With Election Day just a single-digit number of days away, the Trump administration is moving on what could be their final chance to undermine government action against climate change. President Donald Trump recently delivered a series of blows to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the New York Times reported, starting with ousting the agency’s acting chief scientist last month. NOAA’s chief of staff Erik Noble, a former White House policy adviser and one of several employees recently installed by the Trump administration, removed agency scientist Craig McLean after McLean sent an email to some of the new appointees requesting their acknowledgement of the agency’s rules on scientific integrity, which “prohibits manipulating research or presenting ideologically driven findings.” Noble responded with an ask: “Respectfully, by what authority are you sending this to me?” McLean answered that as acting chief scientist, he was responsible for ensuring the scientific integrity policy was upheld. The next day, Noble wrote back to tell McLean that “you no longer serve as the acting chief scientist for NOAA” and that his replacement had already been appointed.

McLean’s replacement is Ryan Maue, a research meteorologist who, per the Times, “has criticized climate scientists for what he has called unnecessarily dire predictions.” Maue is not the only climate-change critic among the new political hires: David Legates, a University of Delaware professor who, like Trump, has long questioned the existence of human-caused global warming, joined as deputy assistant secretary last month, a role that reportedly did not exist before his appointment. “The positions that these individuals are in gives them the perfect opportunity to suppress, distort and cherry-pick information to make it whatever the party line is,” Jane Lubchenco, a former Obama-era NOAA administrator, said of the recent appointments. The eleventh-hour replacement is in line with Trump’s desired purge of the FBI, CIA, and Pentagon, post-election plans reported by Axios last week.

The Times notes that the NOAA “has, so far, remained remarkably independent in its ability to conduct research about and publicly discuss changes to the Earth’s climate” under an administration known for rolling back environmental protections and questioning climate science. But the freedom that the agency has enjoyed is now threatened under the administration’s recent changes, which are reportedly aimed at undercutting the National Climate Assessment, an account the government is legally required to issue every four years that sets the standard for American knowledge about climate change and underpins federal regulations to combat it. If Trump is re-elected, further changes at the NOAA reportedly include replacing longtime authors of the report with writers who argue against accepted facts about climate science, as well as “shifting NOAA funding to researchers who reject the established scientific consensus on climate change and eliminating the use of certain scientific models that project dire consequences for the planet if countries do little to reduce carbon dioxide pollution.”

Along with McLean’s removal, the installment of staff who have argued against accepted facts about global warming, and the threatened credibility of the climate assessment, the Trump administration is also placing restrictions on internal and external messages at the agency. The policy change requires all communications—from social media posts to press releases to agency-wide emails—to be approved by political staff at the Commerce Department at least three days before they are released, a move meant to ensure communications “serve the needs of your employees and mission while aligning with the over-arching guidance from the White House and Department,” a memo issued by the department said. The new limits underscore the environmental implications of next week’s vote—and offer a grim preview of what a second Trump term would look like for climate research. 

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