Virginia Burkett faced the most egregious instance of political interference in her scientific career seven years ago, she said, when political appointees during President Donald Trump’s first term tried to alter the country’s pre-eminent climate change report.

As a top scientist at the U.S. Geological Survey, Burkett had already served as lead author on the first, second and third National Climate Assessment, as well as four United Nations climate change reports . Thirty years prior, she had been the first woman to run a state wildlife agency when she helmed Louisiana’s Department of Wildlife and Fisheries. It was hardly her first rodeo confronting influential figures.

“From those early experiences starting in the late 70s and early 80s dealing with coastal impacts here in Louisiana,

See Full Page