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WASHINGTON – A new White House task force will examine cases where the Trump administration may have distorted or suppressed science in critical government decisions, in a bid to create safes to prevent this from happening again, a the White House declared on Monday.
In a letter to federal agencies, obtained by NBC News, the White House said the task force’s mandate would include identifying whether current policies “effectively prevent inappropriate political interference in the conduct of the law. scientific research ”and“ prevent the suppression or distortion of scientific or technological data. results.”
“Restoring and safeguarding scientific integrity will require the participation and contribution of scientists from across government, who will bring their diverse perspectives to this endeavor,” said the letter, which was signed by Jane Lubchenco and Alondra Nelson, two. White House office officials. science and technology policy.
This is the latest attempt by President Joe Biden’s administration to wipe out the remnants of former President Donald Trump, which Biden aides say has diminished the federal government’s credibility with the public on issues critics ignoring the facts to match the former president’s message. Under Trump, the White House has made conflicting recommendations on the need for masks to combat Covid-19 and the severity of the pandemic, while dismissing government experts who have sounded the alarm on climate change.
Julia Krieger, spokesperson for the Office of Science and Technology Policy, said the task force would conduct a “whole-of-government, forward-looking review of science in federal agencies, in part by examining practices that were contrary to this mission. . the past four years. She said this would include “Trump-era policies that eschewed scientific integrity in favor of politics.”
Officially announced on Monday, the task force was first called in a Jan. 27 memorandum signed by Biden, saying critical decisions should not be “distorted or influenced by political considerations.” The White House is asking federal agencies to nominate members for the task force by April 2.
In a sign that the White House was looking beyond traditional bureaucracies, like the Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency, a long list of divisions that handle national security, financial and health matters were invited to nominate members for the working group. Among those who received the White House letter on Monday were the Justice, Treasury and Defense Departments, as well as the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the National Institutes of Health and the State Department.
The White House effort to examine the entire federal government comes after the EPA launched its own effort last week to review environmental policies and decisions to see where the science may have been manipulated or intentionally deleted, and to update these policies as necessary, NBC News reported.
“When politics drives science rather than the science that informs politics, we are more likely to make policy choices that sacrifice the health of the most vulnerable among us,” wrote EPA administrator Michael Regan in letter to staff last week.
Under Trump’s EPA, the agency has been frequently accused of distorting science and data for political gain and justifying more lax regulations on polluting industries whose emissions contribute to global warming. During Trump’s years in power, the EPA removed climate change data from its website, and many senior scientists and longtime political experts left the agency.
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