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 pledged to restore deleted content after a trial by New York’s Northeast Organic Farming Association, National Resources Defense Council and Environmental Working Group. According to a letter sent to a District Court judge yesterday, the agency has already begun the rehabilitation process and is expected to “complete” in about two weeks.
The material removed from the USDA sites in February included materials about climate smart agriculture, forestry protection, climate change adaptation and investment of clean energy project in rural areas. All three of the plaintiffs have filed a lawsuit on the basis that removal of this information has violated the Freedom of Information Act, which failed to provide the public access to key federal records, as well as the reduction of paperwork through the Act, and without the administrative procedures, without the administrative procedure. The USDA said it would “restore climate change web content that was removed after the opening, which includes all USDA web pages and interactive tools included in the plaintiff’s complaint.”
“This is a great victory and an important first step. People’s members, including our client, rely on the information of the USDA to understand how climate change is affecting our nation’s forests, food supply and energy system,” said the Night First Amendment Institute, with a staff. “It was wrong to remove these web pages in the first place, and it would have to comply with the federal law to move forward.”
