Dr. Jessica Knurick has done a great job IMO breaking down how authoritarian governments co-opt science to their own ends and end up destroying it in the process. Here is one such article, https://open.substack.com/pub/drjessicaknurick/p/the-authori..., but she has lots of posts and short form videos explaining the topic.

This quote in particular struck me as way out there.

“Maybe one way to say it from the administration's perspective,” Stassun says, “is that this group of presidential appointees was advising the Congress to not follow the president's wishes."

its very transparent what they're doing

they're almost certainly going to replace all the board memebers with political loyalists. the board members served six year terms specifically so they'd span multiple administrations and stay independent.

firing them all at once lets you stack the entire board with people. it's not about making science better, it's about removing the people who'd say no.