The Trump administration’s gutting of diversity programs highlights a seeming paradox of vows to deliver clean air, land and water for “every American.”

Swati Rayasam, an EPA environmental protection specialist based in the San Francisco Bay Area, was notified in February that she was being placed on administrative leave with a potentially permanent layoff due to environmental justice-affiliated work for the agency. Sharada Prasad

Swati Rayasam knew her job at EPA would be upended. She just didn’t expect it to happen so soon.

“You are receiving this email because you have been identified as an EPA employee working in ‘environmental justice’ or a diversity, equity, and inclusion position and/or office,” the Feb. 6 message read.

Rayasam, an environmental protection specialist based in the San Francisco Bay Area, was immediately placed on paid administrative leave. Now threatened with a potentially permanent layoff, she’s one of hundreds of EPA employees facing dismissal or reassignment in a purge without precedent.

For Rayasam, it likely spells the end of a career begun only a year and a half ago. But the episode also highlights a seeming paradox at the heart of the Trump administration’s agenda as EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin highlights the importance of clean air, land and water for “every American.”

That, says Rayasam, is exactly what her job entailed.

With a background in ensuring that the laws apply “to all the people that live in this country,” she said in one of several video interviews with POLITICO’s E&E News, “I really saw the opportunity at the Office of Environmental Justice to make that a reality.”

Zeldin has axed Raysam’s job, as part of a drive to abolish EPA’s entire Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights.

That’s in line with President Donald Trump’s day one executive order to end initiatives related to diversity, equity and inclusion, which Trump has characterized as a form of reverse discrimination. Zeldin has described the move as “elimination of forced discrimination programs.” At EPA and other agencies, the administration has proceeded with implementation of the White House’s directive at striking speed.

Trump’s and Zeldin’s stances represent “the larger political discourse … and a fundamental misunderstanding of what environmental justice is,” Rayasam said.

Trump’s executive orders, for example, skate over the abundant studies showing that people of color and low-income communities are more likely to face exposure to dangerous pollution. By Rayasam’s description, environmental justice is woven by law into the work of EPA’s Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention, perennially swamped with reviews of new chemicals before they can go on the market.

That misunderstanding has left her, a public health scientist focused on chemicals policy, as “just a sitting duck,” she said.

Instead of doing a job where she mostly worked in tandem with the chemicals office, Rayasam now sits in limbo as her agency ID card gathers dust.

Her plight is emblematic of the whiplash accompanying the transition from President Joe Biden’s administration, which put an unparalleled emphasis on environmental justice, to Trump’s.

‘Too much work’

Her looming ouster results from Zeldin’s insistence that EPA circumscribe its activities only to those authorized by statute.

By his reading, that means EPA needs to reassign at least 100 staffers elsewhere within the agency to help clear the backlog of new chemicals awaiting review by the chemical safety office.

Major amendments passed to the Toxic Substances Control Act in 2016 created a new requirement for regulators to make a safety determination on each new chemical before it is allowed into the market, which industry trade groups complain has created significant wait times impeding the nation’s innovation and manufacturing capabilities.

The new TSCA amendments also require the agency to rein in dangerous uses of some of the most notorious industrial mainstays, such as asbestos or formaldehyde. The statute spells out the factors EPA must consider when deciding which existing substances will be prioritized for review, including consideration of “potentially exposed or susceptible subpopulations.”

Rayasam said that’s a “pretty explicit” example of a statute mandating environmental justice practices, and factoring in population and exposure variability is a relatively new priority for EPA.

That’s where the environmental justice office staffers stepped in, she said.

“EPA has always had too much work,” Rayasam said. “So [the Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights] provided a breath of fresh air, to be able to say … ‘You have all these people working to assist [the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention] on a specific thing that we’re trying to achieve. Not just because the administration thinks it’s important, but because the statute and statutory amendments actually call for it.'”

Take formaldehyde, for example.

It’s a compound fiercely defended by industry trade groups as critical for sterilizing medical devices and for the production of various building materials or consumer products.

But inhalation of its fumes can lead to cancer, according to the International Agency for Research on Cancer, and other serious long-term illnesses. Communities surrounding formaldehyde manufacturing plants are among the populations at risk for associated chronic illnesses, according to EPA’s final risk evaluation for formaldehyde.

Part of Rayasam’s job was to make sure EPA’s scientific assessments considered the impacts on largely overlooked — and highly exposed — communities in chemical risk assessments, such as formaldehyde exposure for people living in mobile homes.

“All the work that I did was also in the interest of EPA using the best available, most robust science that considered all the communities that it was required to consider, including [potentially exposed or susceptible subpopulations],” she said.

‘An ounce of prevention’

Environmental justice, according to a 1998 EPA definition, “means that no group of people should bear a disproportionate burden of environmental harms and risks, including those resulting from the negative environmental consequences of industrial, governmental, and commercial operations or programs and policies.”

According to Zeldin, environmental justice is “the desire is that these people or communities that have been left behind deserve and need attention to be able to remediate and deal with an environmental issue.”

“I couldn’t possibly agree with that definition more,” he said at a conference in March.

But Zeldin works for a president who has methodically razed decades of work to weave environmental justice into the fabric of the federal government’s day-to-day business.

And during various media appearances, Zeldin has blamed the Biden administration for losing sight of that core bipartisan goal and has targeted environmental justice work “as an excuse to fund left-wing activists” who diagnose what the problem is instead of on direct remediation of the issue.

In response to questions, EPA press secretary Carolyn Holran reemphasized Zeldin’s past comments, adding, “the Trump EPA is focused on providing clean air, land, and water for every American regardless of race, gender, creed, and background. … And we’ll do it without wasting billions in taxpayer dollars on left-wing activist giveaways.”

But Rayasam said Zeldin’s assessment overlooks the importance of preventing exposures before they happen.

“An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,” she said.

Raised in Durham, North Carolina, Rayasam grew up about an hour’s drive from Warren County, a primarily Black enclave where 1982 landfill protests are seen as a pivotal force in launching the environmental justice movement nationally.

She got degrees in biology and global health, then worked for almost five years in a program on reproductive health and the environment at the University of California, San Francisco. She started at EPA in November 2023.

“People thought I was going to come in like a hammer, basically, for EJ communities,” Rayasam said. “The first thing I would say to literally anybody is ‘You guys have a mountain of work, and I’m just here to try to figure out how to help you get it done. I’m here to pitch in, I would never ask people to modify anything that I was not willing to put my own skin in.'”

Joining Rayasam on the calls with E&E News were attorneys from Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), a worker advocacy group representing her and other idled environmental justice staffers in a complaint filed in April with the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, an ostensibly independent agency charged with enforcing federal workforce safeguards.

The complaint seeks to force EPA to put them all back to work partly on the grounds that federal law limits administrative leave to no more than 10 days per year. The special counsel’s office is now investigating, according to Laura Dumais, staff counsel for PEER.

A spokesperson for the special counsel’s office declined to comment.

In February, Trump fired the office’s chief, Hampton Dellinger, a Biden administration appointee who had been contesting the push to cashier thousands of probationary workers throughout the government. In Dellinger’s place, Trump named Jamieson Greer as acting head. Greer, who is also serving as U.S. trade representative, quickly dropped the inquiry into the firings. Trump last week said he was tapping Paul Ingrassia, a former right-wing podcast host, to lead the office.

“It really looks like the OSC is now under new management,” Dumais said. “It just really highlights the importance of an OSC that’s not controlled directly by the executive branch.”

*Sean Reilly and Ellie Borst can be reached on Signal at SeanReilly.70 and eborst.64.

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kid killer:

https://theintercept.com/2021/08/19/formaldehyde-leukemia-epa-trump-suppressed/

KOCH

intercept 921

Sharon Lerner

no lnx mANY DOC

a 2017 DRAFT assessment of formaldehyde that was suppressed by the Trump administration found that the chemical causes myeloid leukemia, according to several sources familiar with the document. The draft assessment concludes that 1 microgram of formaldehyde in a cubic meter of air increases the number of myeloid leukemia cases by roughly 3.5 in 100,000 people, more than three times the cancer risk in the assessment now in use. The EPA currently regulates formaldehyde using an outdated set of calculations, finalized in 1991, based on the risk of nasopharyngeal cancer. If the nasopharyngeal cancer and myeloid leukemia risks are combined, the cancer risk could be 4.5 times higher than the current value.

Although the suppressed assessment, produced by a division of the Environmental Protection Agency known as the Integrated Risk Information System, or IRIS, has grave implications for public health, Trump administration officials, including former EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler, refused to allow the agency to release the assessment, several sources told The Intercept.

