Ranking Member Lofgren Urges Removal of Wielicki as Leader of Climate Research Office

(Washington, DC) - Yesterday, Ranking Member Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) sent a letter(link is external) to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy's (OSTP) Director, Michael Kratsios, urging him to remove Dr. Matthew Wielicki from his position as leader of the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP). The USGCRP was established by law in 1990 to develop and coordinate a comprehensive research program to address climate change. Dr. Wielicki is a climate science denier who has built a career around belittling scientists' calls to action on climate despite his own lack of training in the field.

"For the last 20 months, the Trump Administration has systematically attacked our nation's scientific enterprise, handing the keys to discovery and innovation to our greatest adversaries," Ranking Member Lofgren wrote in her letter(link is external). "Climate science has been one of its most relentless targets. But it now appears that erasing the Federal Government's support for climate science is not enough for this Administration, and that climate science is to be weaponized against the American people as well. Earlier this summer, press reports indicated that the White House had appointed Dr. Matthew Wielicki to lead the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP). The Office of Science and Technology Policy's (OSTP) decision to select a leader of USGCRP who has demonstrated an aggressive unwillingness to collaborate with other scientists is unacceptable. In addition, the law governing the USGCRP requires that its members be permanent employees of certain federal agencies or departments, which Dr. Wielicki is not. Therefore, his appointment appears to violate the law. I urge you to remove Dr. Wielicki from his position and appoint a leader who has the technical expertise, scientific credibility, and legally required qualifications to do the job in a manner worthy of the Government of the United States."

Ms. Lofgren details(link is external) the importance of the USGCRP's work and how the Trump administration's targeting of the Program, rooted in climate denialism, puts Americans in danger and is a massive waste of taxpayer dollars:

"Last April, carrying out changes proposed by now-Director of the Office of Management and Budget Russell Vought in Project 2025, the Trump Administration dismantled the USGCRP. Federal employees were removed from the program and sent back to their home agencies. Government contracts that would have supported the sixth NCA were abruptly canceled without any valid basis. Authors for the sixth NCA, who had been selected based on their scientific expertise and merit, were summarily dismissed. This sudden move laid years of effort and taxpayer dollars to waste. To be clear, USGCRP was not targeted because it was a failure, but rather because it was a success. The program achieved its congressional mandate and became a global leader in understanding the impacts of climate change for human society."

The letter can be found here(link is external) and below.

Dear Director Kratsios,

For the last 20 months, the Trump Administration has systematically attacked our nation's scientific enterprise, handing the keys to discovery and innovation to our greatest adversaries. Climate science has been one of its most relentless targets. But it now appears that erasing the Federal Government's support for climate science is not enough for this Administration, and that climate science is to be weaponized against the American people as well. Earlier this summer, press reports indicated that the White House had appointed Dr. Matthew Wielicki to lead the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP). The Office of Science and Technology Policy's (OSTP) decision to select a leader of USGCRP who has demonstrated an aggressive unwillingness to collaborate with other scientists is unacceptable. In addition, the law governing the USGCRP requires that its members be permanent employees of certain federal agencies or departments, which Dr. Wielicki is not. Therefore, his appointment appears to violate the law. I urge you to remove Dr. Wielicki from his position and appoint a leader who has the technical expertise, scientific credibility, and legally required qualifications to do the job in a manner worthy of the Government of the United States.

The need for a robust national climate program was well established even before Congress created the USGCRP. In 1988, the United Nations (UN) General Assembly identified climate change as an urgent issue and resolved to negotiate a framework to combat it. In 2025, nearly 40 years later, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine published a consensus study report that concluded, "[T]he evidence for current and future harm to human health and welfare created by human-caused greenhouse gases is beyond scientific dispute." In the decades between those warnings to policymakers, global greenhouse gas emissions increased by more than 40%. Also in that time, Congress enacted the Global Change Research Act of 1990 (P.L. 101-606) to establish the USGCRP.

