Environment

The head of the Environmental Protection Agency, Scott Pruitt, has proposed a new rule that restricts scientific research that can be used by the agency for its regulatory decisions. The proposed rule only allows the use of studies that make all data publicly available for anyone to analyze. Pruitt proposed the new rule as a way to make the agency's decision-making more "transparent, objective and measurable." EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt claims the new rule will strengthen transparency. Scientific organizations worry it will exclude valuable data from EPA's rule-making process.

On the right of the political spectrum, free speech is also under attack, with environmentalists and serious ecologically-minded scientists being censored, so that what they say or report does not harm powerful interests and businesses like the fossil fuel industry, or orthodox religion, etc.