After 8 years in the political wilderness, Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson (D–TX) is relishing the chance to “restore the credibility” of the science committee in the U.S. House of Representatives. With Democrats winning control of the House, Johnson is in line to move from ranking member to chair of the panel when the 116th Congress convenes in January 2019. And she says ending the committee’s ideologically driven fights over climate change, management of the National Science Foundation (NSF), and other research topics is high on her agenda.

She feels that the polarizing 6-year tenure of Representative Lamar Smith (R–TX), the current science panel chair who is retiring, was an anomaly for the typically low-key panel she joined as a new member in 1993. She is hoping her Republican colleagues take a less partisan approach to the committee’s business now that Democrats are in charge and Smith is out of the picture.

Trained as a psychiatric nurse, the 82-year-old Johnson served for more than a decade in the Texas legislature before coming to Washington, D.C. She spoke with ScienceInsider on 9 November from her Dallas district about a range of topics, including climate policy under U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration, gender discrimination in science, and how the need for members to raise money influences the committee’s roster. The conversation has been edited for clarity and brevity.

Q: You said on election night that one of your goals is to “restore the credibility of the science committee.” When was it lost, and what will it take to recover it?

A: I think that we lost it under the leadership of Lamar Smith. And to restore it is to follow the charter of the committee. I’m not saying that it will be easy, because we still have a Cabinet and a president that is not necessarily on our side in terms of scientific endeavors. However, it should not keep the committee from functioning as it should function.

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Q: What are the most pressing areas for oversight?

A: We have to get back to examining climate change. We obviously are experiencing a great deal of climate change, and we’ve had lots of denying. I don’t believe that much of that denying was sincere; I think it was governed by the leadership of the committee. I think it’s nonsense for us to sit here and ignore that it’s happening and waste our time without having any plan for what we should be doing to save our planet and the lives and the money it takes to clean up after disasters.

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