NYT: Federal choose guidelines the Power Dept violated the legislation in producing climate-skeptic federal report
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/30/climate/energy-department-climate-ruling.html
A Secret Panel to Question Climate Science Was Unlawful, Judge Rules
The researchers produced a report that was central in a Trump administration effort to stop regulating climate pollution.
By Lisa Friedman
A federal judge on Friday ruled the Energy Department violated the law when Secretary Chris Wright handpicked five researchers who reject the scientific consensus on climate change to work in secret on a sweeping government report on global warming.
The Energy Department issued the report, which downplayed the dangers of warming, in late July without having held any public meetings or made records available to the public. Lee Zeldin, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, then cited the report to justify a plan to repeal the endangerment finding, a landmark scientific determination that serves as the legal foundation for regulating climate pollution.
But the Federal Advisory Committee Act of 1972 does not allow agencies to recruit or rely on secret groups for the purposes of policymaking. Judge William Young of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts said the Energy Department did not deny that it had failed to hold open meetings or assemble a balance of viewpoints, as the law requires, when it created the panel, known as the Climate Working Group.
“These violations are now established as a matter of law,” wrote Judge Young, who was nominated to the bench by Ronald Reagan. He said the Climate Working Group was, in fact, a federal advisory committee designed to inform policy, and not, as the Energy Department claimed, merely “assembled to exchange facts or information.”
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In April, shortly after the group was convened, Travis Fisher, the director of energy and environmental policy studies at the Cato Institute, who coordinated the Energy Department report, emailed the researchers from a personal email account.
He said the “exact charge” of the panel was to provide an update on science as it applies to the endangerment finding. He also informed them that the Environmental Protection Agency had asked that the document be “D.O.E.-branded.”
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The Trump admin needs to smarten up ASAP on the rescission of the endangerment finding. This failure is what happens when you leave the:
1. Planning to amateurs;
2. Courtroom defense of the plan to incompetents and resistance saboteurs; and the
3. Decision to an elderly and… pic.twitter.com/lUiLYQjJje
— Steve Milloy (@JunkScience) January 31, 2026