A New Top Priority for House Democrats? Restoring Science

As Democrats prepare to take control of the House in January, they’re gearing up to advance a long list of priorities. 

One key player in that effort will be the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, which oversees federal grants and research at the National Laboratories and agencies like NASA and NOAA. U.S. Rep. Zoe Lofgren represents California’s 18th district and, as the most senior Democrat on the committee, is in line to become its next chair. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

STEVE CURWOOD: What was your reaction on election day and after, as you understood that the Democrats would take control of both the House and Senate with sizable margins?

ZOE LOFGREN: It’s huge, and it’s a wonderful opportunity that we have to deliver for the American people on the things that matter to them. Obviously, the cost of living was top of mind for many, many voters. People are concerned about the corruption of this administration, which in many cases is related to the costs spiking. Everything from healthcare costs to energy costs and the like, and each committee in the Congress will have a piece of the remedy that we need to bring to bear as best we can.

JENNI DOERING: You are currently the ranking member of the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology in the House, and may become the chair in January. What issues fall under that committee?

LOFGREN: The entire science enterprise, primarily anything with the research, is related to the Science Committee. We have jurisdiction over the space program as well [as] some of the issues that we’ve worked on in fusion energy research and quantum computing. AI has been a focus of the committee, as well as just basic science research. 

We do touch over into issues that relate to climate and in the science portfolio, it’s a broad jurisdiction. We’ve looked at some of the things that EPA has done, which have really been outrageous, as well as the Department of Energy. It’s a fun committee; my predecessor [U.S. Rep.] Eddie Bernice Johnson used to call it the committee of the future.

CURWOOD: What are your top priorities as you assume this position? The things that have been undone or moved ahead by the Trump administration—that list is fairly long. What’s at the top of yours?

LOFGREN: We need to do two main things. One is oversight—to put a spotlight, and in some cases, to uncover what the administration has done that has damaged the science enterprise in this country. We also need to do legislation to change policies that will better serve the American people. 

The committee has a long history of bipartisanship, and it certainly has even in this Congress when it comes to legislation. I will say the Republicans have not been active in criticizing the administration, but we have worked collaboratively to pass a number of bills. I think all the bills that we passed were either unanimous or close to it, and so I’m hoping that that spirit of bipartisanship can continue on some of the bills that we need to enact in our subject area. 

In terms of oversight, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency has done tremendous damage. Twenty percent of the agency’s workforce has quit, retired or been fired. They’ve shut labs down. The Office of Research and Development was completely wiped out. We’ve made multiple requests for records and documents, and they haven’t produced a single one. 

Their science capacity has been gutted, and the science integrity is really impaired. It’s an industry-capture event, and climate denialism is rampant in the agency. It’s pathetic. Their basic mission is to use the best available science to protect health and the environment, and they’ve not done so. 

We’re preparing our letters right now to [EPA Administrator Lee] Zeldin to renew our oversight requests. I sent a similar letter to the Department of Energy secretary, [Chris] Wright, last week. We need to know about their reorganization plans, the Endangerment Finding, and a number of other things. That’s first on the agenda.

DOERING: We wanted to ask you about what’s been happening at the National Science Foundation. We’ve reported in the past on how the Trump administration has targeted vital American science establishments by freezing and canceling grants, and also refusing to release obligated funds at the National Science Foundation. How might your committee go about investigating those missing funds and ensuring they’re returned?

LOFGREN: We’re going to get to the bottom of what has happened. The NSF was the crown jewel of our government’s support for discovery science across all fields of science and engineering. The president asked for a $3 billion cut in fiscal year ’25 and ’26, and it’s worth reminding ourselves that in a bipartisan way, Congress said no to that cut. 

We enacted and funded the agency close to the fiscal year ’24 level, but as you mentioned, the money does not appear to be going out. There are whistleblower accounts that the administration is sort of taxing up to 30 percent of funds for some kind of slush fund [for] their politicized priorities, not science, but maybe funnel it into tech firms. We’re not sure. That would be in complete contravention of the law. 

But looking forward, and I’ve discussed this with the incoming chairwoman of the Appropriations Committee, [Rep. Rosa DeLauro], I think Congress needs to consider and take a look at how we might be more prescriptive in the crafting of authorizations and appropriations so that the opportunity for mischief is severely curtailed, and the opportunity for court orders is significantly enhanced.

CURWOOD: Can you talk to us a bit more about what’s gotten frozen at NSF? I’m thinking of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, or NCAR, and then also over at NOAA. I think the biggest grant under NSF was going to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution to deal with climate stuff, and that simply got stuck.

LOFGREN: It’s not going, and the interesting thing is the courts have been the sole branch of government that didn’t cave, with the exception of the Supreme Court. The trial courts have been pretty good about ordering the administration to comply with the law. But of course, it takes a long time, and so by the time the courts make their decisions, the damage has been done and they slow-walk the compliance, or it’s too late to undo it. So yes, we’re going to take a look at NOAA, which is so important across the board. 