If the Biden EPA permits IRIS to finalize the assessment, which is among the most controversial in the agency’s history, other branches of the EPA will likely set regulatory limits based on the new risk value. IRIS values are used to determine safety thresholds for the amounts of the chemical permitted in air and water, emissions caps from industrial facilities, and guidance for cleanups. Such thresholds also alert exposed people to the dangers they face.

“This is a big, big deal. It could trigger significant interest by the personal injury bar,” said Bob Sussman, who served as the senior policy counsel to the EPA administrator during the Obama administration and deputy EPA administrator under President Bill Clinton. “Even without including the leukemia, the risk is a significant one. With the leukemia, it’s certainly a very significant public health concern.”

Even using the much lower, outdated cancer risk number set in 1991, formaldehyde is already the greatest source of nationwide cancer risk from industrial air pollutants,estimated to cause roughly 18 of the 32 cancers in every 1 million people in the U.S. that are caused by toxic pollutants in the air, according to the EPA’s own data. If the risk values are increased by a factor of four or more, the reported cancer risk from formaldehyde will go up accordingly, revealing previously unrecognized cancer hot spots around the country.

Formaldehyde, mainly used to make plywood, particleboard, and glues, is also a hazard for millions of workers who are exposed to the chemical through the production of resins, wood composite and furniture production, plastics manufacturing, paper production, embalming, foundry work, fiberglass production, building construction, agriculture, firefighting, and the teaching of biology, among other occupations. The general public is exposed to formaldehyde through tobacco smoke, cosmetics, food and water, as well as “off-gassing” from consumer goods, construction materials, and furniture. In 2019, 662 facilities reported releasing 47.7 million pounds of formaldehyde.

In addition to looking at the chemical’s relationships to nasopharyngeal cancer and leukemia, the draft assessment also factored in evidence that formaldehyde causes decreased lung function, allergic conditions, reproductive and developmental toxicity, and sensory irritation.

In part because formaldehyde is so pervasive, a wide range of business interests have attempted to prevent the EPA from finalizing the assessment and publicly acknowledging the connection to leukemia. Until now, the EPA has kept the contents of its assessment under tight wraps. The leaked information provides a window into how the science and regulation around the chemical will finally be updated.

“Just knowing that the IRIS assessment acknowledges that formaldehyde causes myeloid leukemia is huge, regardless of what the value is,” Jennifer McPartland, a senior scientist at the Environmental Defense Fund, said after being told about the main findings of the draft assessment. “But the numbers tell you even more. They set the tone for how the agency will proceed with risk management.”

Assessment Was “Ready to Go”

While the EPA has claimed in court that the formaldehyde assessment did not exist in a form that allowed it to be shared — and used that argument to refuse to release it in response to a Freedom of Information Act request from the environmental whistleblower group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, or PEER — former EPA officials told The Intercept that the completed assessment not only existed but that it had also been prepared for release in early 2018.

“We had the document ready to go for review within the agency, but we were not allowed to proceed,” said Jennifer Orme-Zavaleta, former director of the EPA Office of Research and Development, who retired from the agency in July.“Political leadership did not want me to move it forward.”

Wheeler, the former EPA administrator, was among the Trump appointees who were involved in suppressing the calculation of the myeloid leukemia risk, according to one former agency official who worked on the assessment. “The administrator would not allow us to put out that number,” the former official said, going on to explain how members of the administrator’s office, particularly his chief of staff Ryan Jackson, kept an unusually close eye on the formaldehyde assessment.

“Normally when we’re doing an assessment, they [the staff of the administrator’s office] don’t have access to the guts of it, because it’s deliberative. But they would demand that we give them pieces of the assessment, including what literature we were looking at for dose responses,” the former official said, referring to the precise relationship between exposure and cancer risk. “Then they would share it with ACC,” an acronym for the American Chemistry Council. Although the former official provided no direct evidence of the administrator’s office sending out the segments of the assessment, they said the actions of the trade group made it clear that it had reviewed the unpublished material.

“All of a sudden, after we gave the information to Ryan Jackson, there would be all this targeted activity by ACC that would basically dismiss or disprove whatever mathematical methodology that we were going to be using even though it hadn’t been published yet,” said the former official. If the EPA did share the information with the trade group, the report would be subject to release under FOIA and would not be exempt under the “deliberative process privilege,” contrary to the agency’s claim in the PEER lawsuit.

WASHINGTON, DC - APRIL 26: Environmental Protection Agency Chief of Staff Ryan Jackson (R) listens to Administrator Scott Pruitt testify before the House Energy and Commerce Committee's Environment Subcommittee in the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill April 26, 2018 in Washington, DC. The focus of nearly a dozen federal inquiries into his travel expenses, security practices and other issues, Pruitt testified about his agency's FY2019 budget proposal. (]

Orme-Zavaleta confirmed that Jackson, who now works for the National Mining Association, played a key role in preventing the assessment from moving forward. “The ACC was in contact with Ryan a lot,” she said.

Asked about his role in the formaldehyde assessment, Jackson stated, “Following enactment of the Lautenberg Act, EPA placed formaldehyde though the risk evaluation required in that new law so formaldehyde could be directly regulated by EPA,” referring to the Trump administration’s decision to add formaldehyde to the list of chemicals to be evaluated under the Toxic Substances Control Act. That assessment has also yet to be completed or released. Jackson also stated that “I’m not contributing to anonymous rumors.”

Andrew Wheeler declined to comment. In an emailed statement, a spokesperson for the ACC wrote that the group “has never had access in any manner to unpublished findings from the formaldehyde draft IRIS assessment.”

Orme-Zavaleta also pointed to other Trump appointees who she said were apparently involved in suppression of the document. Among them was thedirector of the Office of Air and Radiation, Bill Wehrum, whose input Orme-Zavaleta needed to move the assessment forward. “A couple times we set up briefings for Bill Wehrum. But they canceled those briefings, and I was not given the OK to further the review within the agency.”

Dunlap Koch email to EPA

1 page

David Dunlap, who served as deputy assistant administrator in the EPA’s Office of Research and Development, also helped suppress the assessment, said Orme-Zavaleta. “When we were in the process of coming up with the priority list for IRIS assessments, a lot of those discussions were held during ‘politicals-only’ meetings, so I wasn’t there. But [Dunlap] was, he was our representative. Formaldehyde was on the list of chemicals being considered. And in November, I got back a short list of the chemicals IRIS would assess, and formaldehyde was not part of it,” she said. Dunlap worked for Koch Industries and defended formaldehyde until shortly before he joined the Trump administration in 2018. Dunlap did eventually recuse himself from work on the assessment, though only after formaldehyde was removed from the list of chemicals IRIS would be allowed to assess, according to Orme-Zavaleta. “I only received a copy of his recusal letter after I got the list of chemicals.”

David Dunlap declined to comment on the matter.

“EPA lied to us. And they lied to the court.”

Presented with information from Orme-Zavaleta and others about the completion of the assessment in 2017,PEER attorney Kevin Bell expressed anger and frustration. Bell oversees 3-year-old litigation against the EPA over the group’s Freedom of Information Act request for the assessment. In that case, the agency has insisted that it didn’t have a completed version of the document that it could publicly release.

“EPA lied to us. And they lied to the court,” said Bell. “They said, ‘We just can’t give you anything like this, because it would be totally full of all sorts of irrelevant things, so that it would totally undermine the deliberative process,’ whereas in reality they had a fully drafted document that was all set to go.”

The EPA declined to comment on Bell’s statement but did provide a broader response, saying that “EPA is committed to ensuring that science is at the backbone of everything the Agency does to deliver on our public health and environmental protection mission, and that we operate in a transparent manner to ensure public trust.” Bill Wehrum did not respond to requests for comment.

Decades of Industry Influence

The suppression of the most recent draft assessment follows many years of interference with government science on formaldehyde. IRIS began updating its original assessment of the chemical in 1997 but almost immediately ran into resistance from industry, particularly around the link to leukemia. A group called the Formaldehyde Council, Inc., which represented companies that used the chemical, began challenging the numbers in the assessment and came up with a cancer risk that was thousands of times lower than the EPA’s. Political appointees in the George W. Bush administration also helped industry postpone the release of the updated document. A 2008 Government Accountability Office report documented those delays and lamented the public health implications of having to rely on an IRIS assessment that was then 18 years old.

