Judicial limits on glyphosate and climate โ€˜jackpot justiceโ€™ litigation

Although the U.S. Supreme Court frequently overrules it, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals (covering California, eight other western states and two U.S. territories) deserves applause for its recent Engilis v. Monsanto decision.

The court affirmed a district courtโ€™s exclusion of โ€œexpert testimonyโ€ claiming a plaintiffโ€™s exposure to the glyphosate-based herbicide Roundup caused his blood cancer (chronic lymphocytic leukemia). The court upheld summary judgment in favor of product manufacturer Monsanto (now owned by Bayer).

A picturesque rural scene featuring a red barn with a gray roof, an American flag flying atop a flagpole, a tractor parked nearby, and a grassy field with a hay bale under a blue sky with white clouds.

From CFACT

By Paul Driessen

A person in a plaid shirt gently holds wheat stalks in a golden field during sunset, symbolizing agriculture and crop cultivation.

Although the U.S. Supreme Court frequently overrules it, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals (covering California, eight other western states and two U.S. territories) deserves applause for its recent Engilis v. Monsanto decision.

The court affirmed a district courtโ€™s exclusion of โ€œexpert testimonyโ€ claiming a plaintiffโ€™s exposure to the glyphosate-based herbicide Roundup caused his blood cancer (chronic lymphocytic leukemia). The court upheld summary judgment in favor of product manufacturer Monsanto (now owned by Bayer).

It was an important victory amid numerous lawsuits against the company for allegedly knowing this chemical is carcinogenic but failing to warn consumers. In fact, by 2020, mass tort litigation firms had lined up over 22,000 โ€œcorporate victims,โ€ and San Francisco-area juries had awarded several plaintiffs $78 million to $1 billion per person in compensatory and punitive damages!

One firmโ€™s website even claimed the requisite exposure to Roundup could involve simply โ€œliving near a farm where the potentially dangerous herbicide is used.โ€ The victim could thereby be afflicted with lymphoma, non-Hodgkin lymphoma, Parkinson disease, multiple sclerosis, lung, brain or thyroid cancer, heart disease, or six other diseases. This is the war zone Monsanto had been dragged into.

The awards were subsequently reduced to โ€œmereโ€ tens of millions. However, faced with seemingly endless litigation, clever lawyers, and sympathetic jurors with limited grasp of science or medicine, in 2020, Bayer-Monsanto paid nearly $11 billion to a half-dozen law firms to settle most of the lawsuits.

Itโ€™s hardly surprising Monsanto settled and took glyphosate out of its U.S. home lawn and garden Roundup formulation. But firms and plaintiffs not part of the settlement are still suing.

Peter and Cathy Engilis were among them. Unfortunately for them, their lawyers relied on the testimony of a board-certified oncologist who reviewed various possible causes of Mr. Engilisโ€™s cancer, ruled out obesity as a contributing factor, and concluded that glyphosate was the most likely cause.

His testimony was the only evidence plaintiffs presented. The district court excluded it as unreliable, since the expert had failed to employ a scientific analysis to rule out obesity as a cause.

The Ninth Circuit agreed, ruling that an expertโ€™s conclusions or opinions are not enough. Under Federal Rule of Evidence 72, experts must provide scientifically sound reasons for ruling out alternative causes and do so by a preponderance of actual evidence. Conclusory assertions are insufficient, unless supported by facts, data, or studies, not merely knowledge or experience.

The U.S. Supreme Court underscored these points in Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals. Plaintiffs must prove the scientific evidence presented is relevant and reliable, the Court said. It must have been tested and peer-reviewed against prevailing standards; be accepted in the applicable scientific community; and show more than just circumstantial links between an injury and alleged cause.

Experts must also show how they reached their conclusions and point to objective sources that demonstrate they followed scientific methods practiced by at least a recognized minority in their field.

