A group of farmers and environmental nonprofits sued the U.S. Department of Agriculture, accusing the department of scrubbing data relating to climate change from its website and saying the move would hinder research and hurt farming initiatives.
Farmers sue USDA after agency deletes climate change data
The lawsuit says the Agriculture Department is hindering farmers from using the data to make “agricultural decisions” while they also face a recent funding freeze.
February 25, 2025
The suit said the department’s actions hurt farmers who used the data to plan “agricultural decisions” and access funding, made it more difficult for climate researchers and advocates to do their jobs, and “deprived the public” of “vital information.” USDA websites include the Forest Service, Food Safety and Inspection Service, and Natural Resources Conservation Service.
“USDA should be working to protect our food system from droughts, wildfires, and extreme weather, not denying the public access to critical resources,” said Jeffrey Stein, an attorney at Earthjustice, the legal group that filed the suit.
USDA referred questions from The Washington Post to the Justice Department, which declined to comment on the lawsuit.
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Examples cited in the lawsuit include the Farm Service Agency taking down a webpage that told farmers how to apply for climate-smart agriculture and farm loan programs, and the Forest Service deleting an interactive map that allowed users to see where federal agencies have conducted climate change vulnerability assessments and learn more about them.
Earthjustice said the data removal is “part of a trend” under the Trump administration, which has worked to dismantle climate protections and reverse federal policies aimed at fighting and measuring climate change.
The suit also noted that the order to delete these materials came as farmers were already reeling from the Trump administration’s freeze of funding previously promised by USDA under programs aimed at promoting clean energy and sustainable agriculture — leaving many farmers on the hook for payments they never expected to make. Under the Trump administration, thousands of federal employees have been laid off across the country, including at USDA.
“Taking climate change information off websites, freezing funds, and laying off USDA workers that are helping to protect communities is ludicrous,” said Wes Gillingham, board president of NOFA-NY, which represents farmers, gardeners and consumers advocating for organic and sustainable food and farming.
According to the suit, on Jan. 30, USDA Director of Digital Communications Peter Rhee told staff members in an email that they had about 24 hours to “identify and archive or unpublish any landing pages focused on climate change,” and instructed them to sort other webpages into tiers based on how much they mentioned climate change and give a “recommendation on how the content should be handled.”
USDA staff members then “acted swiftly to purge department websites of climate-change-focused webpages,” the lawsuit stated — creating confusion and chaos as resources for farmers and the public suddenly became inaccessible, “without any public notice or explanation.”
In recent weeks, government agencies have removed material relating to topics deemed objectionable by President Donald Trump’s administration from their websites, including references to diversity, equity and inclusion, as well as references to climate change and initiatives to combat it.
The lawsuit claimed that in deleting the materials so quickly and without notice, USDA violated the Paperwork Reduction Act, which requires agencies to provide notice when terminating “significant information dissemination products,” and the Freedom of Information Act. The groups also sued under the Administrative Procedure Act, which allows people to request judicial reviews of certain harmful agency actions.
The suit asked the court to declare USDA’s actions unlawful and order the department to restore the deleted webpages and not to comply further with the Jan. 30 directive.
Trump has long rejected climate science and in his first term aggressively targeted policies aimed at protecting the environment and lowering planet-warming emissions. He has called climate change “an expensive hoax,” and in 2016, he told The Post’s editorial board that he is “not a great believer in man-made climate change.” But he also said in 2020 that “the environment is very important to me.”
Farmers sue USDA after agency deletes climate change data
The lawsuit says the Agriculture Department is hindering farmers from using the data to make “agricultural decisions” while they also face a recent funding freeze.
Updated February 25, 2025
4 min
The suit said the department’s actions hurt farmers who used the data to plan “agricultural decisions” and access funding, made it more difficult for climate researchers and advocates to do their jobs, and “deprived the public” of “vital information.” USDA websites include the Forest Service, Food Safety and Inspection Service, and Natural Resources Conservation Service.
“USDA should be working to protect our food system from droughts, wildfires, and extreme weather, not denying the public access to critical resources,” said Jeffrey Stein, an attorney at Earthjustice, the legal group that filed the suit.
USDA referred questions from The Washington Post to the Justice Department, which declined to comment on the lawsuit.
End of carousel
Examples cited in the lawsuit include the Farm Service Agency taking down a webpage that told farmers how to apply for climate-smart agriculture and farm loan programs, and the Forest Service deleting an interactive map that allowed users to see where federal agencies have conducted climate change vulnerability assessments and learn more about them.
Earthjustice said the data removal is “part of a trend” under the Trump administration, which has worked to dismantle climate protections and reverse federal policies aimed at fighting and measuring climate change.
The suit also noted that the order to delete these materials came as farmers were already reeling from the Trump administration’s freeze of funding previously promised by USDA under programs aimed at promoting clean energy and sustainable agriculture — leaving many farmers on the hook for payments they never expected to make. Under the Trump administration, thousands of federal employees have been laid off across the country, including at USDA.
“Taking climate change information off websites, freezing funds, and laying off USDA workers that are helping to protect communities is ludicrous,” said Wes Gillingham, board president of NOFA-NY, which represents farmers, gardeners and consumers advocating for organic and sustainable food and farming.
According to the suit, on Jan. 30, USDA Director of Digital Communications Peter Rhee told staff members in an email that they had about 24 hours to “identify and archive or unpublish any landing pages focused on climate change,” and instructed them to sort other webpages into tiers based on how much they mentioned climate change and give a “recommendation on how the content should be handled.”
USDA staff members then “acted swiftly to purge department websites of climate-change-focused webpages,” the lawsuit stated — creating confusion and chaos as resources for farmers and the public suddenly became inaccessible, “without any public notice or explanation.”
In recent weeks, government agencies have removed material relating to topics deemed objectionable by President Donald Trump’s administration from their websites, including references to diversity, equity and inclusion, as well as references to climate change and initiatives to combat it.
The lawsuit claimed that in deleting the materials so quickly and without notice, USDA violated the Paperwork Reduction Act, which requires agencies to provide notice when terminating “significant information dissemination products,” and the Freedom of Information Act. The groups also sued under the Administrative Procedure Act, which allows people to request judicial reviews of certain harmful agency actions.
The suit asked the court to declare USDA’s actions unlawful and order the department to restore the deleted webpages and not to comply further with the Jan. 30 directive.
Trump has long rejected climate science and in his first term aggressively targeted policies aimed at protecting the environment and lowering planet-warming emissions. He has called climate change “an expensive hoax,” and in 2016, he told The Post’s editorial board that he is “not a great believer in man-made climate change.” But he also said in 2020 that “the environment is very important to me.”