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

13. Environmental Protection Agency · Minor

Reset EPA science advisory boards

Done

422 13. Environmental Protection Agency

“Resetting science advisory boards to expand opportunities for a diversity of scientific viewpoints free of potential conflicts of interest.”

What has happened

  1. Done

    Both boards have been reset. Administrator Zeldin named a chair and 36 members to the Science Advisory Board, saying reconstituting it would "provide rigorous, independent, evidence-based, scientific advice". Neither announcement says anything about conflicts of interest, the other half of the Quote.

  2. Partially done

    The first board was reset. Administrator Zeldin named a chair and six new members to the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee, including, he said, "two members from state air pollution control agencies for the first time in years". The Science Advisory Board was still unfilled.

  3. Attempted

    EPA opened both boards to public nomination on the same day, publishing separate Federal Register requests for candidates to the Science Advisory Board and to the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee.

  4. Attempted

    EPA listed "Reconstituting Science Advisory Board and Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee" among the 31 actions announced as the biggest deregulatory action in U.S. history. Nothing had changed on either board yet.

Research log

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

Research notes

  • A search of the federal records we keep and search for “Science Advisory Board” (EPA OR “Environmental Protection Agency”), added on 2026-08-27, did not surface the membership announcements; the Federal Register notices came from a search of the Federal Register notices among those records, and the two announcements from a web search restricted to epa.gov.
  • Done on the second announcement rather than the first: the Quote names “boards”, plural, and both were reconstituted.
  • The conflict-of-interest half of the Quote is not addressed in either announcement. What the reconstitution did deliver is a membership turnover and, on CASAC, two seats for state air agencies.
  • #1070 asks something different of the same committee — that CASAC weigh economic effects — and stays not started.
Action
reinstate
Object
EPA science advisory boards
ID
1050