This is basic common sense and something law students learn in Evidence 101. As I argued in a medical journal article, it is especially vital in glyphosate litigation โ€“ and other complex, emotionalized cases, including lawsuits alleging damages from climate and weather events supposedly caused by fossil fuel production, refining, or use in transportation or manufacturing.

The jackpot justice Roundup cases rely on so much speculative โ€œevidenceโ€ that they should all be dismissed, based on Daubert, Engilis, common sense, and the endless list of carcinogens we encounter during our lifetimes.

Glyphosate was introduced in 1974, is licensed in 130 countries, and is used every year by millions of homeowners, gardeners, and farmers to control weeds. Studies and reviews by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, European Food Safety Authority, UN Food and Agriculture Organization, Health Canada, and dozens of other experts have found it safe and non-carcinogenic.

The U.S. Agricultural Health Study has followed some 52,000 licensed private pesticide applicators (mostly farmers) and more than 32,000 of their spouses for nearly three decades. More than 80% of these test subjects used glyphosate. The study has found no glyphosate-cancer link.

Only one agency, the France-based International Agency for Cancer Research, says otherwise. In 2015, IARC ruled that glyphosate is a โ€œprobableโ€ human carcinogen โ€“ based primarily on two mice studies, which multiple investigators said manipulated data while ignoring studies that contradicted IARCโ€™s preferred conclusion.

Instead of doing research, IARC classifies chemicals as definitely, probably, or possibly carcinogenic based on reviews of other organizationsโ€™ research โ€“ and by applying โ€œexposureโ€ or โ€œhazardโ€ tests that many epidemiologists view as antiquated and of limited value. Those tests use laboratory animals to determine whether a chemical might cause cancer, even if only at extremely high levels that no animal or human would be exposed to in the real world.

Indeed, epidemiologists and toxicity experts say some chemicals may cause cancer or other serious health problems at extremely high doses but be harmless at levels encountered in our daily lives. Others may be harmful at high doses but beneficial or essential at low or very low doses.

IARCโ€™s Group 1 carcinogens (โ€œdefinitely carcinogenicโ€) include 120 chemicals, substances, and industrial processes: plutonium, sunlight, aflatoxin, asbestos, cadmium, tobacco, welding, processed meats, and more.

Group 2A (โ€œprobably carcinogenicโ€) lists 80+ chemicals, substances, and processes including: glyphosate, dieldrin, malathion, acetaldehyde in bread, anabolic steroids, emissions from high-temperature food frying, red meat, drinking โ€œvery hotโ€ beverages, and working as a hairdresser.

Group 2B โ€œpossibly carcinogenicโ€ materials and processes show โ€œlimited evidenceโ€ of carcinogenicity but includes: diesel fuel, pickled vegetables, carpentry work, caffeic acid in coffee, nutritious foods like apples and broccoli, and over 300 other substances and occupations.

IARC carcinogen claims seem to be such outliers, so beneath scientific norms, so tainted by conflicts of interest and misconduct, so unrelated to actual risks, so deceptive and even fraudulent โ€“ that they should never be admitted as evidence in any glyphosate trial. But from a jackpot justice plaintiff or lawyer perspective, they are central to nearly every case.

Roundup carcinogen allegations should also be excluded from evidence and testimony, because it is impossible to differentiate alleged effects of glyphosate from those of countless other chemicals, substances, occupations, and industrial processes plaintiffs may have been exposed to or engaged in over the course of their lives. The lists presented above represent a tiny sample.

The same principles apply to climate lawsuits in state and international courts.

The lawsuits involve computer models with zero predictive capability; conclusory assertions devoid of actual supportive evidence; and refusal to recognize Earthโ€™s tumultuous climate history, powerful natural forces that caused momentous climate changes long before the fossil fuel era, written records and data over the past 200 years showing no unprecedented changes or trends in climate or weather, and an inability to separate natural from alleged human causes.

Evidence Rule 72, the Daubert and Engilis decisions, and basic scientific principles, demand summary judgments in favor of fossil fuel producers every single time.

