Newly Disclosed Records Show Trump Administration’s Unlawful Actions Related to Secretly Formed “Climate Working Group”

(Washington, D.C. – January 22, 2026) Newly disclosed records about the Trump administration’s “Climate Working Group” (CWG) reveal brazenly unlawful actions behind the creation of a report that underlies the administration’s attack on the Endangerment Finding – including evidence of at least 18 meetings held in secret. 

The records – which also show politicization, reckless haste, disregard for public health, and contempt for rigorous science – are part of more than 68,000 pages of records obtained by Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) and the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) as the result of a lawsuit alleging violations of the Federal Advisory Committee Act regarding the secret creation of the CWG and its production of a widely discredited report. 

EDF sent a portion of the records in a formal submission to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) late yesterday, along with a request for immediate withdrawal of the agency’s proposal to repeal the Endangerment Finding – which relies heavily on the CWG report. 

Here are key findings from the records, which are linked below (the numbers provided correspond to the records numbers at the bottom right corner of all documents contained in the PDFs, which are text searchable): 

The records show that CWG members recognized their objective was to “call into question” the basis for EPA’s long-standing determination that greenhouse gas pollution endangers public health and welfare. (17846-47)

The CWG openly injected policy and legal considerations into what was supposedly a scientific assessment. 

• The records indicate that the CWG began working on the Report in early April. Emails between CWG members reporting on discussions with Secretary Wright suggest the Group was originally given a deadline of April 30, 2025—just weeks after the group began working (16043).
• A DOE political official told CWG members in an email on April 19: “The exact charge for you all is to provide an update on the science relevant to the EPA’s endangerment determination with respect to GHGs” and “the EPA team asked that the document be DOE-branded.” (17144).
• On April 14, 2025, a DOE political appointee emailed the CWG members to share excerpts from Clean Air Act Sections 202(a)(1), 302(g), and 302(h) as “the areas of inquiry that are most relevant to the policymaking process” to help the CWG with “targeting your work.” (17067).  These are the statutory provisions under which the Endangerment Finding was made.
• Acknowledging that the Endangerment Finding was “heavily referenced,” one CWG member wrote on April 19 that “[a]bout all I can hope is that what we write will provide sufficient ‘reasonable scientific doubt’ regarding the science claims” (17846-47).
• A few days later, one CWG member circulated an essay by an industry-funded climate skeptic and described it as a “good explanation of why the Admin may want to move on the [Endangerment Finding] without a science paper …  It is more complex to argue that the science since 2010 invalidates the original EF.” (17278)
• On May 6, one CWG member emailed fellow members to share their review of a draft chapter of the Report and stated: “I don’t have a read on how important this section is to the EF. It is certainly applicable but will it be part of whatever our overseers want?” (17462)

The CWG acknowledged they hardly discussed human health and the overwhelming scientific evidence supporting the Endangerment Finding.

• One CWG member wrote on April 19 that “[i]t sounds like the lawyers involved believe they can win this fight without the science … But if the science argument is decided upon by a vote, or by the number of published citations, we lose the science argument.” (17847)
• When one CWG member later suggested the group title their report “Updated Scientific Assessment of the Risks to Human Health and Welfare from U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions,” another CWG member responded “[w]e hardly talk about health or welfare in the report.” (41685)
• In early May, one [CWG member] suggested having an “Author’s Prefix” that could “say something like ‘Hey, give us a break ... We had only 7 weeks from our first meeting on 11 April. We may have missed something ... we’ll fix it later’”(18997).

The records show that the development of the CWG Report was a politicized process, with coordination between the CWG and EPA facilitated by DOE political officials. 

• On April 24, a DOE political appointee emailed the CWG members, stating: “I’ll update you all as soon as we get a new (interim/rushed) deadline from EPA … Wright and Zeldin are traveling together today, so we should have an answer soon.” (16021)
• On the same day, the political official emailed saying “we have renewed buy-in that EPA will wait for this work and include it in its rulemaking …  [A CWG member] suggested we increase our coordination with EPA, particularly the legal team drafting the rulemaking. If you want to be included in those conversations, please let me know.” (16025)
• On May 27th, the political official emailed saying: “My offer to everyone in this group stands– if you’re interested in supporting … rulemaking efforts at EPA, please let me know.” (16998)
• On July 28, a DOE political appointee emailed the CWG members, saying “I believe the Secretary is aware that he owes you all some glowing public comments and an open bar tab at some point.” (6200).

DOE internal reviewers — who participated in a review process conducted in the final days before the CWG’s Report was published on July 29 — also recognized the report’s failings. But the CWG declined to adopt most of the feedback, and the Trump Administration kept these critiques from the public.

• Internal DOE review comments called out the CWG report for covering “only a very small subset of the literature since 2020” (19244) and criticized the draft report’s citations to blog sites, think-tank papers, older citations, and non-peer-reviewed materials (including the CWG authors’ own non-peer-reviewed work). (19209-19270).
• Internal DOE reviewers used words such as “misleading,” “inaccurate,” “cherry pick” or “cherry picked,” “not appropriate,” “factually incorrect,” “not factual in nature,” “not true,” and “unjustified” to describe the draft CWG report’s treatment of topics presented. (19209-19270)
• A DOE political appointee stated to the CWG “it’s my hunch that most comments will be rejected” (160) and recommended that the CWG “keep[] edits minimal” (15336; 43401). The records show that EPA asked DOE political appointees to avoid major edits that could change the page numbers of content in the Report (46830). 

The records show that the CWG’s work on the report was intentionally done in secret.

