ANALYSIS: China-Backed Groups Continue Their Takeover of US Judiciary
Trump deregulatory efforts run up against vast, well-funded climate activist network connected to the Chinese Communist Party.
Thousands of US judges have come under the influence of anti-science climate activism just as the largest deregulatory effort in American history makes its way through the court system. The timing is no accident, and the stakes could not be higher for the cause of free markets and honest scientific inquiry.
Key players in this effort include the Environmental Law Institute, a left-leaning legal advocacy and climate activist organization closely tied to Communist China, along with a vast network of well-endowed progressive foundations, law firms, and green pressure groups. The institute's Climate Judiciary Project (CJP) serves as the major conduit for climate activists to gain leverage over the U.S. judiciary.
Converting Judges to Climate Zealots
More than 2,000 U.S. judges have already received training from CJP that makes use of curriculum highly skewed in favor of unfounded climate alarmist theories. This according to a new report from a State Armor, a non-profit organization dedicated to helping states create solutions to global security threats.
CJP works in close coordination with the Federal Judicial Center (FJC). Here's why this matters.
As Restoration News has previously reported, the FJC and the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), a nonprofit nongovernmental organization originally chartered by Congress in 1863, jointly publish the Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence. The NAS is a division of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, which has a hand in shaping the CJP curriculum.
Congress created the FJC in 1967 to serve as the research and education arm of the federal courts and made the Chief Justice of the U.S. its chair. For decades, the FJC collaborated with the NAS to give judges objective, apolitical guidance on how to evaluate scientific evidence in the courtroom.
But that objectivity came to a hard stop when the fourth edition of the reference manual was released in December 2025. A letter from three highly credentialed scientists addressed to Chief Justice John Roberts in April explains what went down. Several chapters departed from the manual's long history of neutrality while interjecting unsupported claims masquerading as settled fact, according to the letter signed by Richard Lindzen of MIT, William Happer of Princeton, and Steven Koonin of Stanford's Hoover Institution.
After 28 state attorneys general documented conflicts of interest in the chapter titled "Reference Guide on Climate Science," that chapter was withdrawn. But as the three scientists explain in their letter, the chapter undergirding the withdrawn chapter titled "How Science Works" remains—and it has just as many problems.
The new version of this chapter, which balloons from the 18 pages in the prior edition to 65, slyly swaps out the scientific method in favor of policy stances that, as the letter says, present "contested claims as settled fact." The three scientists inform Roberts that the chapter elevates the faulty notion of consensus over the scientific method. "Consensus," they write, "is an inferior and inherently fragile substitute for the gold-standard of science: testable predictions confronted with data."
The US Supreme Court has already ruled in Daubert v Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals (1993) that the scientific method must govern scientific evidence. Is the theory testable? Has it been tested? Is there a known error rate? Has it been subjected to peer review? Daubert marked a deliberate move away from consensus and toward the well-established scientific method. The scientists writing to Roberts argue that the new chapter walks that move back—instructing judges to admit evidence on precisely the grounds Daubert rejected.
The chief justice has not yet responded to the letter from the scientists even as the CJP continues to make headway with American judges set to hear climate-related cases. Therefore, time is a factor as the assault on the scientific method coincides with increased litigation against American energy companies.
State Armor was founded in large part for the purpose of exposing and monitoring the influence Communist China seeks to exert in the United States. Its group of researchers warns in the report on ELI:
…troubling connections [exist] between this jurisprudential push and interests aligned with or connected to China, including overlapping streams of funding and ties to academia. Consciously or not, this is an instance of ELI pushing for unilateral American disarmament in energy security and industrial production.
State Armor makes it clear that CJP is far from neutral and "instead provides heavily biased materials that favor liability against energy companies as a means to regulate energy through litigation." Moreover, the individuals responsible for producing the materials and presentations for CJP have either political or financial stakes in the outcome of cases they curiously do not disclose, according to State Armor.
Until the scientific method is restored to its proper evidentiary status within the judiciary, it would seem American energy companies are back on their heels on the court room. So are American taxpayers and energy consumers.
The Looming Legal Battles Over Climate
President Donald Trump's Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is currently defending its decision to overturn the 2009 "endangerment finding"—an Obama-era rule that declared carbon dioxide a pollutant under the Clean Air Act (CAA). Climate extremists and backers of the Green New Deal have used it to justify sweeping federal climate policy ever since. The endangerment finding stems from the 2007 Supreme Court's 5-4 ruling in Massachusetts v EPA where the high court said the agency could regulate greenhouse gas emissions from new motor vehicles under the CAA. Obama administration officials then proceeded to interpret the decision to mean they had wide latitude and authority to create new climate regulations Congress never authorized under the CAA.
