Attorney General Knudsen urges federal agencies to investigate and stop funding organizations pushing woke climate agenda to judges

HELENA – Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen led a coalition of 24-state attorneys general in urging the Trump Administration to investigate the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) and the National Science Foundation (NSF), and to cancel federal grants to the organizations after they produced a biased climate science chapter used in a judicial training manual that remains available on the Academy’s website.

In a letter sent today to the Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, and Secretary of Energy Chris Wright, Attorney General Knudsen outlined his concerns about the climate science chapter in the Reference Manual of Scientific Evidence. The chapter, which was produced with taxpayer dollars, presents conflicts of interest that violate the terms of the NSF grant as it relies on three climate activists who have recently been involved in political and climate change advocacy and litigation, including providing expert testimony in active lawsuits. NSF provided part of the grant dollars they receive from federal agencies to NASEM who produced the manual.

Last month, Attorney General Knudsen sent a letter to the President of NASEM Marcia McNutt and the President-elect Neil Shubin, asking them to remove the chapter from all publications, but they refused.

“Taxpayer dollars should not be used to fund efforts that impartially influence judges. Given multiple opportunities, NASEM and NSF still refuse to take responsibility for publishing a biased climate science manual violating their public commitments and legal obligations,” Attorney General Knudsen said. “The organizations producing these manuals and pushing their climate agendas on judges must be investigated and all funding to them should stop. As Attorney General, I will continue to sound the alarm until we put an end to their deception.”

The Federal Judicial Center worked with the NASEM to produce the manual. Recently, Attorney General Knudsen joined a coalition of attorneys general requesting the Federal Judicial Center to withdraw the chapter from their publications, and it was later removed.

Attorneys general from Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, West Virginia, and Wyoming also joined the letter.

In August, Attorney General Knudsen sent a letter urging the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to cancel taxpayer-funded grants to the Environmental Law Institute’s Climate Judiciary Project, which had been funding climate advocacy trainings for nearly 2,000 judges across the country. Following the letter and review, the EPA terminated all related grants, ensuring no current funding for the environmental group.