Every part of America needs NOAA and relies on adequate weather information. Whether you’re in agriculture or whether you’re in a Gulf Coast state worried about hurricanes, or in the West dealing with droughts. We need to know all of that, and they have impaired that capacity. They’ve not only impaired that, they’ve impaired the satellite capacity to capture data where they’ve illegally made changes. We’re going to put a spotlight on all of it, try to unwind the misconduct and prospectively be in a legislative posture that will make it more difficult for them to engage in misconduct in the future.

DOERING: To drill down on the climate aspect of this, when it comes to places like the National Center for Atmospheric Research or NOAA, how important is it at this moment in time when the U.N. is telling us we are surpassing 1.5 degrees Celsius, this critical threshold? How important is it to have that data as weather disasters mount?

LOFGREN: It’s hugely important. We went into an effort to preserve the data. There was an effort to destroy all the data that had been accumulated, and working with scientists in Europe to try and portal some of the data so it would not be lost once this administration is gone. There was some success there, but the new collection of data and the gaps that are being created are not good for science. 

Of course we know that climate change is real. Unfortunately, some of my colleagues on the right wing in the Congress say it, well, it’s just weather. They don’t believe that there is actually climate change. Every farmer in America can tell you that there’s climate change. So we need to do something about this. …

The cheapest energy is solar at this point, but we also need to recapture carbon not only from the air but from the sea, which is the biggest carbon sink. That’s a more difficult challenge, but it is a doable challenge if we’re going to try and be successful in preserving a livable planet.

CURWOOD: What about research funds for universities? I hear a lot of complaints that those have been really slashed, and that the applications for Ph.D. programs that require grant support are down some 20 percent. 

LOFGREN: There is a lot of concern, and I don’t think we have had an adequate complete accounting of that yet. The Democrats, on our Science Committee website, have a portal for people to tell us if their grants have been canceled. That’s how we’re getting information from the grantees. This does tremendous damage to our country. 

Since World War II, we had a system in place. Was it perfect? No, and it could be improved. But destroying it is not improving it. There would be bipartisan support for basic research that was primarily university-based, and then from those wonderful discoveries, there would be commercial development and prosperity. 

And it was the envy of the world. Everyone was trying to copy what we were doing, and [the Trump administration] dismantled that through stupid political moves, mindless destruction. I’ve talked to so many university presidents who’ve told me that they have not admitted otherwise admissible doctoral and postdoctoral students because they don’t know how to pay for the research. Those students are either going into another field or going to another country. 

Another part of this issue is the steep decline in foreign students. If you take a look at the Americans who won Nobel prizes, somewhere between 40 and 50 percent are Americans who were born in another country—Americans by choice. The pattern has been that [the] best and the brightest in the world want to come to America. They get their doctorates. They love America. They become Americans, and then they win the Nobel Prize for America. Well, there’s been a close to 70 percent drop-off in foreign students coming into the U.S. 

DOERING: A lot of Americans are concerned about the rapid pace of how artificial intelligence is developing. What do you think the Science Committee might be able to do to impose regulations or slow down the rapid pace of AI?

LOFGREN: It’s not clear what the leadership on the Democratic side wants to structure the approach to AI. Right now, three committees have most of the jurisdiction over AI, and that’s the Science Committee, the Judiciary Committee and the Energy and Commerce Committee. I’m on two of the three, and we could approach it collaboratively. There’s been a discussion among some whether we should do a separate select committee. I don’t know if that would be a wise approach, since it’ll take six months to get staffed up and organized, but AI has tremendous possibilities. 

It also poses tremendous challenges, and there do need to be constraints and controls. And we need to assign responsibility and liability to the developers of AI for harm that is caused. … We’re ready to serve, and to do what the American people need to make sure that this technology serves their needs, not the needs of the tech bros.

CURWOOD: You have written that, as Science Committee chair, you will work to put a stop to Trump’s politicization of science. Why is taking the politics out of science so important, from your perspective?

LOFGREN: I’ll just give you an example. Ted Cruz and his staff put together a little report [targeting] DEI in science, which was crazy. They did a word search, and then it looks to me that DOE and NSF and NIH just took that document and started canceling grants based on it. I’ll give you an example of a researcher who was doing research on dementia in a university, and she had people who were part of the study, but the people who surrounded the university were all high-income Asian and Anglo individuals, and she needed a broader sample to validate the sample. That’s not DEI. That’s science. They canceled the grant based on the keywords. Stupid stuff. The idea is, and always has been in American science, is if your idea is peer reviewed, it could stand up to review, that’s the measure of valid science. It’s not somebody saying, “I don’t like blue states.” 

When the secretary of Energy came before the committee, we asked about energy grants, but also research grants. Were they canceled based on politics? And he testified that they had not been canceled because of politics. At the same time, the lawyers were in court, swearing under oath that the decision had entirely been made by which states voted for Trump and which states hadn’t. 

We did refer the secretary to the Department of Justice for review of whether that is a felony, to lie to Congress. I don’t fool myself that [Attorney General] Todd Blanche is … going to pursue that. But the statute of limitations is five years, so that referral has already been made. 

We’ll see what Trump does in terms of pardoning his entire criminal enterprise of an administration. But we’re going to be very busy with our oversight activities in crafting legislation that diminishes the opportunity for bad conduct and trying to get this science enterprise back on track and better.