Congress intended the USGCRP to "provide for the development and coordination of a comprehensive and integrated United States research program which will assist the Nation and the world to understand, assess, predict, and respond to human-induced and natural processes of global change." During its long history, the program accomplished just that. Over 35 years, the USGCRP conducted five analyses of the best available climate science and published these as authoritative National Climate Assessments (NCA). In the NCAs, USGCRP affirmed the general scientific consensus that climate change could lead to disastrous economic and social consequences. For instance, in the most recent Fifth NCA, scientists wrote, "Even if greenhouse gas emissions fall substantially, the impacts of climate change will continue to intensify over the next decade…and all U.S. regions are already experiencing increasingly harmful impacts."

Sadly, but not surprisingly, the rigorous and high-quality climate science overseen by the USGCRP made it a target of the Trump Administration. Last April, carrying out changes proposed by now-Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Russell Vought in Project 2025, the Trump Administration dismantled the USGCRP. Federal employees were removed from the program and sent back to their home agencies. Government contracts that would have supported the sixth NCA were abruptly canceled without any valid basis. Authors for the sixth NCA, who had been selected based on their scientific expertise and merit, were summarily dismissed. This sudden move laid years of effort and taxpayer dollars to waste.

To be clear, USGCRP was not targeted because it was a failure, but rather because it was a success. The program achieved its congressional mandate and became a global leader in understanding the impacts of climate change for human society. By contrast, the Trump Administration shutting down the USGCRP puts American lives and livelihoods at risk. The alarming conclusions within the NCAs and other consensus studies are not conjecture; the evidence is all around us. Between 1980 and March 2026, the U.S. sustained 431 billion-dollar disasters, with a total cost exceeding $3.1 trillion dollars. Hindering communication between scientists and policymakers has put U.S. communities on a back foot as they wrestle with how to confront the climate-related problems they now encounter daily: failed infrastructure, losses in jobs, family homes and histories destroyed by intense fires, floods, storms, and more.

Unsatisfied with the mere destruction of the USGCRP, it appears the Administration now has further designs to twist the program into a distorted mirror image of itself. Press reports in July indicated that the White House sought to revive and weaponize the USGCRP by appointing Dr. Wielicki to lead the program. Dr. Wielicki is both scientifically and legally unqualified for the job. He has built his post-academic career around belittling scientists' calls to action on climate as "irrational" fears. He has made this assertion in spite of his own lack of training in climate science, which is perhaps why he has no legitimate history of scholarly debates on the matter via any platform except social media. Dr. Wielicki has used his X account to broadcast his view that climate change is an imaginary problem. As host of his podcast, Dr. Wielicki disparaged young people, scientists, scientific data, and government agencies alike, all while purposefully misunderstanding basic tenets of the scientific process. He has made uninformed arguments such as, "There is just no evidence for anything like a tipping point, particularly at 420 ppm of CO2, which is incredibly low over the last 550 million years. This is just completely unscientific garbage." He has defended the ostensible benefits of climate change with nonsensical arguments about the risks of a new ice age. He is fundamentally unserious as a climate researcher. Yet you ask the public to believe that you are merely elevating alternative scientific viewpoints. The scientific authors of the climate reports named above have argued that there is, in fact, an avalanche of evidence behind decades-long discussions around the possible effects of carbon dioxide levels. I can only surmise that, by appointing Dr. Wielicki, your plan is to promote the Trump Administration's politically preferred narrative by summarily removing scientific expertise from the USGCRP while benefitting from its hard-earned reputation when you slap its name on whatever product it churns out.

