 Okay, well welcome everyone to our webinar this afternoon besieged to bolstered question mark the Biden environmental transition. We've counted up and they're now we're now 84 days into the first hundred days of a whole new presidential administration. It's set about turning all these campaign promises on the environment into action. Of course, most of you are familiar with what they've been responding to Biden one in part by pledging to reverse course from the Trump administration and really bolster the federal environmental policies and regulatory agencies. We're here today to discuss what they've actually been doing, their plans and accomplishments thus far, also how this transition stacks up against its predecessors zone promises and the challenges ahead. So we've gotten together a fine group of panelists here, leaders and specialists and several environmental and related fields, each of them following the Biden transition from a different angle from the standpoints of environmental policy law and policy environmental justice and scientific integrity. Out of all of it we're trying to aiming to paint a multifaceted portrait of where the Biden transition now stands and where it's headed. Now there's several people I want to thank at the outset here. And within edgy, especially Jessica varner lay Frederick son and the many others who helped prepare the work that we're presenting in the webinar, a special thanks to Shannon limkey who has worked so hard who for the last month, and been so vital to pulling off the event. I wanted to extend a warm thanks to our collaborators. That's the three other organizations represented here and their press people. Thanks to the public employees for environmental responsibility to we act for environmental justice and to the union of concerned scientists for your support for this endeavor. And now to get us started with some logistics. I'm going to turn it over to Shannon Shannon linky our communications coordinator edgy. She's been such a vital part of edgy's media relations and communications our strategies and so on. Today she's going to go over some basics about how the webinar is going to work. Thanks. Yeah, thanks so much Chris. Hello everyone thanks for joining this panel discussion I'm really looking forward to it and hearing all of our great panelists speak. My name Shannon like a stole as Chris says I handle the communications for the environmental data and governance initiative or edgy for much shorter. All right so I just wanted to go over some logistics with zoom, which we're all probably really familiar with at this point. But first you'll see that we are recording this discussion this afternoon so that's just a heads up on that. Also note that the chat is open and turned on for this event and I'm going to go ahead and put edgy's code of conduct into the chat right now. And this is just what we use internally and externally for events to outline basic expectations around respect and non harassment. So I just wanted to flag that and also flag that if you have any concerns at any point during the event you can direct message me under the edgy host user name or you can also email me, I have my email there in the chat, or Kelsey Brezeman who's another another edgy person and you can email us at any point during or after the event. So feel free to go ahead and introduce yourselves in the chat with your name and where you're calling in from it would be great to see where folks are coming calling in from. So feel free to do that. And the last thing I'll mention is just that throughout the webinar, the Q&A feature will be open and you can find this by clicking Q&A at the bottom of your screen and opening up that box and then at any point you can type in a question that you may have for the whole panel or for just a particular panelists and either way. And we'll either try to get to that question, perhaps during the presentations or at the very end during the dedicated Q&A portion. And also if you see a question in there that you also had go ahead and hit the thumbs up and that'll just give us that question and give us the sense of which questions we should really prioritize and make sure that we do get to. Okay, so now I'll go ahead and hand it back to Chris Sellers who's going to be facilitating the discussion and introducing all of our speakers. Chris is a professor of history at Stony Brook University and has served on the coordinating committee for edgy, as well as served as the lead for edgy's policy monitoring and interviewing initiative so he's been really, really integral to edgy for effort years now. So thanks so much Chris on to you. Okay. Well, I'm going to introduce just in order of wind speakers are going in the in the lineup. And I wanted to start with our edgy folks, both of them, as well as I or environmental historians. Chris Gavarner is she's a lecturer in architectural history at MIT and a visiting assistant professor at Platte. And is also an incoming fellow at USC society of fellows she's an edgy steering committee member and coordinator of what you'll hear about today are our new people's EPA website. Chris Frederick son who can't be with us today he's, he has a family emergency. He is a visiting assistant professor and the history department at the University of Montana. And he's our, he's our interviewing cord curator at edgy, our oral history interviews. The next speaker then I will go. And the next speaker is Tim White House. He is executive director of the public employees for environmental responsibility or peer. That's that organization supports current and current and former public employees who seek a higher standard of environmental ethics and scientific scientific integrity within their agencies. He was working with a lot of whistleblowers previously he served as a senior attorney at the US Environmental Protection Agency is also head of the law and policy program at the North American North American Commission for environmental cooperation in Montreal. Our next speaker is Peggy Shepherd. She is the co founder and executive director of we act for environmental justice organization, known to many of you with a long history of engaging organizing engaging people in northern Manhattan, community based planning to address environmental protection and advanced environmental policy. She has among her many positions and accolades. She's an executive committee of the National Black Environmental Justice Network. She was the first female chair of the National Environmental Justice Advisory Council to the US EPA. And among her awards, the Jane Jacobs medal from the Rockefeller Foundation for lifetime achievement. And at least two honorary doctorates from Smith College and Lawrence University. Our final speaker is Jacob Carter. He is a leading research scientist for the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientist. He investigates how science is used in the policymaking process with a special focus on issues of scientific integrity across the federal government. And among his act, he has many academic qualifications among them a PhD and ecology and an evolutionary biology, as well as qualification and certificate environmental studies from the University of Kansas. So that's our lineup we're really excited to hear from everybody. And I think we'll start with Jessica, who will tell us a little bit about some some things edgy has been doing on this front. Thank you for setting up. All right. What a pleasure to speak at this political pivot point as environmental justice climate change and scientific integrity become keywords in the Biden administration. I'll share what collaborators at the environmental data and governance initiative what we fondly referred to as edgy are doing and have been doing to keep the government accountable. Super lucky to collaborate with first a quick overview of edgy. The group coalesced in November 2016 to document analyze changes to governmental to environmental governance under the Trump administration. Over 50 member network from multiple academic institutions, nonprofit and grassroots organizations, and professions document analyze and advocate for federal provision of environmental data and governance, working to improve environmental administration stewardship, promote environmental democracy, health and justice in this digital age. This amazing network of historians, scientists, data