If the Trump administration is successful in revoking the endangerment finding, the new rule would save American taxpayers more than $1.3 trillion, according to an EPA press release. Lee Zeldin, the agency administrator, calls the effort the "single largest deregulatory action in U.S. history."
But Team Trump faces legal headwinds.
A vast coalition of well-funded environmental advocacy groups along with blue state governments are working together to uphold the endangerment finding. Their legal challenges against the Trump EPA currently sit before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
On one side sit vast sums of money and numerous organizations devoted to upholding costly regulations. On the other side: an ace in the hole in the form of the CO2 Coalition, a nonprofit advocacy group that includes scientists and researchers from across the globe working to education the public and policymakers about the benefits of CO2.
The CO2 Coalition has filed a motion to intervene in the case that challenges the scientific underpinnings of the endangerment finding. By contrast, the EPA in its defense focuses purely on economic and legal questions. But since scientific arguments will inevitably figure into judicial proceedings, the coalition's motion fills an important gap in the case to be made for overturning the endangerment finding. Not only is CO2 not a pollutant, the coalition notes, but it is a naturally occurring substance that is critical and beneficial to life on Earth. That's the kind of argument that will not find expression unless the courts continue to follow the Daubert standard.
Delay Tactics at Work?
So, what's next?
Given the ideological makeup of the D.C. Circuit, there's a good chance the appeals court will rule against the Trump administration. But from there, the case will likely move up to the US Supreme Court where the majority appears favorably disposed to ruling against administrative overreach. A fresh decision that overturns Massachusetts v EPA would strike a fatal blow to the endangerment finding. This would explain why delay tactics have happened at the D.C. Circuit. Climate activist litigants may be holding out in hopes for a new Democrat administration beginning in 2029. This way they can avoid a high court ruling that uproots their anti-energy agenda.
The proponents of deregulation should know that the lawfare tactics China-backed entities have employed at the federal level targeting U.S. energy companies also work at the state-level. In fact, the Climate Litigation Database, a project of Columbia Law School's Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, is tracking more than 3300 climate-related dockets at the federal and state level.
Restoration News has reported that the same network lurking behind the endangerment finding supports litigation designed to hobble oil and gas development in Louisiana. These groups include the Energy Foundation, a San Francisco-based left-of-center grant making institution, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) in New York, and the Rocky Mountain Institute in Colorado. Since ELI's efforts to influence the judiciary blend in with current climate litigation, ELI's financial ties to China call out for more scrutiny. So do the law firms standing behind the climate litigants.
The Money Trail Leading Back to China
As State Armor points out, "ELI is funded by a network of organizations with significant financial ties to China. Several of the same funders simultaneously bankroll Sher Edling LLP, the primary plaintiffs' firm behind more than two dozen climate-related suits in the very courts where ELI is training judges." ELI and Sher Edling receive funding from the MacArthur Foundation and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. The left-wing dark money network known as Arabella Advisors has contributed millions to Sher Edling in recent years via its New Venture Fund. ELI received $1.25 from the New Venture Fund in 2024.
ELI has a long history with funding sources tied in with China. The institute was founded in 1969 with seed money from the Ford Foundation, which is also knee deep in supporting China's "Belt and Road Initiative." Since then, other China aligned entities have stepped up to support ELI. The ClimateWorks Foundation, a left-of-center" "pass through" organization contributed nearly a million dollars in 2022.
Another name that keeps popping in climate activist circles: the Switzerland-based Oak Foundation, which contributed $650,000 directly to ELI for the purpose of supporting CJP. British billionaire Alan M. Parker founded the Oak Foundation, which has directed millions of dollars to benefit China-backed entities.
Potential Solutions
The US Department of Justice (DOJ) should strictly enforce the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), a law that requires individuals and entities to register as foreign agents if they operate on behalf of foreign governments. Several climate activist groups identified in the State Armor report have already come under scrutiny for potential FARA violations. There are several states that have enacted "Baby FARA" laws that have stricter requirements than the federal version.
Republican Representatives Tom Tiffany of Wisconsin and Harriet Hageman of Wyoming have come up with another potential solution come from. They have introduced legislation to protect US taxpayers from footing the bill for abusive litigation practices. Tiffany is now running for governor, and Hageman is running for US Senate—potentially putting them both in a stronger position to end lawfare practices aimed at harming American energy.
And finally, the chief justice of the United States could provide the scientists with a definitive answer to their letter. That answer would preferably come with unambiguous commitment toward ensuring that the scientific method is observed in ongoing climate cases.
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