Trump's Climate Manual Legal Challenge Targets National Academies

Donald Trump did not answer the National Academies with another letter. On July 19-20, he used Truth Social to direct "Federal Suspension and Debarment Officials" to review the organization over the climate chapter in the Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence, the manual federal judges use in Daubert and Rule 702 work [1]. That phrase is the key: this is not a standard request to revise a scientific chapter, but a push to use a procurement sanction process against a nonprofit co-publisher tied to the judiciary's own reference project.

What the directive does

Suspension and debarment is a procurement integrity tool. In ordinary use, it can block entities from federal contracting for up to three years, usually in response to fraud, ethics violations, or performance failures [1][2]. That is why the order lands so oddly here: the government is not talking about changing the manual through peer review or publication edits, but about whether a contractor-sanctions framework can be aimed at the National Academies because of a climate chapter.

1. December 2025: the 4th edition of the Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence is published with the new climate chapter written by the National Academies [2].
2. January 29, 2026: 27 Republican state attorneys general demand that the Federal Judicial Center remove the chapter [2].
3. February 6, 2026: FJC Director Judge Robin Rosenberg unilaterally omits the climate chapter from the FJC-distributed version [2].
4. February 19, 2026: 21 state attorneys general, led by Montana, ask the National Academies to remove the chapter from its online version [2].
5. March 2, 2026: the National Academies refuses in a two-sentence response, saying it followed the same procedures it uses for all other chapters [3].
6. April 28, 2026: the House Judiciary Committee escalates its investigation and sends letters to Michael Burger, Jordan Diamond, and Vic Sher [4].
7. July 19-20, 2026: Trump directs suspension-and-debarment officials to review the National Academies' conduct [1].

The two-version problem

For litigators, the practical problem is not the political theater but the split text. The FJC-distributed copies no longer include the climate chapter after the February 6 omission, while the National Academies still keeps an online version with the chapter intact [2][5]. If a court, an expert, or opposing counsel reaches for the manual in a Daubert motion, there is now a threshold question that used to be invisible: which version is the one the court is supposed to treat as the reference point?

Justice Elena Kagan's foreword makes that question harder to dismiss. She wrote the manual's foreword, and in July she told Sen. Susan Collins that she had not read the climate chapter, while adding that the judge managing the project was working to address congressional concerns [1]. That does not resolve the chapter's status, but it does underline why the manual carries institutional weight even when its contents are disputed.

How the dispute widened

The House Judiciary Committee's inquiry gave the dispute a separate track. Its letters framed the climate chapter as part of a broader influence campaign around the Environmental Law Institute's Climate Judiciary Project, and the committee said public records showed more than $2.3 million from the New Venture Fund to Sher Edling in 2024 and more than $1.2 million to ELI; it also claimed 47.8% textual similarity between the chapter and a 2020 law article co-authored by Michael Burger [4][8]. Those are the committee's allegations, not a neutral finding, and the similarity number has not been independently verified.

The response from the chapter's supporters was framed as an institutional warning, not a policy argument. Other Reference Manual authors published an open letter saying that if political actors can decide which established sciences are disfavored, every scientific discipline becomes vulnerable [6]. On the other side, William Barr and three other former U.S. attorneys general said the chapter reflected "a biased take on climate science, conceived of and executed by interested parties" [7].

That leaves the part litigators have to live with: a procurement remedy aimed at a quasi-judicial scientific reference work, a nonprofit co-publisher whose role does not fit the usual contractor model, and two versions of the same manual in circulation. Until the authority question is answered, the climate chapter remains contested material, and that uncertainty may matter more in briefing than in headline law.

References

1. Trump demands review of scientific manual used by federal judges - Courthouse News Service
2. Trump calls for review after climate manual for judges withdrawn - The Hill
3. National Academies of Sciences says no to demands it remove climate info - Ars Technica
4. House Judiciary Committee Ramps Up Investigation - EID Climate
5. Defending the Climate Science Reference Guide - Columbia Climate Law Blog
6. "I'm not a scientist": Why judges need the climate chapter - Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
7. A Key Judicial Manual Is Changing What Counts as Science - City Journal
8. Concerns Remain About Climate Advocates' Influence On Judicial Independence - Forbes