The Real Climate Science Crisis: CAGW Hypothesis Lacks Scientificย Evidence

For a hypothesis to reachย the status of being aย legit theory, itย requires withstandingย the onslaught ofย observed empirical evidence.ย Theย CAGW hypothesis is no such animal.

Known by its more contemporary aliases, such asโ€ climate crisis,โ€ โ€œclimate emergency,โ€ โ€œclimate collapse,โ€ or โ€œexistential threat,โ€ theย CAGW has zero empirical evidence to support it.

From Science Matters

Byย Ron Clutz

From C3 headlines The Real Climate Science Crisis: The Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming (CAGW) Hypothesis Is Without Scientific Evidence.  Excerpts in italics with my added images.

For a hypothesis to reach the status of being a legit theory, it requires withstanding the onslaught of observed empirical evidence. The CAGW hypothesis is no such animal.

Known by its more contemporary aliases, such asโ€ climate crisis,โ€ โ€œclimate emergency,โ€ โ€œclimate collapse,โ€ or โ€œexistential threat,โ€ theย CAGW has zero empirical evidence to support it.

Unlike the related hypothesis regarding greenhouse gases (GHG) and global warming, at least the GHG hypothesis has warming global temperature data that somewhat coincides with increasing atmospheric CO2 levels, putting aside the growing possibility that the purported cause-and-effect direction is probably the reverse.

In order to reach a CAGW climate disaster, global warming
temperatures must change rapidly in an accelerating manner
that will initiate a โ€˜tipping pointโ€™ for the climate.

The rapid acceleration would present its occurrence in a continuous increasing of the slope, i.e., trend, of temperatures, such as monthly temperatures. Each subsequent month would represent a greater temperature magnitude increase than the month before, hypothetically.

But those tipping point precursors are not occurring in the real-world climate.

For example, it is agreed by all climate scientists that oceans play a very major role in the worldโ€™s climate and its global temperatures due to their being both the worldโ€™s largest carbon sink and its largest heat content storage.

However, despite these characteristics, in totality, the global oceans HAVE NOT warmed since the year 2014. And certainly, there is no empirical evidence that oceans exhibit constant temperature increases of magnitude.

Quite the contrary, combined oceans exhibit a regular pattern of temperature decreases and increases, as the adjacent plot of NOAAโ€™s monthly ocean data indicates.

Specifically, this is a plot (dark blue) of moving 5-year temperature changes ending each month of the 60-year period from March 1963 through March 2023.

[Explanation: the first data point is the temperature change for the 60 months ending on March 30, 1963; and the chartโ€™s last temperature change data point is for the five 5 years (i.e. 60 months) ending on March 2023.]

The chart also includes a plot (green) of the moving 60-month CO2 level changes over the same sixty year period, plus a linear trend for both CO2 changes and ocean temperature changes.

The trend of the 60-month CO2 changes significantly exceeds the slight positive trend of ocean temperature changes by a factor of 117x. This huge differential undercuts the belief that global warming is primarily the result of GHGs. Which is confirmed by the paltry R^2 of +0.06 โ€“ an almost non-existent relationship between 5-year atmospheric CO2 changes and 5-year changes in ocean temperature.

Not only are the large increases in CO2 levels not causing a concerning uptick of temperature change magnitude, it also has not lead to any type of acceleration, per the linear trend since 1963.

Specifically, with a trend of a tiny +0.0001ยฐC, that would project out 20 years to be an increase of 5-year temperature changes to an insignificant amount of +0.024ยฐC โ€“ definitely not an existential threat of โ€˜runaway warmingโ€™ or a CAGW โ€˜climate crisisโ€™ as portrayed by bureaucrats, politicians and Hollywood celebrities.

So, if 5 years of increasing amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere barely influence 5-year changes in temperature over a 60-year span, either in magnitude or acceleration rate, then it is highly unlikely that this trace gas would cause a catastrophic climate disaster or an extinction event.

