Featuring Jody Freeman, Harvard Law School; Carrie Jenks, Environmental & Energy Law Program, Harvard Law School; Richard Lazarus, Harvard Law School; Andy Mergen, Harvard Law School

This panel will focus on the legal questions raised by the Trump administration’s attack on climate and clean energy policy. The president has signed several unprecedented executive orders directing EPA to reconsider foundational climate rules, including the science-based endangerment finding that provides the legal predicate for federal regulation under the Clean Air Act. He has declared a national energy emergency and authorized agencies to use their statutory emergency authority to support fossil fuel development; attempted to halt disbursement of federal funds appropriated by Congress in the IRA and IIJA; paused onshore and offshore federal leasing for wind energy; directed the Justice Department to block state climate laws; and withdrawn the US from the Paris Agreement, among other things.
Meanwhile, DOGE and other administration appointees have fired or reassigned large numbers of career staff (both at DOJ and in the agencies) who are responsible for enforcing environmental law. The administration has also cut or suspended NIH funding for climate and environmental health research and removed climate data from government websites. The president’s budget would gut climate-related science funding at NOAA, the NSF, and other agencies.
Are these executive orders and other actions to cut funding and undermine science legal?
How are their directives likely to fare in the courts, especially the Supreme Court?
Will Congress push back?
And what does this administration’s agenda mean for the future of climate progress?
This panel will discuss the implications of the current moment and consider paths forward.