analysts, activists, advocates and more are organized in working groups under themes such as environmental justice, alternative org website monitoring policy interviewing. And while Trump's administration was our catalyst, our watchdog ways run deep, as we continue to monitor, advocate and act as Biden's administration shifts words, resources and agency methods. For example, edgy's web monitoring group has been tracking website changes scrutinizing tens of thousands of federal agency environmental web pages. Since 2016, they report there has been moderate progress in the Biden administration. For example, several agencies now use the term climate crisis, there have been updates to EJ agreements and EJ small grants, and there are instances where the Trump administration documents have been revoked due to political interference and agency with scientific integrity policy violations such as this screenshot. Thanks to Gretchen. Chris Leif and I are a part of the policy interviewing working group at edgy, which analyzes changes to federal institutions and environmental energy and climate in various projects, in depth reports, white papers, public comments, op eds, fact sheets, letters to Congress, FOIA requests, websites and public histories and environmental governments are our work. And in December 2020 edgy launched a people's EPA, APE, a collaborative digital project to tell the complex public history of the EPA and help illuminate the path forward. And since December, APE has slowly released previously anonymous interview transcripts of edgy collaborate interviewers and collaborators conducted over 125 sessions over the past four years and still counting with over 90 EPA and environmentally related employees and retirees. A majority are our career employees, they worked in various headquarters offices, divisions and programs from enforcement and compliance, air and environmental justice, and beyond. The interviews reveal the Trump administration's impact, as well as other administration transitions. As Crystal there notes the interviews aren't just an indictment of Trump administration's attack on science. They also make up a library of lessons learned, and he will go into a little bit more depth next. The AP website also is tracking the headlines daily related to the EPA's reconstruction and rebuilding found in local and national media. To provide historical agency timelines, track other groups who are tracking the Biden transition, provide archival documents and resources, such as EPA FOIA request in collaboration with other groups such as toxic docs, and feature data analytics, such as on the EPA's budget or enforcement dollars over its history. And the APE as shown here continues to grow. As we watch, analyze, and document together making EPA's complex work clear, and I'll pass it over to Chris for more. So I'm going to draw on a lot of what Jessica was talking about to pull together an historical perspective on what we've seen of the Biden administration thus far. And I'm kind of standing in here for life as speaker but the other contributors include him and Jessica and others in edgy. There we go. After years, you know, what time am I talking about a moment of transition after years in which the EPA came under siege from its own political leadership, a new chief arrived promising to turn the agency around. No words about his predecessor, how this fellow had crippled the agency and abused the process of administering America's environmental laws squandering the trust of the American people. Stepping in to restore confidence in the EPA. The confronted agency in trouble hobbled by shrinking budgets fleeing staff and low morale. So, who am I talking about. Well, those of you who know your EPA history have probably already realized I'm talking not about Michael Regan our recent recently arrived administrator but about instead William Ruckels house. He was the agency's inaugural administrator once it first was first established in 1970, and he returned to head up the agency in 1983 after Ronald Reagan's first appointee and Gorsuch was pushed out. Now that we're getting deeper into the Biden administration. In its transition of this and other agencies, the EPA's own history can, I think, provide an illuminating window on just how this transition stacks up against its predecessors, and a little bit more. The history of similar if not identical past transitions provides us with the kind of mirror offering comparisons that helps situate what we've seen of the Biden transition thus far, while suggesting opportunities as well as perils that are ahead for Reagan and the rest of the new Biden leadership. But if the 1983 transition led by Ruckels house offers one such lens through which to interpret what we're seeing the 2009 to 10 transition from George W Bush to Barack Obama offers another setting these two prior reverse course transitions alongside the current one also illuminates the long building trends. I'll emphasize today that had made the Biden transition historically unique. And these are the ongoing polarization of environmental politics by party and the growing prominence of an of climate and environmental justice. Starting with the Ruckels house return of 1983 84, despite those similarities we saw at the outset, the political conditions under which it unfolded were quite different from what we're seeing today. And almost among these, it happened under Republican President Ronald Reagan, whose own reversal of support for Ruckels houses predecessor pointed to how many Republicans at this stage still supported the EPA and the nation's relatively new environmental laws. Despite Reagan's reversal, however, his White House still placed significant limits on what Ruckels house could do exemplified by new newer policy fronts and issues such as acid rain. And interestingly, Ruckels house also. He also struggled with the hesitancy in his own enforcement staff, traumatized by the breakup of the EPA's enforcement office under Gorsuch. With the disincentive she put in their way, their initiatives remain at historic lows six months in, at which point, Ruckels house gave his famous gorilla in the closet speech to try and buck them up to to rouse a more confident aggressive attitude against environmental violations. And we may anticipate and see that Reagan Reagan is going to face similar issues down the line. Nevertheless, over Ruckels house is 18 months at EPA's helm, its budget and staff at least began to be restored. And even as those issues we now see as prominent climate change and environmental justice were just beginning to percolate the transition of 2009 to 10, during which a newly elected Obama brought in Lisa Jackson, as EPA had it more closely resembles today's in some other ways. The Democrats were taking over executive leadership from Republicans change of parties. And for a brief period they also control both houses of Congress. They replaced a Republican administration more explicitly hostile, especially on climate action. As well as against the science behind it. With climate change on its way to its current high profile the Obama White House itself appointed some climate leadership within. And that was the arrival of Carol Browner as the climates are the first predecessor to Biden's current White House level climate appointees GM McCarthy and John Kerry. Jackson's EPA also set about drafting the endangerment finding which justified the policies that then began to explore on how to regulate greenhouse gases under the Plenare Act. But in history that might repeat itself, Browner had trouble exerting much influence in White House circles and Obama led climate and other initiatives, then came up against the Republican takeover of Congress in 2010. And the other precedents that the bombing years have bequeathed the Biden team are its growing emphasis on environmental justice and perhaps counter intuitively a continuation from the Bush administration of reductions in EPA's budgets and staff. This is from a 1999 historic high. This last the continuation of declines was largely because of a hostile Republican Congress once again. This proposed budget increase of 21% just out last week would go a long way toward restoring what the EPA is lost. But for that to happen it needs to be sustained over a number of years, not just one year deal. In the light of this history, we can come to a few conclusions about what exactly is