Trump orders review of climate science manuals used by federal judges

Trump the president said the National Academy of Sciences produced fraudulent climate guidance and directed suspension and debarment officials to examine the conduct.

First Published: July 19, 2026, 4:30 PM ET

WASHINGTON D.C. — Donald Trump ordered a federal review of climate science guidance he called fraudulent on July 19, 2026 at 8:17 PM ET.

Here is the full post on truthsocial: “The National Academy of Sciences has historically published analytical Scientific Manuals expressly for our Federal Judiciary. Of course, the Academy has been run by Radical Left Dumocrats who, it turns out, published fraudulent, biased, and misleading Manuals on Climate Change. These bogus Manuals were used by Judges to decide massive “Climate Change” Cases, and have created huge losses across our Country. These Manuals have been totally DISCREDITED. Our Nation’s Federal Judges deserve Facts and Science, not Political Fraud and False Science on Climate. With this TRUTH, I hereby order Federal Suspension and Debarment Officials to review this conduct. Our Taxpayers should not be funding Climate Fraud, and Judges should never have relied upon it. Thank you for your attention to this matter! Trump”

Trump directed federal suspension and debarment officials to examine what he described as biased and misleading climate manuals in a Truth Social post. He said the guidance shaped major climate cases and produced large financial losses across the country. He offered no specific manual, court case, or dollar figure to support the claim.

The National Academy of Sciences is a private, nonprofit institution chartered by Congress in 1863 to advise the government on scientific matters. Its parent body, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, drew on more than 20,000 volunteers, members, and staff in 2025, according to nationalacademies.org. The institution installed evolutionary biologist Neil H. Shubin as its new president on July 1, 2026, according to nasonline.org.

The National Academies continue to publish research linking human activity to extreme weather. A report released four days before Trump’s post assessed the field of extreme event attribution, which measures how human-caused climate change influences individual weather events, according to nationalacademies.org. The organization also studies biodiversity, drought, and environmental health to inform policy at federal, state, and local levels, according to naeducation.org.

The stakes reach litigants, taxpayers, and the courts themselves. A debarment finding could bar an organization from federal funding and contracts, a penalty that would cut off a major channel of government-supported research. The Academy relies on federal agencies to commission many of its studies, according to nationalacademy.org.

Has this happened before? Trump has repeatedly targeted federal climate science during his second term, but a presidential order to debar the congressionally chartered National Academy of Sciences over its judicial guidance has no clear precedent. The Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence, long used by federal judges, comes from the Federal Judicial Center in cooperation with the National Academies.

The next move rests with the federal suspension and debarment officials Trump named. Those officials work inside individual agencies and follow procedures set under federal acquisition rules. A date for any decision or finding has not been announced.

Climate policy has clashed with the courts before, as happened when earlier administrations fought over the science underpinning federal rules. In Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency, decided on April 2, 2007, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that the agency could regulate greenhouse gases as pollutants, according to nationalacademies.org. That ruling reshaped a decade of environmental litigation and expanded the government’s authority to act on emissions, a legacy that any review of climate guidance would now confront.