DOJ Official Queried a Dozen Journals on ‘Partisan’ Views in 2025

The Justice Department last year queried a dozen scientific publications, including Science, Nature Medicine, and Pediatrics, on their “partisan” positions in scientific debates, newly released records show.

FYI Science Policy News obtained the letters through a July 2025 public records request. The new materials reveal a campaign spearheaded by then-interim US attorney for the District of Columbia Ed Martin to pressure publications prominent in the public health response to the COVID pandemic and in reproductive medicine.

“It’s hard not to see this as power politics,” says Matt Motta, an associate professor of Health Law, Policy, & Management at Boston University’s School of Public Health. He called the letters part of a wider “science reclamation project on the political right, where you have folks saying it’s not that we’re anti-science; it’s just that all the science journals out there are telling you some version of the same politically biased story.”

The DOJ did not reply to a request for comment on the letters. President Donald Trump announced in late August that Martin would be leaving the agency.

In April 2025, Martin’s office sent nearly identical letters to at least 11 journals and one news magazine, the records show. The letters said their recipients were “conceding that they are partisans in various scientific debates,” and demanded explanations of their editorial processes.

Initial news of the DOJ letters sent to the New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, and two smaller medical journals created an uproar in April 2025. Legal scholars raised concerns that the letters’ demands clashed with First Amendment protections from government interference with publishers.

The letters were sent to:

• American Family Physician
• American Journal of Public Health
• Cancer
• Chest
• Family Medicine
• JAMA
• Nature Medicine
• New England Journal of Medicine
• Obstetrics & Gynecology
• Pediatrics
• Science
• Scientific American

Until now, only the NEJM, JAMA, Chest, and Obstetrics & Gynecology letters had been reported. DOJ’s letters to JAMA and Nature Medicine both noted that they covered the wider family of journals published by their owners, potentially opening up many more publications to the DOJ enquiry.

“These letters sent by Ed Martin represent a dangerous and intentional overreach by the federal government into scientific research,” said Rep. Bill Foster (D-IL), who is the only PhD physicist in Congress. “Scientific publishing is an integral part of the scientific ecosystem, and these actions by the Trump administration risk fundamental damage to our ability to lead in science around the world.”

At least three of the scientific journals, Cancer, Science, and Family Medicine, responded to Martin’s letters, according to the records; the latter two directed further communication to their lawyers. Broadly, all of the journals described their peer review process in their responses. Scientific American noted it was a news magazine in its response, and not a scientific journal. (The author of this article is a former employee of Scientific American.)

“This was the government sticking its nose in places where it doesn’t belong, all in an effort to pursue speakers who express views it doesn’t like,” said JT Morris, deputy director of litigation for the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE). “The First Amendment is clear: a publication’s editorial decisions are none of the government’s business, whether it’s a newspaper or a medical journal.”

Readers can view DOJ’s public records below (some email addresses and phone numbers were redacted by FYI Science Policy News):