Reset or Purge? Trump EPA Dismisses Agency Science Advisers

Critics fear the unusual clean sweep of panels is meant to ease the planned rollback of climate and environmental policy.

All members of the Environmental Protection Agency’s boards of outside advisers on science and clean air were dismissed in a letter emailed late Tuesday, an unusual step the Trump administration said was aimed at depoliticizing the panels.

Panel members expressed disappointment and confusion at the assertion in the letter signed by James Payne, a career EPA attorney Trump installed as acting administrator. Critics charged the Trump administration with politicizing the process by eliminating the current independent advisers and clearing the way for them to be replaced with hand-picked appointees.

“This is not about good governance, this is about rigging the system for polluters; corruption at the expense of the American people,” said Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, the ranking Democrat on the Committee on Environment and Public Works.

Similar efforts to remake science advisory panels came during the first Trump administration, with EPA leaders changing the eligibility rules for serving on boards. The result was fewer university researchers on the panels and more industry consultants and scientists who were supportive of Trump’s deregulatory efforts, like University of Alabama in Huntsville atmospheric scientist John Christy, taking seats.

A number of the now-dismissed panel members had two to three years remaining in their terms. It was not immediately clear who would be appointed as replacements on the advisory panels, both of which are required under federal law. Trump’s choice to head up the Environmental Protection Agency, former New York Congressman Lee Zeldin, won Senate confirmation on Wednesday, the day after the dismissals.

An EPA spokesperson said the move was in line with the agency’s purpose.

“EPA is working to update the Science Advisory Board (SAB) and Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee (CASAC) to ensure that the agency receives scientific advice consistent with its legal obligations to advance our core mission,” the spokesperson said in an email. “The decision to reset these federal advisory committees emphasizes the importance of SAB and CASAC to EPA’s mission of protecting human health and the environment and seeks to reverse the politicization of SAB and CASAC made by the previous Administration.”

The dismissed chairs of both of the boards disputed that characterization.

“I was not appointed as a political appointee, but as a scientist that studies air pollution and health,” said Jeremy Sarnat, a professor at Emory University’s Rollins School of Public Health who had only begun serving as chair of the CASAC in October. He said the Clean Air Act, passed on a bipartisan basis more than 50 years ago and implemented under administrations of both parties, had been “one of the most successful public policies that has ever been enacted globally,” in part because of procedures that require the agency to rely on the best science.

“I know that so many other facets of American life and society have been politicized, and I hope that the CASAC and the advisory boards can remain above that and that the new administrator will adhere to the principles and practices, which have really worked so well for decades,” Sarnat said.

Kimberly Jones, an engineering professor and associate provost at Howard University, who has served as chair of the Science Advisory Board since 2023, said she was disappointed in the administration’s decision.

“It does seem to signal a shift in the decades-old accepted facts about how science should occur,” Jones said. “We should not be writing or interpreting science to meet anybody’s objectives. We should be independent, doing our best job to evaluate the science as scientists. This seems to go counter to that understanding.”

Although EPA’s science advisers are not decision-makers, their advice becomes important when the agency’s policy decisions face legal challenges. EPA’s 2024 decision to strengthen the National Ambient Air Quality Standard for fine particulate matter, for example, was bolstered because it was in line with the advice the agency received from the CASAC. Conversely, weak ozone standards passed during the first Trump administration were successfully challenged in court in 2021, in part because the EPA had received contrary recommendations from outside advisers.

It is not the first time there has been a clean sweep of scientific advisers. Biden’s EPA chief, Michael Regan, installed a new slate at CASAC when he took office in 2021 based on the findings by the GAO and others that the selection process had become compromised.

H. Christopher Frey, an associate dean at North Carolina State University who served as head of EPA’s Office of Research and Development during the Biden administration, said the circumstances are entirely different now. “This is really just a flat-out purge of the current membership,” he said.

Frey said the Trump administration seemed to be following the conservative policy platform Project 2025, which called for “resetting science advisory boards” at EPA. 

“The administration seems to be wanting to promote loyalty and compliance with its policy agenda, but that’s not the mission of a science advisory board,” Frey said. “So if that’s the goal, it’s an inappropriate interference in an external, independent expert advisory board, and it’s also just setting more precedent for this to happen every time.”

Cover photo:  Lee Zeldin, who won Senate confirmation on Wednesday to head the EPA, speaks during his Senate Environment and Public Works confirmation hearing on Jan. 16 in Washington, D.C. Credit: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images