Records of Trump Administration’s Illegal “Climate Working Group” Available Online

(Washington, D.C. – March 16, 2026) More than 100,000 pages of documents related to the Trump administration’s illegally created “Climate Working Group,” which were released by court order to the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) and the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), are now posted online and freely available to the public.  

You can find the documents here. The site allows users to browse individual records or download them all at once. Instructions are on the web page. 

Background 

Trump Energy Secretary Chris Wright secretly arranged for five hand-picked climate contrarians to form the “Climate Working Group” last year. They were assigned to secretly draft a biased report challenging the overwhelming scientific consensus underpinning the Endangerment Finding – EPA's foundational scientific finding that climate pollution endangers public health and the environment. That report was kept hidden until it was unveiled as part of the Trump administration EPA’s proposal to overturn the Endangerment Finding last July.  

EDF and UCS filed a lawsuit, challenging the secret creation of the group and its work conducted in violation of the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA). FACA is a law passed by Congress after Nixon-era scandals, which states that federal government advisory committees cannot form or operate in secret, requires that they have fairly balanced membership, and mandates that materials created by an advisory group must be available to the public.  

In December 2025, a federal judge, appointed by President Reagan, ruled that the government must disclose the records of the “Climate Working Group” to EDF and UCS. On January 30, 2026, the judge ruled that the Trump administration had violated the law by convening the “Climate Working Group” in secret to develop a report containing advice and policy recommendations. 

The Trump administration’s draft proposal to overturn the Endangerment Finding relied extensively on the “Climate Working Group’s” report, citing it 22 times. However, almost immediately after the report was released, scientists – including some whose work was cited – denounced it. A group of more than 85 scientists issued a scathing rebuttal outlining the report’s numerous flaws, and the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine released its own report finding that it is “beyond scientific dispute” that climate pollution harms human health and welfare. 

EDF and UCS also released a subset of the records received under the court order, and EDF sent them in a formal submission to EPA. That smaller group of records show politicization, reckless haste, disregard for public health, contempt for rigorous science, and evidence of at least 18 meetings held in secret. You can read excerpts from the smaller group of documents here.  

The Trump administration finalized its plan to overturn the Endangerment Finding in February. It claimed not to rely on the unlawful “Climate Working Group” report at the same time that key aspects of its final action reflected a serious and unlawful disregard of foundational science. EDF and UCS are part of a broad coalition that has filed a lawsuit challenging the repeal of the Endangerment Finding. 

As mentioned above, EDF and UCS have posted the documents received under the court order on this webpage, along with instructions for searching through them.