Trump just told the country on Truth Social that the National Academy of Sciences committed climate fraud.
Federal officials are now deciding whether that fraud costs the Academy its funding.
One review could determine whether taxpayers ever fund this group again.
The Chapter That Already Got Caught Once
Every federal judge in America leans on one book to make sense of complicated science.
It's called the Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence, and it has guided rulings on everything from DNA to statistics since 1994.
Last December the Federal Judicial Center slipped a new chapter into that manual.
Ninety pages. Written to shape how judges rule on climate lawsuits.
West Virginia Attorney General JB McCuskey read it and started making calls.
He rounded up twenty-six other Republican attorneys general and demanded the chapter's removal.
They said the chapter wasn't neutral or fair.
They didn't stop at a letter. They asked Congress to investigate defunding the entire Federal Judicial Center.
Eight days later, Judge Robin Rosenberg – the Obama appointee running the Center – folded.
One sentence. No explanation. The chapter vanished.
McCuskey called it a win for judicial impartiality.
Democrats in Congress called it "unconscionable" and demanded it back.
Columbia University's Jessica Wentz and Radley Horton, the chapter's authors, are still publicly fighting to get their work reinstated.
Trump Just Made It Personal
That fight simmered for months.
Then Trump blew it wide open.
He accused the National Academy of Sciences of publishing "fraudulent, biased, and misleading" manuals that judges relied on to decide major climate lawsuits.
Those rulings, he said, cost the country in a big way.
Then he did something no Republican attorney general had dared to do.
Trump ordered federal Suspension and Debarment officials to open a review of the Academy's conduct.
That's not a strongly worded letter. That's a funding threat with teeth.
Debarment is the federal government's version of a blacklist. No contracts. No grants. Nothing.
Trump argued taxpayers shouldn't be funding what he called climate fraud, and that judges never should have leaned on it in the first place.
Translation: the money that built the National Academy of Sciences into America's most trusted scientific voice is now on the table.
Trump didn't stop at climate.
He said the Academy has been run by left-wing operatives who used their credibility to smuggle activism into a document judges were told to trust as neutral.
Look at who wrote the chapter and that charge writes itself.
Wentz runs Columbia's Sabin Center for Climate Change Law – an outfit built to help environmental groups win climate lawsuits.
The same lawsuits her chapter was supposedly guiding judges through with a straight face.
Marc Morano's Climate Depot flagged a newer Academy report on climate attribution science, claiming the same activists are embedded in the process again.
Two Ivy League professors wrote instructions for the federal bench, got caught once, and walked right back into the room.
The Threat That Could Actually Break the Academy's Bank
A suspension and debarment review isn't paperwork. It's a countdown clock.
Federal officials can bar an organization from every new federal contract, grant, and cooperative agreement while they dig through the evidence.
The National Academy of Sciences leans heavily on federal contracts and grants to fund its work.
Cut that off and there's no Plan B sitting in a donor's checkbook.
The Academy is already reeling from funding fights earlier this year, and new president Neil Shubin now inherits a war that could define his entire term.
If Suspension and Debarment officials find what McCuskey's coalition already found once, the Academy doesn't just lose a chapter next time.
It loses the checks.
For Americans who watched judges cite "settled science" to shut down energy companies and drive up their own utility bills, that's not bureaucratic housekeeping.
That's accountability arriving four decades late.
Sources:
- Staff, "Trump Orders Conduct Review Over Climate Guidance for Federal Judges," The Epoch Times, July 20, 2026.
- Staff, "Judicial research center cuts climate section from judges' manual after Fox News Digital report," Fox News.
- Marc Morano, "Bravo, Mr. President! Trump calls out 'climate fraud' at activist National Academy of Sciences!," Climate Depot, July 19, 2026.
- Staff, "President Trump Exposes National Academy of Sciences Publishing Fraudulent," The Gateway Pundit, July 2026.
