President Joe Biden infamously took a number of initiatives to thwart the success of President Donald Trump’s second administration. One such measure was to embed politically charged language into the policies of science-based agencies, like the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) or the National Institutes of Health (NIH). That language, effectively, lets career federal employees make policy decisions for the agency while handcuffing the people President Trump appoints to lead the agencies. Trump should restore actual scientific integrity by removing politics from the equation.
These policies, called “scientific integrity” policies, were originally designed to do exactly what the name suggests: to promote the integrity of science used by the federal government. Historically, they have directed federal agencies to promote using reliable and unbiased data and require objectivity and accuracy. But Biden quietly added portions to these policies that have politicized the executive agency policies in ways both unconstitutional and anti-democratic.
The Biden policy amendments began with a memorandum that shifted focus to “political” or “improper” influence on science. This led the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) to issue a policy that banned “political interference in the conduct of scientific research” or data collection while propping up “different modes of science” like “indigenous knowledge,” or scientists who fit the various diversity, equity, and inclusion categories. By banning “political” (an ambiguous term) considerations in science, while emphasizing DEI, it is clear that the intent of these policies was itself political.
In turn, the EPA, NIH, and other agencies adopted similar policy changes. These policies specifically banned “political appointees” from “directing or suggesting” scientific activities that violate the new scientific integrity policies. Career employees are to be able to “conduct their work free from reprisal or concern for reprisal.” The OSTP policy even gave career employees a seat at the table for policymaking decisions.
Even further, these policies give employees the ability to file complaints against their superiors for violating the policies. For the EPA, this is even written into the collective bargaining agreement with its union.
These policies are both illegal and unwise. They allow career employees, notorious for being ideologically aligned with the preferred policies of Biden, to simply object on “political” grounds any time agency leadership asks them to perform a study that they do not like. For example, if agency leadership were to ask someone at NIH to perform a study that explores the correlation of heart disease with the Covid vaccine, the agency scientist could simply deem that study to be “political,” not perform the task, and report his boss for suggesting it.
Allowing employees to file a complaint against agency leadership for simply “directing or suggesting” a study effectively legalizes insubordination in the federal government. Anything that can be deemed remotely “political” would be off the table. Agency leadership would never get anything done.
As to the policies’ illegality, the Appointments Clause of the Constitution gives the president alone the authority to appoint officers of the United States. The Supreme Court has stated that anyone who exercises “significant authority” over the executive branches of the government falls under this presidential authority. In short, anyone who has policymaking authority is beholden to the president.
The Biden scientific integrity amendments, in effect, vest policymaking authority in career employees who have not been appointed by the president. A subordinate employee should not be able to determine what activity is and is not performed within an executive agency without first having presidential approval.
The amendments are also anti-democratic. The president and his party answer to the people through elections. Career employees do not. When the people elect a president, the executive agencies should not be able to say no to the policymaker that the people chose.
These policies will take work to undo. Not only have they been through the rule promulgation process (which means they must go through an opposite process to get rid of them), but the EPA has also memorialized them in the form of a contract (the collective bargaining agreement). Trump has already revoked Biden’s memorandum, but he should immediately issue an executive order or memorandum denouncing the Biden “scientific integrity” amendments and directing the agencies to immediately begin rulemaking to undo them. Additionally, he should order that their enforcement be stayed (not be enforced) due to their unconstitutionality.
But it is essential that the work be done to reverse course. President Trump is off to a great start in undoing the harms of the last administration. Undoing Biden’s “scientific integrity” amendments should be one of his next priorities.
Curtis Schube is the executive director of the Council to Modernize Governance, a think tank committed to making the administration of government more efficient, representative, and restrained. He is formerly a constitutional and administrative law attorney.
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