NEWS
24 July 2024

Exclusive: the Trump administration demoted this climate scientist — now she wants reform

Virginia Burkett has filed a whistleblower complaint, asking for an investigation and better policies to protect scientists against political interference.

By Jeff Tollefson

A climate scientist who was demoted for speaking out by the administration of former US president Donald Trump is seeking an investigation into her case and demanding changes to personnel policies to prevent similar retaliation against others in future. Her supporters say the proposed reforms could help her agency, the US Geological Survey (USGS), as well as others safeguard science in the event of a second Trump administration, which many fear will be even more efficient than the first at sidelining science and scientists.

“This is not about what happened to me, it’s about what could happen to others,” Virginia Burkett, the scientist, told Nature, emphasizing that stronger protections are needed regardless of who wins the US presidential election in November.

Burkett, whose position and salary as chief scientist for climate and land use at the USGS have been upgraded under President Joe Biden, laid out her allegations in a 200-plus-page complaint filed today with a federal watchdog agency that represents whistleblowers. She is represented by the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund, a non-profit organization based in New York.

After Trump took office in 2017, Burkett repeatedly opposed what she saw as harmful actions taken by his administration, including dismantling climate research programmes, cutting science budgets and attempting to water down an influential government report on global warming. Burkett says that she was demoted from her leadership post at the USGS and then removed from a prominent White House panel that manages the government’s main, multiagency climate programme. Now she is seeking an investigation into what she calls “abuse of authority and gross mismanagement” under Trump.

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