Yet that first assessment, completed three decades ago, is still guiding regulation. In the intervening years, both the International Agency on Cancer Research, or IARC, and National Toxicology Program, whose chemical reviews don’t have the regulatory weight of IRIS assessments, classified formaldehyde as a known human carcinogen and recognized it as a cause of leukemia. In 2010, the EPA released a draft of the updated assessment, which also found that formaldehyde caused leukemia, but did not finalize it. The ACC was harshly critical of that draft, and the agency sent the report to the National Academy of Sciences for peer review. The external agency confirmed its finding that formaldehyde causes cancer and encouraged the agency to quickly rewrite and reissue its report. But the EPA didn’t complete that work until 2016.

Vincent Cogliano, who directed the IRIS program from 2010 to 2017, said the delays during those years weren’t due to political or industry pressure. “We were really trying to get a very objective assessment released,” said Cogliano, who attributed the slow progress on the assessment in that period to the heavy workload of the small program. While Cogliano characterized some of the science around formaldehyde as complex, he said that no one on the IRIS staff disagreed about the relationship between myeloid leukemia and formaldehyde. “When I left the IRIS program in January 2017, I thought that it was ready to be released,” he said.

And yet more than four years later, the EPA has yet to release the updated IRIS assessment.

“It’s very frustrating,” said Linda Birnbaum, who directed the National Toxicology Program from 2009 to 2019. “Here there is evidence that IARC said that formaldehyde was a known human carcinogen. And we said it was a known human carcinogen and that the data was clear. And more data has come out since then, especially from the National Cancer Institute, yet no word from EPA.”

Formaldehyde was added back on to the list of chemicals being assessed on the IRIS public calendar in March. According to an EPA spokesperson, the IRIS Program anticipates releasing the draft assessment of formaldehyde for public comment and external peer review by September 30, 2022. The agency is widely expected to ask the National Academy of Sciences to weigh in on how and whether the agency should combine the cancer risk estimates for myeloid leukemia and nasopharyngeal cancer.

Orme-Zavaleta said that no one in the Biden EPA expressed hesitation about resuming work on it when she raised the issue in the first weeks of President Joe Biden’s tenure. “I asked them several times. I said, ‘I’m going to unsuspend formaldehyde, are you good with that?’ And every time, everybody said, ‘Fine, do it,’” she said. “It is moving!”

Despite the assurances, those intimately familiar with the history of formaldehyde remain guarded in their optimism that the EPA is finally about to update the assessment of one of the most significant and widespread carcinogens in the U.S.

“For decades, up to now, the industry has pretty much managed to put out all the fires,” said Sussman. “But perhaps something really significant might be about to happen.”

Update: August 19, 2021

This article has been updated with a comment from the American Chemistry Council.

kbell@peer.org

Kevin received his law degree from New York University, where he focused in administrative procedure and competed in Moot Court. Previously, he studied Politics at Willamette University, where he was a member of the debate team. Before joining PEER, Kevin worked with Matsikoudis & Fanciullo, a small environmental law firm in Jersey City, New Jersey, and held a fellowship with the Administrative Conference of the United States, an agency responsible for promoting improvements in the efficiency, adequacy, and fairness of the federal administrative process. He also assisted ACUS’s former Chairman, Paul R. Verkuil, in the publication of his volume on overuse of civilian contractors and the importance of professional government: Valuing Bureaucracy. Kevin enjoys board and PC games, volunteer judging for mock trial and debate tournaments, reading science fiction, and trying to make it at least halfway up the easy trails in our National Parks.

===

https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3986&context=dlj

1722 DUKE LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 68:1719

DEREGULATION USING STEALTH “SCIENCE”

STRATEGIES

THOMAS O. MCGARITY & WENDY E. WAGNER†

ABSTRACT

In this Article, we explore the “stealth” use of science by the

Executive Branch to advance deregulation and highlight the limited,

existing legal and institutional constraints in place to discipline and

discourage these practices. Political appointees have employed dozens

of strategies over the years, in both Democratic and Republican

administrations, to manipulate science in ends-oriented ways that

advance the goal of deregulation.

Despite this bald manipulation of

science, however, the officials frequently present these strategies as

necessary to bring “sound science” to bear on regulatory decisions. To

begin to address this problem, it is important to reconceptualize how

the administrative state addresses science-intensive decisions. Rather

than allow agencies and the White House to operate as a cohesive unit,

institutional bounds should be drawn around the scientific expertise

lodged within the agencies. We propose that the background scientific

work prepared by agency staff should be firewalled from the evaluative,

policymaking input of the remaining officials, including politically

appointed officials, in the agency.

† McGarity is Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long Endowed Chair in Administrative Law,

University of Texas School of Law; Wagner is Richard Dale Endowed Chair, University of Texas

School of Law. We are grateful to Jennifer Nou, Arti Rai, and the participants at the Duke Law

Journal 2019 spring symposium for helpful comments and suggestions. Special thanks go to the

Duke Law Journal editors, particularly Scott Grundei, for their wonderful work on this piece.

MCGARITY & WAGNER IN PRINTER FINAL (DO NOT DELETE) 4/25/2019 3:58 PM

1720 DUKE LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 68:1719

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction .......................................................................................... 1720

I. Deregulatory Strategies .................................................................. 1724

A. Adjusting the Substance of the Science ........................... 1724

Censoring Science ........................................................... 1725

Limiting Scientific Input ................................................ 1728

Safety in Models .............................................................. 1729

Studying Rather than Acting and Raising the Burden

of Proof ................................................................................ 1733

Rewriting Reports Relevant to Regulatory Issues ........ 1740

Substituting Deregulatory Policy for Science ............... 1743

B. Adjusting Internal Resources and Procedures ............... 1747

Cutting the Budgets for Technical Staff and Scientific

Research ......................................................................... 1748

Changing Organizational Charts and Shifting

Personnel ....................................................................... 1752

C. Changing the Rules for Scientific Deliberations ............ 1756

Marginalizing External Review of Agency Science ..... 1757

Constraining the Staff’s Analysis of the Best Available

Science ............................................................................ 1767

II. Analysis ........................................................................................... 1769

A. Courts .................................................................................. 1772

B. Congress .............................................................................. 1773

C. Agency Counter-Pressure ................................................. 1774

Science Integrity Policies ................................................ 1775

2. Science Advisory Boards ............................................... 1778

Staff .................................................................................. 1779

D. The Scientific Community and the Media ....................... 1781

III. Reform ........................................................................................... 1783

A. Firewalling the Scientific Literature Review and Analysis

from Policy Input ............................................................... 1785

Support for Firewalls ...................................................... 1787

Precedent for a Firewall ................................................. 1789

Practical Implementation ............................................... 1791

B. Reinforcing Reforms ......................................................... 1800

Science Advisory Boards ............................................... 1800

Deliberative Process Privilege ....................................... 1802

Conclusion ............................................................................................. 1802

INTRODUCTION

Any new president who, like President Trump, campaigns on a

deregulatory platform is in for some unpleasant surprises after the

election. Undoing regulation, particularly in the areas of health, safety,

and the environment, is not as easy as it might appear. Rolling back

most major rules is tedious because it requires notice-and-comment

rulemakings under the Administrative Procedure Act (“APA”),1

with

One viable solution to this dilemma is to adopt stealth “science” strategies. By reaching into the science supporting past or ongoing regulatory actions and changing what the record says, a deregulatory president can sidestep at least the first two problems.5 Changing the science underlying a regulation allows the president to stay within the constraints of protective statutes. The president can show that the deregulatory action does not, on the face of things, compromise the statute’s protective goals, because the modified science demonstrates that his policies remain comfortably within those mandates. Equally important, manipulating the underlying science gives the public a false assurance that their health and environment are being protected. To this end, invoking “sound science” on behalf of an agency decision that in fact may be based on ends-oriented manipulations of the record can lend the patina of objectivity. Even if hurdles one and two can be overcome by playing games with science, the chief executive will still need to devise clever ways to grapple with hurdle three—the large number of career staffers, many of whom are scientists, who will most likely push back against efforts to manipulate science. Although overcoming this third hurdle can sometimes can be difficult, some well-worn paths by previous administrations to manipulate science to advance deregulation are becoming evident.6 This Article explores these strategies, uncovering a playbook of sorts that shows how deregulation-minded presidential administrations, including the current one, have reconfigured the science underlying regulations to advance deregulatory policies. In this Article, we trace out these stealth “science” strategies used to advance deregulation and assign them to three general categories.7 First, some political manipulation of science occurs deep within the...

