Committee votes to block Trump's 'secret science' EPA rule

The House Appropriations Committee on Friday voted to block a controversial Trump Administration transparency rule that the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) own independent board of science advisers criticized. "This rule would place new crippling limits on what studies can be utilized when EPA crafts new regulation," said the amendment's sponsor, Rep. David Price (D-N.C.), citing a slew of experts and scientific associations. Scientists have decried the 2018 rule, which the administration sought to broaden in March, as an effort to block the EPA from being able to use significant amounts of research in its rulemaking. "The problem is throwing up impossible standards of reproducibility that make it exclude huge swaths of research from being considered for the scientific rulemaking enterprise," Price said. The Trump administration has argued that the rule, which gives preference to studies based on public data, will increase transparency by banning "secret science."...MORE