Twenty‑five Republican state attorneys general have demanded that the Trump administration and Congress immediately suspend federal grants to the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) over its alleged left‑wing climate activism.
AGs Target NASEM Over Climate Bias
In a Thursday letter, the AGs warned that NASEM’s recent actions undermine its credibility. They say the organization’s review of the controversial climate chapter is a sham.
The fourth edition of the Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence, produced with the taxpayer‑funded Federal Judicial Center, included a climate guide filled with citations to activist groups. The Federal Judicial Center later retracted the chapter after backlash, but NASEM kept the guide online until early this month.
NASEM announced a temporary removal of the climate section while it conducts an independent review, a process the AGs call a façade. They argue a genuine review would use an external panel, non‑activist reviewers, public documentation, and a clear scope addressing material criticisms.
The letter cites multiple errors: the chapter misquotes the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, contradicts the manual’s statistics, appears ghost‑written by climate litigation attorney Michael Burger, and receives funding and involvement from climate funders, activists, and litigation participants.
They also criticize a July NASEM report titled ‘Attribution of Extreme Weather and Climate Events and Their Impacts 2026,’ saying it was funded, led, and shaped by climate‑litigation supporters. The report’s timing, they claim, was designed to aid plaintiffs in the upcoming Supreme Court case Suncor Energy v. Boulder County, allowing opponents to cite it while supporters missed the filing deadline.
The AGs note that an amicus supporting the plaintiffs bragged about the report’s timing, cited it on ten pages, and received $100 million from the Bezos Earth Fund, which also funded NASEM’s report. They urge agencies to scrutinize this convenient coincidence and consider suspending or debaring NASEM.
The attorneys general further demand that Congress replace the Academies as the federal government’s advisory body and revise its charter to ensure objective analysis.
Suncor v. Boulder will be argued before the Supreme Court on October 5.
Shawn Fleetwood, a staff writer for The Federalist and University of Mary Washington graduate, received the 2025 Dao Prize for Investigative Journalism; his work appears in RealClearPolitics and RealClearHealth. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood.
