A Failed Climate Coup in the Courts
The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board flagged a troubling episode this week that Power The Future has been scrutinizing over the past year: an attempt to quietly inject climate advocacy into the federal judiciary under the guise of “settled science.”
Power The Future last summer called for the Trump administration to investigate this national lawfare campaign by climate activists and submitted FOIA requests into the group.
In its editorial, the Board details how the Federal Judicial Center, which trains and advises federal judges, published a revised Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence that framed climate change disputes as comparable to tobacco denial, implicitly casting dissenting views as bad-faith manipulation rather than legitimate scientific disagreement.
“This might be a case of all’s well that ends well, except that someone on the Judicial Center was either asleep or tried to slip ideology into what should be ‘a dispassionate guide,’ to borrow Justice Kagan’s words.”
That language mattered. The manual cited activist authors and was written by contributors tied to climate-advocacy institutions, raising serious questions about judicial neutrality. The effort drew objections from House Judiciary leaders and 27 state attorneys general, who warned that the chapter threatened litigants’ constitutional right to an impartial tribunal.
Facing scrutiny, the Judicial Center quietly removed the climate chapter with no explanation offered.
The rollback is welcome. But as the Journal notes, the larger concern remains: how easily ideology can seep into institutions that are supposed to sit above politics. Courts don’t make climate policy, and judges shouldn’t be pre-loaded with one side’s arguments before a case is even heard.
February 9, 2026