historically new in the Biden transitions so far. I mean, it confronts historically unprecedented damage at the EPA and especially in other environmental agencies. That has come not just from the four years of Trump, but from a longer term corrosion of its capacity, and where the Trump administration especially distinguished itself on the damage front was in a multi faceted attack on federal science and its role in environmental which Tim White House and Jacob Carter are going to discuss further. Also what stands out historically is how much the Biden team seeks to concentrate the White House level at the White House level, its efforts both against climate change and on behalf of environmental justice and we'll hear more especially about this activities on environmental justice from Peggy Shepherd. But this White House concentration of both efforts seems to reflect a resolve to try and overcome the siloing to which federal agencies are prone to attempt not just across but maybe a pan agency approach to these problems. So historically new facet of what we see in the Biden administration is as willingness to spend in order to accomplish its goals. There's some precedents here in the Obama stimulus of 2009 which funded more super clean up super fun cleanups and alternative energy initiatives, but the level of spending. $9 trillion in the COVID rescue package $2 trillion in the infrastructure plan, and then this night 2022 budget, they are considerably more ambitious, and a much greater share of the infrastructure goes also goes toward transitioning away from fossil fees. But finally I think there is one looming question one additional one for us to watch as this transition unfolds, will it wind up restoring the EPA and other agencies to what they once were, or will it be able to effectively recreate environmental issues. For us at edgy that would mean not just overcoming the silos and bolstering the science, but making it more just and also more accessible to those communities it protects. Thank you. And now we'll move along to hear from Timothy White House. Hello everyone. Hold on well I get set up here. Hi, Chris, and for those of you participating over the years we've relied very much on edgy's data and information so it's a pleasure to be here and share our perspectives on the new administration. As Chris said in the introduction we deal quite oftentimes with whistleblowers we represent actual whistleblowers pro bono. What we wanted to do today in this presentation is provide a perspective on whether we are entering a new era. Share with you some of our client experiences during this transition. Talk a little bit about the Scientific Integrity Act, Jacob will drill down deeper into this, and then offer some perspectives on long term trends, particularly as they relate to whistleblowers and scientific integrity. So are we entering a new era. Let's hope so I don't think I need to go back and put up some of the problems in the Trump administration. Those were quite evident as it waged a war, both on the environment, the federal government and the scientists within the government so we see some very positive announcements and actions out of the Biden administration. Perhaps one of the most revolutionary, if he's able to hold to this pledge is to protect scientists from political interference and make sure I think what is key here is that they are able to provide valuable information and insights to the American people. The language and actions out of the EPA Administrator Reagan are very promising. Just this week he issued a memo where he committed EPA to operating in a fishbowl of borrowing some language from William Ruckelshaus. And to being open and accessible to all points of view and, very importantly, after the Trump administration and from our perspective is reaffirming employees rights to petition or furnish information to Congress, and to engage in protected whistleblower activities. All right. I'm not sure why I'm not going to the next screen. Here we go. I wanted to talk about some of our client experiences before I do that I did want to caveat this that we are in a period of transition, where language and rhetoric really matters. The hard part is going to come real soon as the administration tries to assert control over the bureaucracies and further its own vision and goals. And in some of those agencies and some of those programs it's going to be easier than others so for example, the administration has made climate a priority. It's staffing up its climate offices throughout the federal agencies with some of the best and brightest thinkers. We're reaching out to climate scientists who were who did not fare well under the Trump administration, but in other agencies which will be important for an environmental agenda. And in parts of EPA it's going to be very difficult. So let's just look for a moment at USDA. Tom bill sec has come back from the Obama administration to lead the US USDA. That's agency with tremendous scientific integrity problems it's going to be playing a major role in climate change issues as well as pesticide and chemical issues. In 2016 and oh I do survey of nearly 1000 scientists of those 120 said their work had been suppressed or altered for reasons other than technical merit. And that's a pretty astounding number. If we look at us EPA. There are significant problems in certain parts of EPA that were made worse under the Trump administration but have been long standing problems. We have a 2020 employee employee survey results those will come out officially very soon. But some of them have been published 43% responded negatively to the following statement, I can disclose a suspected violation of law rule or regulation without fear of reprisal. All of the employees that are working in chemicals and pesticide programs, almost one half said they cannot disclose violations of law rules or regulations without fear of reprisal. Again that's fairly astounding. The administration has a tough road ahead in terms of reforming these agencies and it will have to go beyond political leadership they'll have to go down into the management career management staff. So it's rhetoric fairly easy. Cases are harder. I wanted to share with you three cases that are up on the screen just very briefly. These are public cases so you can Google the names if you want to learn more about these cases. But we do see some promising signs but again the jury still out on this I wanted to talk about Evie M and Eger of the USGS. She is a microbiologist who managed the highest biosafety level containment laboratory at USGS is Seattle based Western Fisheries Conservation Center. She had 28 years of excellent job performance ratings. She had filed a scientific integrity complaint concerning the failure of the lab over a six month period to address the release of certain pathogen contaminated wastewater into wetlands. She had been subject to since then poor performance reviews and was ultimately after a very long period on administrative leave was terminated in March 2021, which you will notice during the Biden administration. So we're just this week Monday and abrupt turnaround the USGS rescinded her removal and said it would reinstate her to her previous position, and it's looking to determine the appropriate amount of back pay. Hopefully we don't know why that happened but assume that someone higher up looked at this case and said why on earth would we defend the actions of the previous administration in a case like this where someone was trying to do the right thing and had years of good service to the government. Two other cases that are also very, I think have been in the press and have been talked about that are unresolved but I think are worth mentioning here. The first is Dr. Ruth etzel, who is an internationally recognized expert on child health in the environment. She literally wrote the book Children's Health in the Environment. She was hired by the Obama administration after nationwide search. She was director of the Office of Children's Health Protection under Trump, just as the federal strategy was nearing completion for the elimination of lead from children. And she had been sidelined after speaking out about some regulatory issues and her concerns about the direction of the Trump administration. Dr. McCain had during a backdrop of some of the most latent problems at EPA by the Trump administration, their