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

13. Environmental Protection Agency · Notable · Needs Congress

Legislate transparent, reproducible science requirements for EPA rules

Attempted

439 13. Environmental Protection Agency

“Add teeth to long-standing executive orders, memoranda, recommendations, and other policies to require that EPA regulations are based on transparent, reproducible science as well as that the data and publications resulting from taxpayer-funded activities are made immediately available to the public.”

What has happened

  1. Attempted

    The administration renewed the executive-order layer the Quote wanted Congress to put teeth into, rather than seeking the statute. Executive Order 14303 defines “Gold Standard Science” as reproducible, transparent, communicative of error and uncertainty, subject to unbiased peer review and free of conflicts of interest; requires agencies to update their policies to implement it; and, in section 4(b), requires that the data, analyzes, conclusions, models and source code behind influential scientific information be made publicly available. But it is an executive order, revocable by the next one, with an express section 9(c) disclaimer of any enforceable right — the absence of teeth is exactly what this Quote is about. Under playbook §3b executive action that routes around a Requires-Congress ask is `attempted`, not `partial`.

Research log

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

Research notes

  • Bills: the Sound Science Act of 2026 (S. 4397, Sen. Ricketts) would amend the Toxic Substances Control Act “to improve transparency of the regulatory process and coordination of science among Federal agencies”; its text was read at https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/BILLS-119s4397is/html/BILLS-119s4397is.htm. It was read twice and referred to Environment and Public Works on 2026-04-27 and has gone no further, which is not started on the Requires-Congress ladder. The Scientific Integrity Act (H.R. 1106, S. 4545) runs the other way — it protects agency scientists from political interference — and was likewise only referred.
  • No bill in the window requires immediate public availability of data and publications from taxpayer-funded activities.
Action
other
Object
transparent, reproducible science requirements for EPA regulations
ID
1174