NCAR’s climate research may not be the only thing driving the White House attack. It is widely believed to also be part of a campaign of political retribution waged against Colorado for its conviction and imprisonment of Tina Peters, a former county clerk who breached election security systems in a scheme to find proof of fraud in the 2020 presidential election. The state has included the attack on NCAR in a lawsuit against the Trump administration.

But last week, Colorado’s Democratic governor, Jared Polis, floated the possibility of commuting Peters’s sentence in a social media post. Given Trump’s transactional views on politics, such a move could soften the administration’s views of NCAR. The proposal from Polis drew widespread outrage from state Democratic leaders. But Polis, who is from Boulder and has close ties to NCAR, has been known to buck his party in the past. The fate of one of the world’s most famous climate labs may hinge on backroom bargaining far removed from atmospheric science.