Senate Republicans are questioning the future of the education and research arm of the federal court system, calling it “difficult to justify” taxpayer dollars for the agency because it helped develop a climate science chapter in a judicial reference manual.
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and three Republican senators sent a letter Monday to the Federal Judicial Center. In it, they ask the center to answer a series of questions about the production of the climate chapter of the “Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence.”
“Instead of serving as a neutral and objective resource for federal judges and staff, it read as if it were a plaintiff brief in a climate lawfare suit,” says the letter led by Cruz, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Federal Courts, Oversight, Agency Action and Federal Rights.
The congressional interest comes two months after 22 Republican state attorneys general urged lawmakers to investigate — and potentially defund — the judicial education center. The states’ push is part of a broader campaign to scuttle nearly two dozen climate lawsuits that have the potential to put the fossil fuel industry on the hook for billions of dollars.