1778 DUKE LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 68:1719

Science Advisory Boards. Several regulatory statutes create scientific advisory committees to review the work of agency scientists and provide advice on regulatory issues, and agencies frequently create science advisory boards on their own.325 A scientific advisory committee can lend the patina of objectivity to science-based agency decisions that can be very useful to an agency that is under attack in the political arena.326 At the same time, we have observed a number of instances—more than 30 percent of our accounts—in which scientific advisory committees have blown the whistle on low visibility attempts by upper-level decisionmakers to manipulate science to achieve predetermined outcomes.327 In the course of judicial review, courts in fact sometimes rely on criticisms by scientific advisory committees to support conclusions that agency actions are arbitrary and capricious.328 EPA’s Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee, for example, has on several occasions complained rather loudly that the administrator ignored its advice on NAAQS in an effort to make the standards less burdensome for the affected industries.329 A working group of EPA’s Science Advisory Board circulated a memorandum in May 2018 containing recommendations for full board review of several of the agency’s proposed deregulatory actions during the Trump administration.330 The memorandum, which was reported in the trade press,331 contained several rather strong criticisms of pending EPA actions, including the Agency’s reconsideration of its final determination of emissions standards for automobiles, national emission standards for hazardous air pollutants for hydrochloric acid production residual risk, and the repeal of emissions requirements for 325. See generally JASANOFF, supra note 207 (providing book-length treatment of the operation of science advisory boards in the United States).

...

“glider” trucks.332 The working group pointedly noted a “trend” in which the agency’s air office was providing less information to the Scientific Advisory Board about planned actions333 in an apparent effort to limit the Board’s input. Yet once again, this particularly important shield against politicization of science is limited by the reality that political appointees usually though not always control when a science advisory board is consulted and how that board is staffed. With the exception of a few statutory programs,334 there are virtually no legal constraints over these decisions. Even the composition of such boards is largely subject to political manipulation.335 3. Staff. Career agency scientists provide another valuable institutional check on manipulation by upper-level political appointees. These career staffers can serve as the ballast that keeps the agencies operating in accordance with professional norms that resist ends-oriented political intrusions. The staff, whether or not its work is disclosed to the public, still creates the initial scientific record to inform policy; this record at least creates a speed bump that political appointees must find a way around to advance ends-oriented policies. In nearly half of the stealth tactics discussed in Part I, the role of staff was pivotal in calling attention to the political manipulation of science.336 Some career scientists have resisted political changes to their analyses or conclusions.337 Other scientists have called attention to attempted manipulations, sometimes by leaking the evidence and documents to the press or posting them on the internet and sometimes by formally blowing the whistle on inappropriate actions.338 Moreover,...

when career staffers are called upon for explanations by Congress, some have been quite forthright in acknowledging efforts by political officials to meddle with the scientific record underlying regulations.339 The group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (“PEER”) also uses reports from existing staff to probe into agency decisions. PEER files a FOIA request about once every three weeks, often to probe matters brought to its attention by government employees.340

Another group, called “314 Action,” has established a secure hotline and an encrypted email drop through which government scientists can report abuses to lawyers and receive advice on their legal options.341 In some cases, these staff reports can lead to adverse consequences for the offending political appointees. When Assistant Interior Secretary Julie MacDonald was caught bullying scientific staff into changing their scientific analyses involving endangered species, for example, the DOI’s Inspector General documented her activities and she resigned.342

Former agency staffers can also serve as valuable informants on the manipulation of science after they retire from service. One group of former EPA staffers, for example, has formed an organization called the “Environmental Protection Network” to keep an eye on that agency’s activities and comment publicly on abuses when its members detect them.343 Among other things, it wrote a lengthy critique of Administrator Pruitt’s “transparency” proposal.344 But even with these important innovations, there are limits to what the career staff can accomplish. Political bullying of agency

One EPA senior science adviser testified before Congress, for example, that EPA Assistant Administrator for Pesticides and Toxic Substances asked her to employ a risk assessment model based on a scientific theory that she had never heard of to ensure a smaller risk estimate for the fumigant ethylene dibromide. LASH, supra note 53, at 173. 340.

Amanda Reilly, Group, Firm Offer Pro Bono Help for Federal Scientists, E&E NEWS (Oct. 25, 2017), https://www.eenews.net/greenwire/stories/1060064627/search?keyword=Group %2C+Firm+Offer+Pro+Bono+Help+for+Federal+Scientists [http://perma.cc/TD9W-ZY3J].

Nick Bowlin, Political Group Seeks Federal Whistleblowers, E&E NEWS (Nov. 2, 2017), https://www.eenews.net/eedaily/stories/1060065401/search?keyword=Political+Group+Seeks+F ederal+Whistleblowers [http://perma.cc/M2NX-ED6W]. 342. OFF. OF INSPECTOR GEN., U.S. DEP’T OF INTERIOR, INVESTIGATIVE REPORT: THE ENDANGERED SPECIES ACT AND THE CONFLICT BETWEEN SCIENCE AND POLICY 1–8 (2008). 343. About Us, ENVTL. PROTECTION NETWORK, https://www.environmentalprotection network.org/about [http://perma.cc/2R7V-XEE6]. 344. ENVTL. PROTECTION NETWORK, COMMENTS ON EPA’S CENSORED SCIENCE PROPOSAL (2018), https://www.environmentalprotectionnetwork.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/ 08/EPN-Censored-Science-Summary.pdf [http://perma.cc/K7TY-BCHA].

scientists can still lead to scientifically compromised decisions. The White House has demanded changes to scientific records that even strong career staffers were not able to prevent.345

Moreover, since the political officials decide what counts as “deliberative process” privilege, the staff would seem relatively helpless—short of filing formal whistleblower complaints—to expose these tactics to the light of day.

D. The Scientific Community and the Media The scientific community has been heavily involved in publicizing and disciplining political manipulation of science in the agencies.346 The UCS, editors of top scientific journals, and respected scientists have penned reports, articles, commentaries, and editorials that document numerous problems.347 Soon after the 2016 elections, for example, “[m]ore than 2,300 scientists, including twenty-two Nobel Prize winners, [wrote] an open letter to President-elect Donald Trump and the 115th Congress, urging them to adhere to high standards of scientific integrity and independence” in addressing environmental problems.348 Scientists are working with public relations experts to hone their communications skills to facilitate interactions with the public and the media.349 The annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in February 2017 featured a panel on “Defending Science and Scientific Integrity in the Age of Trump.”350 345. See supra notes 26–34 and accomp...

===

an 721 no lnx

https://www.alternet.org/2021/07/biden-science/

Four scientists at the Environmental Protection Agency are alleging that the "war on science" is continuing under the Biden administration, with managers at the agency altering reports about the risks posed by chemicals and retaliating against employees who report the misconduct.

The government watchdog Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) filed a formal complaint Friday on behalf of the scientists with the EPA's Office of the Inspector General, calling for an investigation into reports that high-level employees routinely delete crucial information from chemical risk assessments or change the documents' conclusions to give the impression that the chemicals in question are not toxic.

The group also wrote to the House Committee on Oversight and Reform's Subcommittee on Environment, calling on lawmakers to work with the inspector general to investigate the allegations.

The report follows outrage about officials in the Trump administration covering up scientific facts by deleting the EPA's climate change website, but PEER emphasized that the problem is persisting at the agency six months into President Joe Biden's term.

"These alterations of risk assessments are not just artifacts of the Trump administration; they are continuing on a weekly basis," said Kyla Bennett, science policy director at PEER who formerly worked at the EPA.

Under the Toxic Substances Control Act, the agency is responsible for evaluating the risks of existing chemicals as well as those slated to be manufactured in or imported to the United States.

The four employees said in the complaint that they've observed "numerous instances" in which significant changes were made to their own assessments, including:

The removal of language identifying possible adverse effects of chemicals, including developmental toxicity, neurotoxicity, mutagenicity, and/or carcinogenicity;

Changes to report conclusions to indicate that there are no signs of toxicity "despite significant data to the contrary"; and

Risk assessments being reassigned to inexperienced employees "to secure their agreement to remove issues whose inclusion would be protective of human health."

"The resulting Material Safety Data Sheets lack information vital to prevent harmful exposures, such as proper handling procedures, personal protection needed, accidental release measures, first aid, and firefighting measures," said PEER.

In one case, managers increased the dose considered safe for consumption for a certain chemical by nearly 10,000-fold, according to The Hill.

"All of these altered assessments need to be pulled back and corrected in order to protect both workers handling chemicals and the American public," said Bennett.

According to PEER, staff scientists at EPA have spent months raising concerns internally and filing a formal complaint on their own—only to face "harassment from managers named in the complaints."

Hours after PEER filed the complaint on Friday, the organization said, the four whistleblowers' names were released internally at the EPA in "a troubling move" by someone at the agency.