disregard for science their attack on scientists including her, she was removed from her position and has not been doing meaningful work at EPA sense. And this is an EPA that is largely very few epidemiologists which is what, what Ruth does. So that case is outstanding, we have another case, Walter Lohan, who's an environmental analyst at the Bureau of Land Management. During this case up it does relate to oil and gas and climate change. He had had a number of years of outstanding service with the Bureau of Land Management. He is a retired member of the US military. He's really stressed to BLM management, the high potential mortality from the Converse County oil and gas project in Wyoming for hawks and other birds, and he was sidelined after repeatedly making those concerns known and given make work tasks. He is being proposed from removal from the federal service despite his many years of strong performance work there. And so those are two cases that kind of shine a light on how the administration will handle some of these issues where scientists or employees have spoken up and have been punished for doing so under the old administration. Tendency and transitions to want to look forward and not backwards. And given what we've gone through in the last four years. It's very important that this administration really focus on making these employees whole again, and bringing them back into meaningful work in the federal service and to stop some of the retaliatory efforts that had happened under the Trump administration. I want to talk about scientific integrity policies. Those were started with the best intentions. Many of our clients and others that have problems in the federal government and become whistleblowers or make protected disclosures. Generally, can do it through scientific integrity policies or even if they don't know those policies exist at the root of their concerns are problems about scientific integrity. This last week I did receive an email I wanted to share from a former EPA scientist who said scientific integrity policies are great window dressing for use at congressional hearings, dealing with media in the public, not so much for ensuring that scientific integrity is actually practiced inside the agency when science and politics in a larger sense collide. So we welcome this look at scientific integrity by the Biden administration. And I think Jacob will delve into this much more deeply but there are a few key things that I wanted to highlight as it ties directly into whistleblowing and science and government. I wanted some of the bullets down here that are important to us there are a few others but I wanted to highlight some of the big failings. One is managers are really never penalized for retaliating against whistleblowers, and that includes not only career managers but supervisors and political appointees. And there needs to be stronger laws to ensure that that can happen, particularly with political appointees where you may need a new law being passed. I also think that what we see oftentimes is supervisors and this again can happens under both Democratic and Republican administrations are often involved directly or indirectly in evaluating the scientific integrity complaints of subordinates and that really needs to And finally, scientists need to be able to publish and lecture in their fields without prior approval with very limited exceptions and that that is not happening gone from, you know, science based agencies to agencies that have been largely run by communication offices not by the scientists and that's been a trend that's happened over the last 20 or 30 years and it's really accelerated under the Trump administration. I won't talk specifically here but I will people want to contact us. There are a number of efforts to improve whistleblower protection laws. We do need better laws to make sure that what happened under the Trump administration doesn't happen again. We could have a change and Congress in two years we could have a change in the president in four years and I think one thing the last four years has taught us is that our legal protections for scientists and federal employees are not strong enough, and that a strong executive can come in and crush the federal government the federal agencies that they're in charge of overseeing. There are no quotes up here because I think they're meaningful for for whistleblowing in general. And they'll be meaningful in the Biden administration and the administrations after him. And I think sometimes what we see is what we know whistleblowers are rarely ever rewarded for what they do. There have been a few exceptions now. We have the new administration era, where the work of whistleblowers has been recognized by the new administration and they need to continue to do that. We also also see employees get caught up in these bureaucratic sort of nightmare scenarios where when they make scientific integrity complaints or complaints about what's happening within their divisions they get caught up in these things and retaliation by their management against them they may have all their time cards reviewed for years, things like that and meanwhile, these people who are trying to do the right thing are having a very difficult time and the polluters are out there having a free reign of things and so that's why I put the second quote in laws are like cobwebs which may catch small flies but let the wasp and hornets breakthrough. You need to make sure that does not happen to our civil servants and in our environmental laws and unfortunately it is happening. And the third bullet is from Nancy Kassenbaum for those of you that know that name, I believe she was a Republican at a time when oversight was a Republican and Democratic function. It's tedious. It needs to happen it will make both, if done correctly, both parties stronger in our government stronger. This is my contact information if you have any questions you can ask them in the chat or Q amp a. Some thoughts down below that the destruction of science under Trump gives President Biden both a low bar for improvement and a tall task for drawing the brightest line ever known between science and economic and political influence. And I know all the groups on this webinar are going to be working full steam to make sure that happens and keep the pressure on to make sure we can protect our scientists and our policy in the process. Thank you. Thank you Tim for that illuminating talk. It sounds like we'll hear from Jacob in just a minute but next up is Peggy Shepard, who I believe I forgot to mention is also on the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Commission, and so I have some very interesting things to tell us about what's been going on I imagine. I and I understand Peggy take it away. Okay. Good afternoon everyone. I've actually been made the co chair of the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council. And we have a lot of work to do in a very short period of time, but I'll get to that. I just want to start out by saying that environmental justice has really had a renaissance in large part, unfortunately, during. This is due to the current COVID-19 pandemic, where we saw African Americans die at higher rates from COVID due to the high levels of air toxins in their communities. And it really reminds us how profoundly the energy and environmental policy decisions of the past have really failed communities of color, allowing persistent stressors and pandemics to disproportionately impact communities of color and low income. So, prior to the presidential election, many environmental justice and national green groups, group advocates came together to really have a strong vision and platform about tackling the climate crisis crisis, while also advancing our shared goals of climate racial and economic justice to improve public health, our climate future, and community well being. And to achieve that vision we made a number of recommendations to divide. We said, you know, you need to enact solutions that address the legacy of pollution. You can do a lot of new initiatives, but if you are dealing with what's there now, there, it will not appear to be effective. The policies in the center justice and equity that we had to reduce greenhouse gas pollution, and that there needed to be a just transition to pollution free energy economy, and that we needed to reduce transportation