• The record indicate that the CWG met in secret at least 18 times in 2025:  April 19 (17855), April 21, (8262), April 22 (20128), May 8 (3622, 29769), May 14 (28486), May 19 (14041, 18971), May 21 (3561), May 22 (8013), May 27 (41450), June 3 (15571, 15588), June 6 (18348, 254), June 13 (2903, 2126), June 20 (1903, 2401), July 3 (3380), July 22 (8339), August 1 (1933, 2909), August 5 (15310, 48089), August 25 (48223, 2860). (most records here unless otherwise linked above)
• DOE political appointees emphasized that the CWG’s efforts should remain secret. In June, a DOE political official underscored, “I cannot stress enough the importance of our silence and restraint pending completion of this process.” (2787; 2774).
• Another DOE official responded in agreement, emphasizing that the CWG’s effort was not grounded in transparency but was instead about achieving Secretary Wright’s goals: “We can loop people in when the time is right, and we should be selective about our inner circle. To me, it comes down to what the Secretary wants and what’s most helpful to the mission” (2774).
• DOE political appointees regularly used personal email addresses for official communication, including some communications where multiple officials used personal addresses. (329; 449; 1185)

The records show disdain for scientific assessments, and the public, by some CWG members.

• Referring to a detailed study by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM), a CWG member dismissed it out of hand — stating that “[w]ithout even reading the NASEM report I assume it’s useless” (1350; see also 18037; 19006; 451; 1880) The same CWG member elaborated on his views on NASEM by making sweeping claims about the political and ideological affiliations of government and academic scientists as a whole, stating “they too deserve the DOGE treatment.” (1350)
• A CWG member opined that “the climate assessment system is really broken, a RFK Jr style purge is needed, IMO.” (1778)
• One CWG member emailed the group, discussing how they wanted to push back against the “extreme weather alarmism angle” with a counterargument: “At this point I want to hold the readers’ faces in it until their limbs stop twitching and then they’ll be receptive to the rest of the material.” Another CWG member responded: “Yes!” (16449)

“The public has a right to information that is required to be disclosed under the law – information relevant to the harmful impacts of climate pollution for millions of Americans. With court-mandated government disclosure of these records, it is clear that the Trump Administration unlawfully pursued a secretive effort to develop a fatally tainted report – abdicating its responsibility to protect public health and well-being,” said Erin Murphy, EDF Senior Attorney and Director of Clean Air and Energy Markets. “The fundamentally flawed proposal to repeal the Endangerment Finding must be immediately withdrawn.” 

“The court clearly ruled that the Trump administration violated the law in setting up a secretive process with a group of hand-picked climate contrarians to draft a sham ‘climate science’ report,” said UCS President and CEO Dr. Gretchen Goldman. “The administration has been forced to acknowledge its unlawful actions and release government documents related to this case, which will allow the public to see for itself how the DOE and EPA worked in concert to solicit a report with predetermined conclusions aimed at overturning the science-based Endangerment Finding. Unfortunately, the thoroughly debunked DOE report remains available on U.S. government websites, which should be deeply concerning to anyone who values science and truth. And EPA’s expected gutting of the scientifically sound Endangerment Finding, coupled with the agency’s complete abdication of its responsibility to limit heat-trapping emissions would put people in even greater danger from fossil-fuel exacerbated climate impacts."  

Read the entire submission EPA here. And review the records of the Climate Working Group, pursuant to the Federal Advisory Committee Act, here:

• CWG Records Part 1
• CWG Records Part 2
• CWG Records Part 3

Background

The Trump EPA has proposed a repeal of the 2009 Endangerment Finding – EPA’s bedrock scientific determination that climate pollution from vehicles harms public health and welfare. The Endangerment Finding is based on a mountain of scientific evidence, has been reaffirmed by EPA multiple times based on new evidence and public comments, has been repeatedly affirmed by courts, and provides the foundation for commonsense standards to reduce harmful climate pollution. Repealing it would mean thousands of avoidable premature deaths and illnesses, more pollution-fueled extreme weather such as flooding, fires, and heat waves, and higher insurance bills and other costs for American families.

EDF and UCS are calling for EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin to immediately withdraw his manifestly tainted, unlawful and harmful proposal, joining former EPA Administrators Christine Todd Whitman and Gina McCarthy, who served under Republican and Democratic Presidents alike and who called for withdrawal in a recent op-ed addressing the Trump EPA’s failure to follow the science and its abandonment of EPA’s mission to protect the health of Americans

Last year, the Trump Administration secretly arranged for five hand-picked climate action opponents to form the CWG and tasked them with writing a report challenging the overwhelming scientific consensus underpinning the Endangerment Finding. The resulting report was kept secret until it was unveiled as part of the proposal to overturn the Endangerment Finding. The proposal relies extensively on the CWG's report, citing it 22 times. Almost immediately after the report was released, a group of more than 85 scientists issued a scathing rebuttal outlining the report’s numerous flaws. 

Environmental Defense Fund and the Union of Concerned Scientists filed a lawsuit alleging violations of the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA) by Secretary Wright, Administrator Zeldin, DOE, EPA, and the CWG. That law, which Congress passed in the wake of Nixon-era scandals, states that federal government advisory committees cannot form or operate in secret, requires fairly balanced membership, and mandates that materials created by an advisory group must be available to the public, among other requirements. The court then ordered the release of CWG records.

Under the court order, the Trump administration has disclosed more than 68,000 pages of records so far. The information in last night’s submission to EPA is drawn from some of those records. At a hearing yesterday, the court ordered the government to disclose an additional set of CWG records, previously withheld, by next week. EDF and UCS are working to house all the records online so the public can access them. We expect that work will be finished by early March.