"Whistleblowers help protect us all—we must protect them," PEER said.

The organization called on the inspector general to "identify all the alterations and restore the correct risk information," and to dismiss the civil service managers found responsible for the misconduct in the investigation.

"EPA's lack of accountability for scientific misconduct poses a direct danger to public health," said Bennett. "Inside EPA, scientific integrity has become an oxymoron and a cure will require a complete overhaul."

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Outcome

In 2012 Monnett was cleared of scientific misconduct,^[21] but reprimanded for the improper release of government documents. The documents in question, issued from 2007 to early 2008, had been cited by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in making decisions to vacate BOEMRE's approval of the Shell oil exploration plans in the Beaufort sea. BOEMRE argued that the documents were exempt from the Freedom of Information Act, and thus should not have been disclosed. ^[22]

Monnett and PEER then filed a suit against BOEMRE, arguing that the e-mails he disclosed showed that the agency was breaking laws to push through Arctic offshore drilling permits, and the reprimand thus represented retaliation against a whistleblower. In 2013 BOEMRE settled, claiming that "The settlement document states that it does not constitute any admission of liability and that the agency entered into it to avoid the costs of litigation". However, the Department then removed all reprimand from Monnett's record and awarded him a cash settlement of $100,000. In addition to the other agreements in the settlement, the agencyissued a certificate for a conservation award from the secretary of the interior which Monnett won in 2010, but that the agency had removed his name from.^[3]

Dr. Jonathan Lundgren, an expert on the risk assessment of pesticides and genetically modified crops, worked for the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Agricultural Research for more than a decade. But when his findings on the ill effects of systemic pesticides and RNAi (a biological process in which RNA molecules inhibit gene expression) on pollinators began to gain traction and visibility, the harassment and punishments did as well.

The 40-year-old agro-ecologist and entomologist hoped that if he kept his head down, the increasing aggression would dissipate. But it didn’t. His scientific work continued to be disrupted along with his ability to communicate with other colleagues and the press.

Ultimately, the coercion and intimidation derailed Lundgren’s career and he stepped down as lead scientist and lab supervisor.

“USDA is blocking science,” Lundgren affirms. “And I refused to be silenced.”

On behalf of Lundgren,The Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) filed an official Whistleblower complaint.

“Censorship of public agency science does not affect only scientists—it concerns the public at large as well as every entity relying upon the integrity of USDA science,” PEER executive director Jeff Ruch stated. “USDA cannot piously pledge its devotion to scientific integrity while at the same rebuffing any attempts to safeguard it.”

Separately, PEER has also filed a lawsuit against the USDA to strengthen its Scientific Integrity Policy. The suit targets official restraints on USDA scientists who publish or speak about their findings in peer-reviewed journals before professional societies and other unofficial settings.

In June, USDA Chief Scientist Catherine Wotecki wrote a letter which stated that the agency refused to consider the substance of the petition because scientific integrity only affected its “internal personnel rules and practices” and was therefore exempt from the public notice and comment process normally required of agency rules.

Sublethal Low-Level Harassment

Neonicotinoid seed treatments, manufactured by Bayer and Syngenta,have been harminghoneybees since they were introduced on the marketplace in the mid ’90s. They are the most widely used insecticides with sales of about $2.6 billion. Today they’ve infected our soil, waterways and have even been fond in our blood stream. They’re harming our pollinators as well as developing human brains.

“Neonics are 5 to 10 thousand times more toxic than DDT, and the environment and everything in it is being poisoned by the toxic equivalent of hundreds of billions of pounds of DDT every year,” Tom Theobald, activist, beekeeper and founding member of the Boulder County Beekeepers Association, said.

Lundgren’s troubles began around March when he submitted an article to the scientific journal Naturwissenschaften (The Science of Nature). His data illustrated that the seed treatment and systemic pesticide Clothianidin kills **monarch** butterfly larvae in the laboratory and that these pesticides were found in milkweed plants, the only food source for developing larvae, under field conditions.

Several months after Lundrgen’s article was published, his direct supervisor Sharon Papiernik confronted him and informed him that the paper shouldn’t have been submitted without “official” approval. She was also upset that he’d conducted a radio interview on the topic.

“The USDA gave me the okay [to publish the study] and then after the paper drew international attention from the media, said they never did,” Lundgren recalled.

Not long after that incident, TheNational Academy of Sciences and Pennsylvania No-Till Alliance scheduled Lundgren to give presentations on his research on the effects of genetically modified crops on farmland ecology. It is customary for these organizations to cover his travel expenses to Pennsylvania and Washington, DC.

Lundgren was literally boarding the plane when his superiors instructed him to return home and reimburse airfare costs out of his pocket. He was reprimanded for not completing the requisite paperwork. He was told to return to his duty station immediately, that he was officially AWOL and would not be paid for the week. This was his first accidental oversight on travel paperwork in 11 years and three other employees had had similar travel oversights within six weeks before Lundgren and received no discipline.

Next, he was suspended for 30 days before they reduced it to two weeks without pay.

“That’s a severe punishment for doing my job,” Lundgren said in an interview from his South Dakota homestead Blue Dasher Farms. “The tax payers, farmers and beekeepers paid for this research to be done. I don’t work for the government, I work for the people of the U.S. They deserve to know the latest science on these issues, even if that data is politically inconvenient.” The suspension affected his personnel file, harmed his reputation and cost him more than $9,000 in lost pay and expenses.

In total, the USDA cited two infractions: providing some of his research to a scientific journal without proper approval and violating official travel policies in connection with lectures he delivered in Philadelphia and Washington, DC.

However, Lundgren said these actions were not justified and in reality they were trying to block his research.

“I am not even anti-gmo or anti-pesticide,” Lundgren said. “I just believe that if there are safer methods they should be used first. If you do things right, you don’t need them.”

Lundgren criticized GMOs and systemic pesticides in the past. One paper he coauthored suggested that soybean seeds pretreated with Syngenta’s thiamethoxam (another nicotine-based systemic pesticide) produces no yield benefits to farmers, who pay extra for the seeds and may even be hurting beneficial predators in soybean fields that farmers need to manage the aphids that the insecticide isn’t controlling. And in 2013, he wrote a paper in Bioscience on the potential dangers of “gene splicing” pesticides or RNAi, which he said require further study to determine if they would possibly harm other organisms.

He also peer reviewed a report published by the Center for Foods Safety, Heavy Costs, which was critical of neonicotinoid pesticides for proving little to no benefit to farmers and adversely affecting bees.

Politics of Science

We put a lot of emphasis on the importance of science without taking into consideration the politics involved. For starters, science is not independent. Many universities who conduct research, for instance, are indirectly funded by big corporations who give them donations. cf

Meanwhile, many studies are conducted by Big Ag. For instance, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) does not conduct its own studies on neonics. Rather, it relies on manufacturers such as Syngenta or Bayer to do due diligence. According to a paper published in Bioscience, the EPA’s pesticide evaluation process may be riddled with flaws, allowing industry too much power and influence. What ends up happening is that the companies, who benefit from allowing these poisons on the market, design, fund and conduct toxicity studies.

This corruption puts our planet and health in danger.

And science is also not impartial. For instance, when it came to the hormone-disrupting herbicide Atrazine, the EPA accepted only one industry-funded study for review in its 2007 and 2012 assessments. That study, which looked at an amphibian that doesn’t even live on this continent, determined atrazine is safe.

There were plenty of other researchers, but they either couldn’t afford to conduct the research or their papers were conveniently disqualified for technicalities. Incidentally, the EU banned atrazine 12 years ago.

For many, these shenanigans represent a deep-rooted corruption in the USDA and EPA that have gone unaddressed for a long time.

“The USDA and EPA have become cheerleaders, enablers and marketing agents for the mega-corporations,” Theobald said. “We no longer have a government, we are governed by an un-elected cabal of industrialists. Agencies we rely on to protect us from this are in bed with the poisoners and are running away from the science. It is a crowded bed and congress is right in there with the rest of them or we wouldn’t be where we are.”

According to Lundgren, he is not alone. There are other scientists from the EPA, USDA-Natural Resources Conservation Service and USDA-Agricultural Research who have been hushed and harassed. They just haven’t come forward. Yet. In the suit, PEER cited instances where USDA scientists have been ordered to retract studies, water-down findings, remove their name from authorship (this happened to Lundgren in a paper involving the unintended adverse consequences of genetically modified corn crops) and endure long indefinitive delays in approving publication of papers that may be controversial. While media requests are either delayed or denied.

Sounds like bureaucratic red tape hell, not science.

