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As the impacts of manmade climate change have accelerated from factors like more extreme fires, heat and floods, and climate science itself has matured into credible discipline, more and more climate scientists have found themselves targeted.

“Compared to the first Trump administration, government scientists are now more comfortable coming to us and using our legal assistance, taking legal action,” said Lauren Kurtz, executive director of [CSLDF]. “They are less afraid of rocking the boat.”

As Trump prepared to return to office, the nonprofit Climate Science Legal Defense Fund, which provides free legal and educational support to researchers facing harassment and intimidation for their work, was gearing up for a high-stakes protracted struggle to protect scientists.

Still, Kurtz expects the next few years to be rough for climate scientists. “It’s going to be chaotic; it’s going to be unpredictable.”

As Trump prepares to return to office, the nonprofit [CSLDF], which provides free legal and educational support to researchers facing harassment and intimidation for their work, is gearing up for a high-stakes protracted struggle to protect scientists.

“I had people come in last AGU worried about this,” said Chris Marchesano, a staff attorney with the nonprofit [CSLDF]. “We’ve been hearing a lot from scientists who are incredibly worried.”

As of July 2024, the [Silencing Science] tracker has documented 531 cases of censorship, information suppression, misrepresentation of scientific facts, and other policy or administrative anti-science actions in the United States.

[CSLDF] fights for the rights of scientists to conduct, publish, and discuss their research and advocate for science without the threat of political harassment, censorship, or legal intimidation.

In the wake of the 2016 election, researchers at the Columbia University Law School’s Sabin Center for Climate Law and the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund created the “Silencing Science Tracker.”

The fundamental problem, Kurtz says, is that institutions are often more focused on protecting themselves than their faculty members and frequently decline to provide legal counsel to their employees.

“This is not about what happened to me, it’s about what could happen to others,” Virginia Burkett, the scientist, told Nature, emphasizing that stronger protections are needed regardless of who wins the US presidential election in November.