Thus, it is fair to state that for all those scientists pushing a narrative of an imminent climate change catastrophe from CO2 without the requisite empirical evidence, this has become the real climate science crisis facing society.

A New Era for American Science: The Gold Standard is Back

On May 23, 2025, President Donald J. Trump signed a landmark executive order:ย Restoring Gold Standard Science. This order marks a major turning point in how scientific information is produced, evaluated, and applied across the federal government. It sets a clear and uncompromising standardโ€”scientific integrity is no longer optional. It is foundational.

ChatGPT

From Watts Up With That?

By Charles Rotter

On May 23, 2025, President Donald J. Trump signed a landmark executive order: Restoring Gold Standard Science. This order marks a major turning point in how scientific information is produced, evaluated, and applied across the federal government. It sets a clear and uncompromising standardโ€”scientific integrity is no longer optional. It is foundational.

Rebuilding Trust in Science

Over the last couple of decades, but especially the last five years, confidence in science has plummeted. High-profile instances of data falsification, politicized health guidance, and misuse of worst-case climate scenarios have damaged public faith in government-led science. This executive order directly addresses those failures.

By mandating transparency, objectivity, and rigorous peer review, the order seeks to rebuild trust in the scientific process. It ensures that federally funded research and scientific information used in policy decisions must be credible, reproducible, and subject to open scrutiny.

Key Reforms Introduced

The executive order introduces sweeping reforms that demand excellence and accountability in federal science:

  • Restoration of Scientific Integrity Policiesย from the first Trump administration.
  • Mandatory public access to influential scientific data, models, and source code.
  • Transparent communication of assumptions, uncertainties, and error margins.
  • Rejection of worst-case-only modeling scenariosย such as RCP 8.5, unless legally required.
  • A โ€œweight of scientific evidenceโ€ standardย to evaluate findings across disciplines.
  • Protection for dissenting viewpointsย and safeguards against ideological interference.
  • Internal oversightย through senior appointees to address violations and uphold standards.

These provisions aim to ensure that science used by agencies is not only high-quality but also faithfully represents reality without distortion or political manipulation.

The executive order makes clear that the purpose of government science is to serve the public goodโ€”not to justify predetermined conclusions or political goals. It revokes previous directives that elevated ideology over evidence and re-establishes a framework where:

  • Hypotheses must be falsifiable.
  • Scientific models must be explainable and transparent.
  • Peer review must be unbiased and independent.
  • Negative results are considered valuable, not suppressed.

This is a return to foundational scientific principlesโ€”those that foster discovery, innovation, and trust.

The issuance of this executive order signals a new chapter for American scienceโ€”one grounded in accountability, transparency, and excellence. It is a strong affirmation that public institutions must earn the publicโ€™s trust by holding themselves to the highest standards.

With this action, the United States reasserts itself as a leader not just in scientific capability, but in scientific integrity. The Gold Standard is more than a label. It is now the law.


Here is the text of the Executive Order.