pollution as well. So, what we've really understood is that Biden has really adopted that vision, and he's working toward implementation after months of consultation with communities and a diversity of advocates. The climate addressing environment and climate justice has been a core part of his climate plan, and he's appointed an array of officials who are meeting with advocates, believe me, daily and weekly, and soliciting recommendations and advice on specific issues. I've probably had meetings with heads of federal agencies, two and three times a week. That is how they are being made available to the advocacy community to really talk about their new initiatives and to seek advice on key issues. So what I am seeing in real time is that Biden is actually using an all inclusive, all of government approach. So he's established an environmental and climate justice division within DOJ, which he did say he would do. And they're looking to pursue cases to the fullest extent of the law. That has not been done in years. They're working to elevate environmental justice in the federal government and in the all of government approach. So, currently the federal government has two key environmental justice groups, and Biden is elevating those and reestablishing them. The first one is the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council. And also the White House Environmental Justice Interagency Council, both report directly to the chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, CEQ. And of course, the chair reports directly to the president. With the work, CEQ has hired senior and dedicated environmental justice staff. So those two councils will be charged with revising executive order 12898, which was initially promulgated by Clinton and then reauthorized by Obama. And those, that executive order will be revised in collaboration with environmental justice leaders and the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council. In fact, we had our first meeting about a week and a half ago, and we are divided into three committees. There are about 29 people on the committee on the council, which is a federal FACA. And the committees are Justice 40, which I'm chairing the executive order and the mapping tool. And so the advocates are going to be developing recommendations in those three categories, so that they can be submitted to the administration by mid May. So we clearly have a lot of work to tackle. I'd also say that we're really looking at clear performance metrics to ensure accountability as we implement the executive order. Because the previous executive orders have said, oh, well, the agency, 17 agencies have to develop an environmental justice plan. You know, that wasn't really done in a robust way. You know, the agencies kind of gathered a bunch of stuff that they said was EJ, and they put it forth as their plan. But there had never been any kind of reassessment or critique of what they were doing or where the gaps were so that a plan would really be effective. So we expect that to change. And also, once the executive order has been revised, the White House, EJ advisory council and the interagency council will publish an annual public performance scorecard on the implementation. So again, the White House EJ council will be making recommendations on what that scorecard should look like and what it should, you know, what are the measures that should be focused on. The administration is also working to overhaul the EPA's civil rights compliance office. We know that for sometimes over 10 years civil rights complaints had simply sat at EPA, not even as far as I can tell, not even read. So he has now appointed some very progressive attorneys to begin to work in that civil rights office and ensure that that we will have some justice for for communities who are overburdened and filing those title six administrative complaints. We're also working to create a data driven climate and economic justice screening tool. And again that's one of the key areas that the EJ council will be working on. And the idea there is to identify communities threatened by cumulative impacts of stresses of climate change, economic racial inequality, environmental pollution. Ensure that the information is accessible. It'll be published in multiple languages. And really there to identify disadvantaged communities, including overburdened tribal areas. There will be a new mandate to set up new air monitoring and frontline and fence line communities. And the administration is going to be reaching out to the states to ensure that they are adequately monitoring environmental pollution, emissions criteria pollutants and toxins in frontline communities. They will also be installing new monitors they will be ensuring that the states install new monitors where there are none, so that they can really provide accurate and available real time data. There's also discussions about creating a new civilian climate core that would be working in frontline communities that would help create a pipeline and also create job training to link them with jobs. You know, a, there's a proposal about to be introduced by AOC and Senator Markey around a civilian climate core as well. I would say it's been very important for the administration to establish an interagency team to address particular issues that have been identified and to partner directly with communities. We believe that's a way to directly work to resolve really challenging persistent pockets of climate inequity. And again, if those interagency teams because environmental justice is intersectoral, we really have to have those agencies all working on those issues. Which is why the executive order targets 17 federal agencies, because we know that housing is a key issue. Certainly environment energy transportation. So, really thinking about the concerns and challenges that arise in communities really impact a variety of agencies and those policies from those agencies are impacting communities, historically in a very negative way. We certainly understand that the administration will be tackling water pollution in a science based way prioritizing strategies and technologies to reduce air pollution in traditional climate and traditional each a communities. And again, recommending that every state prioritize emission reductions in disadvantaged communities that have been identified by the new climate and economic justice screening tool that's going to be developed. And certainly one thing that's gotten a lot of attention is the idea of targeting investments, energy investments and benefits with the goal of delivering 40% of those benefits to disadvantaged communities. And that's certainly gotten a lot of attention. It's called justice 40. And the idea is to target energy benefits 40% of those energy benefits to frontline communities. There's been a number of ways to focus on clean energy, energy efficiency, clean transit, affordable housing workforce development remediation and reduction of legacy pollution and development of clean water infrastructure. And so, I think it's just been, it's just been amazing because when I was thinking last night about preparing for this. And I looked back at what the Biden campaign said it would do. And then I looked at the things that I know are happening and believe me, there are a number of other things I'm sure that I personally just don't know about yet that haven't been publicized. And what I know he is actually implementing exactly what he said he would do in his, in his, in his campaign platform on environmental justice and building back better. So, I'm feeling very optimistic. The devil is always in the details. And one of the key issues is that we know that just because you send 40% or you send whatever amount of monies to states, they don't always get to the communities that really need them. In the Gulf Coast, for instance, federal monies that were sent to the Gulf Coast after Katrina, never made it to African American communities that who are still, you know, basically out of pocket still basically impacted by that by the storm and the flooding. So, how do we really understand the mechanisms to disseminate and distribute resources, and how do we actually hold states accountable that those resources get to the intended the the intended recipients. So that's really, I think, one of the most important challenges we have to address, and that the administration