The US Executive Branch – Where US Science Policy Comes Alive!

By Sheeva Azma

Updated July 15, 2024

UPDATE:

The recent Supreme Court decision, Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, overturns the longstanding Chevron Doctrine and takes away power from the executive branch regarding policy implementation, shifting it to the other two branches (judicial and legislative). On June 28, the day the Supreme Court released their decision in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, I reached out to Gwendolyn Bogard, who spoke at the session I have covered below, and here’s what she had to say:

• AAAS has been covering the SCOTUS rulings in their policy alerts, which are available to AAAS members. The CEO of AAAS and legal experts put out a statement about the decision as well calling for capacity building for science expertise in the judicial system.
• She also shared this Politico article with me which she said had a good breakdown of what happened.
• She further wrote: “As I understand it, there will likely be rippling impacts across the executive agencies because their expertise won’t be deferred to, so if a regulation/etc. is challenged, even if it has scientific backing behind it, it’s more likely to be overturned or delayed. It’s undercutting the scientific expertise that agencies hold. [Sudip Parikh, CEO of AAAS] talks about this in the statement, but it’s expected that it’ll have a chilling effect on agency policymaking/regulatory processes, slowing down/impeding them. And it’s especially bad taken in concert with the separate SCOTUS ruling on the Corner Post case, which opens up a much longer timeline for regulations to be challenged – the statute of limitations, so to speak, is going away. So agency actions aren’t safe from litigation, even decades after they’re finalized.”

So, reading this article about executive branch powers recapping Bogard’s talk at the 2024 AAAS Annual Meeting, make sure to keep all of that in mind! That said, keep reading to learn more about executive branch science!

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Thanks to my membership in the National Association for Science Writers, I got a press pass to attend the 2024 AAAS annual meeting as a journalist (for FREE!) this past February. Check out all the session recaps I wrote, which are all focused on science policy. While I’ve already done a deep dive into the three branches of the US government, this AAAS session added a new dimension to my previous knowledge. I learned a lot about science policymaking that I didn’t know about: for example, that the executive branch’s work has often just begun when Congress passes a bill.

We talk a lot about bills being passed, members of Congress, etc., but there’s a whole other ecosystem in the executive branch. Gwendolyn Bogard, AAAS Office of Government Relations, gave a non-exhaustive overview of federal executive branch science policy at the 2024 AAAS Annual Meeting’s “Mini-Catalyzing Advocacy in Science and Engineering (CASE) Workshop.” She ran through a non-exhaustive list of STEM-related agencies, and mentioned that even agencies who are not dedicated to STEM have STEM-related initiatives. For example, the State Department doesn’t specifically do science, but they are involved in science diplomacy.

What does the US federal executive branch do with respect to science policymaking?

The purpose of the executive branch is to implement and enforce laws that Congress passes – “they’re the ones out there making it happen.” The president appoints the head of federal agencies, as well as their own advisors in the Cabinet. The Cabinet is made up of the heads of 15 different departments, including the armed forces. That’s about 4,000,000 Americans – federal employees, in other words – just in the executive branch! That’s a lot of people and they do a lot of different functions.

Enforcing Laws

Federal agencies do the day-to-day enforcement of various laws. Most agencies sit under one of the 15 executive departments. “Agency” is a pretty broad term. The executive branch Department of Health and Human Services has many different agencies under it, such as the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). On the other hand, we often talk about the Department of Energy as an agency, and it is an executive department in and of itself.

Advancing White House Policy Priorities

The president hires political appointees to run these agencies, which means the president can also fire them. The president hires these people to advance administration priorities.

The White House also has its own science policy division, called the Office of Science and Technology Policy. Arati Prabhakar is the current director of OSTP – her position was elevated to a cabinet-level position in 2021. Science advisors have served the president for decades, but none have been on the level of Cabinet – at the same level as the Secretary of Defense – until 2021. This, which Gwendolyn states, “took a lot of advocacy over a long period of time,” literally brought science to the decisionmaking table.

Intramural vs. Extramural Federal Science

When it comes to science funding from agencies such as NIH and NASA, they have both in-house researchers and external researchers. In-house researchers at federal agencies are called intramural researchers. Most science research is funded by federal agencies extramurally – dispersed to educational institutions by federal agencies, not happening within the agencies themselves. Often, this money is dispersed in a slow form of review known as merit-based review, but there is actually another model which is meant to keep US research and development fast and poised to defeat real-world challenges. Read about both forms of federal science R&D. Agencies can also work with industry, and some departments, like the Department of Defense of Department of Energy, are more likely to do so than others.

Implementing Policy Programs

Agencies don’t just give away money and contracts; they also play a regulatory role in implementing the laws that Congress writes into actual programs. Bills are long and can have hundreds of pages, but that’s still not enough information to fully carry out, build, and create programs. Questions remain such as: who will be hired, what are the parameters of the new law? It’s just not logistically possible for Congress to codify all of that in the laws themselves, so that’s where federal agencies come in for implementation and execution.

There are different routes that executive branch agencies can take to enact and oversee programs. Agencies like the CDC, FDA, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) tend to both fund research and do a lot of regulation as well. 

Rules vs. Regulations

There’s some overlap between rules and regulations. A regulation that is in the works starts out being called a rule. After a rule is drafted, then it can be subject to public comment, and eventually published in its final form as a regulation. The overall process takes a lot of back and forth and tons of review. “There’s a lot of minutia involved,” says Bogard. Sometimes, when public comments don’t come in, the public comment period has to be extended, for example. It can be a lengthy process, overall, to create a regulation mandated by a Congressional law.

Scientists can participate in the development of rules and regulations by submitting public comments on programs in their area(s) of expertise – leaving either written or spoken comments. This is one’s right both as a scientist and as a public citizen, notes Bogard.

The Federal Register “is a bit of a funky website,” states Bogard, but it’s a place to look for opportunities to submit public comments. Scouring the Federal Register, one can figure out which topics are getting comment requests. That way, scientists can directly help inform implementation of science policy – and what better person to do so than a scientist who is tuned into the issue!

Lobbying, Advocacy, and Coalition-Building

Bogard went into more detail about federal executive branch science policy – and it can get pretty complicated indeed. External groups involved in science policy include nonprofit organizations, driven by a mission; think tanks, which do research-informed policy advocacy; professional societies, such as AAAS; as well as trade associations, which have organizations as members (the Association of American Universities, for example). Lobbyists are also, of course, part of this process, notes Bogard – but lobbying can be defined operationally (people invested in an issue trying to get a certain law passed) versus what people typically think of as lobbying (getting paid to represent corporate interests).

When these groups have a common cause, they form an advocacy coalition, such as the Coalition for National Science Funding. They have weekly meetings, share information, write letters to members of Congress, coordinating on advocacy and even visiting Capitol Hill to advocate for their shared cause.

“It’s complicated…but it just takes a little bit of time to untangle,” concludes Bogard.

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