In addition to his scientific shortcomings, Dr. Wielicki is legally ineligible to lead the USGCRP. 15 U.S.C. § 2932 establishes a committee that implements the USGCRP. The statute states that members of the committee shall be high ranking officials from each of the 14 specified federal agencies and departments, and be chaired by a member who "shall be a representative of an agency that contributes substantially, in terms of scientific research capability and budget, to the [USGCRP]." It adds that the committee shall receive support from an executive secretary, who "…shall be a permanent employee of one of the agencies or departments represented on the committee, and shall remain in the employ of such agency or department." Public records indicate that you have appointed Dr. Wielicki as the "Director" of the USGCRP, but he is ineligible to lead or support the program because he was not a federal employee at the time of his appointment and does not appear to be currently employed by a member agency or department. Congress wrote this statute to ensure that scientific expertise would always guide the work of the USGCRP. You must follow the law.

Since June 2025, OSTP has promoted so-called "Gold Standard Science" as "the highest standards of scientific integrity." It has claimed that Gold Standard Science will enable Federal decision-makers to use "the most credible, reliable, and impartial scientific evidence available." A reasonable person would conclude that the consensus reports named above, each of which incorporated technical expertise from hundreds if not thousands of scientists, were well aligned with the tenets of OSTP's Gold Standard Science. But this example of real Gold Standard Science was inconvenient for the Trump Administration and its anti-climate science agenda. Instead, OSTP has selected a fringe ideologue without the proper background, expertise, and legal qualifications to lead America's premier climate science program. It is wrong, it is offensive, and it makes a mockery of what Congress intended when it created the USGCRP more than 35 years ago.

I intend to monitor the activities of the USGCRP closely in the months to come. In order to facilitate the Science Committee's oversight of the USGCRP, please provide answers to the following questions related to Dr. Wielicki's appointment no later than 5:00 PM on Tuesday, October 13^th, 2026:

1. Under what authority is Dr. Matthew Wielicki serving in relation to the USGCRP?

a. By what process was Dr. Wielicki appointed?

b. Please provide copies of the following:

i. Documentation of the Chair's selection;

ii. Documentation of Committee discussions and approval of Dr. Wielicki's appointment; and

iii. A copy of Dr. Wielicki's current SF-50 Notification of Personnel Action.

2. What role did OSTP play in the appointment of Dr. Wielicki to the USGCRP?

3. What role, if any, did the White House, independent of OSTP, play in the appointment of Dr. Wielicki to the USGCRP?

4. What role, if any, did OMB and/or its Director, Russell Vought, play in the appointment of Dr. Wielicki to the USGCRP?

In addition, please respond to the following questions about the general operating status of the USGCRP by the date requested above:

5. In July 2025, USGCRP's website, globalclimate.gov(link is external), was taken down and remains unavailable.

a. Please provide a list of current USGCRP Committee members and documentation of USGCRP Committee meetings held since May 1st, 2026.

b. What is the current staff level of the USGCRP office, including civil servants, political appointees, contractors, and agency detailees?



6. Does USGCRP intend to publish the sixth NCA?

a. If yes, what process does USGCRP and any involved external parties intend to follow to draft, review, and disseminate the report? Please provide detailed guidance as it is available.

b. If yes, what criteria and process will USGCRP and any involved external parties use to determine whether specific pieces of data, studies, and other forms of scientific or technical evidence qualify as meeting the conditions of "Gold Standard Science"?

c. If yes, when does USGCRP intend to issue the final version of its report?

7. Who made the decision to dismiss the hundreds of authors for the sixth NCA in 2025? Did OSTP participate in that decision?

8. Who directed NASA to issue stop-work orders and/or terminate the contracts relating to the management of the USGCRP? Did OSTP participate in that decision?

9. Did Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) representatives have any involvement in the stop-work orders or termination of the USGCRP support contracts or the dismissal of the authors of the sixth NCA?

Pursuant to Rule X of the House of Representatives, the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology "shall review and study on a continuing basis laws, programs, and Government activities relating to nonmilitary research and development." The Committee possesses jurisdiction over environmental research and development. If you have any questions regarding this letter, please contact Josh Schneider with the Committee's Minority staff at (202) 225-6375. Thank you for your attention to this important matter.

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