will have to address. And I am just very happy and optimistic that they are reaching out in such an assertive way to the advocacy community to hear the challenges and to hear what we think are some of the solutions. So, I'll stop there. Thank you Peggy for really a fascinating insight into what all is going on. And it does sound sounds good. I guess. So let's, let's get back though just get back to scientific integrity and hear from. And across the government and Jacob Carter will be speaking about that. And thank you Chris and thank you edgy so much for the opportunity to speak today and it's just so great to hear all the hope and optimism from all the panelists and but also hear about the challenges ahead, because there will be challenges in the future. I'm so I'm going to be talking about what we have seen so far in terms of wins and what we're hoping for in terms of evidence based decision making and scientific integrity under the Biden administration but I thought we just speak first a little bit about the term scientific integrity and give a little history of where this has come from so scientific integrity for a long time referred to what was used as a research term to refer to research misconduct. And then the journalism of research fabrication of data. And if you were ever a graduate student who did some kind of research, you probably had an ethics course where you talked about scientific integrity or ethics and research and this is where I sort of first came across scientific integrity and my career path. In the 2000s this term was used more as a policy term to refer specifically to political interference in evidence based decision making that was occurring under the George W Bush administration. And so for example manipulation of research findings to fit certain political decisions, especially on climate change decisions under that administration. And that is really sort of where I'll focus on today in my talk is more scientific integrity in its uses and used as a policy term. And then under the Obama administration, which ensured to bring science back to decision making. And we start to see scientific integrity. And this idea of ensuring scientific integrity and become the basis and formation of policies and practices that hopefully confer scientific integrity to science based decision making across the federal government so for example the scientific integrity policies that Tom mentioned earlier. Using this policy definition I just wanted to to say this at the outset. This is a table from a paper that I published with the former colleague Emily Berman in the Journal of Science Policy and Governance where we looked at scientific integrity violations. In every administrative administration, dating back to President Eisenhower. And we started this project to look and see how the Trump administration compared in terms of its scientific integrity violations and if they were really unprecedented as compared to other administrations and what we found is that we could find an example of a scientific integrity violation under every administration dating back to Eisenhower so it didn't matter if it was the Democratic administration or Republican administration. We could find a scientific integrity violation and UCS has been tracking scientific integrity violations or what we refer to as a tax on science since the George W Bush administration. We're a handful under the Obama administration and lots under the Trump administration that will continue to watch under the Biden administration as well I mean, always hopeful that you will not see any but if history is repeating then I'm sure we will see some. So we'll be watching for that, but the past four years were very unprecedented in terms of scientific integrity violations. So this is the tax on science that we observed since 2017 during the past four years. And these are the various categories of attacks that we observe restrictions on conference attendance signlining scientific advisory committees politicization of grants and funding, willing that data collection or data accessibility censorship of scientists halted edited or suppressed studies and rules regulations or orders that should have been informed by science or were mandated to be informed by science but we're indeed not. And so at the end of the four years of the Trump administration be tallied 191 total attacks, which was an unprecedented frequency in terms of what we had calculated previously under both Obama and George W Bush so to give you an indication of how unprecedented under the George W Bush administration which was the administration that formerly the scientific community viewed as very hostile to science UCS tallied 98 attacks on science under the George W Bush administration over eight years. So that's like 191 under the Trump administration in half that time. So quite unprecedented. And to me that's indicated that, you know, maybe there were some weaknesses in the scientific integrity policies and their implementation that weren't quite working. So we have this new administration and given the attacks on science that have happened, the weaknesses in scientific integrity that that could be there within the federal agencies. The million dollar question is, what will this administration do, and what will specifically they do to strengthen scientific integrity and protect federal scientists and their work. Which is quite important now I think we all know that given the pandemic and the politicization that we saw the COVID-19 crisis before, and the resulting harm that occurred. This is a really critical and important question that this administration and issue that this administration has to tackle. But there has been some progress that has occurred that has been really good at the onset. And so the first thing that I want to talk about is the appointment of a science advisor. And for over a decade now and UCS has been recommending and various reports that I'm showing here on the screen, that the president should the science advisor to cabinet level. So there have been various reports in which we have made this recommendation. And this year we have finally seen that so Biden did elevate will elevate his science advisor to a cabinet level position, which is really great because it will give the science advisor some capacity to coordinate more closely with other cabinet members and gives the science advisor a little bit more power to coordinate scientific integrity or other science based issues across federal agencies. There's been other progress that that's been great in terms of memos executive orders and anti science decisions that have been reversed. And we just have discussed these in a policy forum that we published in science back in February. If you want more details on this, I would encourage you to seek out that publication and read that. And so I'll just touch on some highlights here so there were a number of scientific working groups that have been formed. And through a presidential memorandum that was signed by President Biden on January 27 to strengthen scientific integrity and evidence based decision making established a subcommittee through the National Science and Technology Council, which is still being formed. The committee will essentially be tasked with reviewing scientific integrity implementation across federal agencies, as well as the existing scientific integrity policies. We've also seen some agencies all mentioned start to do their own review of attacks on science to learn what kind of politicization and political interference occurred in rulemaking and decisions that the agencies were making. So I think that may be a step sort of in that direction of strengthening scientific integrity and federal agencies, which has been really good to see. So this subcommittee will conduct a review and hopefully we'll have some recommendations and some guidance that will help the implementation and strengthen the scientific integrity policies in the long run. And this will be directed by the Office of Science and Technology Policy. We also saw a number of working groups formed on COVID-19 during the transition. There was also a health equity task force form to look more into the disproportionate impacts experienced in our communities in terms of infections from COVID-19 and vaccine distribution and a number of councils as we heard from Peggy Sheffer today and work that