Future is Sustainble Farming

Lundgren is embracing his new-found freedom. He is pouring his energy into the Blue Dasher Farm initiative and believes that the future hinges ondiversifying our food production. He wants to bridge science with innovative farmers in what will hopefully become a national network of centers of excellence in regenerative agriculture. “And through crowdfunding, we will allow the people to decide what research questions will be tackled. Independent risk assessments and beekeeper-driven science will be key to helping the bees,” Lundgren said.

“I’d like to usher in an innovation in food production and help solve the bee problem. The issues we are having with our bees has to do with the way we produce food.”

Check out his new project Blue Dasher Farm on Indiegogo and support and share.

What’s the Latest?

According to The Washington Post:

Judge Patricia M. Miller rejected earlier this month the USDA’s request to dismiss research entomologist Jonathan Lundgren’s complaint as “frivolous.” The USDA had argued that Lundgren’s complaint was based purely on “speculative and unsupported” allegations.

Miller, an administrative law judge with the Merit Systems Protection Board, also set a Jan. 6 status conference for th

http://www.independentsciencenews.org/news/new-research-links-neonicotinoid-pesticides-to-monarch-butterfly-declines/

http://www.alternet.org/print/environment/what-happened-govt-scientist-whose-findings-stood-way-big-oils-plans-arctic-drilling

In February 2011, Charles Monnett, an Arctic marine biologist who in 2006 published the first observations of a decline in the polar bear population of the Arctic due to melting sea ice, was interviewed by Eric May and Lynn Gibson from the Department of Interior’s Office of the Inspector General. The conversation was perplexing. May and Gibson, criminal investigators with the IG, began by suggesting that Monnett was being investigated for scientific misconduct, but early on in the conversation they admitted that neither of them had any training in science and biology.

From there, the transcript [3] of the conversation, a document released by Monnett’s legal representation,Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), becomes murkier. May and Gibson’s line of questioning shifts several times, making it increasingly unclear what aspects of misconduct were being investigated. Monnett explains that his findings, published in Polar Biology, were peer-reviewed; May responds by asking how Polar Biology got involved. Monnett painstakingly takes May and Gibson through the calculations and observations underlying his data, but they seem dissatisfied and change tacks.

What happened after isn’t murky at all. Soon after the interview, Dr. Monnett’s hard drive and notebooks were seized. In July 2011, Monnett found out from his employer, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (BOEMRE), that he had been put been put on administrative leave, barring him from speaking to his colleagues or continuing his research.

The investigation had turned in to a virtual witch-hunt—but when the IG finally released its report toward the end of 2012, its only allegations were of an administrative nature. Monnett subsequently filed a whistleblower complaint [4] against BOEMRE, alleging that the official harassment had impeded him from doing his job and that the Interior Department was violating its own scientific integrity policies intended to protect federal scientists from political interference. In November 2013, Monnett reached a $100,000 settlement with BOEMRE.

The tale of Dr. Monnett is now a few years old, but instructive. Both Monnett and PEER have maintained that Monnett was harassed and essentially eliminated from the ranks of BOEMRE because he represented a threat to the financial stakes of oil companies like Shell hoping to open up the Alaskan Arctic for offshore drilling projects, and that suppressing scientific research was seen as necessary for Shell’s permits to go through. At the time, BOEMRE had been reviewing Shell’s plans to drill in the Arctic. It approved those permits in 2012, and again, in a highly contentious decision by the Obama administration, earlier this year.

Now, years after the debacle, Monnett says he has complex feelings about the dynamics of the science done in federal agencies, given how overbearing the oil industry is and its pervasive influence on the government.

The Bush administration, Monnett recalls, had “created an environment where the managers [of BOEMRE] were very hostile and aggressive towards some of the scientists…which led to a number of people leaving the agency. These people were being actively attacked by managers, screamed at in hallways, threatened with all sorts of actions. Some of them were even being threatened with legal action. The agency just wasn’t receptive to honest analysis.”

“Because of pressure from industry and the administration…certain timelines had to be met, and those timelines weren’t long enough to allow [scientists] to do complete analysis. Management was dictating the outcomes…which is against the law in my view.”

The Bush administration’s agenda from the very beginning was pro-drilling, and therefore invested in fast-tracking Shell’s permits for the Arctic. During the administration’s tenure, there was a mass exodus [5] of scientists from BOEMRE—at the time known as the Minerals Management Service—who were under pressure to overlook the overwhelming environmental concerns of Arctic oil drilling in their analyses.

But Monnett’s investigation began in 2011, not during the Bush administration but during the Obama administration, foretelling Obama’s climate legacy of paying lip service to climate change while fast-tracking [6] Shell’s offshore drilling plans all the same.

On Monday morning, President Obama arrived [7] in Alaska to shed “a spotlight on what Alaskans in particular have come to know: climate change is one of the biggest threats we face, it is driven by human activity, and it is disrupting Americans’ lives right now.” The trip, mere weeks after the final approval [8]for Shell’s summer plans to drill in the Chukchi Sea, is likely to be seen in retrospect as illustrative of the schizophrenic energy policy the Obama administration has long espoused.

The Limits of Academic Freedom

Scientific suppression and the loss of many scientists to BOEMRE during the Bush administration have been well-documented [5], but as Dr. Monnett’s case reveals, something similar, if not worse, has been underfoot during the current administration. As the case of Professor Rick Steiner demonstrates, the influence of oil goes well beyond federal agencies in Alaska.

A tenured professor of marine conservation at the University of Alaska, Steiner spent a large part of his career in the Arctic and then Anchorage, Alaska. Steiner had been a vocal opponent of offshore oil drilling since the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989 and a staunch defender of marine conservation—positions that got him in to trouble multiple times during his career.

In December 2007, soon after Monnett’s polar bear paper was published, there was a federal proposed rule to list polar bears under the Endangered Species Act. At the time, Gov. Sarah Palin publicly stated that Alaska state marine mammal biologists (ADFG) disagreed with the rule, but Steiner was unsatisfied. After much resistance from the ADFG, he obtained the state review through a federalFreedom of Information Act request. The review, underscoring the dishonesty of the Palin administration, showed that marine mammal scientists overwhelmingly agreed that polar bears should be classified as endangered. This move, and many others, put Steiner on the radar as a staunch advocate of marine conservation and opponent of the pervasive influence of the oil industry in Alaska.

In 2008, when the federal government began to consider an expansion of oil development projects in Alaska, Steiner continued to raise major environmental concerns. Written records released by PEER chart out what happened next: the University of Alaska and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration terminated the grant funding for Steiner’s research work. The documents [9] demonstrate how pressure from NOAA led university officials to cut Steiner’s funding: federal officials wrote that they “had an issue with Steiner” and that his environmental advocacy could “cause problems nationally” for the agency. PEER called [10] this one of the first instances where a university and federal agency admitted to removing a faculty member’s funding because of their environmental positions.

Steiner filed multiple internal grievance claims which were all rejected by the university, and in February 2010, Dr. Steiner resigned from the university faculty on principle. Soon after, he was told by a friend who had been in a meeting with university officials that oil executives had met with university officials, telling them point blank that as long as Steiner continued to oppose the oil industry, the university would not get a dime of its money. The University of Alaska, like many public institutions in Alaska, is funded largely by oil revenues.

Like Monnett, Steiner says his experience taught him the limits to academic and scientific freedom in a place like Alaska. “It is a systemic problem far beyond BOEMRE,” he explains. “It’s in all the agencies, the universities. It’s state and federal and a broad systemic problem in Alaska.

“[The University] felt I was being too much of an advocate for marine conservation which is in contradiction to their professed goal of being in favor of academic freedom.”

And indeed, the brazen nature of the university’s statements on Steiner’s case is deeply shocking. In the recommendation to cut Steiner’s funding, Dean Wiesenburg of the University of Alaska noted [11] that Steiner “regularly takes strong public positions on issues of public debate.” Steiner, he said, “has chosen to be a maverick and work independently.”

To Steiner, what this means is clear. “There is an unwritten orthodoxy in Alaska,” he explains, “that dissenting opinions regarding unsustainable economic and political paradigms here need to be suppressed and silenced. Everybody knows that. There’s a very strong political dynamic where agencies and public institutions like the university are captured by the oil industry because it pays 95% of the state budget. Federal agencies bend over backwards for the oil industry and tend to marginalize voices that threaten that dynamic. If you criticize oil, you will have hell to pay.”

“There aren’t very many dissenters. The whole point of making an example of me and Charles [Monnett] was to suppress people from doing that in the future. People have learned that if they want to keep their job and their pay check, and their pension and their benefits, they need to keep their head down.”

