Fearing Retaliation, Scientists Are Struggling to Share Impacts of Federal Cuts

The Trump administration retaliated against scientists who stepped forward publicly to express concerns over federal policies. But many are still sharing their fears anonymously.

Since January, the Trump administration has laid off thousands of scientists and staff and cut research funding for those who remain across the federal government. At the same time, department heads at different agencies—from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration—directed scientists to halt much of the research on climate change and its ripple effects on U.S. residents, lands and seas. 

This summer, staff members from at least two agencies were put on leave after speaking out against these moves. Some were subsequently fired.

Paired with those aggressive pullbacks in federal funding for research, the administration has cultivated a widespread fear of retribution in the U.S. scientific community, one that jeopardizes free speech, experts say. 

But many are still speaking up, albeit anonymously. 

According to a recent survey, one sentiment rings true for a vast number of environmental researchers: Trump-era changes have had an “extremely negative impact” or done “irreparable harm” on their fields.

Critic Retaliation: At the end of June, hundreds of current and former EPA employees signed onto a public “Declaration of Dissent” opposing many of the Trump administration’s policies, which they said “undermine the EPA mission of protecting human health and the environment.” 

The petition made some strong accusations, calling out the administration for subverting public trust, reversing progress made to help improve the lives of “America’s most vulnerable communities” and “ignoring scientific consensus to benefit polluters,” particularly surrounding asbestos, mercury and greenhouse gases. 

Just days after the petition was released, 139 employees who signed it were put on leave, my colleagues Lisa Sorg and Aman Azhar reported in July. 

“These are trumped-up charges against EPA employees because they made a political statement the Trump administration did not like,” Nicole Cantello told my colleagues. She is president of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) Union Local 704 and leader of AFGE Council 238, which represents over 8,000 EPA employees. “Now the Trump administration is retaliating against them.”

Since then, at least eight employees who signed the letter have been terminated, according to The Associated Press. I asked the EPA how many had been fired and a spokesperson said in an email that the agency “does not comment on individual personnel matters,” but that the decisions were made following a “thorough internal investigation.” 

“The petition—signed by employees using a combination of their titles and offices—contains inaccurate information designed to mislead the public about agency business,” the spokesperson said in an email. “Thankfully, this represents a small fraction of the thousands of hard-working, dedicated EPA employees who are not trying to mislead and scare the American public.”

In August, a similar situation occurred at the Federal Emergency Management Agency. A group of 36 FEMA employees were put on administrative leave after signing a letter accusing President Donald Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, whose department oversees FEMA, of hamstringing the agency’s ability to perform its lifesaving missions by cutting programs and staff, appointing an underqualified administrator and censoring climate science. The letter was published just a few days before the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, and was aimed at avoiding a similar catastrophe in disaster management, the authors wrote. 

FEMA did not say whether the employees put on leave would be terminated. 

“It is not surprising that some of the same bureaucrats who presided over decades of inefficiency are now objecting to reform,” a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson wrote in an email to Inside Climate News. “Change is always hard. It is especially for those invested in the status quo. But our obligation is to survivors, not to protecting broken systems.”

Earlier, Trump said he intended to eliminate FEMA, possibly by the end of this year. Then deadly flooding tore through Texas’ Hill Country, and few survivors could get through to FEMA because Noem’s agency had stopped paying for an aid hotline, NPR reported in August.

Soon after the disaster, Noem was saying that Trump merely wants to remake FEMA, not scrap it.

Growing Uncertainty: Fearing retribution, many federal workers and researchers who rely on federal funding have not stepped forward publicly to express their concerns about how policies impact their work. But a survey compiled by the American Society of Naturalists gives insight into how scientists are faring under Trump—and it’s not looking good. 

Sent from early June through mid-July to 14 scientific societies, including the Wildlife Society and Society of Systematic Biologists, the survey asked a range of questions on how federal policies have impacted participants since Trump was inaugurated. Participants, who shared their thoughts anonymously, included scientists from every state and a variety of career stages spread across academia, the federal government, nonprofits and industry.

More than 80 percent of respondents said that federal policies had a detrimental impact on their work, and a majority reported a negative effect on their personal lives. Around half of the respondents reported they had experienced a “chilling effect on free speech.” One of the overarching takeaways was also an uncertainty for the future, with scientists expressing concern for the next generation of researchers as funding cuts inhibit training programs and a lab’s ability to hire more early-career staff. 

Just 2 percent of the respondents were in support of the administration’s changes. 

“The cancellation of funding and the removal of solicitations has had a massive impact on my ability to function as [a] conservation biologist and my ability to plan for the future,” one anonymous participant wrote. “Scientists from federal and state and local agencies rely on me and my lab to provide analytical services and expertise to aid with on-going endangered species conservation efforts.”

I asked the White House what their thoughts were on this survey and what respondents say have been restrictions on free speech. 

“The United States is the largest funder of scientific research and is home to the largest public-private ecosystem for innovation in the world,” White House spokesman Kush Desai said in an email. “The Trump administration’s commonsense efforts to realign grant funding away from ideological pet projects and streamline our bloated government are further strengthening America’s scientific dominance.”

As journalists, my colleagues and I are dedicated to covering how government actions impact climate change and efforts to mitigate it. But it’s been unusually difficult this year to connect with sources willing to speak publicly about how Trump administration decisions are affecting them. 

Heatmap’s Jeva Lange summed it up in her February article, “The Great Clamming Up.”

“Some might be worried about what will happen if they stick their necks out and are playing a sort of wait-and-see game with everyone else; others, justifiably, might be scared of more direct forms of retribution,” she wrote. “This makes it challenging to report stories, of course. But it’s also, more existentially, a crisis of democracy.”

As a result of this, you readers may have noticed more news articles than usual with anonymous sources. When you see this type of source in an article at Inside Climate News, it means the reporters and editors involved have both vetted who this person is and concluded that there is a valid reason for leaving out their name, such as a risk to their safety or livelihood (which can be possible, as the situations at FEMA and EPA have made clear). 

Cover photo:  The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency terminated multiple employees after they expressed discontent with Trump administration policies in June. Credit: J. David Ake/Getty Images