is ongoing on the front of environmental justice. In terms of scientific leadership, there's also been progress there. So the presidential memorandum took a very large step. I thought, do you establish scientific integrity officers and all agencies so not just agencies that primarily conduct scientific work, but all agencies, because all agencies do some sort of evidence-based decision making. It also established chief science officers and science-based agencies as well. And then the Biden administration has been moving quickly to nominate and appoint qualified leaders to lead science-based agencies, which has been really great to see, especially after the past four years. In terms of scientific advisory committees, there has been some progress ongoing here as well. The memorandum that I mentioned earlier also establishes a review for processes that guide the individuals who are nominated and will sit on these advisory committees as well as some transparency issues in scientific advisory committee processes. We hope that the administration will reconstitute a number of these committees that were filled with unqualified experts. It seems like the EPA is moving forward to do just that. And we are encouraging the administration to diversify its members on these committees. It looks like there will be a review of a number of charters for committees that were disbanded, which is great to see, because there were a number of important committees that were disbanded. And it looks like the administration will try to find an answer to who are the qualified experts and how do you define that? Who is the qualified expert that deserves to sit on these advisory committees? There will also be some review of conflicts of interest and how those are handled and made available for those sitting on scientific advisory committees. There were also a number of anti-science executive orders that were reversed by the Biden administration, which was great to see. I just have the common names here, but I'm happy to go into any on particular. And of course, the work isn't over yet. And so we still have a number of recommendations ongoing for strengthening scientific integrity, you know, the implementation of these policies. I think as we saw from, you know, seeing 191 attacks, and most of them conducted by senior level political officials sort of points at the whole of the implementation of these policies. So we've recommended that maybe the scientific integrity officers should begin to work with inspector generals who have a little bit more independence and power. Something else that would really help is the passage of the Scientific Integrity Act, which would codify number provisions making a lot of the scientific integrity violations and the political interference illegal. We also have a number of recommendations related to communication. And we've also done a separate analysis to see that there were a number of scientists that were lost during the past four years. And so the Biden administration is currently making efforts to hire in more scientists, but that is a gap currently. And hopefully the administration will continue to help early career scientists into agencies to build up that scientific workforce and diversify it as well. So there's much more but I will yield my time and thank you all for listening. Thanks a lot, Jacob for covering so much ground and so much sort of terrain it's moving moving parts. We have a lot of moving parts here. And we do have, you know, I have a whole bunch of questions but why don't we start with the on with the questions that have been kind of lingering in the chat. So the first question I think came early on. What should we expect and or hope for from US participation at the upcoming biodiversity and climate conferences I guess the COP is in is in November I think it is this year the big world climate conference where they look at the climate treaties and do any revisions. So we have three thumbs up for that. We can take a first stab at it. Since I was the guy who talked a bunch about climate. And I said a few thoughts. I think that one of the things that we found out in the last four years is that US leadership on climate really does matter. We've seen since Trump pulled out of the Paris agreement and just backed off of greenhouse gas regulation entirely. We also saw Mexico for instance, do the same. They followed suit, even though this was not a conservative but a leftist president. And also his abandoned the climate policies of the predecessors and moved full fledged into more fossil fuel production. And you just think about Obama, how Paris happened was because of some of the things Obama did especially with China. And his his negotiation with China to get China involved in that agreement. So it really does matter and I think Biden has a great chance to restart that process I think there's a lot of trust that's been lost though in terms of how dependable US is, and I would just call people's attention to watch out more. I mean, we're I would think we're maybe other panelists have more but I think this this summit that by that Biden has actually called for next week with 40 world of the world's leaders a summit on climate is something to watch out for in terms of what exactly the plans may be in terms of the international stage for climate negotiations. Others have have things they'd like to say about that one. Okay, why don't we move on to the to the next, the next two. Anonymous attendee asked when identifying and this may be for Peggy, possibly also for Tim as well. And Jacob sounds like you might have something to say, when identifying overburdened areas does that come with an explicit promise to rectify the overburdening. Since identifying areas as damaged quote unquote can exacerbate harm, if not tied to resourcing and promise of improvement. So the, the process of identifying, you know, these overburdened communities is that itself a problem. You know, I've been hearing that question for decades. It's like people saying. Well, let's not redline the redlined communities, because then everybody will know they're redlined, they're redlined, they're already overburdened everybody knows who they are where they are, and the people who live there truly know. So it is absolutely necessary to identify those communities, so that we can target solutions. Now unfortunately, just because we know where those communities are, does not mean that there will be enough resources going there to address the issue, or the issue can be addressed in the way that community would want. I mean we'd love to shut down, you know, a lot of those chemical and petrochemical plants and cancer alley. What we can do is get them is tighten the, the air quality regulations to really be health based, which they say they are, but they no longer are. So I don't think we can commit that we're going to, or that the administration is going to, you know, address all of the legacy pollution there, but we've got to start where we can, where the administration and government does have a way to do that. We need to look at state permitting. Sorry, I don't want to, I'm going on and on. This is an issue dear to my heart. But yes, there are so many elements to what we need to do to address legacy pollution, especially when it's permitted. So I would just stop there and we're, we're trying to push the administration to think in a robust way about that. Others have comments on that if not we'll move to the next question which I think is for Peggy also a little long. Thank you for sharing your important insights and what is happening and for being right there to help affect the changes needed with this and this is about the states with the states so critical for implementation of policies and distribution of resources to affected agencies. What are you seeing in the way of communications and partnering actions between the Biden administration and state governments or agencies. I'd say that we're really really early on all of the agencies don't even have all of their senior staffing yet. What has happened is that he has put mechanisms in place to begin considering implementation, but we're not an implementation yet. And I suspect that until some of those recommendations are in and considered that the outreach to states will not be as robust as it probably will be in the next year or two. Not others other comments we have one more general