2025: Our Year in Review
2025 was challenging in many ways—some we expected and others we could never have anticipated.
To meet the many challenges, we drew on our nearly 15 years of experience to fight the current Trump administration’s all-out assault on scientific research and integrity. This year, we helped more scientists than ever before with free legal and educational resources; submitted testimony and comments on state and federal proposals that will have lasting implications for scientific integrity; and documented a record-breaking number of anti-science actions by the current Trump administration.
2025 was the year it became clearer than ever that protecting science and scientists is no longer just about defending facts; it is about safeguarding the ability of evidence-based science to succeed even amid political turmoil.
Protecting the federal scientific workforce
We’re closing out the year having helped 71 scientists, breaking 2024’s record-setting total of 64. This increase is the result of an even more virulently anti-science Trump administration filled with fossil fuel executives, vaccine conspiracy theorists, and other anti-science ideologues. Much of our work this year focused on providing free legal support to federal scientists, including those facing illegal firings, reassignments, or censorship because of the politically contentious nature of their research.
Scientists also sought our help with:
- Defending against defamation threats
- Legal recourse for cancelled federal grant funding
- Questions related to pro-science advocacy and activism
- Retaliatory and abusive open records inquiries
Defending scientific integrity
In addition to our direct legal work, we submitted comments and testimony in support of science.
- We joined other organizations that promote scientific integrity, such as the Jacobs Institute of Women’s Health and the Center for Progressive Reform, in submitting a comment to the Federal Register opposing the administration’s proposed changes to federal worker protections.
- We also submitted a comment opposing the Environmental Protection Agency’s plan to repeal the endangerment finding, a landmark 2009 determination that greenhouse gas emissions pose a danger to human and environmental health.
- We defended science at the state level, submitting testimony to the Connecticut General Assembly in support of stronger protections for higher education records.
Documenting the damage
While Trump’s attacks on science this time around have far outpaced those of his first term, both in number and the scope of the destruction, we have kept pace. The Silencing Science Tracker, a database we manage with the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, documents these attacks on science and serves as a record of the damage since the 2016 elections. Early in the second Trump administration, federal agencies deleted health, climate, and other vital data from their websites, signaling a broader effort to hide scientific truths that conflict with their agenda. This attempt to change reality by ignoring it has not only jeopardized research into climate change, vaccines, and other critical areas but has also already had devastating consequences.
Since Trump’s return less than a year ago, we have documented more than 130 attacks on science.
Education and resources for this moment
Our resource library grew with the publication of the fifth edition of our 50 State Report, an in-depth analysis of how state laws protect (or, in many states, do not protect) scientific records from invasive and abusive open records requests. To provide clarity amid the chaos caused by the Trump administration, we also put out an explanation of what federal scientists needed to know during the lengthy government shutdown.
We educated hundreds of researchers on how to keep themselves and their work safe from an administration bent on destroying both. We gave presentations on scientific advocacy, legal ways that researchers can push back on political attacks, and how scientists can play a role in the 2026 elections at the annual conferences of the American Meteorological Society (AMS), the Ecological Society of America (ESA), the Geological Society of America (GSA), and the American Geophysical Union (AGU), as well as offering free legal clinics at each.
We also delivered trainings at several universities, including NYU, Texas A&M, and Columbia, and were invited to speak at multiple events nationally and internationally about the current legal landscape for science in the United States.
A groundswell of support
Our supporters power our work, and 2025 was no exception. We were able to help many researchers, educate hundreds more, track the deluge of anti-science attacks by this out-of-control administration, and grow our educational resources thanks to the extraordinary outpouring of support we received. We saw a surge of new donations in response to the administration’s many atrocities, and our end-of-year matching campaign is the largest ever thanks to our generous match donors.
Continuing the fight
2025 was certainly challenging, but we did not back down. Through it all, we continued our mission of providing a legal bulwark for the scientific community against attempts to silence, restrict, or otherwise hinder scientific research.
The fight is far from over. The incoming administration has signaled that the next three years will bring more aggressive efforts to sideline, ignore, and willfully undermine science across the federal government and far beyond. We have a much clearer understanding of what we’re up against than we did at the start of 2025, and we’re ready.