Trust the Science Act

Who is affected and how:

• Department of the Interior / U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service: Required to act within a 60-day statutory deadline to reissue the 2020 delisting rule; must implement the reissued regulatory text and any administrative steps needed to put that rule back into effect.

• Federal courts and litigants: The bill removes the ability to seek judicial review of the specified reissuance, so parties that might otherwise challenge the agency action (environmental groups, states, tribes, industry) would be blocked from federal-court review of that narrow action.

• Gray wolf populations and conservation interests: The reissued rule would remove federal ESA protections for the gray wolf as defined in the 2020 rule, potentially reducing federal regulatory oversight of activities affecting wolves and altering conservation status and recovery trajectory in areas covered by the rule.

• State wildlife agencies: A federal delisting typically returns management authority to states; reissuance would enable state management regimes (including hunting, control measures, or regulated take) to guide wolf management consistent with state plans and the 2020 rule’s terms.

• Ranchers, livestock owners, and rural communities: Those who experience wolf-livestock conflict may see more immediate availability of state-authorized control measures or hunting seasons after delisting, depending on state policies.

• Hunters, outdoor recreationists, and local recreation economies: Where states adopt hunting or trapping seasons after delisting, recreational and commercial opportunities tied to game management could change.

• Conservation and environmental organizations: Groups that seek to challenge delisting on scientific or procedural grounds will be constrained by the statutory bar on judicial review; their ability to obtain a court decision overturning reissuance would be limited.

Broader administrative and policy effects:

• Removes a judicial check specifically on the reissuance step, which may accelerate a shift in on-the-ground management but raises questions about oversight for whether the administrative reissuance complied with applicable statutes and procedures.
• Because the bill contains no funding, it does not provide resources for monitoring, conflict mitigation, or compensation programs often associated with changes in species status; those needs would fall to existing agency budgets and state programs.
• The measure is narrow in scope (it targets a single named final rule) but consequential in outcomes for species protection policy and for stakeholders on both sides of wildlife-conservation and land-use conflicts.