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including section 7301 of title 5, United States Code, it is hereby ordered:
Section 1.  Policy and Purpose.  Over the last 5 years, confidence that scientists act in the best interests of the public has fallen significantly.  A majority of researchers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics believe science is facing a reproducibility crisis.  The falsification of data by leading researchers has led to high-profile retractions of federally funded research.  
Unfortunately, the Federal Government has contributed to this loss of trust.  In several notable cases, executive departments and agencies (agencies) have used or promoted scientific information in a highly misleading manner.  For example, under the prior Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued COVID-19 guidance on reopening schools that incorporated edits by the American Federation of Teachers and was understood to discourage in-person learning.  This guidanceโ€™s restrictive and burdensome reopening conditions led many schools to remain at least partially closed, resulting in substantial negative effects on educational outcomes โ€” even though the best available scientific evidence showed that children were unlikely to transmit or suffer serious illness or death from the virus, and that opening schools with reasonable mitigation measures would have only minor effects on transmission.  
The National Marine Fisheries Service justified a biological opinion by adopting an admitted โ€œworst-case scenarioโ€ projection of the North Atlantic right whale population that it believed was โ€œvery likelyโ€ wrong.  The agencyโ€™s proposed actions could have destroyed the historic Maine lobster fishery.  The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals subsequently overturned that opinion because the agencyโ€™s decision to seek out the worst-case scenario skewed its approach to the evidence.  
Similarly, agencies have used Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) scenario 8.5 to assess the potential effects of climate change in a โ€œhigherโ€ warming scenario.  RCP 8.5 is a worst-case scenario based on highly unlikely assumptions like end-of-century coal use exceeding estimates of recoverable coal reserves.  Scientists have warned that presenting RCP 8.5 as a likely outcome is misleading.
Actions taken by the prior Administration further politicized science, for example, by encouraging agencies to incorporate diversity, equity, and inclusion considerations into all aspects of science planning, execution, and communication.  Scientific integrity in the production and use of science by the Federal Government is critical to maintaining the trust of the American people and ensuring confidence in government decisions informed by science.
My Administration is committed to restoring a gold standard for science to ensure that federally funded research is transparent, rigorous, and impactful, and that Federal decisions are informed by the most credible, reliable, and impartial scientific evidence available.  We must restore the American peopleโ€™s faith in the scientific enterprise and institutions that create and apply scientific knowledge in service of the public good.  Reproducibility, rigor, and unbiased peer review must be maintained.  This order restores the scientific integrity policies of my first Administration and ensures that agencies practice data transparency, acknowledge relevant scientific uncertainties, are transparent about the assumptions and likelihood of scenarios used, approach scientific findings objectively, and communicate scientific data accurately.  Agency use of Gold Standard Science, as set forth in this order, will spur innovation, translate discovery to success, and ensure continued American strength and global leadership in technology.

Sec. 2.  Definitions.  For the purposes of this order:
(a)  โ€œEmployeeโ€ has the meaning given that term in 5 U.S.C. 2105.
(b)  โ€œScientific informationโ€ means factual inputs, data, models, analyses, technical information, or scientific assessments related to such disciplines as the behavioral and social sciences, public health and medical sciences, life and earth sciences, engineering, physical sciences, or probability and statistics.  This includes any communication or representation of knowledge such as facts or data, in any medium or form, including textual, numerical, graphic, cartographic, narrative, or audiovisual forms.
(c)  โ€œScientific misconductโ€ means fabrication, falsification, or plagiarism in proposing, performing, reviewing, or reporting the results of scientific research, but does not include honest error or differences of opinion.  For the purposes of this definition;
(i)    โ€œfabricationโ€ is making up data or results and recording or reporting them;
(ii)   โ€œfalsificationโ€ is manipulating research materials, equipment, or processes, or changing or omitting data or results such that the research is not accurately represented in the research record; and
(iii)  โ€œplagiarismโ€ is the appropriation of another personโ€™s ideas, processes, results, or words without giving appropriate credit.
(d)  โ€œSenior appointeeโ€ means an individual appointed by the President (or an individual performing the functions and duties of an individual appointed by the President) or a non-career member of the Senior Executive Service.
(e)  โ€œWeight of scientific evidenceโ€ means an approach to scientific evaluation in which each piece of relevant information is considered based on its quality and relevance, and then transparently integrated with other relevant information to inform the scientific evaluation prior to making a judgment about the scientific evaluation.  Quality and relevance determinations, at a minimum, should include consideration of study design, fitness for purpose, replicability, peer review, and transparency and reliability of data.

