Trump administration appointed climate-science critic Matthew Wielicki to head reconstituted U.S. Global Change Research Program

On July 9, 2026, the Trump administration reconstituted the U.S. Global Change Research Program and installed Matthew Wielicki, a former University of Alabama geochemist, as its head. The program is the interagency body responsible for the National Climate Assessment, a report Congress has mandated that coordinates climate research across more than a dozen federal agencies and informs environmental rules and infrastructure decisions. The program's dedicated office had been closed and its website taken dark in mid-2025.

Wielicki describes himself as a "professor in exile" and routinely disputes mainstream climate science on social media, including statements such as "The science is not settled on climate change." His appointment places a self-identified skeptic of the scientific consensus in charge of producing and coordinating the government's principal assessment of how climate change affects American infrastructure, the economy, and public health.

The move follows the administration's earlier dismissal in 2025 of the scientists assigned to author the next National Climate Assessment and connects to a broader pattern, recorded elsewhere in the archive, of removing or altering federal climate information. It is recorded here as a distinct event: the placement of a documented climate-science critic atop the body that authors the assessment.