Trump threatens National Academies with debarment. Here’s what it is.
The president invoked an obscure process to review the institution’s federal grants over what he says is “climate fraud.”
July 21, 2026 | Lesley Clark & Chelsea Harvey | E&E News
The oil industry and its allies gained a major supporter in their yearslong effort to derail climate science programs at the National Academies: the president of the United States.
It had the immediate effect of escalating the risk facing the institution over its work aimed at educating federal judges about the science behind climate change.
In a Truth Social post on Sunday, President Donald Trump ordered his administration to open a so-called suspension and debarment investigation into the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine for what he called a “fraudulent, biased, and misleading” publication on climate change…
…The latest move against the National Academies represents an “escalation on the scientific and legal communities and a desperate attempt to erase the reality that man-made climate change is impacting the daily lives of all Americans,” said Chris Marchesano, a staff attorney with the nonprofit Climate Science Legal Defense Fund. “Ultimately, the administration’s efforts to censor scientific consensus will not only fail, but be viewed as a shameful chapter in this nation’s history.”