January 30, 2026 02:51 PM UTC

Colorado Is (Still) Sorry About Chris Wright

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• by: Colorado Pols

Back in September, we took note as dozens of reputable climate scientists condemned a report produced by the Energy Department under Energy Secretary Chris Wright on the issue of global human-caused climate change that was heavily skewed in the direction of denial at the expense of scientific rigor.

As the New York Times’ Lisa Friedman reports this Friday afternoon, a federal judge today smacked down Wright’s fossil fuel evangelism as not just factually inaccurate, but illegal:

A federal judge on Friday ruled the Energy Department violated the law when Secretary Chris Wright handpicked five researchers who reject the scientific consensus on climate change to work in secret on a sweeping government report on global warming.

The Energy Department issued the report, which downplayed the dangers of warming, in late July without having held any public meetings or made records available to the public. Lee Zeldin, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, then cited the report to justify a plan to repeal the endangerment finding, a landmark scientific determination that serves as the legal foundation for regulating climate pollution.

But the Federal Advisory Committee Act of 1972 does not allow agencies to recruit or rely on secret groups for the purposes of policymaking. Judge William Young of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts said the Energy Department did not deny that it had failed to hold open meetings or assemble a balance of viewpoints, as the law requires, when it created the panel, known as the Climate Working Group.

Because the EPA cited this report to explain their plan to repeal the finding that establishes the government’s authority to regulate greenhouse gases, the pro-industry propaganda generated by Wright’s “Climate Working Group” was more than just idle chit-chat–and as a result, needed to rely on an above-board panel participating in good faith in an open process.

But once again, “above-board good faith” is not what a small majority of American voters were looking for in November of 2024. Donald Trump’s policy of wreck it first, make excuses in court later that he followed with the White House’s now-former East Wing also extends to the nation’s energy policy.

In a state that has become a vanguard of resistance against the Trump administration’s excesses, Chris Wright is an unfortunate blot on our geographic conscience. We’re ready for the rumors that Wright is falling out of favor in Trump World to come true.