Earlier this month, the union representing thousands of scientists and engineers at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) signed a new contract that provides protections for government employees who promote scientific integrity. A similar clause was included in a union contract at the U.S. Department of Agriculture last year, and negotiators for the union representing more than 5,000 junior scientists at the National Institutes of Health are following suit. A contract could be signed in the next few months.

These collective bargaining agreements are the latest front in an ongoing effort to protect U.S. scientific agencies from political interference. The government under US President Joe Biden this week dropped out of the November presidential election race, has already issued legal protections for government scientists and other employees. Now it is rushing to finalize scientific integrity policies at dozens of federal agencies.

Political interference in science has long been a bipartisan issue, but the current movement is fueled by fears that former President Donald Trump could return to office. Trump's first term as president proved difficult for scientists at the EPA and other science agencies devastating, and many fear that a second term would be even worse.

If Trump wins the election in November, the next question is what will happen to the US Congress. If Republicans retained control of the House and captured the Senate, Trump would have at least two years of free rein to reshape the government to his liking.

“People shouldn’t trust that we have the legal tools to respond effectively to abuses of power in a second Trump administration,” said Blake Emerson, an administrative lawyer at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Scientific integrity

In his first week in the White House, Biden launched efforts to protect science and scientists by introducing a memorandum issued that calls for a new and stronger scientific integrity policy in the federal government. The administration plans to formally announce the finalization of a set of guidelines next month that could cover up to 20 federal agencies.

Government watchdogs have repeatedly flagged delayed action, but administration officials say they expect to release new or updated guidance for nearly all 30 federal agencies covered by the White House initiative by the end of September. “It's a complex process and takes time,” says Francesca Grifo, who heads the EPA's Office of Scientific Integrity in Washington DC and co-coordinates a White House panel that is leading the process.

Grifo says the guidelines — as well as the panel made up of science integrity officials from across the government — will set policy and institutional norms should a future administration try to break or repeal the rules. The current administration also plans to conduct workshops in the coming months to help federal officials understand and implement the new rules. However, in the absence of a federal law setting formal legal standards, many fear that it will be difficult to prevent an administration hostile to science tinkers with or retaliates against researchers who express their opinions.

“We could have the next administration just red-pencil everything and destroy it,” said Anita Desikan, a senior analyst at the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists, an advocacy group in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Public service

The Biden administration has also finalized legal protections for scientists and other federal officials hired into public service, rather than senior officials appointed by the president. This serves as a direct response to an executive order issued at the end of Trump's previous term in the White House that would have made it easier to reclassify and then terminate the jobs of tens of thousands of career professionals, including scientists.

Biden quickly revoked that order after taking office, but many expect a second Trump administration to move quickly to transform the civil service. Trump's vice presidential candidate, J.D. Vance said in 2021, that if Trump is re-elected, he should “fire every official in the administrative state” and “replace them with our people.”

In April, the Biden administration a rule finalized, which aims to prevent exactly that by limiting which federal officials can be reclassified under a provision known as Schedule F. That would make it harder to restructure the civil service, Emerson says, but there would be nothing to stop a second Trump administration from changing course with a new rule change.

The end result would be a system in which people are appointed to positions of influence based on their loyalty to a particular political faith or party, "and that only encourages corruption," says Tim Whitehouse, executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, an advocacy group in Silver Spring, Maryland.

Science unions

Collective bargaining agreements negotiated by unions are a new way to protect government science and scientists. EPA employees learned their lesson during the first Trump administration, which imposed a contract with fewer protections for federal workers, says Nicole Cantello, who is based in Chicago, Illinois, and serves as legislative and policy coordinator for the union that represents more than half of the EPA's more than 15,000 employees.

When negotiating its contract with the Biden administration, the union secured a passage on scientific integrity for the first time. For now, any disputes about scientific integrity or alleged retaliation against scientists who express their opinions would be heard by an independent arbiter outside the agency. And if a potential Trump administration wants to rescind the contract, the union would also have legal options to take action, says Cantello.

“We really weren’t prepared to defend the agency the first time,” Cantello says, calling the Trump administration’s dismissal of science and scientists radical and unprecedented. “People don’t want to experience that again and are gearing up to fight.”