In the early days of President Donald Trump’s second administration, federal agencies including the US Department of Agriculture were ordered to remove information about climate change from their websites. Now, the USDA has committed to reinstating the deleted content following a lawsuit on behalf of the Northeast Organic Farming Association of New York, the National Resources Defense Council and the Environmental Working Group. According to a letter sent yesterday to a district court judge, the agency has already begun the restoration process and expects to “substantially complete” the effort in about two weeks.
The material removed from USDA sites in February included content about climate-smart agriculture, forest conservation, climate change adaptation and clean energy project investments in rural areas. The trio of plaintiffs sued on the basis that removing that information violated the Freedom of Information Act that allows public access to important federal records, as well as failing to provide advanced notice required by the Paperwork Reduction Act and without the reasoned decision-making of the Administrative Procedure act. The USDA said that it “will restore the climate-change-related web content that was removed post-Inauguration, including all USDA webpages and interactive tools enumerated in plaintiffs’ complaint.”
“This is a major victory and an important first step. Members of the public, including our clients, rely on information from USDA to understand how climate change is affecting our nation’s forests, food supply, and energy systems,” said Stephanie Krent, staff attorney with Knight First Amendment Institute, which helped file the lawsuit. “USDA was wrong to remove these webpages in the first place, and it must comply with federal law going forward.”