question I guess this is this is directed to everyone from Jongmin Lee. Thank you for your wonderful talks I was rereading a book by Audra Wolf called competing with the Soviets. It makes the point that talks about that in the 1960s when racial inequity threatened to undermine US claims to international moral leadership. And ask about what the relevance might be to today's climate and justice crisis and so what is good for America might be detrimental to Bolivia Brazil Sri Lanka and India. There has been some discussion about the people's agreement and international climate environment justice tribunals. What can we expect to see in the global climate summit next week and what what can edgy peer UCS and others do to make the Biden administration develop both domestic and international policies toward climate justice. So balancing the stick with the international piece of it. I'll just take a piece of that. And I would say that there's no cookie cutter model. There's the US model. There might be a model in Louisiana and a model in New York, but a US model can't be transplanted to to another country or nation. And so I hope those tribunals and I hope that the NGO community will be very strongly going to those meetings and supporting some of those tribunals. They need the support they need the resources, and I would hope to focus a little more attention there on whether some of these large communities of color countries of color are getting the adequate resources they need to be resilient. Yeah, we'll jump in. This is Tim. I'll speak more domestically in terms of what peer might do. It's important, I think, as we face this climate crisis to really those of us that want to protect our natural resources and move to clean energy economy as quickly as possible to really make sure the watchdogs are out, making sure that that really happens and that people aren't being taken advantage of along the way. So we set very ambitious climate targets. So within these schemes, we're often finding that there's manipulation of numbers. There are winners that are often very wealthy companies and there are losers people left behind so domestically, we need to make sure that they're not only ambitious goals but that those goals are equitable and really achieving the results they're intended to achieve. I had a couple of thoughts on this. I think it is really interesting that Biden has climate here and EJ here, but when you put EJ together with climate it does bring up a global north versus global south. And so there's tremendous questions there that have been a matter of debate for ever since the climate negotiation began. I think when Obama or when Biden goes into this meeting, we'll see how he brings this climate justice or his justice angle over against the climate commitments. I mean that's going to be interesting. And I'm not sure another president has really done that in a very robust way so it may be a little challenge for him. I mean what I hope he can do is first of all emphasize that mitigation greenhouse emissions is climate justice, and it's justice for the rest of the world. And the other piece of it is that the global negotiations have had such a hard time getting developed nations to actually pony up what the promise contributions that are going to go to energy transitions in the developed world sort of global south. So I hope we can see more commitments on both those fronts, coming out and I mean I hope that we hear them in the in the summit next week, and going forward we see some action on those fronts. And we do have historians in the room I would like to point out that Colleen linear Christiansen who is here who's working in particular on the OECD. So I think there are people that are asking those global questions. And if they have any points to bring up I we've got experts in the room beyond just our panelists there's definitely a attendee expert and experts in the room to answer. Sure. Okay, yeah we do have a question now on scientific integrity. I had a bunch of those but let's just get to this one. Is there someone who is specifically looking at scientific integrity regarding new pesticides this is from Loretta Williams. Is there someone looking at specifically scientific integrity regarding new pesticides and agriculture. Even under the Obama administration the scientific studies on these pesticides was largely left to the companies creating those pesticides. So, so what's going on there with pesticides and pesticides studies. I don't. I mean there's nobody, you know specifically monitoring the scientific integrity on pesticides specifically. But if there were a political interference on going and that you know I guess it would depend on the decision. The agency making the decision right so if it was a task a decision, maybe it would be EPA scientific integrity officer who would oversee. Yeah, I'll jump in we've been doing a lot of work on this recently. There are significant and profound problems and EPA's pesticide program. You know we've recently filed an inspector general complaint regarding one pesticide and fraud in the decision making process regarding that pesticide. So Nick it to noise, you know there've been studies under the Obama administration were suppressed by USDA and retaliation against scientists for participating in those studies. So it's a huge problem of industry capture of EPA and USDA and the decision making processes there. And it's going to prove to be a real challenge to the Biden administration to change the way things are done and you can just see it in the number of pesticides that are being approved in the US that are being banned in other countries throughout the world. One more question I guess this will be our last one. Do you see evidence of greater cross agency collaborations around in environmental justice concerns for instance, labor between labor housing and environment. We hear from communities that and this is from Bonnie Keeler by the way, we hear from communities that investments in green solutions or radiation of toxic sites tree planting parks etc, come with fears of gentrification and displacement. How can we ensure frontline communities share and the benefits of environmental investments. What might be the broader policy tools involved in tandem with these like relating to housing job creation wealth building community benefits agreements sector. So a lot of stuff there for for two minutes but we I guess we can go a little over. Does anyone want to speak to that looks like it might be in Peggy's wheelhouse at least the cross agency collaborations that you're seeing I guess maybe some example or two. Now it might shake out. The environmental justice the cross agency collaboration is going to be happening through the inner agency task force, where every agency will have to have environmental justice plans will have to have a liaison, who is working with some of the environmental councils, also with the justice 40 every agency will be developing a method or a way to disseminate funds based on what those amounts are. We are suggesting advocates are suggesting that there be an advisory, an EJ advisory body in those agencies as well, because they're going to be making some very serious. The initial is if they're really going to address the issue. So I think that cross. That cross fertilization is beginning to happen. I know that a variety of, of agency heads have been reaching out and have been having meetings with advocates environmental justice advocates. So I think all of the agencies have been given a directive that this is a concern and needs to be a consideration and all of their policies, but it's early. Yeah, we have a start. So we'll see, let's stay tuned on so many fronts stay tuned. Well, I wanted to thank everyone on my panelists, especially for your willingness to speak your great talks and all that you shared. So effectively, I think, and thank everyone else involved, including the audience for for listening and for some very good questions. The recording of this will be published on YouTube. And so I look forward to that we'll be sending that out I guess do we send that out to all the registrants a link or something. Yeah, so you just distribute it widely and let other people take part. Look forward to more of these in the future to and stay tuned for those. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you all. Thank you. Okay, that's a wrap I guess.