A Handy Guide to Scientific Suppression

The cases of Charles Monnett and Rick Steiner have dire implications for how we view Shell’s offshore drilling plans in the Chukchi Sea this summer, and the lengths to which they went to acquire the permits. Much of this can only be guessed at. Steiner talks about the prevailing culture where federal agencies and universities begin to eliminate scientists who do not conform to the pro-oil agenda by not granting promotions or incentive awards, or giving them inadequate annual performance reviews. Another tactic, he says, is overwhelming staff scientists with trivial tasks, pulling them off projects for which they are qualified.

Jeff Ruch, executive director of PEER, an organization that seeks to protect scientist whistleblowers, can add to this list. “The range of things we see,” he says, “range from attempts to terminate, suspend, crippling internal investigations. In one case involving a lab director, the funding for his graduate students was jeopardized so he lost a lot of his research capacity. Preventing publications has no limits—in one case, a scientist was raising issues and her email privileges were taken away. We were left scratching our heads wondering how that could have happened.”

One possible remedy is scientific integrity policies that protect whistleblowers, but as Ruch explains, they are far from satisfactory. “Industry puts pressure on government agencies, and government agencies are the instrument of retaliation,” he explains. “For the most part, scientists have few legal protections. These scientists are not covered by whistleblower laws, because they’re not disclosing violations of law, fraud, or abuse. They’re disclosing suppression of research, or watering down of methodologies or the omission of key findings.”

“The law generally treats these as a matter of opinion and in these cases, the chain of command generally wins over the staff scientist.”

In his experience, Ruch says “scientific integrity policies operate within the Department of the Interior—those were weakened in December to make it even more difficult to sustain a complaint. Up until that time, there had been 2 instances out of 14 where the scientist involved faced multiple suspensions and the responsible managers escaped punishment altogether. It’s difficult to advise scientists in good conscience to file complaints under their own name because they’re unlikely to resolve in anything good.”

Early in 2009, Obama released [12] a presidential directive to develop policies that restore scientific integrity to federal actions, including providing federal scientists better whistleblower protections. At the time, this was hailed as a huge leap in the right direction.

Ruch feels not much has changed. “The agencies in the Interior have largely ignored the presidential directive,” he explains. “Some policies claim protections but have no mechanisms by which that protection is implemented, which makes it empty protection.”

Environmental groups argue that this scientific suppression, and overlooking the enormous environmental risks, has been key to the Obama administration’s approval of Shell’s permits this year. Much of the information detailing the safety and reliability of Shell’s operations has not been released to the public, despite multiple FOIA requests by groups like Greenpeace and PEER. A recent FOIA request by PEER, directed at the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE), seeks to release information on how Shell’s plans for certified by third-party observers, as well as information on the deployment of capping stack and containment domes in the event of an oil spill. BSEE has not responded. PEER has now filed [13] a lawsuit in a federal district court to bring these details to light.

As President Obama continues his trip in Alaska to highlight the dangers of climate change amid overwhelming opposition from environmental and indigenous groups, it begs big questions about the administration’s overarching legacy with federal scientists and the oil industry. Ruch feels strongly about this: “In terms of the actions inside these agencies, there has been no discernible difference between those under George Bush, who was an oil man, and Barack Obama, a constitutional law professor who when his own Commission on the Deepwater Horizon spill met with him, one of the very first questions he asked was about Arctic drilling.”

“It has been clear that Arctic drilling is part of the ‘all-the-above’ energy strategy and the same sort of suppression and the same suite of issues have never really been analyzed.”

For an administration pretending to conduct a dramatic push toward mitigating climate change, that is a shameful record.

Frank Buono is chair of PEER's board. Frank retired following a more than 33 year career with the National Park Service, culminating in service as Assistant Superintendent at Mojave National Preserve and Joshua Tree National Park. In 1994 the National Parks and Conservation Association conferred upon him the prestigious Mather Award for public service. Joined Board May 2000.

Louis Clark is the founder and Executive Director, since 1978, of the Government Accountability Project. G.A.P. is a public interest law firm that specializes in whistleblower protection and environmental advocacy. A lawyer and Methodist minister, Mr. Clark was active in the civil rights movement and worked for prison reform before founding G.A.P. Founding Board member December 1993.

Richard G. Steiner advises NGOs, governments, and industry as an international conservation and sustainability consultant in Anchorage, Alaska. For 15 years Rick worked as a professor and statewide conservation specialist at the University of Alaska and had primary responsibility for the university's Environmental Conservation Extension Mission. Previously, Rick was an Associate Professor and Marine Advisory Program Agent for Prince William Sound in Cordova, Alaska. Rick fulfilled leadership roles in coordinating the response to the Exxon Valdez oil spill by helping organize and direct the emergency response on behalf of the local fishing industry; initiating the effort to settle natural resource damage claims among the State, the U.S., and Exxon resulting in landmark $1 billion settlement and environmental restoration program; co-founding the Prince William Sound Science Center in Cordova; and helping initiate the PWS Oil Spill Recovery Institute. Rick's outspoken and effective criticism of the oil industry caused him to lose his federal grant funding at the University of Alaska, after which he joined the PEER board. Rick has brought his expertise in coordinating oil spill response efforts to the recent BP disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. Joined Board May 2010.

Zoe Kelman is a chemical engineer who had worked at the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) for 18 years following extensive experience in the private sector. While at DEP, Zoe exposed that state assessments of the public health danger of hexavalent chromium in sites deemed to be clean was far greater than admitted. Joined Board September 2009.

Jack Gregory retired from the U.S. Forest Service after a 36-year career in both forestry and law enforcement positions on national forests across the country. For in his last decade in service, Jack was Special Agent in Charge for the Southern Region overseeing some 200 employees and a $20 million annual budget. Jack helped PEER form Rangers for Responsible Recreation, a network of former federal, state and local rangers underlining the growing threat of off-road vehicle abuse of public lands. He is also active in the National Association for Cave Diving and is Lead SCUBA Repair Technician at a local Dive Shop in Marietta, GA. Joined Board July 2014.

Jeff Ruch has been the Executive Director of PEER since 1997. With Jeff DeBonis, he helped to start PEER and for its first four years served as General Counsel & Program Director. Prior to that Jeff was the Policy Director and a staff attorney at the Government Accountability Project representing whistleblowers from both the public and private sector. Before coming to DC, Jeff worked in California state government for 17 years, mostly in the State Legislature as counsel to various committees where he drafted literally hundreds of laws on topics ranging from energy conservation to the rights of employed inventors. Jeff served stints as a deputy district attorney, an appellate court clerk and is a graduate of the California Correctional Officers Academy. Joined Baord May 1997.

http://www.peer.org/

What we do every day at PEER:

Combat political manipulation of science. Public agency scientists are under tremendous pressure not to report results that argue for resource protection, and when they do that work it is often suppressed or re-written. PEER is working to strengthen and enforce scientific integrity rules and data quality laws to protect the accuracy and completeness of technical documents.Follow our progress.
Enforce the law. PEER works with rangers, inspectors, attorneys and other specialists to make sure that our environmental laws are actually enforced and that political obstructions are removed. When necessary, we go to court ourselves to enforce the law. Learn more>>
Defend whistleblowers. While we work mightily to avoid putting employees in the position of having to be whistleblowers, if that is not possible, we defend them ferociously. See how.
Shield scientists from interference.PEER operates a unique program providing legal information, counseling and, when needed, formal representation to embattled scientists at no cost to them. This Alliance for Legal Protection of Science (ALPS) also fields a national network of volunteer attorneys from a variety of specialties to help PEER staff counsel provide pro bono legal assistance to besieged scientists.
Help eco-cops do their jobs. From local, state and federal environmental law enforcement agencies across the country, PEER teams with embattled rangers, law enforcement officers, attorneys and inspectors to better pursue violations of anti-pollution and wildlife protection laws. Look at one example.
Safeguard public lands. When public agencies cannot effectively address threats to our public lands, PEER steps in. Look at our work curbing off-road vehicle abuse and the widespreaddegradation of federal range land from persistent overgrazing.
Protect public health. PEER is waging national campaigns to protect the water we drink, air we breathe and food we eat. See how our work extends from factories to the schoolhouse door.
End giveaways of your public resources. Disclosures through PEER have stopped massive rip-offs of public resources and even reformed the land exchange process.
Throw a Lifeline to every environmental employee. PEER wants to reach out to cubicles, field stations and laboratories across the country. Every employee who faces political pressures to ignore laws or put development above conservation should know how to call PEER.

What Else Would You Like to Know About PEER? Look around this site and find out!

