Stress balls were the swag item of choice at the National Center for Atmospheric Research's booth Wednesday morning, during the world's largest gathering of climate scientists. NCAR representatives came to this meeting — the convention of the American Geophysical Union — to talk about their research, which is crucial to the climate and weather community. Instead, they've ended up fielding questions about Trump administration plans to break up this Boulder-based center, which conducts research and maintains supercomputing facilities on behalf of the government and 129 colleges and universities in the United States and Canada. The impending breakup of NCAR, announced on X Tuesday night by OMB director Russ Vought, would be aimed at ending the center's climate programs while maintaining its supercomputing facilities and weather-related programs. But three officials close to the matter suspect the administration's action against NCAR — and the potentially hundreds of layoffs it would result in — is related to the White House's anger over Colorado Gov. Jared Polis' refusal to release Tina Peters, a former election official and prominent 2020 election denier, from prison. Peters, the former Republican clerk of Mesa, Colorado, was found guilty last year on state charges of participating in a criminal scheme with fellow election deniers to breach her county's secure voting systems, in hopes of proving Trump's false claims of massive fraud. She was sentenced to nine years in prison and is serving her sentence at a women's prison in Pueblo, Colorado. Trump announced last week he was granting Peters a full federal pardon. The federal pardon has no legal impact on her state conviction and incarceration, but the administration has been pressuring Polis and other Colorado officials to set her free. The White House did not deny the connection. Read more at the link in our bio. 📷: John Greim/LightRocket/Getty Images