574 Attacks on Science and Counting: The Trump Administration's War on Evidence-Based Policy
When Donald Trump returned to the White House on January 20, 2025, scientists, researchers, and environmental advocates braced for impact. What followed was not a slow erosion of science-based policy — it was an immediate, sweeping dismantling of the frameworks that govern how the United States uses scientific evidence to protect its people and the planet. In just the first few months of Trump's second term, his administration has carried out an astonishing 574 documented attacks on science, according to a new tracking tool published by the nonprofit Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS). That number continues to grow.
What Happened on Day One
The assault on science began the very moment Trump was sworn in for his second term. On January 20, 2025, the administration moved with striking speed to undo decades of scientific and environmental policy. Among the first actions taken were the withdrawal of the United States from the Paris Climate Agreement, the declaration of a national energy emergency used to justify the rapid expansion of fossil fuel production, and the repeal of multiple longstanding environmental protections.
These were not minor procedural adjustments. The Paris Climate Agreement represented a landmark international commitment to limiting global warming. Withdrawing from it — for the second time — sent a clear signal to the rest of the world about the direction of U.S. climate policy under Trump. The declaration of a national energy emergency, meanwhile, was widely criticized by energy economists and climate scientists who argued it misrepresented the actual state of U.S. energy supply. Calling it an emergency, critics noted, was not supported by the data.
But day one was, as it turned out, just the beginning.
The Union of Concerned Scientists Tracker: A Tool Built for Accountability
To help the public keep pace with the volume and scope of anti-science actions coming out of Washington, the Union of Concerned Scientists launched an interactive online tracker built on Microsoft Power BI. The tool catalogs each documented attack on science, allowing users to filter by category, agency, date, and type of action. It is one of the most comprehensive databases of its kind and serves as both a historical record and a live monitoring resource.
The tracker currently documents 574 separate incidents, though researchers at UCS continue to update it as new actions are taken. The breadth of what the tracker covers is striking. It spans rollbacks of environmental regulations, suppression of government scientific research, dismissal of federal scientists and advisory board members, funding cuts to research programs, and policy changes that directly contradict established scientific consensus.
For journalists, policymakers, researchers, and concerned citizens, the tracker provides an accessible, evidence-based window into the scale of what is happening to science in the United States under the current administration.
Key Targets: From Forever Chemicals to Emissions Reporting
While any single one of the 574 documented attacks could warrant its own in-depth investigation, several have drawn particular public and media attention for their potential impacts on human health and environmental safety.
One of the most alarming involves PFAS, commonly known as "forever chemicals." These synthetic compounds, found in everything from nonstick cookware to firefighting foam, have been linked to cancer, immune system dysfunction, and reproductive harm. The Trump administration has moved to roll back regulations that would have set strict limits on PFAS contamination in drinking water — limits that were hard-won through years of scientific research and regulatory effort.
Another significant rollback involves emissions reporting requirements. The administration has taken steps to eliminate rules that required industrial polluters to disclose the volume and type of emissions they release into the air and water. Emissions data is foundational to environmental science, public health research, and regulatory enforcement. Without it, communities living near industrial facilities lose a critical tool for understanding the risks they face and holding polluters accountable.
These two examples represent a broader pattern: weakening the mechanisms that science depends on to generate accurate, actionable information about environmental and health risks.
Why Tracking These Attacks Matters
It can be easy, amid the constant churn of news, to lose sight of the cumulative effect of what is happening. Each individual rollback or policy change might seem like a discrete event. But when viewed together through a tool like the UCS tracker, a much larger and more troubling picture emerges.
Science is not just an academic pursuit. It is the backbone of public health infrastructure, environmental protection, disaster preparedness, and economic planning. When the institutions and policies that support scientific work are systematically undermined, the consequences are felt by ordinary people — in the water they drink, the air they breathe, the medications they take, and the climate conditions their children will inherit.
Tracking these attacks is an act of civic accountability. It creates a record that can be used to challenge misinformation, inform legal challenges, guide future policy restoration, and ensure that the public understands what is being done — and undone — in their name.
How to Access the Tracker
The Union of Concerned Scientists' attacks-on-science tracker is publicly available online and free to use. It is designed to be navigable even for users without a scientific or policy background, with filters and visualizations that make it easier to understand which agencies are most affected, which types of actions are most common, and how the pace of attacks has changed over time.
- Visit the UCS tracker at attacksonscience.org to explore the full database of documented incidents.
- Use the category and agency filters to find actions relevant to specific issues you care about, such as climate, public health, or food safety.
- Share the tracker with others to help spread awareness of its existence and the information it contains.
- Follow the Union of Concerned Scientists for updates as new incidents are added to the database.
The Broader Stakes
The United States has historically been a global leader in scientific research and evidence-based governance. The institutions, funding structures, and regulatory frameworks built up over generations represent an enormous investment in the capacity to understand and respond to the world's most pressing challenges — from infectious disease to climate change to food security.
What the UCS tracker documents is not just a series of policy disagreements. It is a sustained, systematic effort to weaken the infrastructure of American science itself. Understanding that — fully, clearly, and with access to the facts — is the first step toward an informed public response. The tracker exists so that none of this happens in the dark.
With 574 documented attacks and more expected to come, the need for tools like this one has never been greater. Awareness, accountability, and civic engagement remain among the most powerful defenses available to those who believe that science — and the policies built on it — should serve the public good.