Sec. 3.  Restoring Gold Standard Science.  (a)  Within 30 days of the date of this order, the Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP Director) shall, in consultation with the heads of relevant agencies, issue guidance for agencies on implementation of โ€œGold Standard Scienceโ€ in the conduct and management of their respective scientific activities.  For the purposes of this order, Gold Standard Science means science conducted in a manner that is:
(i)     reproducible;
(ii)    transparent;
(iii)   communicative of error and uncertainty;
(iv)    collaborative and interdisciplinary;
(v)     skeptical of its findings and assumptions;
(vi)    structured for falsifiability of hypotheses;
(vii)   subject to unbiased peer review;
(viii)  accepting of negative results as positive outcomes; and
(ix)    without conflicts of interest.
(b)  Upon publication of the guidance prescribed in subsection (a), each agency head, as necessary and appropriate and in consultation with the Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB Director) and the OSTP Director, shall promptly update applicable agency policies governing the production and use of scientific information, including scientific integrity policies, to implement the OSTP Directorโ€™s guidance on Gold Standard Science and ensure that agency scientific activities are conducted in accordance with this order.
(c)  Each agency head shall, to the extent practicable, incorporate the OSTP Directorโ€™s guidance on Gold Standard Science and the requirements of this order into the processes by which their agency conducts, manages, interprets, communicates, and uses scientific or technological information prior to the finalization of the updated policies under this section.
(d)  Within 60 days of the publication of the guidance prescribed in section 3(a), agency heads shall report to the OSTP Director on the actions taken to implement Gold Standard Science at their agency.

 Sec. 4.  Improving the Use, Interpretation, and Communication of Scientific Data.  No later than 30 days after the date of this order, agency heads and employees shall adhere to the following rules governing the use, interpretation, and communication of scientific data, unless otherwise provided by law:
(a)  Employees shall not engage in scientific misconduct nor knowingly rely on information resulting from scientific misconduct.
(b)  Except as prohibited by law, and consistent with relevant policies that protect national security or sensitive personal or confidential business information, agency heads shall in a timely manner and, to the extent practicable and within the agencyโ€™s authority:
(i)  subject to paragraph (ii), make publicly available the following information within the agencyโ€™s possession:
(A)  the data, analyses, and conclusions associated with scientific and technological information produced or used by the agency that the agency reasonably assesses will have a clear and substantial effect on important public policies or important private sector decisions (influential scientific information), including data cited in peer-reviewed literature; and
(B)  the models and analyses (including, as applicable, the source code for such models) the agency used to generate such influential scientific information.  Employees may not invoke exemption 5 to the Freedom of Information Act (5 U.S.C. 552(b)(5)) to prevent disclosure of such models unless authorized in writing to do so by the agency head following prior notice to the OSTP Director.
(ii)  risk models used to guide agency enforcement actions or select enforcement targets are not information that must be disclosed under this subsection.
(c)  When using scientific information in agency decision-making, employees shall transparently acknowledge and document uncertainties, including how uncertainty propagates throughout any models used in the analysis.
(d) Where employees produce or use scientific information to inform policy or legal determinations they must use science that comports with the legal standards applicable to those determinations, including when agencies evaluate the realistic or reasonably foreseeable effects of an action.
(e)  Employees shall be transparent about the likelihood of the assumptions and scenarios used.  Highly unlikely and overly precautionary assumptions and scenarios should only be relied upon in agency decision-making where required by law or otherwise pertinent to the agencyโ€™s action.
(f)  When scientific or technological information is used to inform agency evaluations and subsequent decision-making, employees shall apply a โ€œweight of scientific evidenceโ€ approach.
(g)  Employeesโ€™ communication of scientific information shall be consistent with the results of the relevant analysis and evaluation and, to the extent that uncertainty is present, the degree of uncertainty should be communicated.  Communications involving a scientific model or information derived from a scientific model should include reference to any material assumptions that inform the modelโ€™s outputs.
(h)  Once the guidance on Gold Standard Science is established and promulgated pursuant to section 3 of this order, it shall, among other things, form the basis for employeesโ€™ evaluation of all scientific and technological information called for in this order except where otherwise required by law.

