Project 2025 Tracker / What’s done, what’s next

13. Environmental Protection Agency · Major

Eliminate unauthorized ORD programs including IRIS

Attempted

437 13. Environmental Protection Agency

“Several ORD offices and programs, many of which constitute unaccountable efforts to use scientific determinations to drive regulatory, enforcement, and legal decisions, should be eliminated. The Integrated Risk Information System, for example, was ostensibly designed by EPA to evaluate hazard and dose-response for certain chemicals. Despite operating since the 1980s, the program has never been authorized by Congress and often sets “safe levels” based on questionable science and below background levels, resulting in billions in economic costs.”

What has happened

  1. Attempted

    ORD is on the chart with nobody senior on it. OPM's PLUM listing of EPA's policy and supporting positions, reported by EPA and published as of 15 June 2026, returns 179 positions across 24 EPA components and **not one** under the Office of Research and Development — no Assistant Administrator, no Principal Deputy, no Deputy Assistant Administrator for Management, and none of the career senior executives who ran the four centers, all of which the 2024 Plum Book listed. Every other headquarters office reports its career SES directors in the same file, so this is an absence of positions and not an absence of reporting. EPA's own pages have not moved with it: the organization chart still lists ORD among the headquarters offices, and the ORD chart and About page, both last updated 2025-10-20 and re-read on 2026-09-06, still carry ORM, OSIM, OSAPE, the CCTE, CEMM, CESER and CPHEA centers, every division beneath them and all six research programs, with the Acting Assistant Administrator and the Deputy Assistant Administrator for Management vacant. That is a hollowed office rather than an eliminated one, and it is not what the Quote asks: no ORD office, center, division or program has been eliminated, and IRIS is named in no Primary record as ended. §3b's test is what happened to the functions, and a leadership vacuum is not a statement about functions either.

  2. Attempted

    Nothing the Quote asks to be eliminated has been eliminated. EPA's rebuttal to press coverage confirms researchers were reassigned and OASES stood up, while insisting no ORD staff were laid off and that science remains a priority — the agency's own case is continuity, not abolition. EPA's current record agrees: the organization chart, last updated 2026-01-08, still lists the Office of Research and Development among the headquarters offices, and ORD's own chart and About page, both last updated 2025-10-20, still carry the Immediate Office of the Assistant Administrator, the Offices of Resource Management, Science and Information Management and Science Advisor Policy and Engagement, the CCTE, CEMM, CESER and CPHEA centers with every division beneath them, and all six research programs — with the Assistant Administrator and Deputy Assistant Administrator posts vacant. §3b's test is what happened to the functions and never the org chart alone, and the functions were relocated inside EPA rather than dropped, so this is a reorganization and not an elimination. On IRIS specifically no Primary source records an elimination: the IRIS Program Outlook page is live (updated 2026-02-17), though the most recent outlook document it offers is February 2025 against a stated cadence of February, June and October — three missed publications, which is a signal and not a Primary record of the program ending. A former ORD assistant administrator wrote in May 2026 that IRIS no longer exists as an independent program; that is one Secondary outlet and, under §3b, one outlet is a lead rather than a Status.

  3. Attempted

    EPA announced a reduction in force in ORD as part of the reorganization, with the agency shrinking from 16,155 employees (January 2025) to about 12,448 and ORD's research shifted to the program offices and the new OASES. The FY2026 Congressional Justification addendum describes the same act: scientific staff "integrated directly into program offices as opposed to being siloed in the Office of Research and Development", with ORD scientists and engineers shifted to OAR, OCSPP and OW. That relocates research; it eliminates no ORD office, center, division or program, and neither document proposes eliminating one. IRIS was not named.

  4. Attempted

    Two formal administration acts on the same day. EPA announced it would move scientific staff out of the Office of Research and Development into program offices and create an Office of Applied Science and Environmental Solutions in the Administrator's office; nothing had moved. And the President's FY2026 discretionary budget request asked Congress for a $235 million cut to ORD on the ask's own ground — it would "put an end to unrestrained research grants, radical environmental justice work, woke climate research, and skewed, overly-precautionary modeling that influences regulations—none of which are authorized by law", leaving $281 million for statutorily required research. Under §3b a President's Budget request is a formal administration request, so a proposed elimination is `attempted`. Neither document names IRIS or any other ORD office, center or program for elimination.

Research log

What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence

Research notes

  • The No IRIS Act (H.R. 1415 / S. 623, introduced 2025-02-18, referred) would abolish IRIS by statute; introduced only, which is not started on the Requires-Congress ladder and carries nothing here.
  • The govexec piece is an op-ed; it is kept as Secondary for the IRIS claim only because no Primary source addresses IRIS. One outlet is a lead, not a Status.

Re-leveled 2026-09-01: partial → attempted. The partial rested on the 2025-07-18 note’s assertion that “ORD as a stand-alone office is being dismantled”. The rule that a rename is not an elimination decides this item and it was not applied: the test is what happened to the functions, never the org chart alone. Both halves of that test now point the same way. Pages fetched 2026-09-01:

So: nothing the Quote names has been eliminated, the functions were relocated inside EPA rather than dropped, and the only thing in the record that reaches the ask is a Budget request. This is #802’s shape (functions continue, so an “eliminate” ask does not climb on the reorganization) and not #962’s (EERE came off the org chart and was merged away). Compare #1199, which reached the same finding about ORD the same day by asking whether its addressee had been abolished.

Reviewed 2026-09-06. Held at attempted, with a fourth event added. The open question was whether ORD’s four centers and three offices are still staffed and operating or are a chart EPA has not updated. Both ORD pages are unchanged since 2025-10-20, so the chart answers nothing new. What does answer it is OPM’s PLUM database (opm.gov/about-us/open-government/plum-reporting/plum-data/, agency-reported, data as of 2026-06-15): EPA reports zero ORD policy and supporting positions, against 179 for the agency as a whole. That is the staffing answer the question wanted, and it cuts both ways — it is the strongest evidence yet that ORD has been emptied of senior leadership, and it is still not the elimination of any named office, center, division or program, which is what the Quote asks. It is recorded as a dated event rather than left in this note because it is a dated fact about the ask’s object. The IRIS program outlook page was not read again on 2026-09-06.

Action
eliminate
Object
ORD offices and programs including the Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS)
ID
1165