Many of the best things we do at PEER, we cannot talk about. Working behind the scenes, we have saved the careers of hundreds of conscientious public servants, often by talking them out of publicly blowing the whistle and convincing them to work through PEER instead to expose a problem.

Looking at just the past year, here are ten examples we can talk about where PEER has made significant progress in safeguarding public health, protecting wildlife, conserving public resources or securing freedom of speech —

Induced the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service to announce that it would end all planting of genetically engineered (GE) crops and ban neonicotinoids (powerful insecticides linked with bee colony collapse) from all National Wildlife Refuges in the U.S. This culminates a decade-long multi-state litigation effort to end harmful practices on refuges;
Won new reforms to protect independent monitors of U.S. commercial fishing fleetsfrom interference and reprisal in reporting violation of catch-limits, by-catch of protected species, shark-finning prohibitions and marine pollution;
Vindicated whistleblowers who documented scientific fraud within the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service and pressed to secure the removal of responsible managers;
Represented sick teachers from Malibu public schoolsin exposingtoxic conditions in classroomsand pursuing campus-wide cleanup;
Made EPA retract its safety assurances for artificial turf made from shredded tires. This is part of a larger effort to end reuse of toxic industrial wastes in consumer products;
Ripped open a ticket scam at the USS Arizona Memorial in which thousands of free tickets were skimmed by commercial tour companies forcing visitors to sign up for expensive tour packages;
Debuted a powerful new tool for government oversight in the form of agrazing website featuring an interactive map combining range health data received from the U.S. Bureau of Land Management with high resolution satellite imagery to enable comparison of BLM’s data with ground conditions that are visible even to the untrained eye. The website represents the most complete and up-to-date look at the results of BLM’s land health status evaluations ofroughly 20,000 BLM grazing allotments – an asset we are already putting to work across the West;
Brought together a coalition of Alaska and national marine conservation organizations to formally nominate the Aleutian Islands marine ecosystem as Alaska’s first National Marine Sanctuary. The Aleutians are one of the planet’s most ecologically important ecosystems, yet faces growing threats from overfishing, oil and gas development and increasing shipping with scant protection – all aggravated by the spreading effects of climate change. Although more than half of Alaska’s lands have permanent federal protection, virtually none of Alaska’s federal waters receive comparable protective status;
Bared the biggest official mass desecrations of Indian pre-historic burial sites at Effigy Mounds National Monument, including 80 illegal structures atop the ancient artifacts this national park was founded to protect. On a related front, PEER forced an investigation ofsystemic breakdown in the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act following misplacement of thousands of human remains and funerary objects; and
Won a critical legal victory in a drive to end open-riding of off-road vehicles without any controls throughout California’s largest off-road park, Ocotillo Wells State Vehicular Recreation Area, in order to protect its rich but vulnerable archaeological and natural resources;

One invaluable tool has been our robust use of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) litigation program. Guided by insider sources, PEER operates a wide-ranging transparency program powered by one of the most robust FOIA litigation practices in the country.

There is a lot more going on at PEER. Check out our ongoing campaigns.

Following reports

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/03/27/usda-petition-idUSL2N0WT1TQ20150327

that scientists at the United States Department of Agriculture are being harrassed and their research on bee-killing pesticides is being censored or suppressed, a broad coalition of farmers, environmentalists, fisheries and food-safety organizations urged an investigation in a May 5 letter sent to Phyllis K. Fong, USDA Inspector General.

"The possibility that the USDA is prioritizing the interests of the chemical industry over those of the American public is unacceptable," states the letter, which was signed by more than 25 citizens' groups concerned that a forthcoming report by the White House Task Force on Pollinator Health, which is co-chaired by the USDA, will be compromised.

The signatories include the American Bird Conservancy, Avaaz, Center for Biological Diversity, Center for Food Safety, Farmworkers Association of Florida, Food and Water Watch, Friends of the Earth, Green America, Organic Consumers Association and Sierra Club.

"It is imperative that the American people can trust that their government and its employees are serving their constituents and not the profits of private companies," they wrote. "All of the research that the USDA conducts must maintain scientific integrity and transparency to ensure it is guiding sound policy decisions."

The research in question centers on neonicotinoids, a nicotine-like class of insecticides that impair the neurological systems of insects and which studies have linked to die-offs of bees and monarch butterflies—two key pollinators—as well as birds. Neonicotinoids have been strongly linked to honey-bee colony collapse disorder (CCD), a syndrome first observed in Germany that has been blamed for massive bee population declines across the globe. In 2013, certain neonicotinoids were banned by the European Union and a few non-EU nations.

The global food system relies on bees to pollinate at least 30 percent of the world's crops. Bees are responsible for pollinating a host of American crops, from apples and almonds to cantaloupes and cucumbers, impacting $15 billion a year in U.S. crops.

In March, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), an environmental activist group supporting local, state and federal researchers, filed a legal petition with the USDA seeking new rules meant to increase the job protection for government scientists and citing censorship and harassment. At least 10 USDA scientists have come under fire for research into farm chemical safety that conflicts with the interests of the agribusiness sector, according to PEER executive director Jeff Ruch.

"They have very little in the way of legal rights and have career paths that are extremely vulnerable," he said. He said the scientific work under scrutiny is the research into the effects of neonicotinoids and glyphosate, the key ingredient in Monsanto's popular Roundup herbicide, which the World Health Organization recently concluded likely causes cancer.

"Your words are changed, your papers are censored or edited or you are not allowed to submit them at all," a senior scientist at the USDA's Agricultural Research Service told Reuters.

“Censorship and harassment poison good science and good policy,” said Lori Ann Burd, environmental health director at the Center for Biological Diversity. "There’s no question that neonicotinoids are killing bees, and it’s long past time for our government to take action. The European Union has already banned neonicotinoids. The reports that USDA is harassing and suppressing its scientists for doing their jobs instead of using their findings to protect our pollinators are extremely disturbing."

“How can the American public expect USDA to develop a federal strategy that will protect bees instead of pesticide industry profits if it is harassing and suppressing its own scientists for conducting research that runs counter to industry claims?" said Tiffany Finck-Haynes, food futures campaigner with Friends of the Earth.

In April 2014, the group released “Follow the Honey: 7 ways pesticide companies are spinning the bee crisis to protect profits,” a report documenting the deceptive tactics used by agrochemical companies to deflect blame from their chemicals to pollinator declines and stall governmental regulation on neonicotinoids. The companies named in the report include U.S.-based Monsanto, Switzerland-based Syngenta and Germany-based Bayer, which patented the first commercial neonicotinoid, Imidacloprid, the world's most widely used insecticide.

"If USDA wants to employ a kill-the-messenger approach," said Finck-Haynes, "it will only delay critical action to address the bee crisis that threatens our nation’s food supply."

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/03/27/usda-petition-idUSL2N0WT1TQ20150327

environmental activist group has filed a legal petition with the U.S. Department of Agriculture seeking new rules that would enhance job protection for government scientists whose research questions the safety of farm chemicals.

The action filed on Thursday by the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, an advocacy group for local, state and federal researchers, came less than a week after a World Health Organization group found the active ingredient in Roundup, the world's best selling weed killer, is "probably carcinogenic to humans." Roundup is made by Monsanto Co.

The petition to the USDA presses the agency to adopt policies to prevent "political suppression or alteration of studies and to lay out clear procedures for investigating allegations of scientific misconduct."

According to the petition, some scientists working for the federal government are finding their research restricted or censored when it conflicts with agribusiness industry interests.

A USDA spokesman said the allegations have no merit and that the agency values the integrity of its scientists and the quality of their research.

PEER's executive director Jeff Ruch said on Friday that at least 10 USDA scientists have been investigated or faced other consequences arising from research that called into question the safety of certain agricultural chemicals.

Ruch said his organization had received mounting complaints over the last year from USDA scientists claiming they have been ordered to retract studies, water down findings, remove their names from authorship and experienced delays in approvals for publication of research papers. The petition does not identify any specific research or scientists.

"They have very little in the way of legal rights and have career paths that are extremely vulnerable," Ruch said.

Research into glyphosate, the key ingredient in Monsanto's Roundup herbicide, and neonicotinoid insecticides, which have been linked to honey bee and monarch butterfly endangerment, face particular scrutiny, Ruch said.

One senior scientist at the USDA's Agricultural Research Service told Reuters he has experienced harassment and censorship.

"Your words are changed, your papers are censored or edited or you are not allowed to submit them at all," said the scientist, who asked not to be named. (Reporting By Carey Gillam; Editing by David Greising, Toni Reinhold)