Sec. 5.  Interim Scientific Integrity Policies.  (a)  Until the issuance of updated agency scientific integrity policies pursuant to section 3 of this order, and except where required by law:
(i)    scientific integrity policies in each agency shall be governed by the scientific integrity policies that existed within the executive branch on January 19, 2021, except that in the event of a conflict between such policies and the policies and requirements of this order, the policies and requirements of this order control; and
(ii)   agency heads shall take all necessary actions to reevaluate and, where necessary, revise or rescind scientific integrity policies or procedures, or amendments to such policies or procedures, issued between January 20, 2021, and January 20, 2025.
(iii)  each agency head shall promptly revoke any organizational or operational changes, designations, or documents that were issued or enacted pursuant to the Presidential Memorandum of January 27, 2021 (Restoring Trust in Government Through Scientific Integrity and Evidence-Based Policymaking), which was revoked pursuant to Executive Order 14154 and shall conduct applicable agency operations in the manner and revert applicable agency organization to the same form as would have existed in the absence of such changes, designations, or documents.
(b)  In updating applicable scientific integrity policies pursuant to section 3 of this order, agencies should ensure they:
(i)    encourage the open exchange of ideas;
(ii)   provide for consideration of different or dissenting viewpoints; and
(iii)  protect employees from efforts to prevent or deter consideration of alternative scientific opinions.
(c)  Agencies, unless prohibited by law, shall review agency actions taken between January 20, 2021, and January 20, 2025, including regulations, guidance documents, policies, and scientific evaluations and take all appropriate steps, consistent with law, to ensure alignment with the policies and requirements of this order.

Sec. 6.  Scope and Applicability.  (a)  The policies and rules set forth in this order apply to all employees involved in the generation, use, interpretation, or communication of scientific information, regardless of job classification, and to all agency decision-making, except where precluded by law.
(b)  Agency heads and employees shall, to the extent practicable and consistent with applicable law, require agency contractors to adhere to these policies and rules as though they were agency employees.  
(c)  The policies and rules set forth in this order govern the use of science that informs agency decisions but they are not applicable to non-scientific aspects of agency decision-making.

Sec. 7.  Enforcement and Oversight.  (a)  Each agency head shall establish internal processes to evaluate alleged violations of the requirements of this order and other applicable agency policies governing the generation, use, interpretation, and communication of scientific information.  Such processes shall be the responsibility, and administered under the direction, of a senior appointee designated by the agency head and shall provide for taking appropriate measures to correct scientific information in response to violations, consistent with the requirements and procedures of section 515 of the statute commonly known as the Information Quality Act, Public Law 106-554, appendix C (114 Stat. 2763A-153).  The designated senior appointee may also forward potential violations to the relevant human resources officials for discipline to the extent the potential violation also violates applicable agency policies and procedures.  The designated senior appointee may consult appropriate officials with scientific expertise when establishing such processes.  
(b)  The processes created under this section are, unless otherwise required by applicable law, the sole and exclusive means of evaluating and, as applicable, addressing alleged violations of this order and other agency policies governing the use, interpretation, and communication of scientific information.

Sec. 8.  Waivers.  (a)  An agency head may request in writing that the OMB Director, in consultation with the OSTP Director, waive any of the requirements of this order for good cause shown.  Such request must explain how the requested waiver is consistent with the policies and purposes of this order.
(b)  Notwithstanding any other provision of this order, the policies and requirements of this order shall apply to agency actions that pertain to foreign or military affairs, or to a national security or homeland security function of the United States, only to the extent that the applicable agency head, in his or her sole and exclusive discretion, determines they should apply.

Sec. 9.  General Provisions.  (a)  Nothing in this order shall be construed to impair or otherwise affect:
(i)   the authority granted by law to an executive department or agency, or the head thereof; or
(ii)  the functions of the Director of the Office of Management and Budget relating to budgetary, administrative, or legislative proposals.
(b)  This order shall be implemented consistent with applicable law and subject to the availability of appropriations.
(c) This order is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies, or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person.
(d)   The Office of Management and Budget shall provide funding for publication of this order in the Federal Register.


                               DONALD J. TRUMP


THE WHITE HOUSE,
    May 23, 2025.